Political Apathy As An Element Of Reversing To Parochial Culture: The Case Of Saratov City, Russia

This research is devoted to the study of political apathy as an element of reversing to parochial culture on the example of the Russian city, Saratov. The main theoretical framework of the study is the parochial culture, one of the types of the civic culture, according to Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. In this work, political apathy is defined as a lack of a personal position of an individual towards issues affecting his/her life directly. Political apathy as a part of political culture is understudied, so this study aims to fill this gap. The aim of the study is to show, using the example of one of the most disadvantaged, politically unstable cities, Saratov, how political apathy leads to the formation parochial culture orientation. Based on 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Saratov residents, I came to unexpected conclusions. Residents of Saratov turned out to be not so much apathetic, but alienated from politics. Saratov residents are aware of what and why they are staying away, while political apathy is a passive process of isolating themselves from politics. At the same time, the results of the interviews demonstrated that the residents of Saratov already share the values of the parochial culture - they have low awareness of the life in Saratov and Russia, at the same time, they are more aware of events happening on a global scale. Thus, here it is not that much political apathy, but political alienation of citizens that has already led its inhabitants to establishment of parochial culture.