ETHNOS AND GLOBALIZATION: Ethnocultural Mechanisms of Disintegration of Contemporary Nations. Monograph. A. L. Safonov
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and subjective components should be singled out in the theoretical approaches to globalization. It has been established that the theories may be descriptive or prescriptive. When analysing theories and models of globalization, one should single out their objective, descriptive component, and the subjective component that reflects the peculiarities, interests and intentions of the agent that shows a preference for a certain theoretical approach.
The prescriptive component of social theory (including the theory of globalization), understood as an ideal model of society, plays a special part in forming nations and other social communities of political genesis. The national idea is nothing short of the social order controlling the masses and forming their common identity.
Therefore, one should single out an ideological, prescriptive component of the theory of globalization – in other words, a value-based message, aimed at a certain social group (target audience), born out of certain social agents (usually elites), using ideology as a social management tool actively shaping or “building’ social reality.
Therefore, comparative philosophical-methodological analysis of well-known theories and globalization concepts, created within various science disciplines, shows that most are based on the reduction of globalization as an all-encompassing phenomenon to separate, albeit significant, economic or political phenomena.
At the same time, most existing globalization concepts, apologetic and critical theories, exhibit absolutization of convergent aspects of the development, monopolization and unification, including the ethnocultural one.
The aforementioned limitations placed on theoretical approaches inevitably lead to cognitive restrictions that hinder the theory not only from making forecasts, but also from explaining the course of the global development post factum, necessitating a review of the sociophilosophical approaches used in certain social studies.
Globalization is usually described using the well-known categories of internalization of the economy and integration of states – in other words, from the point of view of economic determinism and the concept of world politics as the interaction of sovereign states.
However, globalization does not simply weaken nation states that reached their development peak in the twentieth century, including great powers, and erode nations as system-building social communities, but also brings to life new agents in the global game, new centres and power mechanisms that serve as alternatives to the nation state.
According to one of the most prominent contemporary philosophers and sociologists, the creator of social structuration, Anthony Giddens,120 the process of globalization cannot be reduced to such substantial factors as information and communication technologies and the liberalization of trade and finance.
The concept of the “hybridization’ of society that presupposes the process of cultural, racial, ethnic mixing and miscegenation121 has gained some traction. Therefore, hybridization is a model of a slowed-down convergence that reduces new entities to mechanic superposition, overlaying already known phenomena and entities.
According to Guseynov,122 globalization is the transformation of long-standing, rather independent (although capable of complex interactions) cultural-civilizational and nation state forms of social life into a single system including all of humankind. This new system inevitably takes a stand against those forms of collective life which it is supposed to replace in a new, wider, inclusive (to the point of being universal) synthesis.
The confrontation of the global and the local becomes especially evident, and dramatically antagonistic, when globalization moves beyond economy to take over cultural, political and ideological (in a wider sense, including outlook, mentality) spheres.
According to Stepin, globalization is a choice between the two scenarios, which are called the “golden billion” concept and the “dialogue of civilizations” concepts.123
The golden billion concept stems from the idea of globalization as the rule, the triumph of Western civilization and the Western peoples, “the end of history”124 The rest should strive to become more like them under the threat of being relegated to an existence on the periphery or the semi-periphery. In the same manner, the future global society is seen as a semblance of the feudal and hierarchical system in the centre, with concentric circles of various levels around it.
The concept of the “global human ant hill” (Cheloveynik), as a final and definitive variant of the integration of humankind within the Western paradigm, was sociologically forecast and shown in the work of Zinoviev.125
The events of the last two decades provide objective proof that globalization, as the establishment of a qualitatively more connected and homogenous global environment, does not lead to the extinction of the formed social communities, similarly to how biological evolution in ecosystems does not lead to a decrease in biodiversity. As a result, despite the obviously outdated nature of religious and ethnic social institutions, the influence of ethno-religious and ethnocultural processes across the world is increasing as the migration flows across states are increasing, the state institutions are losing their significance and, consequently, the nation state identity is weakening, being replaced by an ethnic and religious identity.
From that point of view, the epoch of globalization is analogous to the axial age – a pivotal age of the formation of the first local civilizations, introduced by Karl Jaspers – the secession and the setting apart of the political sphere and, as a consequence, the appearance of the largest global denominations that defined the global history for ages to come.126
Consequently, globalization is not a gradual evolutionary approach to the only possible equilibrium point, but a global crisis during which catastrophic and, accordingly, essentially unpredictable major changes occur in the global society, linked to the establishment, development and extinction of a wide range of social agents as a result of an increasing global confrontation that is not limited by spatial barriers.
As a consequence, a global economic empire, even if it swallows the whole world, gives rise to new processes of structuration and divergence inside itself, undoubtedly begetting the possibility of a historical choice, a bifurcation of the historical process.
At the same time, the main consequence of the variability of global development and the increase in the number of agents in a new global world is the undoubtedly uncontrollable nature of global sociohistorical development that reaches its peak during historical crises.
The concept of the dialogue of civilizations, justifiably assuming that the sociocultural sphere is not a carbon copy of economic processes, proposes the principle of equality of civilizations, cultures and peoples, and sees the ideal global society as unity in diversity.
In fact, the concept of the dialogue of civilizations is a cover for the global periphery already formed to counter the pressure of the West in terms of the unification of culture and values, and to work out its own project for the existence in a united world. Seen from this angle, globalization is a challenge for the cultural, civilizational and national identity, which is applicable to all development scenarios, including the concept of the dialogue of civilizations.127
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the process is currently happening in a somewhat different way – that is to say, an ideology of the supremely wide community, the people of the Western world, the “golden billion’, is being formed, which caters for global confrontation in the sphere that is responsible for material wealth. A confrontation is inevitable within a new global community, as the fight for natural resources is gaining momentum due to the exponential increase in population
Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives. London: Profile, 1999. Translated to Russian. M.: Ves’ mir, 2004. – 120 p.
Prazauskas, A. A. Ethnonationalism. Multinational state and globalization processes // Polis. 1997. №2 – p. 95—105.
Guseynov, A. A. Individual and nation in light of globalism // Eastern Christian Civilization and Eastern Slavic Society in the Contemporary World. M., 2001. – p. 25—33.
Stepin, V. S. About Types of Civilizational Development and Future Scenarios. The Time of Changes and Future Scenarios. M., 1996. – 368 p.
Fukuyama, Francis (1989). “The End of History?”. The National Interest (16): 3—18
Zinovyev, A. A. Global Anthill. M., 1994. – 448 p.
Safonov, A. L. Axial Age 2: return to origins or descent into darkness? // Vestnik Buryatskogo Universiteta. Issue 14 (Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Culturology). Ulan-Ude, 2012. – p. 34—42.
Guseynov, A. A. Individual and nation in light of globalism // Eastern Christian Civilization and Eastern Slavic Society in the Contemporary World. M., 2001. – p. 25—33.