Cultural Identity and Cultural Hybridity: Current Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Research

The subject of the article is the analysis of the research results of scientists who contributed to the understanding of the nature of cultural identity at the beginning of the 21st century. The article analyzes theoretical and methodological approaches to the interpretation of the concepts of “cultural identity” and “cultural hybridity”. The authors actualize the need to turn to traditional concepts of identity, practices and markers that distinguish between types and kinds of identity in the context of a conscious choice of identity by an individual in modern society. Based on the use of interdisciplinary, historical, structural and functional approaches, methods of cultural studies, cross-cultural psychology, the connection between cultural identity and hybridity is substantiated; the method of analyzing the philosophical ideological foundations of the formation and construction policy of cultural identity has made it possible to study the factors of actualization of the identity marker by updating the content and form of traditional cultural connotations. The main factors in understanding cultural identity are presented: cultural identity is simultaneously an individual essence, a social category, and a result of systemic and communicative everyday practices; it is an individual-personal and social, group choice, selection of markers with which a person, group, collective is identified on different scales; is an adaptive, developing, flexible system of values. It is revealed that at the beginning of the 21st century, individual scientists in the context of analyzing the features of the functional certainty of cultural identity, as the basis of the general theory of intercultural communication, come to the understanding of cultural identity as a socio-cultural instrument formed under the influence of the prioritization of the choice of an individual’s status in the spatio-temporal continuum of the group. It has been proven that cultural identity, despite the differences in the priorities of accepting personal or group certainty, is perceived as a hybrid, multiple and intersecting reality and at the same time represents an individual and social reality, which emphasizes its complexity and diversity. The prospect of studying cultural identity and cultural hybridity is connected with the study of processes occurring in conditions of socio-economic uncertainty, risks of modern society, with the fact that the world in which we live is becoming more and more diverse, and the social and individual confidence of the individual is losing its stability.