ETHNOCONTACT ZONES IN THE URBAN GEOCULTURAL SPACE: SPECIFICS AND CLASSIFICATION APPROACHES

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the specifics and differences of urban ethnocontact zones (ECZs). Due to the importance of interethnic interaction problem and research of ethnocontact zones surge, the article draws attention to different approaches to the definition of this concept. The authors consider ECZs as chorological objects of geographical science and the type of ethno-cultural regions. Methodological approaches to their study are defined. The specific features of ethnocontact zones of urbanized territories are revealed. First of all, faster formation and transformation compared to rural areas, due to greater mobility and turbulence of urban population, as well as greater intensity of interethnic contacts and borrowings, less influence of landscapes on their formation. The most important factors of these processes are shown – morphological and positional, historical-geographical, geodemographic, ethnopolitical, ethnopsychological, and ethnoeconomical. Two main opposite processes of ECZ development, often occurring in parallel, are described: 1) interethnic integration and 2) isolation and divergence of ethno-cultural groups. Attempts have been made to classify urban ECZ on various grounds: by the mutual arrangement of ethnic areas, by the index of ethnic mosaic, by the number of city-defining ethnic groups, by the ratio of ethnic composition of the city and the ethnic composition of the surrounding countryside, by the predominant form of interethnic interaction, by hierarchy and territory coverage, by geographical location. Models of chorological types of ethnocontact zones are proposed, the number of which can be reduced to three main ones. The main ways of ethno-contact zones development are interethnic integration or separation and divergence of ethnic groups. They all depend on many factors and types of these formations.