Social and cultural identity and strategies for youth vocational education in the Republic of North Ossetia - Alania

The development issues of the social and cultural values and attitudes among the youth of the North Caucasus have historically been of multifactorial and multilayered nature. On the one hand, the creation of social and cultural identity is influenced by ethnic identity matrix prevailing in the region and constructing local ethnic, confessional, cultural meanings and space. On the other hand, social and cultural identity is based on the fundamental components of civic identity, primarily, on such political elements as state and policy, and the temporal characteristics represented by the country, culture, nation. Disintegration and confrontation of these two lines in the sociocultural identity model are typical for a value-based system of young people in the North Caucasus. The research presents the results of a survey conducted in April - May 2017 which provides a scientific assessment of the processes contributing to the development of the value-based system in modern young people of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. Besides, the study identifies the groups of values (traditional or civil ones) that are dominant for North Caucasian youth. The youth values are structured according to six cultural dimensions developed by a Dutch sociologist G. Hofstede: individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, power distance index, uncertainty avoidance index, long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation, indulgence vs. restraint. The author concludes that the social and cultural identity of the residents of the North Caucasus depends on the updating mechanisms of traditional identity and certain modernization processes.