Globolocalization versus Russophony: the search for an alternative to hybridity and cross-cultural situation

The relevance of the research topic is due to social contradictions caused by the proliferation of glovolocalization, transculturation and translocality projects in the global culture, associated with the active implementation of the manipulative practices of adaptation of linguistic and cultural locuses to the global market. Hybridity as a basic property of postmodernity requires the interpretation of these projects on the basis of new methodological premises: philosophy of media, structuralism and poststructuralism, critical theory. The neoliberal hehemony lays in the basis of these projects an imaginary tolerant cross-cultural phenomenon, which often makes it difficult to identify the deepest paradoxes of their repressiveness. The central project of cross-culture today is glocalism. The aim of the research is to carry out a comparative analysis of global localization and Russophony as alternative (pragmatic and ethical) ways of resolving hybrid conflicts between cultures and finding ways of dialogue at the global (world) and local (Russian) levels. As a result of the analysis of materials on glocalization, the author comes to the conclusion about the existence of a number of legitimate contradictions in glocalism, the main ones of which are: the contradiction between capital and labor, time and space; the contradiction between ethical universalism and the economic particularism of the market; the contradiction between the imaginary freedom of horizontal communication and the asymmetric governing structure of organized haos; the contradiction between transnational companies and the state, which risks losing its national and civilizational subjectivity; the contradiction between the promises to the regions from transnational companies and the real possibilities of the regions; double codes in relation to protest movements in globalist and anti-globalist regions. As an alternative to glocalization in relation to Russia and a number of other countries, including Ukraine, we propose a solidarity project of Russophony as a mechanism of linguistic solidarization of cultural subjects on civilizational, cultural and symbolic grounds.

The Universalization of Ethical Universalism

This chapter argues that the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 2004 and its subsequent ratification by more than 180 parties indicates universal agreement on the norms of quality of government, putting an end to moral relativist arguments. While UNCAC does not define corruption, it defines good governance and sets ethical universalism as its key benchmark. The chapter then follows the intellectual history of this concept and its remarkable success, with the norm of equal, fair, and nondiscriminatory treatment of every citizen present in every current constitutional contract. Ratification does not necessarily mean implementation when corruption is concerned, and the chapter surveys limitations to the practice of ethical universalism in governance and existing approaches to narrow the gap between norm and practice.

Miejsce Norwida w kulturze

Even in today’s “postmodern” world, Norwid cannot be reduced to a single formula. He is rather a “constellation,” requiring that readers join the “continual discussion” on issues specific to a given era. His focus is on humanity, which he regards from a dualist perspective that necessitates pursuing a synthesis of matter and spirit under the sign of ethical universalism. Norwid refers to the “cupola of ‘a monologue-that-keeps-parabolizing-itself’” andregards culture as the parable of the world. His original aesthetics of “whiteness” refers, as it were, to the biblical “gentle gust of wind,” which announces God’s presence and indicates the rejection of the Romantic veneration for volcanoes, which he contrasts with the importance of work. This kind of philosophy, developed by Brzozowski, Tischner and John Paul II, has led to the self-limiting revolution of Solidarity in the years 1980-81, and ultimately to the de-legitimization and fall of communism; finally, after the bloody myth of the French Revolution reigned for two hundred years, this philosophy altered the paradigm of historical changes around the world. Norwid elaborated on the industrial-era Romanticism and opposed martyrological messianism, developing the original idea of a “messianism of work,”linking it with a vision of human Church, which “burns through the Globe with conscience.”He would contrast the global church with the parochial “church-turned-living-room.”Human beings count more than institutions, he argued, just like goodness prevails over formal sacraments. With the ultimate goal defined as the resurrection of the world, art becomes a church of work. Norwid embraced an anthropocentric perspective, in which human beings are called upon “to un-make” [od-poczynać] the mistakes of the past, and thus to begin afresh at a whole new level. With his language and style Norwid was constructing a new social stratum: intelligentsia (Łapiński), understanding it as the nation’s copula, i.e. the unifying force of conscienceand the collective consciousness. It would form an interpersonal, horizontal transcendence spanning the length and breadth of societies. The opposite of nation and its culture is “empire” – the root of subjugation – which particularly enslaved Central and Eastern Europe. Of special importance is the clash between Asian civilization and the “Roman” one, i.e. Christianity or Western Europe. However, the poet opposes Slavs to both the Westerners and the Easterners, emphasizing the processualand not the essentialistcharacter of national cultures. The question whether Norwid’s work is fundamentally dialogic or monologic in character continues to divide scholars. However, Norwid is in a way a Master or teacherwho embodies the Other and incarnates Wisdom in his Voice and Gesture. The nature of Wisdom is anthropocentric because man is a priest, although “involuntary / And immature,” which abolishes the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Through his ethical universalism Norwid provides a solution to the Enlightenment crisis of universal reason. Emancipation of the individual should not entail abandoning a sense of belonging, which is something that Norwid’s modernism shares with that of Central Europeans (Ch. Delsol). Understood as the expression of collective desires, cultures shape responsibility and a sense of belonging, at the same time constituting an answer to the crisis of narcissistic individualism characteristic for our times.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Context of the Enlightenment and the Contemporary Era

