Abstract

Based on the theoretical basis and empirical data, the article discusses from the sociological point of view the problem of identity development within the framework of the reform of local government, namely within the process of creating the united territorial communities. Understanding identity as a person’s property to feel belonging to a group, the author focuses on the issues of its change in rural communities that have joined the process of reforming local self-government. Based on the analysis of information on the first elections in the united communities of Zaporizhzhia and Lviv regions, a general social portrait of the current head of the united territorial community was developed. The author analyzes the recent results of community association and expressed the opinion that the structural process of construction of territorial units is characterized in general by the same regional trends, caused by more or less equivalent community consciousness of the entire rural population of the country. At the same time, there are differences in the results of the restructuring of power in different parts of the country, namely the spread of tendencies of ignorance and the opposition to decentralization in the West and the success of the restructuring of local authorities in the East of Ukraine. This is due, according to the author, to a greater degree of traditionalist identity in the western regions and an increase in the modern identity component in the eastern regions. Attention is drawn to the fact that decentralization, which is accompanied by the transformation of the boundaries of the rural community, raises problems of identity change. There is a problem of forming the perception of the new community of the united community as an ident for the rural man. It is revealed that decentralization in Ukraine, in particular the creation of united territorial communities, will have as a result of the destruction of the traditionalist identity of a person living in rural areas, the erosion of the communal content of interpersonal relations through the weakening of communal ties, which, in turn, the question of the future effectiveness of the system of local self-government, the mechanism of which is being built, since the essence of such a model of management is the collective solution of problems of local importance on the basis of a single identity. In this context, the author proposes to distinguish between the traditional community and the modernized community. The study focuses on the specific features of a modernized community, which, on the one hand, relate it in some respects to the urban community, and on the other hand, characterize it as a hybrid of the community and the urban community. At the same time, members of the united community will in the future form a new identity that is not inherited, but constructed on the basis of formal principles, rather than cultural attributes. The researcher concludes that it is problematic to achieve the goal of decentralization reform, which was declared by the authorities, to create a capable local government that will address all local issues and bear responsibility for it, because the community of unions as a means of transformation does not take into account the complexities of identity.