Contents

Theory

Marat A. Cheshkov

Globality as the Main Concept of Global Studies Original text and References

While in modern mass consciousness globalization seems to be considered as nearly an apocalypse (there are many reasons for such an approach), in scientific consciousness there has existed a constant idea of this phenomenon as of a natural and historical regularity deflected in various ideologemes and strategies. To understand this supercomplex phenomenon, we should briefly characterize the process of formation of Global Studies and especially that informative situation which developed in this area of socio-humanistic knowledge during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Halil A. Barlybayev

Globalization: Theory and Practice Original text and References

The development of globalization has a relatively short history; if one considers it from the moment of setting of the global problem it has lasted for only about thirty years. The term ‘globalization’ is less than twenty years old. Therefore, one can hardly expect a complete, comprehensive, and systemic scientific idea of this phenomenon. This situation becomes rather clear if one takes into account that many fundamental philosophical and sociological concepts which have been studied for centuries such as democracy, civilization, state, culture, etc., possess a certain fundamental categorical device, but still are debatable and disputable, and there is no ending to these discussions. Obviously, the study of globalization problems must produce generally accepted major categories, first of all, a definition of this concept, a name of the discipline studying it, the main characteristics of globalization as a social phenomenon, deeply, consistently and systemically revealing all aspects of its contents.

Ioanna Kuchuradi

Globalization of Free Market from the Philosophical and Ethical Point of View Original text and References

‘We know that the world has strongly changed (from the moment of the establishment of the United Nations). Since 1950, even with the account of the inflation the world export increased by ten times, consistently increasing quicker than the world GDP. Foreign investments grew even more promptly; the multinational companies’ profit from sales exceeds the world export, and dealings between enterprises of large corporations make the extending sector of the world trade now. This is globalization of free market which is based on the private property at the national scale; a globalization which some consider natural while the others – reject. Globalization, undoubtedly, can touch any sphere, even the human rights protection. However, the most real globalization is perceived in the market and information transfer.

World crisis

Ruslan I. Khasbulatov

Global Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences Original text and References

In our opinion, modern financial crisis storming in the world is only a preview to a more powerful economic crisis. It is defined in many respects by the cyclic development of both national and world economy. The recession has become real. The previous business cycle in the world economy began after overcoming of the world crisis of 2001–2002. If consider that the cycles in post-war decades lasted for 8–10 years, the financial crisis of the end of 2007–2008 can be considered as an introduction to a more powerful crisis in the sphere of production and trade. Hence, we observe how the world economy (its developed segment) enters the phase of a long slowdown, recession and stagnation. It will inevitably reduce needs for liquid fuel for the USA, Japan and Western Europe that will decrease the price, despite the remaining need for it from China and India. Russia will appear in the center of the future world economic crisis due to overdependence on the oil and gas factor, and also on import which will be considerably reduced. This will lead to stagnation in production, falling growth rates, worsening of position of workers (production workers and engineers, employees, and peasantry). One thing is clear, that is recessions, production stagnation and moreover, crises in the western countries strongly influence the Russian economy. Getting rid of the influence of the foreign market completely cannot be a successful goal for any country of the world and such a purpose is unlikely to be positive in the current context. Skillful use of processes of the international division of labor when the country makes what is defined by its natural advantages is just the most rational way for the societies to achieve success and prosperity.

Leonid Grinin

An Unwanted Child of Globalization. Notes about Crisis Original text and References

The global crisis which some economists have spoken about is increasing. We can only guess about the scales it will reach when falling indices will reach the bottom, how strong will be the recession and when the new takeoff will start. It is even possible that not only certain countries, but the whole world will be rejected for several years ago by economic indices. Nevertheless, some hypotheses of the nature and meaning of this crisis can be already developed. However, each crisis as well as each revolution, a large social turning point, has always a number of reasons. Thus, each generation finds the new ones again and again. The discussions on the reasons of Great Depression, Revolution of 1917, Great French Revolution of the 18th century, Industrial Revolution in England etc. do not cease at all. It is also obvious that there are already many assumptions on the point of why current crisis began and what consequences it will have. Many of these assumptions are reasonable to a greater or lesser extent, in particular, that it is caused by the cyclic nature of economic processes. It is clear that neither the rise, nor the recession can last long, and technical and technological development can accelerate the economy to the scales when its recession becomes inevitable.

Global problems

Gleb V. Dobrovolsky

The Degradation of Soils as the Threat of Global Ecological Crisis Original text and References

Most people and part of scientific community associate soil only with agriculture, mainly with farming. This idea has deep roots and reflects a centuries-old experience of agriculture as the main way of food production.

