What the youth of a large Russian city knows and thinks about vandalism: the case of Yekaterinburg

Rudenkin Dmitry Vasil'evich PhD in Sociology Analyst, the Laboratory of Advanced Socio-Environmental Research, Ural State Pedagogical University 620017, Russia, Sverdlovskaya oblast', g. Ekaterinburg, ul. Kosmonavtov, 26 d-rudenkin@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The main purpose of this work is to understand the dominants of public opinion about vandalism, which are currently well–established among Russian urban youth. The relevance of such a research plan is given by the existence in Russian society of a managerial request for the development of effective programs to prevent youth vandalism, which at present has not been sufficiently satisfied by social and humanitarian science. The background of this request is clear in itself: it is obvious that youth vandalism creates a number of risks for any city, which include the increase in the costs of repairing damage to urban infrastructure, and the marginalization of youth communities, and the strengthening of general conflict in society, and a number of other problems. Therefore, it is logical that the development of management solutions aimed at preventing youth vandalism is of great importance for any city: it is easier to avoid the problem than to deal with its consequences. In the current Russian realities, the development of proposals to prevent youth vandalism has increased significance. The intensive internal development of many Russian cities and the holding of major international events in them have led to the appearance of a large number of renovated buildings and infrastructure facilities in them, which can be extremely vulnerable to the aggressive actions of vandals. The development of proposals to minimize vandalism becomes particularly important in these circumstances.

The problem, however, is that currently social and humanitarian science is experiencing difficulties in meeting this managerial request. The development of effective proposals to minimize youth vandalism requires a detailed understanding of the stereotypes and assessments that have developed about this social pathology among a more or less massive youth audience. Only a clear idea of what the average representative of urban youth thinks about vandalism helps to understand which areas of work in this direction may be effective and which may not. Unfortunately, it has to be stated that Russian social and humanitarian science currently does not have a detailed idea of what interpretations and assessments of vandalism are established among the mass youth audience. Although youth vandalism has recently been subjected to rather close attention of domestic scientists, most often their interest was focused either on individual cases of its manifestation, or on the peculiarities of the legal qualification of such cases, while a sociological analysis of mass perceptions and assessments of vandalism at the level of youth as a social group was practically not carried out. Therefore, it remains unclear what exactly the youth of Russian cities knows and thinks about vandalism and does the prevention of youth vandalism require correction of their knowledge and assessments?

The impulse to write this work is given by our desire to understand these difficult issues. Turning to the revision of theoretical and methodological literature and the analysis of data from our own sociological research, we intend to identify and describe the most significant features of the ideas of Russian urban youth about vandalism and determine whether the prevention of this social pathology among young Russians requires the correction of such ideas. We will focus our analysis on the materials of a specific Russian city – Yekaterinburg. However, in the context of this work, we consider Yekaterinburg as a private, but informative and illustrative case, on the basis of which it is possible to draw conclusions about the general specifics of the moods and assessments of all Russian youth. The general specifics of Yekaterinburg's social, political, cultural and economic development in recent years make it fundamentally similar to other major Russian cities. In addition, vandalism, including youth, manifests itself quite intensively in this city due to the developed street art movement and the regular use of provocative graffiti in political conflicts. Therefore, our assumption is that the analysis of the Yekaterinburg case allows us to obtain comprehensive and informative data on the peculiarities of the attitude to vandalism of Russian urban youth in general.

Youth vandalism in the focus of modern research

At the beginning of the work, it will be appropriate to specify what exactly we will understand by vandalism in the context of our reasoning. Despite the existence of certain discussions in the scientific community about the definition of this term, its commonly used meaning remains in line with the interpretations laid down in the XVIII century ^[5]. In the most general form, vandalism in modern research is understood as a special destructive activity of a person aimed at damaging or destroying someone else's or public property ^[18]. We admit that this is a rather broad definition that ignores a number of nuances that continue to be the subject of discussion in the theoretical and methodological literature. In particular, there are different opinions of researchers on whether it is appropriate to unequivocally classify vandalism as a type of deviant behavior ^[2]. There are also disputes about whether it is possible to consider vandalism actions that were committed by a person accidentally and were not intended to cause harm ^[6]. There are also different views on the relationship of vandalism with related concepts (this is especially evident in discussions about street art ^[10] and graffiti ^[12]). Nevertheless, all these discussions emphasize, albeit important, but still particular nuances of understanding vandalism and do not question the general line of its interpretation. Therefore, we believe that the definition of vandalism as a destructive activity aimed at harming someone else's property generally reflects the most common line of interpretation of this phenomenon in science. And it is in this sense that we will talk about vandalism in the subsequent text of the work. 

