The paper addresses the problem on the consolidation of local communities, by which authors refer to the purposefully organized and regulated process of strengthening interpersonal and intergroup ties in a community. By consolidation route, the authors understand the process of mass consciousness modification of the territorial community, consisting in the successive (step-by-step) approval of the prerequisites for the assimilation of the consolidation idea as a behavioural norm. At each stage, however, bifurcation points and risks of not achieving the planned results are likely to emerge. Regulation in this case involves the application of point effects in bifurcation situations, the creation of conditions for movement in the desired direction, and the motivation of various groups of the territorial community to pass the route.

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The objective is to assess the role of urban culture in the formation and growth of the conjunctive-consolidation potential in a modern city in the context of augmented social reality. The basis for the article was a sociological study conducted by the authors in 2020 in three cities of the Belgorod region (Belgo-rod, Gubkin, Novy Oskol), which included: a) a questionnaire survey of the urban population (N=500) based on a quo-ta (by sex and age), zoned and multistage sampling; b) expert survey (N=30 experts); and c) three focus groups (urban youth, employees of cultural institutions, and media workers). Based on the study, the authors revealed dynamic equilibrium between conjunctive and disjunctive trends in the development of urban culture. The sphere of urban culture has significant opportunities for the formation and build-up of conjunctive-consolidation potential, which is expressed in the acquisition of urban citizens’ ability and readiness for mutual loyalty and constructive interaction.

This article discusses changes that actually occur in the Russian Higher Education in the process of reform. The thesis that the functioning of the educational system increasingly detects formal rationality, not focused on the senses, and their imitation. It is noted that the Russian system of higher education refers to a specific type, which can be rightly defined as "culturecentric". This type have a number of traits: dominance conception of education as a complex of practices, with the aim of translation of cultural codes from older to younger generations; the idea of the sacred nature of the educational process as a student-deterministic; installation of universality, according to which university graduates must be not only professionally prepared and fully developed; priority of content and semantic aspects of education in relation to formal, often even to the detriment of the latter; belief in the special position of the higher education sector, as well as education in general in relation to other spheres of activity. It is emphasized that the logical consequence of the transition to the formal rationality becomes a management simulation in which real values and meanings are replaced and replaced by a formal reproduction of operations and procedures, followed by their demonstration, declaration and decoration. It is proved that the main source of formal rationalization is a corporate bureaucracy. What evidence, unwarranted expansion of the administrative apparatus of the university, which is a logical consequence of the formalization of the educational process, excessive standardization and regulation of educational activities, as well as the deformation of the controlling function.

This study analyzes the process of cultural and civilizational identity development in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine. The definition of a cultural-civilizational identity as a kind of macrosocial supra-ethnic identity is presented. A cultural-civilizational identity is a structure of self-consciousness that connects subjectively realized and experienced values, state and cultural symbols, attitudes, relations, assessments and norms of a supra-ethnic community. They prove that in order to understand the content of cultural and civilizational identity development in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine, the concept of political and cultural delimitation has a heuristic potential according to which the process of definition and delineation of adjacent geopolitical entity. This process consists in the development and distribution of stable notions about the specifics of their political and cultural systems among population. According to the materials of empirical study conducted in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine, (n = 1000, 2015), it is argued that the identification processes in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine do not primarily stimulate the restoration of the former high level of social space homogeneity. They separate more than unite the people of the borderland close by their cultural characteristics. The concept of identification process monitoring is proposed in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine.