Chernova Z. V., Shpakovskaya L. L. (2020) “God Help Those Who Help Themselves”. Pragmatic Individualism as a Discursive Strategy for Normalizing the Biographies of Young Middle­Class Women. Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes. No. 6. P. 173–194. https: ...

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: https://www.monitoringjournal.ru/index.php/monitoring/article/view/1691 (дата обращения 12.01.2021)

Abstract

The article deals with the question how young women of the educated urban middle class in Russia discursively draw up their life project. The authors analyze the categories and discourses that young female representatives of the middle class use to substantiate their choices in the field of family and work. The article also examines how they understand social support of the state as a source of their well-being. The authors show that young women of urban middle class do discursive work to normalize their life stories, bringing them into line with the cultural notions of respectability that are characteristic of the middle class and its lifestyle. This work is a way of producing of self as a subject, and includes emotional work of bringing one’s feelings and speaking about them in accordance with conventionally given cultural and class ideas of decency. The article is based on biographical interviews with women (N 45), representatives of three generations. The main focus of the analysis was formed by the interviews with young women with children, and under 35 years. As an additional information source, publications on thematic Internet forums and social network groups devoted to motherhood were used. Based on the analysis of the interview, the discourse of pragmatic individualism was distinguished. It is an everyday consciousness explanatory model of life choices made by young women in the spheres of employment and family. It presents such decisions as a result of a personal decision based on competent rational choice. The idea of finding oneself and desire to fulfill oneself in various spheres of life is one of the leitmotifs of this discourse, which requires individual to constantly develop personal and professional competencies. The article shows how discourse of pragmatic individualism works in the narratives of young women about their strategies in the field of employment, family, and government assistance.