In the socio-humanitarian discussion of recent decades, the central place is occupied by the comprehension of such categories of modern globalized reality as global, local, transnational. The scientific analysis of the problems of modern societies, therefore, takes into account and brings to the fore the global social and political context - a variety of networks of social, political, economic communications covering the whole world, turning it into a "single social space". Previously separated, isolated from each other societies, cultures, people are now in constant and almost inevitable contact. The ever-increasing development of the global context of communication results in new socio-political and religious conflicts that had no precedent before, which arise, in particular, due to the clash of culturally different models at the local level of the nation-state. At the same time, the new global context weakens and even erases the rigid boundaries of sociocultural differences. Modern sociologists and culturologists, engaged in understanding the content and trends of the globalization process, pay more and more attention to the problem of how cultural and personal identity changes, how national, non-governmental organizations, social movements, tourism, migration, interethnic and intercultural contacts between societies lead to the establishment of new translocal, transsocietal identities.

The global social reality blurs the boundaries of national cultures, and hence the ethnic, national and religious traditions that make up them. In this regard, globalization theorists raise the question of the trend and intention of the globalization process in relation to specific cultures: will the progressive homogenization of cultures lead to their fusion in the cauldron of "global culture", or will specific cultures not disappear, but only the context of their existence will change. The answer to this question involves finding out what "global culture" is, what are its components and development trends.

Theorists of globalization, concentrating their attention on the social, cultural and ideological dimensions of this process, single out “imaginary communities” or “imaginary worlds” generated by global communication as one of the central units of analysis of such dimensions. New "imaginary communities" are multidimensional worlds created by social groups in global space.

In domestic and foreign science, a number of approaches to the analysis and interpretation of the processes of modernity, referred to as the processes of globalization, have developed. The definition of the conceptual apparatus of concepts aimed at analyzing the processes of globalization directly depends on the scientific discipline in which these theoretical and methodological approaches are formulated. To date, independent scientific theories and concepts of globalization have been created within the framework of such disciplines as political economy, political science, sociology and cultural studies. In the perspective of a cultural analysis of modern globalization processes, the most productive are those concepts and theories of globalization that were originally formulated at the intersection of sociology and cultural studies, and the phenomenon of global culture became the subject of conceptualization in them.

This section will consider the concepts of global culture and cultural globalization proposed in the works of R. Robertson, P. Berger, E. D. Smith, A. Appadurai. They represent two opposing strands of international scholarly discussion about the cultural fate of globalization. Within the framework of the first direction, initiated by Robertson, the phenomenon of global culture is defined as an organic consequence of the universal history of mankind, which entered the 15th century. in the era of globalization. Globalization is understood here as a process of shrinking the world, its transformation into a single socio-cultural integrity. This process has two main vectors of development - the global institutionalization of the life world and the localization of globality.

The second direction, represented by the concepts of Smith and Appadurai, interprets the phenomenon of global culture as an ahistorical, artificially created ideological construct, actively promoted and implemented through the efforts of the mass media and modern technologies. Global culture is a two-faced Janus, a product of the American and European vision of the universal future of the world economy, politics, religion, communication and sociality.

So, in the context of the paradigm set by Robertson, globalization is comprehended as a series of empirically fixed changes, heterogeneous, but united by the logic of turning the world into a single socio-cultural space. The decisive role in the systematization of the global world is assigned to the global human consciousness. It should be noted that Robertson calls for abandoning the use of the concept of "culture", considering it to be empty in content and reflecting only the unsuccessful attempts of anthropologists to talk about primitive non-literate communities without involving sociological concepts and concepts. Robertson considers it necessary to raise the question of the socio-cultural components of the globalization process, of its historical and cultural dimension. As an answer, he offers his own "minimal phase model" of the sociocultural history of globalization.

An analysis of the universalist concept of the socio-cultural history of globalization proposed by Robertson shows that it is built according to the Eurocentric scheme of the "universal history of mankind", first proposed by the founders of social evolutionism, Turgot and Condorcet. The starting point of Robertson's construction of the world history of globalization is the postulation of the thesis about the real functioning of the "global human condition", the historical carriers of which are successively societies-nations, individuals, the international system of societies and, finally, all of humanity as a whole. These historical bearers of global human consciousness are formed in the socio-cultural continuum of world history, built by Robertson on the model of the history of European ideologies. The sociocultural history of globalization begins in this model with such a societal unit as the "national society" or the nation-state-society. And here Robertson reproduces the anachronisms of Western European social philosophy, the formation of the central ideas of which is usually linked with the ancient Greek conceptualization of the city-state (polis) phenomenon. It should be noted that the radical transformation of European socio-philosophical thought in the direction of its sociologization was carried out only in modern times and was marked by the introduction of the concept of “civil society” and the concept of “world universal history of mankind”.

Robertson calls his own version of the socio-cultural history of globalization the “minimal phase model of globalization”, where “minimal” means not taking into account either the leading economic, political and religious factors, or the mechanisms or driving forces of the process under study. And here he, trying to construct some kind of world-historical model of the development of mankind, creates what has been appearing for centuries on the pages of textbooks on the history of philosophy as examples of social evolutionism of the 17th century. However, the founders of social evolutionism built their concepts of world history as the history of European thought, achievements in the field of economics, engineering and technology, and the history of geographical discoveries.

