Ethnocultural Values In The Context Of Globalization

Abstract

The modern world is based not so much on mastering the achievements of scientific and technological progress and cultural and educational human values, as on a gradual, conscious process of reviving ethnocultural attitudes and values. A characteristic feature of the modern period is expressed in the special influence of ethnic and mass culture on the processes of personality formation. Ethnocultural attitudes in the spiritual sphere become intellectual wealth and a reserve of universal values, cultural traditions of peoples, and processes of personal identification. In the modern world, there are two very contradictory trends in the development of civilization. The first is the creation of global structures, and the second is the segmentation of the world. As one trend increases, the second trend becomes more active at the same time. Therefore, these contradictions in the process of formation of modern civilization have become an incentive to create a new worldview, which is based on personality, individuality and freedom in decision-making. The processes of evolution of ethnocultural attitudes indicate that an ethnic group in the conditions of globalization and modernization not only does not assimilate and does not lose its potential, but on the contrary, receives certain additional impulses for the development and preservation of its own identity.

Keywords: Ethnocultural values, globalization, national culture, Russian society, socio-cultural reality

Introduction

Globalization is a socio-cultural process that affects absolutely all spheres of interaction in the modern world, from economic, political to social, cultural, class and national. The social sciences study the specificities and peculiarities of globalization through their own subject and problematics. Many humanitarian studies today rely heavily on identity theory (Gerasimova & Ivanov, 2017).

Globalization has an important impact on the socio-cultural basis of the system and all the properties of the world in which people live, the nature of interactions and conflicts, the direction and trends of globalization, the nature of the relationship between old and new values, etc. The foundations and signs of globalization as a substance are embedded in different social conditions shaped in the early stages of forming the integrity of the nation.

Problem Statement

The problem of ethnocultural values in modern civilization depends on many factors: above all the ability of an ethnic group to find its place in the world without imitating others, the ability to combine tradition and innovation, to accept the challenge of openness and economic competition, and to retain its mental foundations in the process.

The key to solving this problem is to understand the process of interaction of ethnocultural values in a global world, what and how is borrowed, adopted and internalized. While defending the paradigm of ethnic culture, a condition for its development, it is important to understand what can realistically adapt on this basis. Russian society under these conditions also feels the need for an adequate understanding of its own social nature, to clarify its tendencies to influence social changes in modern civilization. The transformation of civilization against the background of global world problems has raised the topic of ethnocultural values as a subject for serious study and research.

Research Questions

The subject of the study is ethnocultural values in the context of globalization.

Tasks of research include the following:

• Record changes in ethnic culture and values in Russian society;
• Identify the role of globalization in transforming ethnocultural values in Russian society.

Purpose of the Study

The aim of the paper is to conduct a comprehensive theoretical study of ethnocultural values in the context of globalization.

Ethnocultural attitudes in the spiritual sphere become the intellectual wealth and reserve of universal values, peoples' cultural traditions and processes of personal identification. The modern world is witnessing two very contradictory trends in the development of civilization. The first is the creation of global structures, and the second is the segmentation of the world. As one trend increases, the second trend becomes more active at the same time. Therefore, these contradictions in the process of formation of modern civilization have become an incentive to create a new worldview, which is based on personality, individuality and freedom in decision-making.

We assume that critical reflection on contemporary socio-cultural reality will bring an objective scientific perspective to the process of evolution of ethnocultural attitudes and values.

Research Methods

The authors applied the structural-functional method during the study. This method identifies interrelationships in the socio-cultural space and structures the phenomena of spiritual culture. In general, the material is presented in a logical sequence. There are syllogistic techniques for processing information.

Findings

Globalization has a direct impact on national cultures. This is clearly visible in the surrounding society. Active globalization has had its effect on the national culture and socio-cultural framework and ethnocultural values in Russia. Ethnocultural values are a peculiar combination of traditional and innovative elements that concentrate the experience of an ethnic subject in civilization.

The socio-cultural framework includes the modern social structure, common stratification and mobility trends, similar basic logical and meaningful cultural values, the prestige and high value of science and scientific knowledge, the values of modern political systems, democracy and pluralism, modern systems of education, social protection, medicine, and mass communication (Abdurakhmanova, 2019; Goverdovskaya et al., 2020).

The processes of internationalization can generate the contradictions of globalization and integration, and thereby trigger the following major contradictory trends:

• Increasing integration into the sphere of universalization;
• Developing goals for diversity and the preservation of national cultural values and traditions (Assman, 2004).

