The Reproduction Trajectories of Institutions in Relation to Social Isolation of Individual Population Groups in Regions of Russia

Abstract

This article deals with spatial socio-demographic isolation as a factor of the existing settlement system in Russian regions. Theoretically, the phenomena of solitude and social isolation have their own demographic, socio-economic, and psychological origin. Conceptually, they are reflected in theories of nucleation of society’s family structure, families losing its core functions, and the deprivation of personality (friends and family) in the context of the second demographic transition. In fact, the trending reluctance to having children, increases in cohabitation and divorces, men’s premature deaths resulting in widowhood are supplemented and accompanied by institutional factors that enhance a singular lifestyle, including various forms of personal isolation from social environment in post-industrial society.

We examine the increasingly higher number of private households with single individuals ranging from young to old, the incidence of widowhood institution (effects of death rate risks on marriage and family), effects of labor, academic, survival, and consumer migration (both reversible and irreversible) on replacement levels as the major reasons of socio-demographic isolation. Psychological, demographic isolation of any given local communities favors the feel of solitude as the controller of communication and interaction intensity between individuals. In socio-economic terms, isolation of local communities is related to the factor of families’ living away from communication centers and real markets, to new Russian and global logistics, deprivation of traditional sources of income of households as specific forms of survival on the vast living space of Russian society.