Robertson distinguishes five phases of the socio-cultural formation of globalization: the rudimentary, initial, take-off phase, the struggle for hegemony and the phase of uncertainty.

First, rudimentary, phase falls on the XV - the beginning of the XVIII century. and is characterized by the formation of European nation-states. It was during these centuries that the cultural emphasis was placed on the concepts of the individual and the humanistic, the heliocentric theory of the world was introduced, modern geography was developing, and the Gregorian chronology was spreading.

Second, initial, phase begins in the middle of the 18th century. and continued until the 1870s. It is marked by a shift in cultural emphasis towards homogenization and unitary statehood. At this time, the concepts of formalized international relations, the standardized "citizen-individual" and humanity are crystallizing. According to Robertson, this phase is characterized by the discussion of the problem of accepting non-European societies into an international society and the emergence of the theme of "nationalism/internationalism".

Third, phase takeoff,- since the 1870s. and until the mid-1920s. - includes the conceptualization of "national societies", the thematization of ideas of national and personal identities, the introduction of some non-European societies into an "international society", the international formalization of ideas about humanity. It is in this phase that an increase in the number and speed of global forms of communication is revealed, ecuminist movements appear, the international Olympic Games, Nobel laureates, the Gregorian chronology spreads.

Fourth, phase fight for hegemony begins in the 1920s. and completed by the mid-1960s. The content of this phase consists of international conflicts related to the way of life, during which the nature and prospects of humanism are indicated by the images of the Holocaust and the explosion of a nuclear bomb.

And finally, the fifth, phase uncertainty– since the 1960s and further, through the crisis trends of the 1990s, enriched the history of globalization with the growth of a certain global consciousness, gender, ethnic and racial nuances of the concept of individuality, and the active promotion of the doctrine of "human rights". The event outline of this phase is limited, according to Robertson, to the landing of American astronauts on the moon, the fall of the geopolitical system of the bipolar world, the growing interest in the world civil society and world citizen, and the consolidation of the global media system.

The crowning achievement of the sociocultural history of globalization is, as follows from Robertson's model, the phenomenon of the global human condition. The sociocultural dynamics of the further development of this phenomenon is represented by two directions, interdependent and complementary. The global human condition is evolving in the direction of homogenization and heterogenization of sociocultural patterns. Homogenization- this is the global institutionalization of the life world, understood by Robertson as the organization of local interactions with the direct participation and control of the global macrostructures of the economy, politics and mass media. The global life world is formed and propagated by the media as a doctrine of "common human values", which has a standardized symbolic expression and has a certain "repertoire" of aesthetic and behavioral models intended for individual use.

The second direction of development is heterogenesis- this is the localization of globality, i.e., the routinization of intercultural and interethnic interaction through the inclusion of other cultural, "exotic" in the texture of everyday life. In addition, the local development of global socio-cultural patterns of consumption, behavior, self-presentation is accompanied by a "banalization" of the constructs of the global living space.

Robertson introduces the concept of "glocalization" in order to fix these two main directions of the socio-cultural dynamics of the globalization process. In addition, he considers it necessary to speak about the tendencies of this process, that is, about the economic, political and cultural dimensions of globalization. And in this context, he calls cultural globalization the processes of world expansion of standard symbols, aesthetic and behavioral patterns produced by Western media and transnational corporations, as well as the institutionalization of world culture in the form of multiculturalism of local lifestyles.

The above concept of the socio-cultural dynamics of the globalization process is, in fact, an attempt by an American sociologist to portray globalization as a historical process organic to the formation of the human species of mammals. The historicity of this process is substantiated through a very dubious interpretation of European socio-philosophical thought about man and society. The vagueness of the main provisions of this concept, the weak methodological elaboration of the central concepts, nevertheless, served as the emergence of a whole direction of discourse on global culture, aimed primarily at scientifically reliable substantiation of the ideologically biased version of globalization.

The concept of "cultural dynamics of globalization", proposed by P. Berger and S. Huntington, ranks second in terms of authority and frequency of citation in the international cultural and sociological discussion about the cultural fate of globalization. According to its creators, it is aimed at identifying the "cultural parameters of globalization". The modeling of these parameters is based on a methodological trick well developed by Berger and Huntington in their previous theorizing experience. The concept of "global culture" is built in accordance with scientifically fixed criteria for classifying one or another phenomenon of social life as a fact of sociocultural reality. Thus, Berger and Huntington state that the concept of “culture” itself is the starting point for their concept, defined in the generally accepted social and scientific sense of the word, i.e. as “the beliefs, values ​​and way of life of ordinary people in their daily existence.” And then the discourse unfolds according to the algorithm standard for cultural studies, cultural anthropology and sociology: the historical and cultural background of this culture, its elite and popular levels of functioning, its carriers, spatiotemporal characteristics, development dynamics are revealed. The methodological trick done by Berger and Huntington is that the development of the concept of global culture and the corresponding proof of its legitimacy are replaced by the definition of the concept of “culture” that has been established in the socio-humanitarian sciences, which has nothing to do with either the discourse on globalization or the phenomenon of globalization itself.