Internationalization has links to processes that take place between nations, but the formation and preparation of these processes take place within, in the interior of national life.

At the end of the 20th century, young people felt the effects of globalization, when everything foreign, and more specifically American, was a priority. Television showed only foreign films, mostly American-made, television programs were also mostly foreign-made, clothes were only by foreign manufacturers, and there was an active development of foreign-brand catering outlets (Krapivin, 2018).

All this had a significant impact on the subsequent development of national culture and the transformation of ethnocultural values. Today, the American culture of values continues to prevail in Russian society. The Russian people believe that the American economy is the best in the world, that the dollar is the most stable currency, and it is better to save money in dollars. There are certainly attempts to ease the pressure of globalization on Russian culture, but this is not fully successful (Mammadov, 2020).

And the problem is not only a Russian one. The values of American culture, the American way of life, are being actively imposed all over the world. Today, Europe is particularly appreciative of anything American (Ilyasova, 2018). McDonald's or KFC, for example, are in every corner of the world and are growing in popularity. Young people all over the world are induced to love fast food, even though they know it is not healthy, and yet they continue to eat it.

Globalization has contributed to the identification of the problem of national-cultural identity. It is now of concern to culturologists, politicians, religious and public figures who are progressive thinkers, representatives of natural scientific knowledge (Diligensky, 2019).

As it is known, ethnic culture is traditionally connected with the process of ethnogenesis. Therefore, it represents the cultural experience, historically acquired by the ethnos when mastering a certain territory and adapting to specific natural conditions of existence, which crystallizes in the form of aggregate material and spiritual values, norms and behaviour patterns reflecting internal and external interactions of the ethnos, necessary for its full-fledged activity. Instead of acting as a means of enriching each culture with all the others through their equal dialogue, globalization has become a form of depersonalization of all cultures. The general population accepts the attitudes of globalization, as there has not been a single country or state in historical development that has been able to exist with identity and independence without being affected by globalization.

Today, there are countries that are attempting to preserve their culture in its original form, unaffected by outside influences. They are China, Japan, and Korea, but still, in one way or another, globalization is creeping into their cultures as well.

The Soviet Union was once a shining example of independent culture, which for 70 years preserved and carefully protected its culture from the negative (harmful) influence of the West. But we all know the means and methods by which this was achieved. As we can see, globalization pervades all cultures in one way or another, whatever they are and however they defend it.

Today there is a gradual shift from national cultures to a global culture with English as the main language. The dollar is used almost all over the world, Western mass culture is penetrating everyday life at a rapid pace (Liseev, 2018). Globalization has led to a decline in the status of national languages, leading to the establishment of English as the only means of interaction in the intercultural space, even though it is the mother tongue of only 1/5 of the world's population. English is the international language, as it is used for the majority of scientific papers, journals and newspapers. More than 4/5 of the materials available on the global network are in English. The same is true for musical production (Diligensky, 2019). A striking example of globalization in the field of music is music competitions such as the Eurovision Song Contest, where all participants perform their compositions in English, and this is an important factor and key to success.

In fact, the entire Internet is English-speaking. All the main activities of the network use the English language. Other languages, including the official languages of the UN, for example, the Russian language, are gradually losing their importance. The range of their spread is narrowing every year, the number of speakers of these languages is decreasing, the used vocabulary of the population is becoming poorer, the spoken language and written texts are rapidly saturated with alien borrowings, which are traces of English and meaningless. For example, expressions such as “love from the first spoon”, “fireworks of other tastes”, etc., which are not meaningful from the perspective of the Russian literary language norms, are becoming increasingly common in the Russian language (Diligensky, 2019).

There is an active infiltration of American words into the national culture of speech. In the last decade, a new language has essentially emerged that young people and adolescents use to communicate. This is increasing year by year, and if the trend continues, the day is coming when most people in developed countries will speak English rather than their own language.

With globalization, the diversity of different types of socio-cultural interaction disappears. As globalization deepens and expands, the predominant type of interaction between different cultural worlds becomes expansion, whereby one culture's value system is forcibly incorporated (Lotman, 2017).

The Russian state was historically formed as a multinational power in specific geopolitical circumstances. It is quite obvious that on the way of formation of multinational states there were many wars of conquest, national inequalities, religious intolerance, but there was also a desire for voluntary unification in a strong state. In Russian history, the prevailing pivot has been the long-term convergence of interests across a vast expanse of Europe and Asia.

