Assessments of susceptibility to the components of social space and to the levels of environmental threats
The article studies subjective assessments of environmental threats from the point of view of the theory of perception of social space components. The hypothesis of the existence of invariant schemes of the cognitive functions of the extraction of meaning is tested, when referring to the spatial dimension of social life in the “society-perception-action-space” relation, the linking of social dynamics and the transformations of ideas about space appear. Scientific novelty lies in the fact that assessments of the susceptibility of people to the levels of environmental threats are interpreted in the genre of cognitive niches reflecting levels of perception as special worlds of meanings, conjugated in their meaningful features with actual problems-dangers. The following methods of analysis are used: calculation of insecurity indicators, variance analysis, regression analysis, classifications of people's susceptibility to environmental threats. The main result of the paper is the presentation of the authors' theoretical studies and empirical assessments of the structure and dynamics of susceptibility to environmental threats of residents of Russian regions. The conclusion is drawn that the inhabitants of medium-sized towns of Russia, rural population and the poorest segments of the population are the most sensitive to environmental threats and they are exposed to the greatest negative influence of environmental factors. The paper reveals the following contradiction: on the one hand, the environment does not enter “directly” into the concept of the personal world view and there is an inadequate social reflection of environmental problems of the existing objective reality, which is an important factor of environ-mental risk; on the other hand, in the social consciousness the environmental threat has been closely related to a system of social action, which was confirmed by the results of regression analysis.