ETHNOS AND GLOBALIZATION: Ethnocultural Mechanisms of Disintegration of Contemporary Nations. Monograph. A. L. Safonov
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of crisis processes of an ethnocultural kind – above all, processes of ethnic and religious fragmentation of civil nations and invigoration of ethnicism, ethno-separatism and clericalism that filled the institutional vacuum born from the crisis of social institutions in the industrial epoch.
The split of the USSR and a number of eastern European states (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia) into ethnic enclaves that gained the status of sovereign states entailed the need for a theoretical and ideological basis for corresponding projects of state construction and attempts to create them.
From the point of view of this study, it is of the utmost importance that scientific work on ethno-political issues is carried out, among others, by corresponding local elites that aspire to political separation or a special status within large states (ethnic communities within Russia, for example). The dissertation by Zaripov136 is a typical work illustrating this. Stating that “despite expectations of scientists and politicians, ethnicity not only failed to disappear, but showed a tendency for the expansion on a group level. Ethnic identity, ethnic feelings, ethnic solidarity stopped fitting into contemporary globalist tendencies that led to the unification of peoples”, Zaripov presents an idea of strengthening the ethno-confessional regionalization of Russia.
It should be noted that direct or implicit call to raise the status of titular ethnic groups is typical of the many sociological works on ethno-political issues that are being researched in Russia and in new independent states in the territory of the former USSR.
Obviously, the goal to justify raising the status of ethnic autonomies is linked to certain support on the part of regional ethnic elites trying to transform ethnic communities into political ones through purposeful artificial construction of the idea of a nation state (ideology) and a corresponding collective consciousness based on the ethnic culture.
On the theoretical level, the goal to assign political status to ethnic autonomies is based partly on post-modern concepts of constructivism and instrumentalism, partly on the ideas on multi-stage transformation of the ethnicity into a nation.
The crisis of the formational approach as a form of economic determinism caused reasonable interest in the civilizational approach which focuses on sociocultural issues.
Yakovets137 should be singled out among Russian researchers studying globalization through the civilizational approach.
Yakovets’ “Globalization and interaction of civilizations” proposes several key concepts of the contemporary civilizational approach to globalization:
1. The history of humankind is periodic change in global civilizations that assumes the form of changing global historical cycles.
2. Each global civilization can be presented as a five-step pyramid, with a demographical substrate with its biosocial needs and manifestations as a foundation. The pyramid top comprises spiritual and cultural phenomena, including culture, science, education, ideology, ethics and religion. Social transformation begins at the base and gradually transforms all the floors of the pyramid, which leads to the change of civilizations.
3. The intensity of intercivilizational interactions is increasing with each historical cycle, with humankind gradually becoming a united social system as a result.
4. The contemporary period is the transition from an industrialized to a post-industrialized global civilization.
5. Processes of globalization are a typical attributive characteristic of the establishment of a contemporary post-industrialized global civilization.
6. The main contradiction of a neoliberal-technocratic model of globalization is the fact that it is not in the interests of humankind, but in the interests of the largest transnational corporations.
According to Yakovets, the process of sociocultural unification, the convergence of local communities, is a threat because it lowers the viability and potential for the development of humankind. The formation of civilizations of the “fourth generation” is a response to this challenge. Yakovets discussed his concept built on the idea of the historically evolving structure of local civilizations, which includes the consequential change of civilizational leadership, in several works.138,139
At the same time. Yakovets believes that at the moment the sociocultural unification of local civilizations is generally prevalent. Therefore convergence of the local civilizations is moving toward the global one – that is to say, it de facto assumes the neoliberal model of global convergence (“Westernization’, according to Zinovyev) as a basis, without seeing or suggesting either alternative development models or agents interested in the alternative development.
Meanwhile, global unification is impossible, not least because peripheral local civilizations are fighting the current dominant Western civilization. Qualitatively new types of social life, social norms and rules, alternative values and models of social life will appear in the course of this fight.
Having swallowed the whole world, the global civilization will inevitably engender new processes of the formation of structures and groups.
However, Yakovets’ rejection of the formational approach leads to the rejection of its main achievement – the understanding of class and group interests as the most important powers behind the sociohistorical development. It also leads to rejection of the achievements and possibilities of sociological structuralism, which sees society as a system of objectively existing social groups and structures which include, in particular, class and ethnocultural communities.
Azroyantz140 presents his unique model of globalization as a concept of historical cycles, singling out three most important cycles in the evolution of the humankind: the establishment of man; the establishment and development of social community; and, ultimately, the establishment of the global social mega-community as the most advanced moral and spiritual form of human existence.
Development cycles are linked by transition periods during which situations occur where the historical choice of the next road to take must be made. These are seen as the bifurcation points, the arborization of the trajectory of historical development. Each cycle is looked upon as an evolutionary niche, while the transition during which a possible path of development for local or global social community is chosen is seen as a choice and the mastering of a new niche. At the same time, according to Azroyantz, the possibility of fatality cannot be ruled out for local civilizations and for humankind in general in the current global crisis as one of the variants of the development of the situation.
Azroyantz justifiably believes that humankind is experiencing a civilizational crisis that corresponds to the transition from the second cycle – i.e. the establishment of society – to the third one, the establishment of the social megacommunity.
In view of this, according to Azroyantz, the contemporary liberal model of globalization (globalization of scientific and technological progress and of financial capital) precludes moving onto a new level of development, which is why the creation of a qualitatively new “humane’ model of global development is required.
However, as Azroyantz rightly believes, social agents capable of and interested in resisting scientific and technological progress and managing the process of globalization on behalf of humankind have not yet been formed in the contemporary world.
At the same time, Azroyantz supposes that the spiritual and technological development of society are heading in opposite directions and, as a result, technological development under certain conditions objectively gives rise to social regression, which can be observed in the sphere of social relationships. Both cultural-civilizational unification and the general deterioration of culture occur during neoliberal globalization.
However, appeal to the networks, characterized by shapelessness
Zaripov, A. Y. Ethnos as agent of sociopolitical and cultural development: contemporary aspect. PhD dissertation 09.00.11. Russian State Library, 2005 (Russian State Library funds) – p. 3—4.
Yakovets, Y. V. Globalization and Interaction of Civilizations. M.: Ekonomika, 2001. – 416 p.
Yakovets, Y. V. At the Origins of New Civilization. M., 1993. – 137p.
Yakovets, Y. V. Cycles, Crises, Forecasts. M., 1999. – 283 p.
Azroyantz, E. A. Thoughts on future // Globalization, Conflict or Dialogue of Civilizations? M., 2002. – p. 37—45.