The hypnotic consequence of this illusionistic technique is manifested in the instant immersion of a professional reader into the abyss of political science essays and the quasi-definition of global culture. The real facts and events of our time, linked into a single whole by the distinct logic of the world economy and politics, are presented as representatives of global culture.

Global culture, argue Berger and Huntington, is the fruit of "the Hellenistic stage in the development of the Anglo-American civilization." Global culture is American in its genesis and content, but at the same time, in the paradoxical logic of the authors of the concept, it is in no way connected with the history of the United States. Moreover, Berger and Huntington insist that the phenomenon of global culture cannot be explained by the concept of "imperialism". The main factor of its origin and planetary spread should be considered the American English language - the world-historical stage of the Anglo-American civilization. This new koine, being the language of international communication (diplomatic, economic, scientific, touristic, international), broadcasts the "cultural layer of cognitive, normative and even emotional contents" of the new civilization.

The emerging global culture, like any other culture, reveals, according to the vision of Berger and Huntington, two levels of its functioning - elite and popular. Its elite level is represented by practices, identity, beliefs and symbols of international business and clubs of international intellectuals. The popular level is the culture of mass consumption.

The content of the elite level of global culture is "Davos culture" (Huntington's term) and the club culture of Western intellectuals. Its bearers are "communities of aspiring young people in business and other activities" whose life goal is to be invited to Davos (the Swiss international mountain resort where top-level economic consultations are held annually). In the "elite sector" of global culture, Berger and Huntington also include the "Western intelligentsia", which creates the ideology of global culture, embodied in the doctrine of human rights, the concepts of feminism, environmental protection and multiculturalism. The ideological constructions produced by the Western intelligentsia are interpreted by Berger and Huntington as normative rules of conduct and generally accepted ideas of global culture, inevitably subject to assimilation by all those who want to succeed "in the field of elite intellectual culture."

Anticipating the possible questions of non-Western intellectuals, Berger and Huntington repeatedly emphasize that the main carriers of the emerging global culture are Americans, and not some “cosmopolitans with narrow local interests” (the concept of J. Hunter, who sharply criticized the term “global intellectual”). All others, non-American businessmen and intellectuals, must for the time being only hope to become involved in global culture.

The people's popular level of global culture is the mass culture promoted by Western commercial enterprises, predominantly shopping, food and entertainment. (Adidas, McDonald, McDonald's Disney, MTV etc.). Berger and Huntington consider the "broad masses" of consumers to be carriers of mass culture. Berger proposes to rank the carriers of mass culture in accordance with the criterion of "involved and non-involved consumption". This criterion, according to Berger's deep conviction, helps to reveal the chosenness of some and the complete innocence of others, since "communion consumption" in its interpretation is "a sign of invisible grace." Thus, involvement in the consumption of values, symbols, beliefs and other Western mass culture is presented in this concept as a sign of God's chosen people. Non-participatory consumption implies the "banalization" of consumption, the malicious neglect of reflection on its deep symbolic meaning. According to Berger, consumption devoid of divine grace is the use of mass culture products for their intended purpose, when eating hamburgers and wearing jeans becomes common and loses its original meaning of joining the lifestyle of the elect, to some kind of grace.

Mass culture, according to Berger and Huntington, is introduced and disseminated by the efforts of mass movements of various types: movements of feminists, environmentalists, fighters for human rights. A special mission is assigned here to evangelical Protestantism, since "conversion to this religion changes people's attitude to the family, sexual behavior, raising children and, most importantly, to work and the economy in general." At this point of reasoning, Berger, using his international reputation as a professional sociologist of religion with a high citation index, is, in fact, trying to impose on researchers the idea that evangelical Protestantism is a religion of the elect, a religion of a global culture designed to radically change the image of the world and the identity of mankind.

It is evangelical Protestantism in the concept of Berger and Huntington that embodies the “spirit” of a global culture aimed at cultivating in the masses the ideals of personal self-expression, gender equality and the ability to create voluntary organizations. According to Berger and Huntington, the ideology of global culture should be considered individualism, which helps to destroy the dominance of tradition and the spirit of collectivism, to realize the ultimate value of global culture - personal freedom.

In the concept of Berger and Huntington, global culture is not only historical as a Hellenistic stage of Anglo-American culture, but is also clearly fixed in space. It has centers and peripheries, represented respectively by metropolises and regions dependent on them. Berger and Huntington do not consider it necessary to go into a detailed explanation of the thesis about the territorial attachment of global culture. They limit themselves to just clarifying that the metropolis is a space for the consolidation of an elite global culture, and its business sector is located both in Western and Asian giant cities, and its intellectual sector is based only in the capital centers of America. Spatial characteristics of folk global culture Berger and Huntington leave without comment, because it is destined to capture the whole world.

And finally, the final conceptual component of this theorizing is the dynamics of the development of global culture. And here Berger and Huntington consider it necessary to reinterpret the concept of "glocalization", which is basic for the first direction of interpretations of the sociocultural dynamics of globalization. Unlike most of their colleagues in the ideologically biased construction of globalization, Berger and Huntington prefer to talk about "hybridization", "alternative globalization" and "sub-globalization". The combination of these three trends in the development of globalization forms the socio-cultural dynamics of globalization in their concept.

