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7Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 3 (2009 2) 295-300
УДК 130.2
Globalization as the Universalist Theory and Ambitendency of Its Revelations
Anastasiya A. Gerasimenko*
Siberian Federal University, 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 14.08.2009, received in revised form 21.08.2009, accepted 28.08.2009
Russian society reforming must be to a large extent correlated with globalization processes, which determine the leading directions of human life. Though, globalization is one of the forms of attempts to universalize the world society, and it is important to distinguish natural globalization (Internet and so on) and artificial one (enforced) globalization. Though, to our mind, there lies euro-centrism in the basis of globalization, and that is why in order to understand the essence of modern globalization processes one needs to research euro-centrism as the ideological basis of globalization. In the history of western civilization development, the myths, declaring a special position of Europe, are known to be built up already on the educational system level. This widespread modern western society conception considers Europe not as a geographical notion, but as a civilizational one. We can call euro-centrism to be a meta-ideology of the West, because separate confronting ideologies being also developed within its frames (for example, Liberalism and Marxism). It is important, that they proceed from one and the same world picture and one and the same postulates about historical way of the West. To our mind, the euro-centrism becoming and the symptoms of its crisis upon the modern conditions prove that the given process is closely connected to globalization and crucially influences the process of reforming of all the aspects of Russian social life renewal.
Keywords: euro-centrism; natural globalization; enforced globalization; meta-ideology; political being and sphere.
Point
It is important to estimate adequately the historical way of euro-centrism, in order to understand globalization processes as a natural tendency to integration or to forcible pressure, threatening to lose one's socio-cultural identity. As it is well-known, there was a gradually forming euro-centric point of view in European public opinion already in the colonial epoch. It happened, when dynamic, creative and free
Europe fulfilled a civilizational mission towards stagnant, totalitarian and fanatic East. Such a point of view of the world was not only the result of the situation in ХIХ century. As a social-political phenomenon of opposing of «right and good» Europe to the rest of the world, euro-centrism has undergone a long evolution of fading and dying under the influence of objective and subjective factors, and that is most vividly revealed in the conditions of globalization.
* Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
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Example
In the post-colonial period, euro-centrism prevents spiritual decolonization of developing countries and contributes to imposing western patterns of development to these countries, not taking into account their civilizational specifics, all these can be of big advantage to the West, but leads to drastic consequences for the East. The appearance of such works as «The End of History» by F. Fukuyama, who has announced the western capitalism pattern to be the top of the world evolution, can be one of the proofs of such an approach. Here, we can see the ways, wherein the principles of euro-centrism reveal themselves, and which have been driven to extremity in the modern Universalist conception, which has recommended itself especially vividly in the American variant of artificial globalism.
At present time, some scientists still stick to the conception of European «faster growth», according to which underrunning of the East is relative and contrast in comparison to the West. We may say that the key to «the European wonder» is in Europe itself, in its peculiarities of economical, social, and political orders, in European man's moral and spiritual attitude, but we can find this key only by means of comparative analysis of Europe and non-European world, which in its turn is also not homogeneous.
Till our days, traditional opinion still dominates and causes the wide-spreading of the notions, according to which global manageability suggests if not the world government appearance, so then at least some centre creation, which performs some state functions in the planetary scale. Such point of view is based on the principle of world managing under the leadership of some ruling subject - let it be even collegial and democratic, though, world manageability is not equal to world managing. Actually, world manageability is expressed in a controlled or managed development, but not at all in a
regulation of the ways of functioning of these or those institutions or separate individuals' or people groups' behavior.
Advancement of manageability, as the main criterion of globalization, does not at all means the reduction of the later up to only political questions. This criterion is also important to other non-political spheres, where we may possibly speak about well-developed general modernization criteria, such as rationalization, reflexiveness and so on. Though, manageability is present there as well in such a degree that while achieving the set political goals, economical, cultural and other specifics are also taken into consideration. That is why social management does not present by itself a one-way influence of the managing social system over the managed one, but a dialectic interaction between its subject and its object, which consists of various direct and reverse connections between them, and that acquires special importance in the conditions of domineering globalization as a special form of world universalization.