A retrospective analysis of the scientific literature convincingly shows that the topic of vandalism appeared in youth studies for quite a long time and was directly or indirectly mentioned in those scientific works that today are considered to be classical for juvenile studies ^{[11, 23, 24]}. And the analysis of more modern scientific literature suggests that the topic of youth vandalism in later periods continued to be an important area of both foreign youth research ^{[21, 22]} and Russian ^{[9, 16]}. At the same time, a meaningful revision of current studies of youth vandalism shows that the established research practice in the relevant field turned out to be somewhat one-sided. Despite the multiplicity and versatility of studies of youth vandalism in social and humanitarian science, the clear majority of them, according to our observations, tend to analyze only a few research issues and pay significantly less attention to all the others. Let us take the liberty to state that three key analytical vectors have now been identified in the relevant research area, expressed more significantly than the other areas of analysis. Let's look at each of them in more detail.

The first vector. Identification and description of the main features of consciousness and behavior of young people who have committed vandal acts or are inclined to commit such actions in the future (this angle of analysis is presented in the works of such authors as S.J. Vialt and G. Fondevila ^[27], I.A. Kiyatkin ^[7], I.A. Simonov ^[17] and other researchers). In fact, in the works tending to this analytical vector, vandalism is described as the result of the influence of the mental and cultural characteristics of specific young people. It is obvious that the high heuristic value of scientific papers belonging to this vector is due to the fact that they help to understand the specific reasons and circumstances that pushed this or that representative of youth to a vandal act, as well as to identify the meanings that were invested in this act. However, this area of research on youth vandalism has certain limitations: in particular, works that are carried out in the appropriate direction pay only limited attention to the social determination of vandal activity of young people: the psychological and cultural characteristics of a young person prone to committing vandal acts are analyzed in much more detail in the relevant works than the social context that created the ground for the appearance of such features. If the latter is considered in such works, it is only indirectly.  

The second vector. Analysis of typical forms of youth vandalism and clarification of the principles of their legal assessment (in a similar vein, the works of M.T. Palermo ^[25], V.E. Batyukova ^[1], V.P. Teplyakov ^[20], and other researchers were carried out). Scientific works that adhere to this analytical vector are distinguished by a fundamental interest in analyzing the content and evaluating the forms of vandal actions that young people commit in certain circumstances. Researchers working in this direction perform a kind of revision of actual manifestations of vandalism: in their works, classifications of forms of youth vandalism are developed and the principles of their legal qualification are determined. It is obvious that the great heuristic value of the works that are carried out in this way is that they contribute to the development of a detailed understanding of the specific forms of manifestations of youth vandalism and help to understand the principles by which this or that destructive activity of young people can be attributed to the manifestations of vandalism. But this analytical vector also has certain limitations: researchers who work within this direction pay their attention to the forms of manifestation of youth vandalism and most often take out of the scope of analysis the question of what, in principle, made the manifestation of youth vandalism likely in such forms. 

The third vector. Interpretation of symbolic meanings and subtexts of vandal actions of young people (in this vein, the works of L. Ten-Erng ^[26], M.Y. Kondakova ^[8], I.M. Suvorova ^[19] and other scientists were carried out). A typical feature of the research carried out in this analytical direction is the emphasized interest in the content and meanings that could be embedded in the vandal act by those who committed it, and in the interpretation of the meanings that society could see in this act. Probably, it will not be far from the truth to assume that the active development of research in this area was stimulated by the fact that vandalism in modern society gradually became one of the formats of street art and often began to act as a platform for political statements. The value of research that adheres to this analytical vector lies in the desire to analyze youth vandalism precisely as a symbolic phenomenon in which different and not always predictable subtexts may be reflected. The interpretation of such subtexts is an important area of research that reveals the specifics of social communication, which is built around vandalism. However, unfortunately, this analytical vector also has certain limitations. The vulnerability of this line of analysis is that it pays primary attention to the meanings that could have been laid by a young man in a vandal act, while the reasons that pushed him to this act either fall outside the scope of attention, or are considered only indirectly. In fact, the work carried out in this analytical channel helps to understand exactly what the young man who committed the vandal act wanted to say, but does not make it clear why he had such a desire in principle. 

