Provincialism as a personal property: social and philosophical aspect

The article attempts to analyze the basic approaches to defining the province as a characteristic of the territory and the provincialism as a property of a person that is a resident of a province. The author justifies the impossibility of an unambiguous evaluation of the abovementioned characteristics and their territorial determination. It shows the dependence of the provincial development as a personal trait on the external social and cultural environment of human existence. The study presents the current scientific viewpoints on such phenomena as a “provincial inferiority complex” and a “provincial spiritual superiority complex”. The research notes the predominance of negative connotation in the definitions of “provincialism” described in both scientific and non-scientific publications (e.g., blogs). The paper provides several positive features of provincialism. The author defines it as “traditionalism”, “conservatism”, “limitation” predetermined by the environment in an objective manner.