For many nations, the awareness of the need to unite with a powerful country and its patronage helped them in matters of self-preservation and development. The national territories that joined Russia were organically integrated into it, retaining their national characteristics. The relatively long periods of the annexation of the national territories also testify to the organic nature of the expansion of the state.

Long processes of interethnic cooperation and integration have shaped Russia as a multinational state, where peoples have preserved their identities regardless of the prevailing political regimes. This approach is supported by the historical fact that the ethnic groups united within Russia have preserved their ethnocultural values over the centuries and the state has managed not to suppress them, but instead to actually unite them into a distinctive Russian civilization (Diligensky, 2019).

Ethnocultural values have undergone a transformation in the context of modern civilization, and individual and social identification of the individual has also changed (Abdulaeva, 2019). These processes do not mean a weakening of primordial ties and a total rationalization of human thinking, but rather, in the process of development, lead to the actualization of ethnic identity, so necessary for every human being.

In these conditions, it is primarily concerned with the essential parameters of ethnic values and perceptions, through the prism of which the surrounding world is perceived and assimilated. In today's socio-cultural reality, ethnic values are undergoing significant transformation. The challenges of everyday globalist culture place demands on the effectiveness of the mechanisms of absconding and accommodating ethnic identity, through which the individual and the ethnic collective adapt to the world around them. In this context, inter-ethnic tensions tend to be caused by the inability, due to various changes, including socio-psychological ones, to develop the social mobility required in the new conditions, which demands the abandonment of certain value-temporal conceptions of the individual, time and society (Halbwaks, 2007).

We should note that earlier, in the Russian context, the modernization, which began in the pre-November period and continued during the Soviet period, was only technically and economically feasible. The huge industrialized power, which had undergone a period of modernization, did not complete it politically and socio-culturally. Modernization in its classical version was to lead not only to the construction of modern industry, but also to the formation of civil society and political democracy. Socialist modernization has not transformed basic cultural universals, leaving such mental traits as radicalism, androcentrism, insularity, regimentation, collectivism and traditionalism virtually unchanged.

Ideologically and psychologically, the peoples have accepted the authoritarian-totalitarian model of political power in the country as identical to the collectivist-authoritarian spirit of their identity. In the early 1990s, domestic political processes led to a weakening of the central government. Democratic processes have liberated national energies that had previously been held down to a great extent by totalitarian mechanisms. Inter-ethnic relations have changed qualitatively. Ethno-national interests and aspirations have become increasingly active. A multi-ethnic society is inherently less stable and more prone to inter-ethnic problems than an ethnically homogeneous society. The core of the issue is how to maintain a balance between the interests of all nations and nationalities living in the same territory. Under these conditions, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a problem of developing a national policy. It should pay special attention to the formation of a general civic national consciousness of the country's population, which should prevail over local ethnocultural differences (Abdulaeva et al., 2019).

Today, it is clear that there is a massive saturation of the socio-cultural space of different countries with samples of American mass culture. This alarms not only radical fundamentalists and conservatives, but also the political, social and religious sphere, where they are well aware of the consequences of reorienting the general population towards the values of American culture. Globalization is striking a massive blow to the basic structures of absolutely all national cultures. This is certainly a negative consequence of globalization becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

Conclusion

Globalization has a direct impact on national cultures. Globalization pervades all cultures in one way or another. With globalization, the diversity of different types of socio-cultural interaction disappears. As globalisation deepens and expands, expansion becomes the dominant type of interaction between different cultural worlds. It involves the forcible adoption of one culture's value system. Globalization is striking a massive blow to the basic structures of absolutely all national cultures. This is certainly a negative consequence of globalization becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

Ethnos in the context of globalization and modernization does not assimilate or lose its potential, but rather receives certain additional impulses to develop and maintain its own identity. In modern civilization, ethnocultural values have undergone a transformation and individual and social identity has also changed. These processes do not mean a weakening of primordial ties and a total rationalization of human thinking, but rather, in the process of development, lead to the actualization of ethnic identity, so necessary for every human being. The challenges of everyday globalist culture place demands on the effectiveness of the mechanisms of absorption and accommodation of ethnic identity through which the individual and the ethnic collective adapt to the world around them. In this context, inter-ethnic tensions tend to be caused by the inability, due to various changes, including socio-psychological ones, to develop the social mobility required in the new conditions, which demands the abandonment of certain value-temporal conceptions of the individual, time and society.

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