Patriotism as a social phenomenon in the scientific representation of reality: concept and theories

The study combines three scientific fields - psychology, sociology and political science -to analyze the features of the social phenomenon of “patriotism”. Frequently in the social sciences, patriotism is defined as feelings and actions in the interests of the Motherland. Also, in each scientific field, a number of researchers define patriotism by relying on the concept of identity. Based on the theory of social identity, psychologists create survey tools to study patriotism, mainly attitudes to the state. Sociologists, considering patriotism in the context of identity, associate it with solidarity, social stratification, trust and altruism. Political scientists are ideologically oriented; they analyze the history of concepts and also collect empirical material related to the population's attitudes to patriotism. The study analyzes two phenomena as independent from each other: to consider patriotism as a social phenomenon derived from we-identity with the function of protection, as well as the phenomenon of the politics of patriotism - from the sphere of political and ideological action. Patriotism as a social phenomenon derived from we-identity can be studied through the analysis of public solidarity, trust and public altruism, that is, through the analysis of the characteristics of society, which allows us to understand the specifics of the we-identity of the subject of patriotism. Policies of patriotism as a set of political and ideological actions involve the identification of subjects and actors who offer different interpretations of patriotism, different ideas and meanings that characterize patriotism, an analysis of the characteristics of the acceptance of different versions of patriotism by the population, channels and methods of transmitting patriotic ideas. Our findings suggest that one of the key tasks in the development of the theoretical field of patriotism as a social phenomenon is the construction of new theoretical constructs, where patriotism appears in the context of psychological health, as the acceptance of one's group without comparison with other groups, as a form of positive we-identity. As for the theoretical field of the politics of patriotism, it is necessary to integrate into a single picture what already exists in political science (to correlate different versions of the ideologies of patriotism and the subjects of promotion of these ideologies; to find out how these discursive strategies of patriotism are translated and accepted by different structures of society, etc.).