In this connection we are to note that the very notion of «euro-centrism» has an important methodological meaning. If we want to estimate the position of Europe more objectively with respect to non-European world, then we need a comparative analysis, i.e. we need to refuse from euro-centrism as a historiographical approach, whereby non-European countries' development passes completely out of sight or is considered exclusively through the perspective of European development. L.N. Gumilyev wrote: «Commonplace euro-centrism is enough for philistine perception, but is not acceptable for scientific understanding of the observed phenomena variety» [1, p. 65], as far as it leads «to creation of an imaginary image of Europe, and on its basis a distorted picture of development of the rest of the world» - M. Ferro noticed in his turn [2].
Though, many scientists are not satisfied with such an unambiguous approach, and they raise the question of inconsistency of euro-centrism cult as a leading methodological basis for objective research of social processes essence. For example, К. Jaspers has suggested an alternative formula, being based on the fact, that he defines the divide epoch as a central period, comprising the biggest part of I millennium B.C., when the main spiritual and intellectual breakthroughs in four world regions had brought to a highly developed civilization: Jewish transition to monotheism; Greek rational philosophy evolution; transition from Vedas to Upanishads; Buddhism and Jainism in India; appearance of Confucianism and Taoism in China. Along with the secondary revolutions (Christianity and Islam), intellectual and moral traditions, which were set during these centuries, supported the leading world civilizations in the course of two thousand years. In spite of the fact, that the breakthroughs, identified by К. Jaspers, were transcendental, everything was seated in the search of human immortality and saving, to his mind [3, p. 65-66]. Nevertheless, unlike euro-centrism, advantages of such an approach are especially revealed first of all in initial equal rights of all the civilizations.
We proceed from the fact, that consideration of modern globalization ambitendency implies theoretical understanding of euro-centrism, which should be achieved, firstly, in the context of comparing of a row of modern concepts of native and foreign authors, secondly, basing on the structure of notions of «political being», «political sphere», and «political time» and, thirdly, tracing the transformation of modernism into postmodernism. One of the first researchers of the age of Enlightenment was J. Herder, who undertook a sort of global approach to the study of culture theory and history. Though, he as well admitted the East to be the cradle of human culture and, correspondingly, refused
from euro-centrism absolutization, he stated that «new European culture could become only the culture of people, the kind they were and wished to become, the culture, being generated by businesslike character, sciences, and arts». Thus, modernization paradigm of the West was forming social and cultural values on the basis of priorities of rationalism, individualism, and religious traditions secularization [4].
At the beginning of XX century, researchers already raised the question of euro-centrism consistency as the leading theory, defining not only humanitarian sciences, but also political life of the humanity. О. Spengler predicted -and now we can observe this prognosis being realized, - that «future cultures will consider it to have been completely improbable», that this scheme «with its naive straightforwardness, and its senseless proportions» has not been open to the question for a long time. Such serious researchers, as О. Spengler and К. Jaspers were perplexed concerning to that, that the widespread chronological scale was euro-centric [5]. Along with that, we can agree with McNeil, who has noticed, that «... quite another aspect of their work seems to be more important, as far as О. Spengler and A. Toynbee have put European and non-European civilizations in one row, while revealing the cycles in the fixed written past. This century historiography differs at least potentially from the previous ones by really extreme concentration of the past European triumphs, which prevailed in XIX century. » [6, p. 20].
Modern historical consciousness, accustomed to «The End of History» by Hegel or to «The Kingdom of Freedom» by Marks, does not think about bringing together the future and the past. Being unambiguously equated by significant number of philosophers to the system of western values' development and consolidation, the notion of historical progress is oftener and oftener associated with «the end of history».
Though, on the whole, being based on the values of market and liberal democracy, Fukuyama's utopia conception of «the end of history» and of «the panhuman state» does not hold water in the face of sharpened national, cultural and religious peoples' self-identifications in the background of global civilizational crisis of XXI century [7, p. 67]. For example, being a scrupulous all-round scientist, Hodgson at various times criticized ethno-centric western historiography and western cartography (Europe being placed right in the centre of the world maps). He rejected generally accepted explanations of the western exclusiveness (including Max Weber's defense of the western rationalism), basing on the fact, that special praising qualities, being observed in the western culture history, could be found in the history of non-western societies in plenty.
Globalization, the same as euro-centrism, can be considered as a striving to realize in practice the enforced progress conception in those countries, where the share of traditions is quite significant or prevailing. It is well known, how painfully it is, when on the national ground the society with rooted traditional moral and living norms and forms of social order meets the enforced implantation of foreign spiritual and cultural values with co-current structures in political and economical spheres.