Eduard V. Girusov

The Humankind’s Energy Production at Global Scales Original text and References

The issues of energy production have always been in the center of special attention since energy is the essential condition for any activity; but these problems have become even more urgent since the start of a widespread use of technical devices set in motion by different power resources.

Ivan A. Aleshkovsky and Vladimir A. Iontsev

The International Migration Trends in the Globalizing World Original text and References

In the second half of the 20th century, the humankind witnessed compelling and irreversible force of globalization processes which involved all spheres of social life in one way or another and created a global system of interdependence of countries and people of the world.

Globalization processes

Alexander N. Chumakov

Modern World: At the Threshold of Fundamental Transformations Original text and References

Modern world is at the threshold of serious challenges because as a result of globalization it has become a single cohesive system by all main parameters of social life, while we still lack the mechanisms of managing this qualitatively changed world. Without developing such a control system the humankind as an integral organism has no chances for the prosperous future.

Vadim V. Dyozhkin, Valeriy V. Snakin, and Lyudmila V. Popova

The Restorative Natural Resource Management as the Basis of Sustainable Development Original text and References

The ‘Earth face’ changed due to human activities and more often becomes an object of thorough analysis from the Global Studies position. One of the first examples of such an analysis is G. Marsh's treatise where the author paid attention to the necessity of development of the system of measures for counteracting the negative aspects of man-made changes in Earth nature. What happened to the biosphere for one and a half centuries from the date of emergence of this book is not a secret for anybody: various manifestations of negative anthropogenic factors are described in dozens of thousands of scientific and publicist works which showed that the biosphere and its major components suffered heavy losses and got in some cases incurable wounds.

Boris F. Kalachyov

Transfer of Narcogenes: From Space to Earth and Back to the Universe Original text and References

To guess at the future, even in 10–15 years' time, without speaking about more grandiose futurological swings is a thankless job. As A. B. Weber fairly writes, ‘to try to predict global processes is a risky venture, especially in “the century of uncertainty” what our time is presented from postmodernism positions’.

Russia in the global world

Alexander V. Katsura

‘The World Tenderness’, or the Russian Way to Globalism (Continuation) Original text and References

In the article we speak about a peculiar dual role and sad destiny of Marx's doctrine. (We have to put outside brackets the original depth of Marx's doctrine for a while, nowadays being important for very few people. The doctrine about human freedom, freedom of the specific human person in its close connection with freedom of everything, freedom which is strung on the historical axis as on a skewer, is spread on this axis so that it is not enough in the present, it is even less in the past and echoes from the scientifically expected future looking like an ultratechnical utopia, ‘fatalistically treated technical messianism’ only by weak painful aroma.) No, we will not. Here we will remember about the other one, the rough doctrine of communism (Marx would start back from it in horror, if he could rise from the dead during the period of Lenin or Stalin's ruling), the doctrine equally suitable for authoritative leaders and ignorant crowds, masses where each grain of commonalty presents an ancient complex of the leader and herd in its deep unconsciousness, and the main attribute of this complex is shifting of the center of its own personality and interests into the imagined personal consciousness of the leader: he is we, we are he. Dying for the leader in the battlefield of the passionarian believes subconsciously in his immortality because he handed a core of his personality to the leader, dissolved in the leader who is not simply a person, but the symbol, and therefore is immortal. If it is warm in the palace and the leader is fed, so it is warm and passionarian is fed in a hovel, in dugout, in a damp entrenchment. But how long can this faint last? Everything would be fine and leaders are not eternal not only as flesh and blood creatures, but also as symbols – what a horror! (though fighting for this symbolism cannot calm down for a long time, exhausted and confused passionarians catch at it as the last straw). In China of the last century it reached Homeric metaphor: Wen Wen sui Mao dzhusy (10 thousand years of life to the Chairman Mao)! But what a shock was Stalin's death in communist Russia! The people became so irrational by that time, he believed in death of ‘the Father of the People’ only partly. According to Korney Chukovsky Emmanuil Kazakevich joked gloomy in March 1956, just after the 20th Congress: ‘Suddenly in “Pravda” is printed in large type “In Council of Ministers of the USSR”: yesterday at 12 o'clock 11 minutes I. V. Stalin presumed dead is REVIVED due to the efforts of the Soviet scientists and assumed his functions. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beriya the Vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers is also revived together with him’. And nobody would be even surprised’.

Vasily N. Vasilenko

A Trilogue about the Noospheric Nature and Destiny of the Humankind Original text and References

During the 4th Russian Philosophical Congress ‘Philosophy and the future of civilization’ (Moscow, MSU, May, 2005) a very interesting trilogue took place between a philosopher, a demographist and an ecologist about the destiny of the Russian people and responsibility of authorities.