The first trend of hybridization is understood as a deliberate synthesis of Western and local cultural characteristics in business, economic practices, religious beliefs and symbols. This interpretation of the processes of introducing ideologemes and practices of global culture into the texture of national traditions is based on the gradation of cultures into “strong” and “weak”, proposed by Huntington. Strong cultures Huntington calls all those that are capable of "creative adaptation of culture, that is, the processing of samples of American culture on the basis of their own cultural tradition." He classifies the cultures of East and South Asia, Japan, China and India as strong, while African cultures and some cultures of European countries are weak. At this point in their reasoning, Berger and Huntington openly demonstrate the political and ideological bias of the concept they put forward. The term "hybridization" is ideological in its essence; it refers to non-discursive, axiological postulates about the chosenness of some cultures and the complete worthlessness of others. Behind this interpretation is the chosenness of peoples, preached by Berger, and the inability of cultures to be creative, defined by Huntington. Hybridization is not a trend, but a well-thought-out geopolitical survival game project.

The second trend in the dynamics of the development of global culture is alternative globalization, defined as global cultural movements that arise outside the West and have a strong influence on it. This trend indicates, according to Berger and Huntington, that modernization, which gave rise to the Western model of globalization, is an obligatory stage in the historical development of all countries, cultures and peoples. Alternative globalization is thus a historical phenomenon of non-Western civilizations that have reached the stage of modernity in their development. Berger and Huntington believe that these other models of globalization, like the Anglo-American global culture, have elitist and popular levels of functioning. It was in the midst of the non-Western elite that the secular and religious movements of alternative globalization arose. However, only those that promote modernity, alternative to national cultural traditions, democratic modernity and devoted to Catholic religious and moral values, can have a practical impact on the way of life of the global culture dominating the world.

From the above characteristics of the second trend in the dynamics of the development of global culture, it clearly follows that it is called “alternative” only because it runs counter to national historical and cultural traditions, opposing them with all the same American values ​​of modern Western society. Culturally surprising are the examples Berger and Huntington have chosen to illustrate the non-Western cultural movements of alternative globalization. Among the prominent representatives of non-Western global culture, they included the Catholic organization Opus Dei, originating in Spain, the Indian religious movements of Sai Baba, Hare Krishna, the Japanese religious movement of the Soka Gakkai, the Islamic movements of Turkey and the New Age cultural movements. It should be noted that these movements are heterogeneous in their genesis and preach completely different religious and cultural patterns. However, in the interpretation of Berger and Huntington, they appear as a united front of fighters for a consistent synthesis of the values ​​of Western liberalism and certain elements of traditional cultures. Even a superficial scientifically motivated examination of the examples of “alternative globalization” proposed by Berger and Huntington shows that all of them in reality represent a radical counterexample to the theses stated in their concept.

The third tendency of "sub-globalization" is defined as "movements having a regional scope" and contributing to the rapprochement of societies. The illustrations of sub-globalization proposed by Berger and Huntington are as follows: the "Europeanization" of the post-Soviet countries, Asian media modeled after Western media, men's "colorful shirts with African motifs" ("Mandela shirts"). Berger and Huntington do not consider it necessary to reveal the historical genesis of this trend, to consider its content, since they believe that the listed elements of subglobalization are not part of global culture, but only act as "mediators between it and local cultures."

The concept of "cultural parameters of globalization", proposed by Berger and Huntington, is a vivid example of the methodology of ideological modeling of the phenomenon of globalization. This concept, declared as scientific and developed by authoritative American scientists, is, in fact, the imposition of geopolitical programming on cultural discourse that is not characteristic of it, an attempt to pass off an ideological model as a scientific discovery.

A fundamentally different direction of cultural and sociological understanding of globalization is represented in the international discussion by the concepts of E. D. Smith and A. Appadurai. The phenomenon of global culture and the accompanying processes of globalization of cultures and cultural globalization are interpreted in this direction as ideological constructs derived from the real functioning of the world economy and politics. At the same time, the authors of these concepts make an attempt to comprehend the historical background and ontological foundations for the introduction of this ideological construction into the texture of everyday life.

The concept of global culture proposed by Anthony D. Smith is built through the methodological and substantive opposition of the scientifically based concept of "culture" to the image of "global culture", ideologically constructed and promoted by the media as a global reality. Unlike Robertson, the founder of the discourse on globalization, Smith does not at all call on the thinking scientific world to abandon the concept of culture in connection with the need to construct a sociological or cultural interpretation of the processes of globalization. Moreover, the initial methodological thesis of his concept is the postulation of the fact that the socio-humanitarian sciences have a completely clear definition of the concept of "culture", conventionally accepted in the discourse and not subject to doubt. Smith points out that in the variety of concepts and interpretations of culture, its definition as "a collective way of life, a repertoire of beliefs, styles, values ​​and symbols" fixed in the history of societies is invariably reproduced. The concept of "culture" is conventional in the scientific sense of the word, since in historical reality one can only talk about cultures that are organic to social time and space, the territory of residence of a particular ethnic community, nation, people. In the context of such a methodological thesis, the very idea of ​​a “global culture” seems to Smith absurd, since it already refers the scientist to some kind of interplanetary comparison.

