Pinchuk A., Makarov E., Tikhomirov D. Cultural Marginality: Multiple Cultural Boundaries and the Perspective for the Positive Realization (Based on the Cluster Analysis of Moscow Students). Journal of Economic Sociology. 2025. Vol. 26. No 5. Pp. 11–37.

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: https://ecsoc.hse.ru/data/2025/11/30/140951220/ecsoc_t26_n5.pdf#page=11 (дата обращения 02.12.2025)

Abstract

The focus of the article is cultural marginality and its manifestation among Russian students, as well as its positive features. The authors analyze the history of scholarship on cultural marginalityб which meaning in the social sciences has shifted from the liminal state of “the stranger” in-between two stable cultural boundaries, to a more fundamental characteristic of social life due to the multiplicity of cultural borders. This development is viewed within two schematically defined lines of the theoretical inquiry: structurefunctional and constructivist approaches. The former underlines the crosscultural interaction and the problem of adaptation, while the latter points out an unstable character of the cultural boundaries themselves. Cultural marginality of the Russian youth is intensifying and becoming more visible because the youth experiences, on the one hand, the worldwide tendency of blurring cultural borders, and on the other, the top-down incentive to form “traditional” values reflected in the cultural policy in the context of geopolitical tensions. The survey conducted by the authors among Moscow students in 2024 (convenience sample, n = 1615) attempts to demonstrate operationalization of the cultural marginality and provide a view on the current trends in the Moscow youth. To do so, cluster analysis has been conducted, which showed that two cluster groups can be distinguished: followers of the dominant culture, and cultural marginals. Consistent with the constructivist approach, the latter demonstrate complexity in forming their cultural identity and the recognition of the multiplicity of cultural boundaries, which, in some cases, can lead to social isolation. Cultural marginality, revealed among the Russian youth, poses the question on its positive aspects and potential; the gap that can be linked via the fields and capitals theory in sociology. Using various examples of successful realization of cultural marginality from literatures on leadership, and innovations in the fields of cultural production, we demonstrate the heuristic potential of dialogue between sociology of marginality and field theory. The research contributes to the literature on marginality by empirical analysis conducted within the logic of the constructivist approach and, combined with economic sociology of fields and capitals and empirical studies of the Russian youth’s solidarity, outlines a sociology of cultural marginality as a theory of the middle range.