Trends in cultural universalization in the global modern process

1. Factors and mechanisms of culture transformation

For ten thousand years of its development, human culture has gone from a stone ax to space exploration. It never remained motionless: having originated, it developed and spread from one region to another, passed on from past generations to the present and future, and was constantly replenished with new material and spiritual products.

Changes are an integral property of culture and include both the internal transformation of cultural phenomena (their changes over time) and external changes (interaction with each other, movement in space, etc.). Thanks to this, there is a progressive movement of culture, its transition from one state to another.

In the process of cultural change, various elements of cultural experience are born, fixed and distributed. The value, influence and extent of distribution of these elements depend largely on the source of their occurrence.

The values ​​and symbols embodied in the monuments of the past become an important factor in the new culture. At the same time, they should not only be preserved, but also reproduced, revealing their meaning to new generations. The appeal to the cultural heritage of the past is designed to ensure the maintenance of the usual meanings, norms and values ​​that have developed in society. These meanings, norms and values ​​turn into canons or patterns, tested by many years of practice; following them provides the usual conditions of life. Those elements of cultural heritage that are passed down from generation to generation and preserved for a long time provide the identity of culture. The content of identity is not only the traditional phenomena of culture, but also its more mobile elements: values, norms, social institutions.

A significant role in cultural dynamics is played by cultural borrowing, i.e., the use of objects, norms of behavior, values ​​created and tested in other cultures. This kind of cultural dynamics develops when one culture is influenced by another, more developed one. However, at the same time, most people of a less developed culture, despite borrowing elements of another culture, retain many of the customs, norms and values ​​inherent in their native culture.

Cultural borrowings are the most common source of cultural change compared to all others. This source of cultural dynamics can be both direct (through intercultural contacts of individuals) and indirect (through the action of the media, consumer goods, educational institutions, etc.). However, in the process of borrowing, the recipient people do not borrow everything, but only what is close to their own culture, can bring obvious or hidden benefits, give advantages over other peoples, and meets the internal needs of this ethnic group.

The nature, degree and effectiveness of cultural borrowings are determined mainly by the following factors:

1) the intensity of contacts (frequent interaction of cultures leads to the rapid assimilation of foreign cultural elements);

2) the conditions of intercultural contacts (violent contacts give rise to a reaction of rejection);

3) the degree of differentiation of society (the presence of sociocultural groups ready to accept innovations);

4) susceptibility to a foreign culture (the ability to change one's behavior depending on the change in the cultural context).

The sources of cultural dynamics also include synthesis, which is the interaction and combination of heterogeneous cultural elements, as a result of which a new cultural phenomenon arises that differs from both of its components and has its own quality. Synthesis takes place in the event that a culture masters achievements in those areas that are not sufficiently developed in itself, but at the same time retains its original basis and remains original.

In modern conditions, synthesis is an important source of cultural transformation in many developing countries. Japan, as well as a number of countries in East and Southeast Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) are usually cited as the most striking example of a fruitful combination of their own national and foreign cultural elements.

2. Universalization and transformation of culture in the era of globalization

Cultural diffusion as a process of spontaneous and uncontrolled borrowing of cultural values ​​has both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, it allows peoples to communicate more with each other and learn about each other. Communication and knowledge contribute to the rapprochement of peoples. On the other hand, excessively active communication and borrowing is dangerous for the loss of cultural identity. The spread of the same cultural patterns around the world, the openness of borders to cultural influence and the expanding cultural communication make us talk about the process of globalization of modern culture.

The globalization of culture is the process of integrating individual ethnic cultures into a single world culture based on the development of vehicles, economic ties and means of communication. In intercultural communication, it is expressed in the expansion of cultural contacts, the borrowing of cultural values ​​and the migration of people from one culture to another.

Currently, the process of globalization has covered the most diverse areas of our lives. Finance, ideas and people are now more mobile than ever. It is natural that global financial and commodity markets, media and migration flows have led to a rapid growth of cultural exchanges, which are expressed in a rapidly increasing number of direct contacts between state institutions, social groups and individuals of different countries and cultures. In the course of these contacts, many traditional forms of life and ways of thinking disappear. But at the same time, the process of globalization leads to the emergence of new forms of culture and ways of life. Due to the wide availability of certain goods and ideas, local cultures change and enter into unusual combinations with each other. The boundaries between insiders and outsiders are blurred. This mixture of cultures is observed not only in the life of individual individuals - it is increasingly becoming a characteristic feature of entire societies.