Smith emphasizes that even if we try, following Robertson, to think of global culture as a kind of artificial environment for the human species of mammals, then in this case we will find striking differences in the lifestyles and beliefs of segments of humanity. In contrast to the supporters of the interpretation of the process of globalization as a historically natural, culminating in the emergence of the phenomenon of global culture, Smith believes that from a scientific point of view, it is more justified to talk about ideological constructs and concepts that are organic for European societies. Such ideological constructions are the concepts of "national states", "transnational cultures", "global culture". It was these concepts that were generated by Western European thought in its aspirations to build a certain universal model of the history of human development.

Smith contrasts Robertson's model of the socio-cultural history of globalization with a very laconic overview of the main stages in the formation of the European-American ideologeme of the transnationality of human culture. In his conceptual review, he clearly demonstrates that the ontological foundation of this ideologeme is the cultural imperialism of Europe and the United States, which is an organic consequence of truly global economic and political claims of these countries to universal domination.

The sociocultural dynamics of the formation of the image of global culture is interpreted by Smith as the history of the formation of the ideological paradigm of cultural imperialism. And in this history, he singles out only two periods, marked respectively by the emergence of the very phenomenon of cultural imperialism and its transformation into a new cultural imperialism. By cultural imperialism, Smith understands the expansion of ethnic and national “sentiments and ideologies—French, British, Russian, etc.” to universal scales, imposing them as universal values ​​and achievements of world history.

Reviewing the concepts developed in the paradigm of the original cultural imperialism, Smith begins by pointing out the fact that before 1945 it was still possible to believe that the "nation-state" is the normative social organization of modern society, designed to embody the humanistic idea of ​​national culture. . However, World War II put an end to the perception of this ideologeme as a universal humanistic ideal, demonstrating to the world the large-scale destructive capabilities of the ideologies of "supernations" and dividing it into winners and losers. The post-war world put an end to the ideals of the nation-state and nationalism, replacing them with the new cultural imperialism of "Soviet communism, American capitalism and new Europeanism." Thus, the time frame of the original cultural imperialism in Smith's concept is the history of European thought from antiquity to modern times.

The next ideological-discursive stage of cultural imperialism is, according to Smith, "the era of post-industrial society." Its historical realities were economic giants and superpowers, multinationality and military blocs, superconductive communication networks and an international division of labor. The ideological orientation of the paradigm of cultural imperialism of “late capitalism, or post-industrialism” implied a complete and unconditional rejection of the concepts of small communities, ethnic communities with their right to sovereignty, etc. The humanistic ideal in this paradigm of understanding socio-cultural reality is cultural imperialism, based on economic, political and communicative technologies and institutions.

The fundamental characteristic of the new cultural imperialism was the desire to create a positive alternative to the "national culture", the organizational basis of which was the nation-state. In this context, the concept of "transnational cultures" was born, depoliticized and not limited by the historical continuum of specific societies. The new global imperialism, which has economic, political, ideological and cultural dimensions, offered the world an artificially created construct of global culture.

According to Smith, global culture is eclectic, universal, timeless and technical - it is a "constructed culture". It is deliberately constructed to legitimize the globalizing reality of economies, politics and media communications. Its ideologists are countries that promote cultural imperialism as a kind of universal humanistic ideal. Smith points out that attempts to prove the historicity of global culture through an appeal to the fashionable in the modern concept of "constructed communities" (or "imagined") do not stand up to scrutiny.

Indeed, the ideas of the ethno-community about itself, the symbols, beliefs and practices that express its identity are ideological constructions. However, these constructions are enshrined in the memory of generations, in the cultural traditions of specific historical communities. Cultural traditions as historical repositories of identity constructs create themselves, organically fixing themselves in space and time. These traditions are called cultural because they contain constructs of collective cultural identity - those feelings and values ​​that symbolize the duration of the common memory and the image of the common destiny of a particular people. Unlike the ideologemes of global culture, they are not sent down from above by some globalist elite and cannot be written or erased from tabula rasa(lat. - blank slate) of a certain humanity. And in this sense, the attempt of globalization apologists to legitimize the ideologeme of global culture in the status of a historical construct of modern reality is absolutely fruitless.

Historical cultures are always national, particular, organic to a specific time and space; the eclecticism allowed in them is strictly determined and limited. Global culture is ahistorical, does not have its own sacred territory, does not reflect any identity, does not reproduce any common memory of generations, does not contain prospects for the future. The global culture does not have historical carriers, but there is a creator - a new cultural imperialism of global scope. This imperialism, like any other - economic, political, ideological - is elitist and technical, does not have any popular level of functioning. It was created by those in power and is imposed on the "simple" without any connection with those folk cultural traditions, which these "simple" are the bearers of.

The concept discussed above is aimed primarily at debunking the authoritative scientific myth of our time about the historicity of the phenomenon of global culture, the organic nature of its structure and functions. Smith consistently proves that global culture is not a construct of cultural identity, it does not have a popular level of functioning that is characteristic of any culture, and it does not have elite carriers. The levels of functioning of global culture are represented by an abundance of standardized goods, a jumble of denationalized ethnic and folk motifs, a series of generalized "human values ​​and interests", a homogeneous emasculated scientific discourse about meaning, interdependencies of communication systems that serve as the basis for all its levels and components. Global culture is a reproduction of cultural imperialism on a universal scale, it is indifferent to specific cultural identities and their historical memory. The main ontological obstacle to the construction of a global identity, and consequently, a global culture, Smith concludes, is historically fixed national cultures. No common collective memory can be found in the history of mankind, and the memory of the experience of colonialism and the tragedies of world wars is a history of evidence of the split and tragedies of the ideals of humanism.

The theoretical and methodological approach proposed by A. Appadurai is formulated taking into account the disciplinary framework of sociology and anthropology of culture and on the basis of sociological concepts of globalization. A. Appadurai characterizes his theoretical approach as the first attempt at a socio-anthropological analysis of the phenomenon of "global culture". He believes that the introduction of the concept of "global cultural economy" or "global culture" is necessary to analyze the changes that have taken place in the world in the last two decades of the 20th century. Appadurai emphasizes that these concepts are theoretical constructs, a kind of methodological metaphor for the processes that give rise to a new image of the modern world within the boundaries of the globe. The conceptual scheme proposed by him, therefore, claims, first of all, to be used to identify and analyze the meaning-forming components of reality, which is designated by modern sociologists and anthropologists as a "single social world".

The central factors of changes that have swept the whole world are, in his opinion, electronic communications and migration. It is these two components of the modern world that turn it into a single space of communication over state, cultural, ethnic, national and ideological boundaries and regardless of them. Electronic means of communication and constant flows of migrations of various kinds of social communities, cultural images and ideas, political doctrines and ideologies deprive the world of historical extension, placing it in the mode of a permanent present. It is through the media and electronic communications that the connection of various images and ideas, ideologies and political doctrines is carried out into a new reality, devoid of the historical dimension of specific cultures and societies. Thus, the world in its global dimension appears as a combination of flows of ethnic cultures, images and socio-cultural scenarios, technologies, finances, ideologies and political doctrines.

The phenomenon of global culture, according to Appadurai, can be investigated only if it is understood how it exists in time and space. In terms of unfolding global culture in time, it is a synchronization of the past, present and future of various local cultures. The merging of the three modes of time into a single extended present of global culture becomes real only in the dimension of the modernity of the world, which is developing according to the model of civil society and modernization. In the context of the global modernization project, the present of developed countries (primarily America) is interpreted as the future of developing countries, thereby placing their present in the past that has not yet taken place in reality.

Speaking about the space of functioning of global culture, Appadurai points out that it consists of elements, “fragments of reality”, connected through electronic means of communication and mass media into a single constructed world, designated by him by the term “scape”. The term "scape" is introduced by him to indicate the fact that the global reality under discussion is not given in objective terms of international interactions of societies and nation states, ethnic communities, political and religious movements. It is “imagined”, constructed as that common “cultural field” that does not know state borders, is not tied to any of the territories, is not limited to the historical framework of the past, present or future. The elusive, constantly moving, unstable space of identities, combined cultural images, ideologies without time and territorial boundaries - this is the "scape".

Global culture is seen by Appadurai as consisting of five constructed spaces. It is a constantly changing combination of the interactions of these spaces. So, global culture appears, Appadurai believes, in the following five dimensions: ethnic, technological, financial, electronic and ideological. Terminologically, they are designated as ethnoscape, technoscape, financialscape, mediascape and ideoscape.

The first and fundamental component of global culture– ethnoscape is a constructed identity of different kinds of migrating communities. Migrating flows of social groups and ethnic communities are tourists, immigrants, refugees, emigrants, foreign workers. It is they who form the space of the "imaginary" identity of the global culture. The common characteristic of these migrating people and social groups is a permanent movement in two dimensions. They move in the real space of the world of territories with state borders. The starting point of such a movement is a specific locus - a country, a city, a village - designated as "homeland", and the final destination is always temporary, conditional, impermanent. The problem of establishing the final point, locus, territory of these communities is due to the fact that the return to their homeland is at the limit of their activity. The second dimension of their permanent movement is the movement from culture to culture.

The second component of global culture– technoscape is a flow of outdated and modern, mechanical and information technologies, forming a bizarre configuration of the technical space of global culture.

Third component- financialscape is an uncontrollable flow of capital, or a constructed space of money markets, national exchange rates and goods that exist in motion without boundaries in time and space.

The connection between these three components of global culture functioning in isolation from each other is mediated by the unfolding of the space of images and ideas (mediascape) produced by the mass media and legitimized through the space of constructed ideologies and political doctrines (ideoscape).

The fourth component of global culture The mediascape is the vast and complex repertoire of images, narratives, and "imaginary identities" generated by the media. The constructed space of a combination of real and imaginary, mixed reality can be addressed to any audience in the world.

Fifth component- ideoscape - a space created by political images associated with the ideology of states. This space is made up of such "fragments" of ideas, images and concepts of the Enlightenment as freedom, prosperity, human rights, sovereignty, representation, democracy. Appadurai notes that one of the elements of this space of political narratives - the concept of "diaspora" - has lost its internal meaningful concreteness. The definition of what a diaspora is is purely contextual and varies from one political doctrine to another.

Appadurai believes that one of the most important reasons for the globalization of culture in the modern world is "deterritorialization". "Deterritorialization" leads to the emergence of the first and most important dimension of "global culture" - the ethnoscape, i.e. tourists, immigrants, refugees, emigrants and foreign workers. Deterritorialization is the cause of the emergence of new identities, global religious fundamentalism, etc.

