Financial Literacy Volunteers: Individual Choice in new Institutional Conditions

The functioning of social institutions is the basis of social life. The creation of new institutions can take place through the development of formal requirements and classifications at the level of old institutions. The focus of the study the results of which are presented in this paper is examining the process of appropriating newly created rules and classifications at the level of individuals during the development of a new institution. The methodological framework chosen was M. Douglas’s theory of cognitive institutions, which allowed us to identify the stages of creating a new institution by correlating three definitions of the concept of ‘institution’: a large-scale industrial process, a legitimized social group and a convention. The empirical object was the project ‘Volunteers of Financial Education’ and its participants. The functioning of the project is considered in the broad context of work on improving financial literacy among the population. The detailed characteristic of the institutional design of this project is given, classifications created within its framework are analyzed, the process of origin of the new institution is shown. The study of volunteers’ inclusion in the process of improving financial literacy among the population allowed us to identify five options of individual choice: inclusion through the development of classifications; through the adoption of classifications; through solving the problems of local communities and non-adoption of classifications; inclusion mediated by involvement in other volunteer activities, without the adoption of classifications; participation in volunteer activities on the basis of personal motives without the adoption of classifications. The description of the three levels of the process of institutionalization of new classification grids allowed us to obtain a comprehensive characteristic of the system of improving financial literacy in Russia.