elites separating themselves from local communities, a vertical fragmentation and a crisis of post-industrialism nations, as will be discussed below.
Considerable scientific results have been achieved within the socio-ecological approach that looks at globalization from the point of view of a global ecological, resource and demographic crisis. It should be noted that the socio-ecological approach has, since the very beginning, been controlled by representatives of global elites in the face of the Club of Rome and further international organizations and scientific communities.
By manipulating global threats, supporters of the concepts of sustainable development and zero growth motivate states and corresponding social communities to step back from choosing their own developmental path. They promote the creation of supranational institutions of global political power that member states cannot control or see through, using objective necessity to justify the lowering of the life standard and social guarantees for most of the world’s population, even the “inevitable’ decrease in the Earth’s population.
However, the term “sustainable development’ allows us to see clearly the interests of global financial elites behind it, lobbying for the maintenance of and increase in inequality of the global nucleus and the global periphery, to solve global contradictions at the expense of economic and political outsiders of the global community. Notably, Mikhail Gorbachev became a well-known supporter and promoter of global sustainable development, publishing several compilatory works under his name.131
Nevertheless, Russia’s groundwork in basic natural science could not but result in scientific achievements, important not only in a practical sense but in terms of general philosophy. The most notable in this regard is concept of physical economy and a number of works on globalistics and system analysis of global development by some members of the Russian science community. Geophysicist and climatologist Kondratyev and his associates132 should be noted among the latest, as well as the works by Fedotov133 and Subetto,134 developing the noospheric approach.
The crisis of the formational approach resulted in a wave of interest in the civilizational approach. The first post-revolutionary reprint of Danilevsky’s135 Russia and Europe became a landmark moment for the rehabilitation of the civilizational approach.
The publication of the works of Leo Gumilev, which may not have solved but at least presented clearly the problem of ethnogenesis and the correlation between ethnographic and nation state in the historical process, became an important source of renewed interest in civilizational issues and the overcoming of economic determinism.
However, interest in the civilizational approach sprang mainly from the reality of globalization, namely the crisis of the classic nation state of the industrial epoch and a flare-up 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
Gorbachyov, M. S. My Manifesto Land. St. Petersburg: Питер, 2008. – 160 p.
Kondratyev, K. Y., Krapivin, V. F., Savinykh, V. P. Perspectives of Civilization Development: Multidimensional Analysis. M.: Logos, 2003. – 576 p.
Fedotov, А. P. Globalistics: Origins of the Science of the Contemporary World: Lectures. M.: Aspekt-p Press, 2002. – 224 p.
Subetto, A. I. Capitalocracy and Global Imperialism. St. Petersburg: Asterion, 2009. – 572 p.
Danilevsky, N. Y. Russia and Europe. M.: Kniga, 1991. – 573 p.
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.