The concepts of "global culture", "constructed ethnic communities", "transnational", "local" introduced in the framework of the discussion of sociologists and anthropologists on globalization served as a conceptual scheme for a number of studies on a new global identity. In the context of this discussion, the problem of studying ethnic minorities, religious minorities that arose only at the end of the 20th century, and their role in the process of constructing the image of global culture, can be posed in a completely new way. In addition, the concept proposed by Appadurai provides grounds for a scientific study of the problem of a new global institutionalization of world religions.

Globalization- a term for a situation of change in all aspects of society's life under the influence of a global trend towards interdependence and openness.

The main consequence of this is the global division of labor, global migration of capital, human and production resources, standardization of legislation, economic and technological processes, as well as convergence of cultures of different countries. This is an objective process that is systemic in nature, that is, it covers all spheres of society.

Globalization is connected, first of all, with the internationalization of all social activities on Earth. This internationalization means that in the modern era all mankind is included in a single system of social, cultural, economic, political and other connections, interactions and relations.

Globalization can be viewed as integration at the macro level, that is, as the convergence of countries in all areas: economic, political, social, cultural, technological, etc.

Globalization has both positive and negative features that affect the development of the world community.

The positive ones include rejection of the obedient subordination of the economy to the political principle, a decisive choice in favor of a competitive (market) model of the economy, the recognition of the capitalist model as the "optimal" socio-economic system. All this, at least theoretically, made the world more homogeneous and allowed us to hope that the relative uniformity of the social structure would help eliminate poverty and poverty, and smooth out economic inequality in the world space.

In the early 1990s many followers of the idea of ​​global liberalization appeared in the West. Its authors believe that globalization is one of the forms of the neoliberal development model that directly or indirectly affects the domestic and foreign policies of all countries of the world community.

In their opinion, such a model of development may turn out to be "the end point of the ideological evolution of mankind", "the final form of human government, and as such represents the end of history." Preachers of such a course of development believe that "the ideal of liberal democracy cannot be improved," and humanity will develop along this only possible path.

Representatives of this trend in political science and sociology believe that modern technologies make it possible to accumulate wealth without limit and satisfy ever-growing human needs. And this should lead to the homogenization of all societies, regardless of their historical past and cultural heritage. All countries that carry out economic modernization on the basis of liberal values ​​will become more and more like each other, drawing closer with the help of the world market and the spread of a universal consumer culture.

This theory has some practical evidence. The development of computerization, fiber optics, the improvement of the communication system, including satellite, allows humanity to move towards an open society with a liberal economy.

However, the idea of ​​the world as a homogeneous socio-economic space, driven by a single motivation and regulated by "universal values", is largely simplified. Politicians and scientists in developing countries have serious doubts about the Western model of development. In their opinion, neoliberalism leads to a growing polarization of poverty and wealth, to environmental degradation, to the fact that rich countries are gaining more and more control over the world's resources.

In the social sphere, globalization involves the creation of a society that should be based on respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, on the principle of social justice.

There is little opportunity for developing countries and countries with economies in transition to achieve the level of material well-being of rich countries. The neoliberal model of development does not allow even the basic needs of the vast masses of the population to be met.

The growing socio-economic and cultural gap between the upper and lower strata of the world community becomes even more obvious if we compare the incomes of some of the richest people on the planet with the incomes of entire countries.

Manifestations of globalization in the sphere of culture:

1) the transformation of the planet into a "global village" (M. McLuhan), when millions of people, thanks to the mass media, almost instantly become witnesses of events taking place in different parts of the globe;

2) introducing people living in different countries and on different continents to the same cultural experience (Olympiads, concerts);

3) unification of tastes, perceptions, preferences (Coca-Cola, jeans, soap operas);

4) direct acquaintance with the way of life, customs, norms of behavior in other countries (through tourism, work abroad, migration);

5) the emergence of the language of international communication - English;

6) widespread distribution of unified computer technologies, the Internet;

7) "erosion" of local cultural traditions, their replacement by mass consumer culture of the Western type

Challenges and threats caused by globalization:

It should be noted that in recent years, economic aspects have become increasingly important in globalization. Therefore, some researchers, speaking of globalization, have in mind only its economic side. In principle, this is a one-sided view of a complex phenomenon. At the same time, an analysis of the process of development of global economic ties makes it possible to identify some features of globalization as a whole.

Globalization has also affected the social sphere, although the intensity of these processes largely depends on the economic capabilities of the integrated components. Social rights, previously available to the population of only developed countries, are gradually being adopted for their citizens by developing countries. In an increasing number of countries, civil societies, a middle class are emerging, and social norms for the quality of life are being unified to some extent.

A very noticeable phenomenon over the past 100 years has been the globalization of culture based on the enormous growth of cultural exchange between countries, the development of the mass culture industry, the leveling of the tastes and predilections of the public. This process is accompanied by the erasure of national features of literature and art, the integration of elements of national cultures into the emerging universal cultural sphere. The globalization of culture was also a reflection of the cosmopolitanization of being, linguistic assimilation, the spread of the English language around the planet as a global means of communication, and other processes.

