Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository

3L: Consumerism in Russia: An Intercultural Perspective

Panel 3: L (Register Here)

The presentation aims to report on the findings of an undergraduate research project conducted under UNG’s FUSE program in summer of 2020. The purpose of our project was two-fold: first, to actively engage in academic research on an aspect of the Russian culture through the lenses of the Intercultural Competence (ICC) framework; second, to address the problem of a lack of up-to-date authentic teaching materials at the UNG Russian program. Our research question was to what extent consumerism and capitalism affect Russian people on a day to day basis as well at the macroeconomic level. The prior scholarly research concerning Russian consumerism and capitalism demonstrated that since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, consumerism and capitalism have become much more prevalent in Russian society and the minds of its people. This influences how Russians allocate spending with increasing funds devoted to non-essential goods and services. We interviewed native speakers of Russian in the target language to acquire first-hand perspectives on consumerist habits in modern Russia and compare them with the existing knowledge on the matter in the American society. The data obtained from the interviews confirmed that Russian people are moving toward a society where consumerism is widely accepted due to the influences of globalism and capitalism. The presentation will outline the structure and methodology, major findings drawn from the interviews, and a reflection on the outcomes of the project as pertained to the Intercultural Competence Framework.