The life world of a student volunteer in the mechanisms of culture reproduction

The aim of the study is to reveal the significance of the student-volunteer’s life world in culture reproduction. The life world is understood as a special microspace of personal culture, which is saturated with its own meanings and values. The study is based on data obtained in the course of a sociological survey conducted among students of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, Potential of the Volunteer Movement of Students of Universities in Kabardino-Balkaria, as a theoretical basis. Results of studies on the mechanisms of culture reproduction were also used. The methodology consists of methods for collecting and processing empirical data, as well as a methodology for their interpretation developed by the author, based on three concepts: person-centric (based on the phenomenological approach of the European sociological school), socio-centric (using a system-activity approach implemented in domestic cultural studies), and bi-centric (typologies of the socio-cultural process of success symbolization (Gennady Bakumenko)). The theoretical foundations of the conducted sociological survey, based on the methods for studying the motivation for volunteering by Katharina Gaskin and Davis Smith and the model of cross-cultural studies of the third sector of the economy at Hopkins University, are considered in detail, the changes the author made to these methods are described. Three concepts that are the basis for interpreting the results of the study are characterized, differences between them in the interpretation of social reality and the basic mechanisms of cultural reproduction are shown; the author points out that they are, in fact, models of the reproduction of culture. The results of the conducted sociological survey are commented, the significance of the factors influencing the refusal of volunteer activity is determined. The content of the crisis of the inner world of a student volunteer, which is expressed in a change in the value priorities of volunteering in the third year of study at a university, is revealed. The obtained results were interpreted in line with the three models of culture reproduction identified by the author. The life world of a student volunteer is of great importance among the mechanisms of cultural reproduction, since it predetermines the nature of promising trends in sociocultural development. The conclusions of the study were evaluated in the context of the works of scientists analyzing the mechanisms of reproduction of modern culture (Anthony Lyons and Yoshihisa Kashima, Yuuze Zhu and Junmin Liu).