That is why the United Nations declared 2001 the year of dialogue among cultures.

New forms of culture and identity are not easy to understand in terms of conventional ideas about what culture is. Cultural differences between people are usually determined by their distinctive historical roots. However, modern technological progress and global political, economic and cultural changes have led to the fact that our planet is permeated with a dense network of communications, preoccupied with common global problems of survival. The states and peoples that make it up, despite the contradictions and fundamental differences between them, are successfully finding ways and means of mutual understanding, and are increasingly gravitating towards the establishment of a single global culture on the planet. Within this emerging system, differences are already being established, similarities are being revealed, the diversity of the world is being realized, and therefore it becomes extremely important to be able to determine the cultural characteristics of its constituent elements in order to understand each other and achieve mutual recognition. Structures and ideas become global, such as ideals of beauty, human rights, or organizational principles. However, their practical design or implementation can vary significantly in each case.

From a cultural point of view, globalization is a dialectical process. Integration and differentiation, conflicts and cooperation, universalization and particularization are not mutually exclusive, but are mutually presupposing development trends. In the course of globalization, some of the ideas and structures of modern life are indeed spreading all over the world. At the same time, the cultural characteristics of individual peoples against the backdrop of global processes are becoming more and more sharply outlined or are generally recognized as such for the first time. Globalization is not an automatic process that will end in a conflict-free and ideal world. It is fraught with both new opportunities and new risks, the consequences of which for us may be more significant than in all previous eras.

The end of the confrontation between East and West did not lead to the establishment of a stable world order. The process of globalization has a pronounced tendency towards the unification of cultures. This causes in some nations the need for cultural self-affirmation and the desire to preserve their own cultural and individual values. A number of states and cultures demonstrate their active, often aggressive and explosive self-determination, liberation from paternalistic influence from traditionally dominant states and cultures, and categorical rejection of global cultural changes. To the general process of opening various frontiers, they oppose the growing impenetrability of their own and the exaggerated sense of pride in their cultural identity. All this is aggravated by the presence of unresolved historical problems, mainly geopolitical ones, leading to a change in the boundaries of political and economic spaces, the emergence of "hot spots", and the transformation of borders between cultures into military lines.

Historical practice shows that in the very process of cultural globalization, a certain conflict potential was initially laid down, since it is often necessary to revise or abandon some of the traditional principles and values ​​of one's own culture. Different societies react to alien changes in different ways. The range of resistance to the process of merging cultures is quite wide - from passive rejection of the values ​​of other cultures to active opposition to their spread and approval. As a result, we are witnessing numerous ethno-religious conflicts, nationalist sentiments in politics, and regional fundamentalist movements. This applies to a large extent to the traditional cultures of the Caucasus, to Islamic culture, to the archaic cultures of Africa, some countries of Latin America and Asia.

3. Routinization and virtualization of culture

Recently, supporters of the culturological approach are increasingly saying that unity in diversity, pluralism of cultures and common ethical principles of human society have ceased to be dilemmas of value choice. Thus, in particular, the authors of the World Report on Culture, who, based on an analysis of data on the degree of satisfaction of people, their hopes for the future, the level of trust and tolerance, the geographical parameters of self-identification, attitudes towards the gender problem, marriage and family etc. a fairly wide range of values, consider the current state of "a stage of evolution" towards a higher level of cultural unity.

Noting that the international value system is not internally divided by impenetrable partitions, they list the following components of the "dominant cultural climate":

1) the ideal of democracy (despite the lack of universal commitment to human rights);

2) the ideal of tolerance (although it is only partially manifested in relation to foreigners and does not always apply to some minorities, such as homosexuals);

3) orientation to the local level of articulation of interests (city, to a lesser extent - the country);

4) the idea of ​​female emancipation and rather liberal views on marriage;

5) recognition of the existence of problems related to the environment (but not as pronounced as environmentalists used to think);

6) the desire to protect children from the impact of adverse factors.

In our opinion, the conclusion about the unequivocal dominance in the globalizing world of the trend towards the growth of cultural unity is hardly justified.

