printCrisis of Trust:
Field Notes from a Research on Aging in Villages
Parfenova O.A.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Senior Researcher, Sociological Institute of FCTAS RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia oparfenova@socinst.ru
The study was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation No. 24-78-10118.
Parfenova O.A. Crisis of Trust: Field Notes from a Research on Aging in Villages. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2025. No 12. P. 132-139
This article presents field notes from the qualitative sociological investigation of aging in rural Russian villages, offering an ethnographic perspective on the everyday practices and lived experiences of older adults amid structural and cultural transformations. The research frames aging as a process embedded in multi-scalar social relations, where kinship networks, neighborly support, and informal reciprocity function within a shrinking infrastructure of welfare provision and collective resources. When conducting research on aging in Russian villages, we encountered familiar barriers such as recruiting informants, obtaining support from authorities and relatives, and facing cognitive or physical difficulties of older participants; however, all of these proved less significant than the issue of trust, which emerged as central during initial contact. Field observations and interviews revealed that distrust had multiple dimensions: firsthand experience with widespread fraud [often involving direct encounters with scammers] and latent fears about being questioned on sensitive or prohibited topics, especially those related to the current conflict. This pervasive sense of alienation and distrust was further exacerbated by the pandemic and self-isolation measures, which, though brief, left a lasting imprint of anxiety and habitual distancing. The study contributes to rural gerontology by problematizing idealized conceptions of village solidarity, demonstrating the layered crisis of trust and the need for nuanced, context-sensitive researchers interventions that respect local lifeworlds and epistemologies of aging.
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