Socio-Normative Culture as an Educational Paradigm in Traditional Society

(The Case of Ajara)

Abstract

One of the significant factors in the formation of personality is socio-normative culture, which encompasses the social practices developed across generations, etiquette, and a broad spectrum of human behavior, ranging from customs and traditions to folk law. As a form of the society’s “collective morality,” it exerts a considerable influence on personality formation and functions as a particular paradigm of upbringing. Personality formation takes place within a specific socio-cultural context (environment). Every society develops particular sociocultural norms through which it influences and socializes its members.

In Adjara, important social institutions such as the family and the wider social milieu (lineage, village, community, etc.) are actively involved at all stages of the upbringing process. Sociocultural norms play a crucial role in this process, including adet/adat (folk law)—traditional customary rules inherited from ancestors, unwritten yet widely recognized as obligatory; folk ethics—the way of life developed by traditional society over centuries, including moral customs and behavioral norms based on popular conceptions of morality; and traditions, which reflect and preserve the cultural values characteristic of this ethnic group.

It is generally considered that traditional Georgian society is characterized by an authoritarian style of upbringing, an orientation toward obedience, strong family and intergenerational attachment, interpersonal interdependence, and the development of the individual within a framework closely tied to family members. In other words, this represents a cultural model in which society exercises comprehensive control over life situations.

Although the model of upbringing in Georgian society is largely well-defined and systematized, the ethnographic life of various regions of Georgia—including Ajara—has preserved rather flexible and contex­tua­lly adaptive methods of upbringing. Alongside social control, these methods gradually and smoothly support the development of adolescents, cultivate essential life skills, and facilitate their progressive incorporation into the life of the community, ultimately shaping them into bearers and continuers of the traditional values of their society.