Of course, it would be a mistake on our part to categorically assert that the listed analytical vectors fully reflect the entire field of research on youth vandalism, which is currently taking shape in social and humanitarian science. This is a fairly broad and multifaceted area of research, and there is no doubt that there are very different works on the topic, the focus of which is able to go beyond the designated areas. Nevertheless, our experience of theoretical and methodological analysis shows that the corresponding research vectors are found in the literature much more often than others, and at present they have actually turned out to be the most popular and widespread perspectives of youth vandalism research. In fact, we can say that the topic of youth vandalism most often finds itself in the focus of interest of social and humanitarian science either in the context of studying the consciousness and behavior of young people prone to vandalism, or within the definition of typical forms of their vandal behavior, or in line with the identification and description of those symbolic meanings that they may reflect. Other perspectives of the topic research are also presented in the literature, but they are much less common.

We would like to refrain from categorical statements that there is something wrong or reprehensible in focusing attention on these topics. There is no doubt that each of these research vectors emphasizes important perspectives of the analysis of youth vandalism and responds to significant management requests. The problem lies rather in the fact that focusing the main attention of researchers on these topics shifts the prism of scientific interest away from other, potentially equally important angles of analysis of youth vandalism. And actually, the question that interests us about the specifics of mass representations of urban youth about vandalism as a phenomenon remains rather poorly investigated. The prevailing research practice allows us to understand a lot about the motives of specific young people who commit certain vandal acts, the forms of their destructive behavior, the meanings that they put into their actions. However, in all these cases, attention is focused either on young people who are prone to vandal activity, or on the results of their actions. The attitude to vandalism on the part of mass youth communities (not involved in vandal activity, namely observing it from the outside) remains a poorly studied issue. This is the conceptual problem that we discussed at the beginning of the work: the development of programs for the prevention of youth vandalism in Russia is currently devoid of a detailed understanding of those ideas about vandalism that are well-established among young people as a social group and may require significant correction.

The lack of large-scale sociological research in this area deprives us of the opportunity to correlate our analytical assumptions with the materials of already conducted scientific projects and forces us to base our hypotheses only on general scientific logic and the experience of previous developments on related topics. Nevertheless, the current situation complicates the formulation of the initial research hypothesis, but does not make it fundamentally impossible. And based on the experience of our previous research, we believe that the naivety and superficiality of young people's ideas about this social pathology can create a certain ground for the spread of youth vandalism in Russian cities. Our previous research in this area has shown that young people's judgments about vandalism are often very naive and evaluatively flexible ^[13]. Of course, such naivety and flexibility cannot be considered as a condition guaranteed to turn all young people into seasoned vandals. But they are able to create a fairly favorable ground for vandal behavior of young people, which can manifest itself under favorable circumstances. And if such features in the ideas of young people about vandalism really take place, they clearly need correction. However, we emphasize that this is still only a hypothesis that needs empirical verification.  

Materials and methods of research

We will carry out an empirical test of our assumption on the materials of a sociological study that we carried out on the basis of the Ural State Pedagogical University in the summer of 2020. The immediate purpose of the study was to diagnose current ideas about vandalism and its forms of manifestation, which are well-established among the youth of the city. The method of conducting the study was a questionnaire survey conducted among representatives of the youth of the city aged 14-29 years. A total of 212 people were interviewed. The selection of respondents was based on a quota sampling model based on the criteria of the area of residence, age and gender of respondents. The sizes of the corresponding quotas were calculated on the basis of official statistical data on the gender and age structure of the population of the Sverdlovsk region and the city of Yekaterinburg, which are presented on the official website of the Office of the Federal State Statistics Service for the Sverdlovsk Region and the Kurgan region. The maximum error size for this sample model with a 95% probability should not exceed 2.5%. A detailed sampling model is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

The sampling model used in the survey

Let's explain one organizational nuance. Since the fieldwork during the study coincided with the peak of quarantine restrictions imposed in the city in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic, we were forced to conduct a survey of young people without a personal meeting with them and use an interactive form created on the GoogleDocs platform instead of a paper version of the questionnaire for the survey. However, despite the non-standard approach to data collection, the principles of recruiting respondents during the study remained quite classical. The link to the questionnaire was not publicly available, but was addressed to specific respondents who met the selection criteria. Careful monitoring of compliance with sampling quotas helped, even in such difficult conditions, to obtain data that with a high degree of probability reflect the most important features of the mood of the youth of the city as a whole.

