Abstract:

Analysis presented in this paper is a part of a broader H2020 collaborative research project “Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future” (CHIEF, agreement no. 770464) on how young people are engaging with meanings and forms of European cultural heritage in various contexts. With the aim to examine young people’s understanding of culture and their engagement in cultural activities the Old Believer youth group was selected for the ethnographic study in Latvia. This choice was guided by the objective to highlight differences in young people’s cultural identities and their cultural practices. The Old Believer youth group is a particularly interesting case, since Old Believers in Latvia are both an ethnic and religious minority. To flee form persecutions based on religion in Russia, they reached the territory of present-day Latvia in the middle of the 17th century. Old Believers have managed to preserve their religious and ethnic identity over several centuries by living in relatively isolated communities and overcoming political pressure from various power structures (the religious policy of tsarist Russia was aimed at converting the Old Believers to Orthodoxy; the ideal of Soviet power was the creation of an atheistic society). Today Old Believers in Latvia pay particular attention to training of young people to make them knowledgeable preservers of the ancient cultural heritage. Participant observation and interviews were the main research tools used in the field work (from June 2019 to January 2020). When developing the semi-structured interviews, the focus was on young people’s experience gained from interacting with other cultures and ethnic minorities in Latvia; what are these forms of interaction in everyday life (face-to-face or digital); what determines the attitude of young people towards others; how intercultural communication takes place at different social levels (family, school, peers, local community, public at large). It was particularly important to find out young people’s viewpoint on the formal and informal discourse of national and ethnic belonging, on the national cultural heritage, collective memory, as well as crucial events in Latvian and European history. It was essential to clarify the attitude of young people towards social stereotypes and prejudices, as well as the extent to which they are related to xenophobia and stigmatization of different social groups.

Keywords:

Youth, cultural heritage, cultural diversity, ethnic minority, religious minority.