No 1 (2012)

The article deals with those possibilities and perspectives which are opened by complexity in solving problems of human cultures and society. Complexity is metaphorically defined as the spirit of contemporaneity. Historically it is opposed to simplicity characteristic of modernity. As a methodological approach complexity legitimizes combining completely different things, small and large in particular. It plunges any subject-matter into practically unlimited contextuality. Complexity reveals the measure of differences and uncertainty in any reality analyzed. It is a kind of soft reductionism.

The paper considers the possibility of constructive interpretation of paradigmal shift affecting now our ideas, values, organization of body and perception of the world. Such shift is largely stimulated by the advances of modern technology, especially in the field of nanotechnology and NBIC-convergence. It is here, in our opinion, the term complexity is appropriate (as opposed to complexness). This term speaks not only about compound nature of certain entities (in the Cartesian sense), but about a special style of thinking. Complexity is not determined by composition of the given object, but by a special way of grasping dynamics, which increasingly evident penetrates all the pores of social life as well as mental or physical existence of man. To grasp this complexity specific philosophical approaches are required - approaches aimed not only to explain the situation of affairs, but also to provide a conceptual life in the new reality. As one of the options for such a conceptual approach - in the article - we discuss the philosophical technology proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Thousand Plateaus (the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia).

The article reviews some modern approaches to human communication. It highlights the approach, which is relatively new to the Russian social science and humanities tradition, that is: communication as social construction. The social construction approach brings into focus the constructive, transformative, and constitutive role of communication, while viewing communication itself as a meaning-making and negotiation (coordination) process.

The article considers transcultural studies as a new transdicsiplinary area, analyses its various types and methodological grounds, offers a comparative survey of the existing centers for transcultural studies. The author presents a number of ontological, ethical and gnoseological aspects of this area within the frame of post-continental philosophy. The paper also touches upon the main tasks and grounds of the newly launched Center for Transcultural Studies at Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.

Current understandings tend to presuppose that the transformation of inequality patterns entails a series of new phenomena, which make the coining of new concepts such as the Europeanization and the transnationalization of social inequality necessary. The paper argues that, at least since the European expansion into the Americas, inequalities have been the result of transnational processes arising from transregional entanglements between shifting metropolitan and peripheral areas. To this end, the paper uses the example of the Caribbean as Europe's first colonial backyard in order to show the historical continuities between creolization as a term originally coined to describe processes specific to the Caribbean and what is being analyzed today under the label of the transnationalization of (Western) Europe. The paper subsequently claims that theorizing the continuum of structures of power linking colonialism to (post)coloniality is an essential element of the endeavor of creolizing Europe.

Despite the existing problems democracy is the most optimal regime, which meets tasks of the epoch and has prospects for the future. Strictly speaking, Russia is just starting its way to constructing a truly democratic environment. We need to cultivate a citizen-subject as a backbone element of this environment. His current political culture can be shaped through modernization of values of patriotism, history and integration into a globalizing world, purposefully developing the system of civic education.