Research results

The analysis of the data collected during the survey allowed us to identify several specific features of the ideas and assessments of vandalism that have become widespread among the youth of the city.

First of all, it turned out that the general evaluative attitude of urban youth to the phenomenon of vandalism steadily tends to be negative. The answers that the young people interviewed gave to the open question "What associations do you have with the word "vandalism"?" look indicative: the most popular answers to it were "destruction" (21%), "aggression" (18%), "crime" (17%), "damage" (16%). Almost the same associative series is indicated by their answers to the same question in a closed form (that is, with the proposed list of answer options): in this case, the most popular answers were "harm" (67%), "damage" (66%), "destruction" (62%) and "aggression" (46%). Let us explain: significant discrepancies in the percentages in the answers to these questions are a normal phenomenon, which is associated with the technical features of the questions themselves. Answering a question in a closed form, respondents name the answers within a clear, previously known and limited list of options, so the total percentage of mentions of each of these options turns out to be higher than it could be in the case of an open-ended question, the space of possible answers to which is virtually limitless. Therefore, it can be noted that in fact the answers to the question in both open and closed form show the same thing: the word "vandalism" for the vast majority of young people is negative in its implication and is perceived as a marker of unpleasant, condemned phenomena.

However, the study revealed that a negative attitude to vandalism is manifested in young people only at the level of abstract assessments and judgments and is much less often manifested when assessing actual destructive actions in the surrounding urban space. Indicative in this case are the answers that were given by the respondents to the question "What actions could you attribute to vandalism?". The distribution of answers to this question is shown in Figure 1. In fact, it suggests that the meaningful idea of the interviewed young people about what vandalism is and how it manifests itself in the life of the city is quite formulaic and narrowed. The overwhelming majority of young people are ready to attribute to the manifestations of vandalism only clearly destructive and actually criminal practices aimed at causing obvious harm to urban space: damage to railings, elevators, entrances, destruction of benches, arson and other similar activities. At the same time, a number of other destructive activities are considered by young people to be manifestations of vandalism much less often. So, it is noticeable that the application of inscriptions on desks, posting ads, throwing garbage in unintended places and other similar actions are still not considered by many youth representatives as manifestations of vandalism. In fact, this suggests that young people do not have a formed habit of considering any destructive activity taking place in urban space as vandalism in general. Their approach to assessing such phenomena is quite flexible and selective.

Figure 1. Which of these actions would you attribute to vandalism?

(multivariate question, % of respondents)

It was also found that vandalism is not perceived by the interviewed young people as a phenomenon intensively represented in the social reality surrounding them. Even the word "vandalism" itself, judging by the responses received, they hear relatively rarely: four out of five respondents are convinced that they either do not encounter it at all in everyday life, or they meet with it extremely rarely, in exceptional cases. But it's not just that young people rarely hear the very word "vandalism". Much more important is the fact that most of them believe that they do not come into contact with the phenomenon of vandalism in any way: more than half of them (54%) claim that, in principle, they have not encountered anyone near them committing specific vandal acts, and from people they know, they have only seen this at all a clear minority (9%). This result shows that many respondents are characterized not only by a narrowed idea of vandalism, but also by the confidence that this phenomenon is, in principle, extremely rare in their lives. It is characteristic at the same time that both our own work ^[14] and the research of colleagues ^[3] showed that Yekaterinburg, where the materials of this study were collected, suffers quite noticeably from numerous and diverse vandal influences, and the objective probability of encountering their manifestations in the average young person as a whole is high. Therefore, it suggests that such responses of the respondents do not indicate the absence of vandalism in their daily reality, but a certain blunting of their attention to its manifestations.

