Civilizations – Real, Imaginary or Constructed Communities?

Abstract

The article analyzes the problem of the “methodological revision of the civiliza­tional approach” to the analysis of the history of mankind, which is proposed to be carried out by supporters of social constructionism. In this context, the “dif­ficult issues” of constructivism are discussed, the theoretical foundations of so­cial constructionism as one of the variants of anti-realism in epistemology and science are criticized. According to the author, the civilizational approach, which has been formed for many years in the space of historical macrosociology, is productively returned to the field of “philosophy of history”. In this case, the concept of “civilization” acquires a philosophical and historical content, fix­ing the centuries-old process of “civilization of mankind”, expressed in the di­versity of its concrete historical forms: that is, “local civilizations”, differing among themselves in the “orders” of living together and based on them “models of development”, which they seek to extend beyond their historical territories for considerable distances. Thus, the empirically observed globalization of mankind and the periodic change of the “centers” of world development will receive an­other – civilizational – explanation. The proposed understanding of the civiliza­tional analysis of the history of mankind is based on the socio-historical version of social constructivism, which does not exclude, but assumes the “natural-his­torical” and “projected” nature of the implementation of anthropohistory.