The formation of a single information space and the universalization of consumer standards do not remove the problem of maintaining "diversity" (as a characteristic of identity), and the apparent lack of options for globalization according to the neoliberal scenario stimulates the search for alternatives. The question of what they will be remains open, although studies of "global civil society" state the formation of qualitatively new structures at the transnational level.

What is the role of sociocultural factors in the development of development alternatives and how to assess the main directions of sociocultural dynamics in a single space of information and communications?

The diversity of modern social experience and the choice of lifestyles and cultural models stimulates the fall of inhibitions and the routinization of this experience. The rapid growth of needs does not at all mean a comparable degree of their satisfaction, just as expanding access to cultural achievements does not directly lead to either an increase in their demand or a noticeable breakthrough in the quality of education. Rather, we can talk about the "desacralization" of culture. As a result, the importance of general humanitarian knowledge decreases. It loses the functions of a factor structuring the space of communication, yielding them to information carriers. The expansion of cinema, television, the Internet increases the role of visuality, visual perception of cultural patterns, contributes to the replacement of the latter with signs and symbols. Virtual cultural models are gaining an ever stronger place in popular culture.

Attempts to go beyond the network world constantly return to it. Being formed at the junction of modernist and traditionalist orientations, the vector of Russian sociocultural dynamics lies in the coordinate system of globalization and the search for one's place in the world order.

The choice of specific development strategies depends on the preferences of the power elite, and the institution of political leadership performs the functions of a real social integrator. National interests are identified with state interests, and the latter are often replaced by the interests of elite groups in power.

A high level of social disunity hinders the accumulation of cultural resources for modernization. The parameters of socio-cultural dynamics are set by the interaction of unstable cultural models and the social experience of a transforming society, split along numerous lines.

All of the above can be expressed in the words of the Russian thinker A. Dugin. He identifies the following trends in culture at the threshold of the XNUMXst century:

1) mondialization (globalization) of Americanism as an ersatz culture.

The leveling of the economic and political model on a planetary scale presupposes the establishment of a single cultural stereotype. According to the logic of things, the modeling of such a stereotype should be carried out by those forces and poles that are sponsors and curators of the entire process of globalization.

The American way of life, stamps of the Americanized ersatz culture, broadcast through the global mass media, are gradually replacing local cultural projects, adjusting the historical diversity to one-dimensional predetermined patterns.

At the same time, the reverse phenomenon also exists: the consolidation of regional national and religious enclaves to resist cultural expansion;

2) postmodern phenomenon. The general trend of changing the quality of civilization, the emergence of new factors of human existence and a significant modification of habitual forms of life, associated with the seriousness of historical transformations, are manifested in the organization of a new type of culture or a common denominator in the development of culture. This phenomenon is called postmodern. We are not talking about a specific artistic style, we are talking about a general trend that will affect all cultural trends in the future;

3) universalism and differentialism in postmodernity. At the same time, the final vector of postmodernity in culture has not yet been determined. This phenomenon can undergo a serious evolution and most likely will develop along a complex trajectory. In postmodernity, one can certainly distinguish between the unification aspect, associated with the mondialization of civilizational stamps under the auspices of the West, and the differential aspect, associated with the reaction of geo-economic zones, national and religious cultures to the challenge of "globalism";

4) alternative cultural projects (fundamentalist, neoconservative, ecological). As part of the search for an alternative to the globalization of American ersatz culture, one can distinguish the contours of other cultural projects that are opposite in their main orientation;

5) the role of mediacracy. The role of the media and new information technologies (the Internet or similar projects of an interactive virtual type) in the cultural process will increase geometrically. The spectacular side displaces the semantic coloring of the object. Gradually, the information function of the media will expand to culture-forming.

The model of the "society of the spectacle" (Guy Debord), established in Western countries, will be transferred to other regions.

4. Globalization as a basis for intercultural dialogue

Despite pessimistic forecasts, different positions and points of view are formed and coexist within the global culture, and this does not make all people the same. Globalization does not eliminate the diversity of people's ways of life, it only creates new forms that partially integrate the previous ones.

The process of globalization of culture is currently being implemented in various forms in all areas of human activity: economics, politics, science, art, sports, tourism, personal contacts, etc.