This assumption is confirmed by the fact that, in fact, many young people encounter manifestations of vandalism somewhat more often than they declare it in their answers. You can verify this if you compare their answers to two questions: "What actions could you attribute to vandalism?" and "Which of these phenomena do you most often see in your area?". A comparison of the answers to these questions is presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Damage that respondents consider vandalism, and damage,

which respondents see in their area (% of the number of respondents)

The results of this comparison are eloquent: in fact, they say that the confidence of young people in the absence of vandalism in their social reality is due to the fact that they imagine this phenomenon extremely superficially and stereotypically. The phenomena that most of them refer to as manifestations of vandalism are quite rare in the social reality surrounding them. But at the same time, a number of other similar phenomena are present in their lives, they are simply not perceived by most of them as vandalism. Simply put, many of them see objects around them that have suffered from vandalism, but do not understand this and do not treat such objects accordingly.

These results actualize the question of whether the interviewed young people themselves are inclined to commit unconscious vandal acts. After all, if their idea of vandalism is so formulaic and narrowed, then it is logical that they may be inclined to commit vandal acts without considering them as such and not perceiving them as something negative. The analysis of the answers to the relevant questionnaire questions allows us to conclude that the propensity for such unconscious vandal acts among many young people does exist, but is not a mass problem. The respondents themselves often admit that vandal acts can be committed by a person without malicious intent and unconsciously: 48% of them agree with this point of view. At the same time, they themselves do not have any mass tendencies to commit such unconscious actions. The overwhelming majority (93%) of them are sure that they have never committed any actions that fall under the concept of vandalism. And 68% of them, indeed, have never committed any of the actions over the past year that we considered as potential forms of vandal activity of urban youth (the list of these actions was identical to the one presented in Table 2). In fact, this means that only a quarter of respondents have a certain tendency to unconscious vandalism. It is difficult to call this tendency a mass problem.

Noteworthy conclusions can also be drawn when studying the repertoire of specific actions to which young people predisposed to commit unconscious vandal acts turned out to be prone. It was possible to clarify this repertoire itself by using a simple question "Which of these actions have you committed at least once in the last year?", which was asked to respondents who chose the "No" option in the question "Have you personally committed actions that you consider vandalism at least once in the last year?". The responses that were received from them show that among the unconscious vandal actions, domestic and non-serious damage actions are mainly represented. The corresponding distribution of responses is shown in Figure 2. The responses received convincingly show that for most young people, unconscious vandalism manifests itself in "soft" forms and does not go beyond the rather harmless trampling of paths on the lawn, leaving inscriptions on desks or leaving garbage in the wrong place. In other words, the tendency to unconscious vandalism, which was found in about a quarter of the respondents, is not only a fairly limited problem in its prevalence, but is also not associated with the occurrence of any serious consequences. Although this phenomenon exists, it is hardly correct to talk about it as a serious threat to society.   

Figure 2. Which of these actions have you performed at least once in the last year?

(among those who do not believe that they committed vandal acts, % of the respondents)

Another remarkable conclusion that was made during the study is that the territory, infrastructure and objects of the city are not perceived by the majority of respondents as a sacred inviolable space in which no unauthorized changes are unthinkable. This is clear from the modality of the respondents' attitude to such a specific element of urban life as street art. We emphasize that we adhere to cautious views and would not like to categorically assert that any artistic object placed on buildings and infrastructure of the city should be considered as an act of vandalism. However, historically, the attitude of Russian society to this creative genre was quite complex and tended to identify this phenomenon with vandalism ^[15]. And there are still discussions in the research literature about the boundaries of such art and vandalism in urban space ^[4]. In addition, street art, as well as vandalism, involves the use of the territory, infrastructure and facilities of the city for purposes for which they were not originally intended. Therefore, the question of attitude to street art is an important and logical part of the study of ideas about vandalism: the analysis of this attitude helps to understand in many ways how inviolable people consider urban space and whether they allow any unauthorized transformations in it.