A deep ethnological sense is hidden under the wordplay of theological terms, which is traditional for ideologists of the Universalist theories (of euro-centrism and artificial globalization): the Europeans have singled out themselves out of the rest of humanity and contradistinguished themselves to it, as it was done by the Arabians and Chinese, and in ancient times by the Hellenes, the Jews, the Persians and Egyptians. Consequently, to L.N. Gumilyev's mind, here we observe the process of ethno-genesis, being common for all the epochs and countries. And if so, then we have a right «... to consider these
events neither as random coincidences, nor as a political conspiration of the Europeans against the Asians, but we must approach them as a naturally proceeding process or objective law of human ethnic history in that cruel epoch, when the time of peoples' crystallization has come, the people living and acting up till now» [8, p. 278].
Not refusing from accusations against the West on the whole and against the western historical science of the sin of euro-centrism, we should say at the same time, that it remains to be the basis for globalization ideologists and, nevertheless, acquires some new tendencies. Firstly, globalization ideologists have primarily borrowed euro-centrism ideas and methods of artificial globalization justification. Secondly, we observe a rift in the sphere of globalization subjects, first of all, between the USA and Europe, which vividly illustrates crisis demonstrations in euro-centrism as a leading ideology of XX century. New tendencies in social science development are the proofs of the fact to some extent. In his book «Beyond the Moral Virtues», American philosopher A. Macintyre has expressed a well-known scepsis according to the potential possibilities of social sciences: «. from time to time it is announced, that at last the true law, controlling human behavior, has been discovered. Though, all these supposed laws have just one shortcoming - they are obviously so false, that nobody believes in them, except social scientists, who are weighed upon by traditional science philosophy» [9, p. 122].
To A. Whitehead's mind, the problem of social life is a problem of individual actions and their unionization limits [10, p. 417]. Individuals' unionization limits appear to be a theoretical problem, perceived as a problem of individual's delegation of some part of his authority to the state institutions, and the state turns out to be lawfully authorized to govern the society, including those relations, which concern globalization processes
and negative globalization pressure blocking as well.
Nevertheless, even today many scientists still consider euro-centric-globalization tendencies to be non-competitive. For example, Amitai Etzioni proves that the East is moving in direction of the western pattern. «The same happens with the West, which is moving in the eastern direction -not to the East as it is, but by means of narrowing of the deficit of commonness (and of powers authority) to some median position... we should also note that, this movement does not go in the direction of one common synthetic pattern. It is more likely, that there is realized a whole row of social projects, which have two common important features: the society is becoming more balanced, than in individualistic and authoritarian variants, and the public order is more than ever based on the force of persuasion» [11, p. 44].
Resume
The fact, that the USA does not try to consolidate the world society, for example, on the basis of some grandiose global panhuman project (like energy space system creation and, thus, to
provide a steady development of humanity and poverty surmounting) serves as an inconsistency indicator of the goals, being set by globalization subjects. Instead of the mentioned, the USA suggests «the struggle against the international terrorism», which will only aggravate the hatred towards America and redouble the terroristic threat» [12, p. 174].
In these conditions, the countries, experiencing such a pressure, turn out to be faced with the necessity of corresponding means development of globalization process blocking, and having taken their societies' specifics in consideration, they must develop some special mechanisms on the basis of their traditions, which will block the enforced globalization as a consequence of non-constructive euro-centrism.
Thus, mankind's survival guarantee supposes some changing of globalization process essence from aggressive to constructive one, and on condition, that it is successfully theoretically and practically studied, globalization process can contribute to unlock positive potentials of different types of societies.
References
1. L.N. Gumilyev. Ethno-Genesis and the Biosphere of the Earth / L.N. Gumilyev. - Moscow, 1989.
2. Quotations from: Europe Metamorphoses. Moscow, 1993.
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4. I.F. Kefeli. The Social Nature of Globalism / I.F. Kefeli // Man's Perspectives in the Globalizing World/ edited by V.V. Parcvanij. St. Petersburg: the St. Petersburg Philosophical Society, 2003.
5. O. Spengler. The Dawn of Europe / O. Spengler. - Moscow: Mysl', 1993.
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