A Human and the Present

Boris G. Yudin

A Techno-Science, Human, and Society: Significance of Humanitarian Examination Original text and References

One of the main vectors characterizing the direction of development of science (and technology) during the globalization era, is its inevitable approach to an individual, his needs, aspirations, and expectations. As a result, we can observe a tighter ‘capture’ of the person by science, his exposure to the world created and equipped by science and technology, if we may say so. Of course, it does not mean that it is limited only by the ‘service’ for an individual at all. Science and technology are approaching him not only from outside, but also as if from within, in a sense also making him by their work, creating not only for him, but also him. Literally it is created in some modern genetic, embryological, biomedical researches, etc.

Danilo Markovich

Culture of the World, Tolerance, and Interethnic Relations Original text and References

Application of the principle and method of the world culture and tolerance in the interethnic relations assumes deliberate social behavior based not only on the fact that cultural diversity promotes development of mutual understanding, real understanding of cultural identity and ‘searching of some common features for the majority of civilizations’, but also on the fact that their application presents a contribution to the solution of global problems of the modern world. These problems have to be solved on the basis of new ethical principles and increased responsibility of not only those who make decisions on destiny of mankind, but also figures of science and culture. This thought is confirmed also by the statement that it is necessary to make ‘a huge common effort of the best minds of one nation in order to improve the existing social reality for it could reach the level of its optimum historical opportunities’. Philosophy also plays a certain role in this regard, because it is not simply a science, but also something that differs from science. ‘It is not only the knowledge or something that can be created without knowledge. It represents an effort of the human spirit to ascend to the heights from where it would be possible to see the world more comprehensive’.

Global Person

Karl M. Kantor

Marx's Doctrine: Universalism and Globalism Original text and References

Historical destinies of Marx's doctrine intertwined with historical destinies of all mankind. What the world became these days was considerably defined by fighting both for Marx, and against him, by the aspiration to bring his doctrine in life, and counteraction to this aspiration, both fruitful development of his ideas, and their distortion, profanation, vulgarization. Marx's doctrine today, as earlier, is in the center of the world spiritual oppositions. Questions appear again and again: what is it, what is its essence, what is its genesis, what it became today and what is its future? Both its political economy, and theory of classes, both dialectic method, and ethics, and an esthetics are the subjects of discussion. All these questions are the result of the fact that Marx's doctrine is the most complicated spiritual education, the most comprehensive and the deepest synthesis of religion, art, scientific knowledge, philosophical ideas, humanistic ideals since the time of antiquity and the Bible. It cannot be measured by a usual measure of science, philosophy, or ideology. It is an inseparable unity of all the main forms of spiritual and practical and theoretical, rational and intuitive development of reality. It does not have analogues among modern political economic, politological, historiosophical and other scientific disciplines, modern doctrines, ideology, concepts and philosophy.

Scientific Life and Education

The Faculty of Global Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University Original text and References

The interview of the Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Age of Globalization” with the scientific supervisor of the Faculty of Global Studies of the Lomonosov Moscow State University Igor A. Abylghaziev and the Dean of the Faculty of Global Studies of Moscow State University Ilya I. Ilyin on the issues of Global Studies and their teaching at the Faculty.

Olga V. Malyukova and Alexander G. Pyrin

Philosophical and Methodological Study of Global Studies Original text and References

Starting form 2001, the Russian Philosophic Society together with Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences monthly hold an interdisciplinary workshop “The philosophical and Methodological Studies of Globalization” headed by Prof. Alexander Chumakov, Igor K. Lisseev and Alexander V. Katsura. With the account of a tight connection between this workshop and the journal “Age of Globalization” in the present issue we present a survey of some of those meetings.

Naum Z. Yaroshchuk

Response to Current Challenges Original text and References

On December 17–18, in Chebokasary the Chuvash State University hosted an International Conference “The Curretn Challenges in the light of History and Philosophy of Global Economy”

Vladimir I. Krasikov

Humanism versus Globalization of Violence Original text and References

After the end of the Cold War, many would think that the former epoch of violence had come to an end and one should only determine the ways to develop democracy in those countries where this regime remained in a primitive state. The events in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq in 2001 showed that those optimistic conclusions of the possible “end of history” had turned hasty. It was an illusion to think that the great miseries of the 20th century as wars and totalitarianism would make people reject the policy of violence. Actually, a renaissance of political violence as a normal practice has started. This is rather dangerous since people get used to common violence and it is known that the world wars are prepared by local conflicts.

Reviews, summaries, papers

To the Results of Discussion of the Journal ‘Age of Globalization’ Original text and References

On October 29, 2008, in the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences there was held a discussion of the first issue of the journal “Age of Globalization”. The members of the Editorial Board as well as invited experts took part in the discussion. Here we present a brief survey of the meeting and would like to invite readers to further discussion and present their opinion on the journal, its goals, contents etc.