Actually, the results of our analysis suggest that most young people do not have an attitude to urban space as something inviolable. The appearance of street art in this space is perceived by them as an acceptable and even positive practice. This is evidenced by several circumstances identified during the analysis. Firstly, street art itself is perceived by young people as a natural and familiar element of city life: 98% of respondents recognize this concept, and there is practically no pronounced negative in the meaningful interpretations they named (the most popular interpretations of such art were "images on the streets" (43%), "drawings on the walls" (24%) and "fine art in the city" (21%)). Secondly, among the respondents there were practically no opponents of the placement of street art objects in the city: more than 90% of them believe that such objects always or almost always become an ornament of the city and only 2% consider them something unacceptable. Thirdly, young people have a request for the cultivation of street art from the city authorities: 66% of them believe that the city's leadership should not fight such art, but create conditions for its development. Taken together, these facts suggest that the city is not perceived by the mass youth audience as a closed and inviolable space: the specifics of their attitude to street art suggests that changes and transformations in urban space are seen by most of them as possible and acceptable.

Summarizing all these disparate and, at first glance, little related results of the analysis, we can note that the attitude of the interviewed representatives of urban youth to vandalism is quite contradictory. On the one hand, at the level of general assessments and judgments, vandalism continues to be perceived as a negative and reprehensible phenomenon. On the other hand, the meaningful representation of the city's youth about vandalism is rather narrow and superficial, and its real manifestations in the surrounding urban space do not cause mass condemnation. Condemning vandalism at the level of abstract judgments and assessments, young people often find themselves quite tolerant of its real manifestations in urban space. Many of them understand vandalism very narrowly and do not attribute to its manifestations a number of actions that cause significant damage to the property of the city and the property of other people. The urban space itself is not perceived by most young people as inviolable: the idea that some unauthorized transformations can be carried out in it does not cause mass rejection. And specific objects of urban space that have suffered from vandalism often end up in the blind spot of young people. In other words, the study found that vandalism is condemned by the youth of the city only at the level of general value judgments, whereas their attitude to the real forms of its manifestation is flexible. This is a negative in relation to the word "vandalism", and not to the full range of phenomena that it can mean.

Conclusion

Starting our research, we intended to analyze the dominant public opinion of Russian urban youth about vandalism. Realizing that a high-quality organization for the prevention of youth vandalism needs to identify the real specifics of young people's ideas about this phenomenon, we turned to the materials of our own sociological research to identify and describe this specificity. Based on the experience of our previous research, we suggested that the general attitude of urban youth to vandalism may be naive and flexible. And in the course of empirical research, this hypothesis was confirmed. Our analysis has shown that the vast majority of young people condemn vandalism as a phenomenon only at the level of general value judgments that do not relate directly to their life experience. Their actual idea of vandalism is extremely narrow and superficial. Attributing a clear negative connotation to the word "vandalism", many of them are not ready to apply this word to the description of specific life situations and are even sure that they practically do not encounter it in life. Urban space for many of them is basically devoid of any sacredness: the very possibility of changes and unauthorized changes does not cause pronounced rejection. Destructive activities that can cause harm to this space are not always evaluated as manifestations of vandalism, and often they are not noticed at all. In other words, the study showed that the general negativity towards the word "vandalism" is not always converted among young people into a real condemnation of specific vandal practices that manifest themselves in the space of the city that surrounds it.

Let's be honest in our conclusions: the identified perceptions and assessments of vandalism do not allow us to make inappropriate alarmist statements that all Russian urban youth have either already turned into vandals or are on the verge of such a transformation. The analysis shows that even the unconscious vandal behavior of young people at the moment has a fairly small spread and manifests itself only in mild forms. Nevertheless, these results demonstrate that the general meaningful idea of vandalism that has developed among young people has certain flaws and contradictions that create favorable ground for destructive activities of young people. In fact, these results show that there are no compelling and logically justified reasons for avoiding vandal activity at all costs among urban youth. And the impact of factors provoking vandal behavior of urban youth will fall on favorable ground. The question of what factors can be significant catalysts of vandal activity of young people in this case needs a separate study. But whatever they are, their impact can be effective, because the potential predisposition to vandalism in young people is formed in principle.

Understanding the peculiarities of the identified attitudes and assessments of vandalism among young people, we can note that educational work with mass youth communities should become a promising direction for the prevention of youth vandalism in Russian cities. In the event that such work complements the existing vectors of prevention of youth vandalism, the effectiveness of such prevention will be higher. Comprehensive educational work with the youth audience will eliminate the superficiality and naivety of young people's ideas about vandalism, which at the moment create a fairly favorable ground for the spread of youth vandalism in Russian cities. And we believe that this conclusion can be considered the main result of the study.