No culture, social group or ethnic community remains aloof from this process. At the same time, the most significant changes occur in the three most important areas of human life:

1) in the field of new technologies and information systems (communication system);

2) in the field of ethnic relations on the planet;

3) in the process of development of the world economic system. Modern technological advances have significantly expanded intercultural contacts through the creation of new vehicles and new forms of communication.

The mobility of people has sharply increased: today supersonic aircraft can deliver a person to any part of the planet in a matter of hours.

The result of this was the availability of direct contact with cultures that previously seemed mysterious and strange.

In direct contact with them, differences are realized not only in clothing, diet, kitchen utensils, but also in the perception of time and space, in relation to women and the elderly, in the ways and means of doing business, etc.

However, new media have played a particularly important role in the development of cultural interaction. Space satellites have allowed people to receive information from all regions of the world.

The importance of this form of communication is convincingly demonstrated by the following data: today there are 1,2 billion televisions and 180 million personal computers in the world.

Today, the ABC world television system with round-the-clock broadcasting is being intensively created, the transmissions of which will initially be received by viewers in 90 countries of the world.

In turn, the development of satellite communications led to the creation of the Internet, which is currently the fastest growing communication system.

Thus, over the past two years, the scale of the Internet has tripled, and users of this system are located in more than 100 countries around the world.

In addition, the ethnic factor has become a necessary and vital determinant of global cultural changes, which is reflected in the rapid growth of the planet's population.

The dynamics of this process had the following statistics: in 1965 there were 3,3 billion people in the world, by 1995 the population increased to 5,7 billion people, and in October 1999 the total population of our planet exceeded 6 billion. Human.

These figures mean that in recent years population growth has averaged 100 million people per year.

In turn, on a global scale, this also means that its population is increasing by 3 people per second, by 10 people per hour and by 600 per day.

Modern population growth rates entail the aggravation of a number of global problems of the existence of all mankind.

Today, about 1 billion people in the world do not receive adequate nutrition, and the lack of food, accordingly, pits one nation against another.

The 100 million people who appear annually in corresponding proportions exacerbate the shortage of resources and can cause a struggle for the possession of them to preserve their lives. For many countries and peoples, the problem of clean drinking water, which in fifty years will become the most valuable natural resource, is becoming increasingly acute.

Already today, there is a shortage of fish in the oceans, etc.

The ever-increasing aggravation of these problems requires preventing impending conflicts and encourages all peoples to mutual understanding and cooperation.

The processes of globalization and cultural dynamics, as practice shows, do not lead to the formation of a single world culture.

Modern culture remains a multitude of original cultures that are in dialogue and interaction with each other. Cultural changes lead only to universalization, but not to monotony.

But these processes force us to take a critical look at our own culture and the type of person inherent in it, to identify their intercultural boundaries.

Modern studies of cultural anthropology show that the cultural identity of any people is inseparable from the cultural identity of other peoples, that all cultures are subject to the laws of communication. Therefore, the ability to understand a foreign culture and points of view, a critical analysis of the foundations of one's own behavior, recognition of a foreign cultural identity, the ability to include other people's truths in one's position, the recognition of the legitimacy of the existence of many truths, the ability to build dialogic relations and make a reasonable compromise are becoming increasingly important. The ongoing cultural changes are increasingly subject to the logic of cultural communication.

The coexistence of people in modern civilization is impossible without the desire for harmony between cultures, which can only be achieved through dialogue between them.

In this dialogue, no culture can claim the right to an exclusive voice or the only true worldview. Relations between cultures should be based on the principles of consensus and pluralism.

The real basis for this type of relationship is the presence in each culture of positive universal values ​​that can be used for intercultural consensus.

Thus, the cultural dynamics develops in the direction of cooperation between cultures based on cultural pluralism. Cultural pluralism is the adaptation of a person to a foreign culture without abandoning one's own. It involves mastering the values ​​of another culture without compromising the values ​​of one's own culture.

With cultural pluralism, no culture loses its identity and does not dissolve into a common culture. It implies the voluntary mastery by representatives of one culture of the habits and traditions of another, enriching their own culture.

Authors: Islamgalieva S.K., Khalin K.E., Babayan G.V.

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