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a special personage in the history of Enlightenment philosophy and European thought in general. This is so, because, on the one hand, he propounded ideas that were typical for the Enlightenment and greatly influenced his contemporaries—after all, it was he who inspired Kant with the idea of the autonomy of the will as a source of moral and juridical law, a conception which became the foundation of Kantian practical philosophy—but on the other criticised many popular ideas of his day, which from our contemporary perspective appear to have been the superstitions of the Enlightenment period. Rousseau rejected the uncritical apology of (universalistically understood) reason together with the “ethical universalism” professed by rationalists since Socrates. In his claim that human history ran in a circle (from nature in its primeval purity to nature as the expression of civilisational decay), he contested the Enlightenment’s widespread belief that it was a linear, continuous, cumulative and by nature unchangeably progressive process. Because of his transgression of the Enlightenment paradigm, Rousseau is sometimes considered to have been the first modern philosopher. And, in my opinion, rightly so, because his thought stood ahead of its time, and in many ways anticipated contemporary philosophy. I believe that especially the Frankfurt School owes a lot to his achievements. Rousseau’s thought already carried the main seeds of critical theory: the intertwinement of progress and regression over human history, emphasis on the mastering of nature and the destruction of the human element in the course of civilisational evolution, a social-historical (and not purely theoretical, as in Kant’s case) critique of reason for the sake of reason and not from the position of irrationality. Long before Max Horkheimer and his associates at the Institute of Social Research, and even ahead of Sigmund Freud, he saw reasons to ambivalently evaluate the results of human self-creation and to highlight the regressive tendencies present in human history.

Postmodernism: between the subject and absolutely external

The subject of this research is the contours of philosophical reasoning on the authenticity of human existence from the perspective of postmodernism. Comparison is conducted on interpretations of subjectivity in different philosophical discourses. The article examines the postmodern stage as an inversion of values and traditions of modernism and postmodernism in the context of new realities of the digital virtualized society. The author reviews the postmodern inter-worldliness of a subject and externalized selfness of a human, who on the one hand seeks self-identification, and om the other – avoids it, falling under the sway of symbolic identity, determined by the social institutions, norms and standards. Research methodology is based on the historical-philosophical approach, phenomenology of social, existential analytics and object-oriented ontology. A conclusion is made that the situation of s postmodern human is reflected in transition from the idea of diluting metanarrative to ethical universalism, from the regression of the philosophy of identity to object-oriented ontology, from skepticism to sincerity, from ironic sensibility of postmodernism to aesthetic experiencing of the tragic, from the power of text to metaphoric access to reality.

Conclusion: Social Movements, Patronage Democracy, and Populist Backlash in Indonesia

This concluding chapter focuses on the challenges faced by these different movements in postauthoritarian Indonesia. Having acknowledged the advances social movements have made individually and collectively, the chapter points to their structural weaknesses and failure to gain traction in the political arena as evidence of their enduring fragility. This fragility, it argues, is a product of the patterns that continue to dominate Indonesian society, namely clientelism, the reliance of extralegal means to achieve political outcomes, and the ever-growing strength of rival political movements, which seek to mobilize the disenfranchised for different, and often antiliberal, ends. This chapter contends that incrementalism is not sufficient in such circumstances if Indonesia's progressive social movements wish to prevail. Instead, the chapter concludes that they must continue to strive for “root-and-branch transformation of the social order,” with the goal of transforming Indonesia into a society based on ethical universalism, not particularism.

