printСhallenges and Risks of Globalization. Seven Theses
Yanitzky O.N.
Dr. Sci. (Philos.), Prof., Chief Researcher, Institute of Sociology of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia oleg.yanitsky@yandex.ru
Yanitzky O.N. Сhallenges and Risks of Globalization. Seven Theses. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2019. No 1. P. 29-39
Current globalization is a dynamic but contradictory process burdened with the growth of global risks and geopolitical conflicts. Drawing on a review of globalization studies in Russia and abroad and on my own experience gained in the run of some international research projects, the author came to the following conclusions. Global risks are inseparable feature of postmodernity. Man-made uncertainties, unintended consequences and the emergence of a hybrid reality undermine world social order. The existing rules of games were not fit to a ‘liquid modernity’ and were replaced by a handmanagement and the endless chains of talks, temporal agreements and roadmaps making. There are no more definite margins between man and nature. Global world is now a super-complex sociobiotechnical system (hereafter the SBT-system) within which an antagonism between network-based and territoriallylocalized structures is sharpened. Their common denominator is metabolic processes in the form of exchange of matter, information, energy and human resources. Geopolitical intervention into them provokes the emergence of critical situations accompanied by emanation of giant masses of energy of decay (involuntary migration, ‘dead zones’). All in all, the study of current globalization requires an interdisciplinary approach while a domination of an all-embracing technocratic approach is an existential risk fraught with the losse of a cultural heritage of humanity and its creative potential.
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