Local-civilizational research and social constructivism: points of intersection

Abstract

This article represents a polemical response to the critical of poly-civilizational research article by D. E. Letnyakov, who offers to shift away from the essentialist attitudes in the context of studying the phenomenon of civilization, and rather focus on the mechanisms of formation of civilizational identity. In contradiction of the aforementioned point of view, the author of this article argues the inferiority and one-sidedness of the attempts to limit the multi-paradigm vector of research to a single methodological approach, substantiates the philosophical grounds of such multi-paradigmality, and on the example of gender studies, indicates the discrepancies that emerge due to neglecting the essential approach by the researchers. The subject of this article is the methodology of civilizational research. The author does not intent to refute the provisions of social constructivism completely, since its adherents made a considerable contribution to social knowledge, but rather demonstrate that in a number of multi-paradigm vectors (to which civilizational research belong to), this methodological approach cannot be limited to just one. It is substantiated that for philosophy, the criticism of civilizational theory from the perspective of social constructivism, is the phenomenon similar to refutation of Lobachevsky’s geometry from the standpoint of Euclidean geometry, or the laws of quantum mechanics based on the Newton laws. These are different worlds, different set of coordinates, with fundamentally different laws effective therein.