Corruption and Development: A Reappraisal

Corruption and development are two mutually related concepts equally shifting in meaning across time. The predominant 21st-century view of government that regards corruption as inacceptable has its theoretical roots in ancient Western thought, as well as Eastern thought. This condemning view of corruption coexisted at all times with a more morally indifferent or neutral approach that found its expression most notably in development scholars of the 1960s and 1970s who viewed corruption as an enabler of development rather than an obstacle. Research on the nexus between corruption and development has identified mechanisms that enable corruption and offered theories of change, which have informed practical development policies. Interventions adopting a principal agent approach fit better the advanced economies, where corruption is an exception, rather than the emerging economies, where the opposite of corruption, the norm of ethical universalism, has yet to be built. In such contexts corruption is better approached from a collective action perspective. Reviewing cross-national data for the period 1996–2017, it becomes apparent that the control of corruption stagnated in most countries and only a few exceptions exist. For a lasting improvement of the control of corruption, societies need to reduce the resources for corruption while simultaneously increasing constraints. The evolution of a governance regime requires a multiple stakeholder endeavor reaching beyond the sphere of government involving the press, business, and a strong and activist civil society.

Universalist Rights and Particularist Duties: The Case of Refugees

The conflict between refugees’ human right to be admitted to a safe country and the right of states to exercise sovereign control of their borders, including the right to deny refugees entry, can be understood in terms of a normative conflict between two ethical systems, namely those of ethical universalism and ethical particularism. Here it is suggested that this conflict can be resolved by combining a universalist comparable cost argument with a particularist fair share argument. The comparable cost argument affirms that a state receiving refugees should allow at least the most basic rights of refugees to override less important rights of its own citizens. The fair share argument modifies the comparable cost argument by affirming that no state is morally obligated to sacrifice any of its citizens’ rights for the sake of protecting a larger share of refugees than what is fair, given its resources.

Cosmopolitanism and Education

In the opening decades of the 21st century, educators have turned toward cosmopolitanism to theorize teaching and learning in light of increasingly globalized relationships and responsibilities. While subject to extensive debates in disciplines like political science, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, cosmopolitanism in education has primarily been explored as a moral framework resonant with educators’ efforts to cultivate people’s openness to new ideas, mutual understanding through respectful dialogue, and awareness of relationships to distant and unknown others. Scholars have recently called for more critical cosmopolitan approaches to education, in which the framing of cosmopolitanism as a neutral, essentializing form of global togetherness is subject to critique and includes analysis of systems of power, privilege, and oppression. However, while scholarly efforts to articulate critical cosmopolitanisms (in the plural) are still in nascent form in terms of educational practice, recent work in other disciplines offer promise for forwarding such a critical agenda. In sociology, for example, a focus on cosmopolitics foregrounds the labor of creating a shared world through ongoing, often conflictual negotiations that take into account the historical and contemporary political exigencies that shape that process. A framework of cosmopolitics for educators, particularly as a counterpoint to liberal understandings of cosmopolitanism as a form of ethical universalism, will be explored. Such a critical approach to educational cosmopolitanism not only foregrounds the local, everyday actions needed to build connections with others and create common worlds—but also acknowledges the historical and sociomaterial conditions under which such actions take place. A cosmopolitical approach to educational practice thus recognizes multiplicity and contingency—the mobility that locates people and ideas in new relations can just as easily lead to prejudice and bias as tolerance and solidarity—but does so in an effort to understand how social, political, and economic structures produce inequality, both in the present moment and as legacies from the past.

Accomplishing Anticorruption: Propositions & Methods

The insidious practice of corruption cripples institutions, consumes communities, and cuts deeply into the very structure of people's lives. It destroys nations and saps their moral fiber. Corruption is invasive and unforgiving, degrading governance, distorting and criminalizing national priorities, and privileging acquisitive rent-seeking, patrimonial theft, and personal gains over concern for the commonweal. It also costs an estimated $1 trillion annually - roughly a loss of 2 percent of global GDP - and disproportionally affects the most needy countries and their peoples. This opening essay shows that these baleful results need not occur: the battle against corrupt practices can be won, as it has been in several contemporary countries and throughout history. Ethical universalism can replace particularism. Since collective behavioral patterns and existing forms of political culture need to be altered, anticorruption endeavors must be guided from the apex of society. Consummate political will makes a critical difference. Anticorruption successes are hard-won and difficult to sustain. This essay and this special issue show what can and must be done.