Guzhva A. Sociocultural Transformations of the Public Ecstatic States

A research task of determining a specific character of public ecstatic states as a whole phenomenon of life activity has been set and completed in the thesis. It has been determined as a component of biosociality that influences the processes of identification and consolidation of societies and is transformed according to social organization. The complexity was used as a methodology of the research. This allowed one to combine features of ecstatic states as a physiological mechanism, take into account psychological processes conditioned by the mass phenomenon, and use results of semiotic analysis of the utterances with the lexeme «ecstasy». Generally the scientific novelty of the thesis consists in conceptualization of the phenomenon of public ecstatic state as evolutionary mechanism that helps to form communities and keep social intercourse. Two types of public ecstatic state exist from an individual’s perspective: acute, when changes of identity occur, and normal, when changes do not occur. Organized and spontaneous public ecstatic states have been determined. According to recursion, the public ecstatic state can trigger disintegrative processes and lead to destruction of the existing social system, but can also become a beginning of a new, more complex organization of society. The spontaneous public ecstatic state directly relating to self-identification of a person and critical rethinking of a social system is revealed through civil protest and a revolutionary rebellions that destroy the existing differences and try to create a new group identity and, respectively, new communities and society. The state of contemporary epoch is characterized by the increasing amount of public ecstatic states, blending of organized and spontaneous forms, because due to globalization processes, sociocultural settings transform, and the need for self-identification is actualized.