Like any complex phenomenon, globalization has both positive and negative sides. Its consequences are associated with obvious successes: the integration of the world economy contributes to the intensification and growth of production, the mastering of technical achievements by backward countries, the improvement of the economic condition of developing countries, and so on. Political integration helps prevent military conflicts, ensure relative stability in the world, and do many other things in the interests of international security. Globalization in the social sphere stimulates huge shifts in the minds of people, the spread of democratic principles of human rights and freedoms. The list of achievements of globalization covers various interests from a personal nature to the world community.

However, there are also many negative consequences. They manifested themselves in the form of the so-called global problems of mankind.

Global issues are universal difficulties and contradictions in the relationship between nature and man, society, the state, the world community, having a planetary scale in scope, strength and intensity. These problems partially existed in an implicit form earlier, but mainly arose at the present stage as a result of the negative course of human activity, natural processes and, to a large extent, as the consequences of globalization. In fact, global problems are not just the consequences of globalization, but the self-expression of this most complex phenomenon, which is not controlled in its main aspects.

The global problems of mankind or civilization were truly realized only in the second half of the 20th century, when the interdependence of countries and peoples, which caused globalization, increased sharply, and the unresolved problems manifested themselves especially clearly and destructively. In addition, the realization of some problems came only when mankind had accumulated a huge potential of knowledge that made these problems visible.

Some researchers distinguish the most important from global problems - the so-called imperatives - urgent, immutable, unconditional requirements, in this case - the dictates of the times. In particular, they call the economic, demographic, environmental, military and technological imperatives, considering them to be the main ones, and most of the other problems are derived from them.

Currently, a large number of problems of a different nature are classified as global. It is difficult to classify them because of mutual influence and simultaneous belonging to several spheres of life. Sufficiently conditionally global problems can be divided into:

Global problems of mankind:

Social character - the demographic imperative with its many components, the problems of interethnic confrontation, religious intolerance, education, healthcare, organized crime;

Socio-biological - problems of the emergence of new diseases, genetic safety, drug addiction;

Socio-political - problems of war and peace, disarmament, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, information security, terrorism;

Socio-economic character - problems of stability of the world economy, depletion of non-renewable resources, energy, poverty, employment, food shortages;

Spiritual and moral sphere - the problems of the decline in the general level of culture of the population, the spread of the cult of violence and pornography, the lack of demand for high examples of art, the lack of harmony in relations between generations, and many others.

A characteristic feature of the state of affairs with global problems is the growth of their number, the aggravation or manifestation of new, quite recently unknown threats.

MODERN GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE

Vigel Narine Liparitovna
Rostov State Medical University
Professor of the Department of History and Philosophy

MODERN GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE

Wiegel Narine Liparitovna
Rostov State Medical University Doctor of Philosophy
professor of department of history and philosophy

Although the process of globalization is becoming more widespread and influential, however, it has not yet been sufficiently studied from the point of view of "sociocultural transformations". Globalization is not a completely new "phenomenon of modernity", but, it should be noted that in modernity it has some "specific characteristics" in the increase in the flow of information, trade, finance, ideas, peoples and cultures, which is caused by high-tech means of communication, travel, etc. d.

Globalization is a "process of adaptation of local and regional cultures" to the developing global system, which in the current situation leads to a restructuring in economic life, as well as the transformation of traditional culture and identity. From a theoretical point of view, "the philosophy of globalism generates a global outlook", which is based on global integration.

In a globalized world, revolutionary changes in technology, transportation, communication, ideas and human behavior have changed the way people and cultures live in every corner of the globe and are transforming a segmented world into a global village. Marshall McLuhan's term global village describes the current form of global connectivity that establishes closer contact between different groups of people in a more collaborative environment and thereby "initiates the emergence of a global community" and global citizens who contribute to the development of a global culture and global civilization.

Of the various aspects of globalization, cultural globalization has attracted enormous attention from anthropologists and sociologists. Cultural globalization is a process that "creates a global culture based on the ideas of multiculturalism", democracy and common values, tastes and lifestyles.

Today, in almost every society, there is a double process of globalization from the outside and localization from the inside. Contemporary global culture consists of "a number of distinct non-integrated traits"—a series of mixed cultural elements or habits derived from various separate and divergent cultures. The global culture appears to be "not an extended version of local cultures"; rather, it is a cultural interaction on a global and local level. Local culture interacts with members of the local society, while global culture is the product of interaction between people of different societies living at great distances from each other. With regard to local and global cultural interaction, it is still necessary to explore how global cultural flows become local and hybridized. R. Robertson (1990, 1992, 1995) introduced the term glocalization , describing the process by which local culture is integrated into the global one.

On the one hand, cultural globalization contributes to the maintenance of cultural traditions, since the expansion of communications and the impact of the media contribute to greater awareness of cultural differences and unique identity, on the other hand, “cultural integration implies a certain unification and standardization”, crystallization of the same stereotypes of global culture. As a result, an inter-civilizational and intercultural crisis is on the face, and only evolutionary and relativistic approaches are considered as the most suitable for explaining the anthropological aspects in studying the process of modern cultural globalization.

Today, culture is neither a closed system nor a single whole, it is internally heterogeneous and consists of traditional cultures and local culture with "blotches" of glocalization, which has the potential for further globalization.

Bibliographic list

1. Aloyan N.L. Category of tragedy // Humanitarian and socio-economic sciences. 2008. No. 2. S.80-82.
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