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Heuristic potential of family visualization in sociocultural research // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 4 (42). P. 9-32

The author focuses on the methodological problem of combining different approaches to study a phenomenon within the framework of sociocultural research, which involves a simultaneous consideration from the position of society and culture. The study is based on the works of N. Bohr, L. Frank, Yu. M. Lotman, L. S. Vygotsky, and others, and on the principle of complementarity. An expressive drawing representing one of the varieties of projective research methods is chosen as the main tool. The use of graphical representations on the topic allows, in the author’s opinion, removing restrictions for the study of hidden unreflexed information or something the respondent is not ready to disclose under the pressure of cultural traditions. The demonstration of the heuristic potential of the proposed set of methods, including projective drawing, Schwartz’s methodology for studying value-based orientations, Sobchik’s individual typological questionnaire, and a sociological questionnaire, is based on the example of studying the family. This set of methods is one of the best examples of the multidimensionality and ambiguity of perception of the phenomenon from the perspective of a sociocultural approach. It can be used at different levels: social, collective, and individual. In the study, several objectives were set: to analyze the relationship between the characteristics of the family, its perception by the individual, and value-based attitudes formed on this basis that determine behavior strategies; to substantiate the value of employing the projective method in the framework of sociocultural research using the example of family visualization. In the empirical part, a secondary analysis of the data of a sociocultural study conducted in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) was performed. The sample consisted of 1,459 people aged 18–25, young students. Among the selected parameters for groupings were the following: the number of children in the respondent’s parent family (large families and families with 1–2 children); the type of emotional intimacy in the family. The results of the study revealed that the use of projective drawing in sociocultural research contributes to the formation of a representative sample, which provides the opportunity to obtain valid data when building groupings. A comparison of drawings of family representations made by descendants of large families and those where 1–2 children were raised did not show significant differences in the perception of the image of the family by young people. There was also no correlation between the number of children in the image and the real families of the respondents. The semantic analysis of the components of the family image most often used in diagnostics allowed concluding that, in the drawings of grown-up children, the elements reflecting the emotional contact in the family between its members are more informative, on the basis of which three groups with a close, distant, and selective type of emotional connection are distinguished. From the third group, respondents who depicted a family with a “parent-centered” type of relationship were considered in more detail. The comparison of the results of their responses to Schwartz’s questionnaire on value-based orientations showed that they are closer in type to the modern incarnation of the patriarchal family. The main result of the study was the substantiation of the heuristic potential of family visualization in conducting sociocultural research, as well as the application of a set of sociological and psychological techniques, including the projective method, to identify the relationship between attitudes, value-based orientations, behavioral principles with relationships built in the parental family.

Keywords: projective methods, sociocultural research, methodology of interdisciplinary research, epistemological potential, representations