Globalistics
Discussion
Leonid Grinin et al.:
"The volume is entitled Globalistics and Globalization Studies. However, why Globalistics, not Global Studies? The notion of Globalistics was born in Russia, this is a translation of the Russian term globalistika; however, we believe it might be useful within the English Global Studies thesaurus. We are sure that the introduction of this term is justifiable, because it expresses the vision of systemic and epistemological unity of global processes, of the presence of some relatively autonomous field with its own research subject. Morphologically this term is identical with such well-established designations of academic disciplines as Economics, Linguistics, Physics, and so on.
Globalistics emerged in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s first of all as a result of philosophic and scientific scrutiny of the global problems of the humankind. As this research was conducted within quite a rigorous and orderly philosophical framework, in contrast with the Western Global Studies, the Soviet/Russian Globalistics acquired certain systematic qualities of a rather coherent academic field from the very beginning. We believe that this turned out to be a significant advantage of the Russian version of the study of global processes and phenomena. Note also that Globalistics has been developing as a synthesis of various academic disciplines (that is well in the mainstream of the contemporary scientific trends); on the other hand, academics working in this field have been trying to impart to it a certain conceptual unity. That is why Globalistics (in contrast with some other philosophical schools) experienced not collapse but flourishing in the post-Soviet history of Russia. In the 1990s and 2000s it became one of the most productive research directions in Russia. One may, for example, recollect that the first encyclopedias of Globalistics/Global Studies were published just in Russia (Mazour and Chumakov 2003, 2006; Mazour, Chumakov, and Gay 2006). Another example is represented by the establishment (seven years ago) of the Faculty of Global Studies (FGS MSU) within the Moscow State University; this is one of the few academic and educational bodies specializing in the realm of Globalistics. The staff of the faculty is facing a number of conceptual issues such as how to develop research and educational process; what the optimal combination of research methods in Globalistics is; how to form educational trajectories in reasonable ways, to arrange and coordinate disciplines within the curriculum etc. Globalistics is a cross-disciplinary integrative field of research. It aims at investigating global problems in all their facets: from causes, laws and tendencies of global processes through an insight into positive and negative effects to the survival of humankind and the protection of the biosphere (Chumakov 2008). Thus, Globalistics may be regarded as a sort of systemic and more or less integrated ‘core’ within Global Studies. The development of Globalistics results in the emergence of a special form of multidisciplinary scientific knowledge that is sometimes denoted as ‘global knowledge’, that is the knowledge that reflects all the global processes and systems which exist on the planet Earth in the framework of their planetary unity and evolutionary significance.
Globalistics is a very young academic field, that is why it has a large number of unresolved problems. It has not been fully incorporated yet into the system of academic disciplines. An attempt to contribute to the solving of this problem has been undertaken in a recently published monograph (Ilyin and Ursul 2009), where Globalistics is considered as a very important element of the system of integrative-scientific knowledge that forms the modern scientific worldview based on the principles of global evolutionism. This system of knowledge emerges in the way of interdisciplinary synthesis and integrative processes within sciences. Earlier the growth of knowledge took place most effectively in the framework of particular academic disciplines through further differentiation and specialization of science; now this tends to be achieved through interdisciplinary processes of knowledge synthesis, as well as synthesis of fundamental and applied researches. Global Studies are rapidly becoming leaders of modern scientific-education processes, as well as a basis of modern scientific worldview. Development of Globalistics and similar disciplines2 suggests that some other fields of academic research may find themselves under the influence of ‘global attractor’. One may well expect that names and more and more traditional fields of academic research will get a ‘global prefix’."
(http://www.sociostudies.org/books/files/globalistics_and_globalization_studies/005-008.pdf)
More information
* Book: GLOBALISTICS AND GLOBALIZATION STUDIES. Edited by Leonid E. Grinin, Ilya V. Ilyin, and Andrey V. Korotayev. Volgograd: ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 2012. – 400 pp.
URL = https://www.sociostudies.org/books/globalistics_and_globalization_studies/