Definition of Marginality. Methodological perspectives in historical studies

Definition of marginality is becoming more and more relevant for the Humanities, in this connection its methodological potential for historical science needs to be studied. The emergence of the marginality definition traces back to the American School of Sociology of the 1930s. This definition is based on the social and psychological aspects of socialization and cultural conflict, connected with the period of removal, changing, which can be defined as a crisis. The further development of American Sociology led to the expansion of the described marginality cases. New approaches appeared, marginality became a sociological definition to a large extent, the study of the social causes of marginalization began to dominate. Sociology became the science studying the social structure of the society, and persons, who ''really'' were in a position marginal to the defined social structure, began to be called ''marginal persons''. The psychological aspects of marginality receded into the background. Therefore, in our opinion, the monolithic notion of marginality phenomenon could not be worked out in sociology of our country as well as in sociology of other countries. The scientists either cannot explain the definition of marginal persons or expand this definition to all people. Therefore, to use this definition in the historical science we propose to return to the psychological understanding of this definition and to define marginality as the crisis state of uncertainty, vagueness or self-determination of a person in the world. It means that this understanding of marginality is based not on the position of the person in the social structure, which can be regarded as a secondary phenomenon, but on the doubts of the person about the stability of their social position. Such a person has a definite motivation and demonstrates typical behaviour, what is important to take into account for the study of a medieval person. Ivan the Terrible can be regarded as a glaring example of a marginal medieval person. According to the traditional point of view it is impossible to define Ivan IV as a marginal person, because the Tsar is considered to be on the top of the social hierarchy. Many scientists rather prefer to call him a brain-sick person than to explain his specific behaviour. But the use of marginality conception lets us see the conflict between the Tsar and the society, which was caused not by the different notions of political, ideological doctrines or psychological crises but by the different notions of morality, the due, which underlie socialization. The use of our definition of marginality let us study effectively and distinguish types of marginal groups, for example, insurgent peasants, suppressed ethnic minorities, sectarians, etc.

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