TRANSDISCIPLINARITY IN THE STUDY OF SOCIOCULTURAL PRACTICES OF EVERYDAY LIFE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE PHENOMENON OF FAMINE IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND)

Abstract

The study of the role of sociocultural practices in the everyday life of society involves the synthesis of methodological approaches in order to create a transdisciplinary research model. Analysis of various aspects of private life in the context of studying socio-cultural practices requires an analysis of the value categories of the society under study, taking account of worldview interpretations of phenomena by contemporaries, cultural attraction, individual self-identification and psychological perception of ongoing processes. The phenomenon of the Victorian famine is not meant to be studied only as a strictly biological phenomenon. The article interprets hunger as a sociocultural phenomenon, considers the associated fear of social stigmatization. The famine in the early Victorian period acts as a factor in the conceptual context of ongoing social phenomena, influencing the reception of cultural ties within society. The categories of “food”, “hunger” and “starvation death” were everyday companions of the public discourse of the era, reflecting the crisis state of Victorian society. Not only was the famine a factor that increased the potential for conflict, as it was perceived in the middle of the century, but by the end of the 19th century it began to be recognized by the authorities as a consequence of social contradictions and acted as an argument for the introduction and continuation of legislatively supported forms of social compromise. Having reworked the inhumane concept of getting rid of “social surpluses” of the period of popularity of Malthusian philosophy in the Middle Victorian period, the Victorians change the topology of the “hunger” concept in the system of structural and semantic models of social dialogue. The sociocultural phenomenon of famine is transformed in the communicative space of the Victorian era from a marker of condemned poverty into a social problem that unites various social groups.