The System of Social Sciences in the Context of Civilizational Approach: Formulating the Problem

Abstract

In modern socio-humanitarian disciplines, the concept of a “system of social sciences” is absent. This concept existed in Soviet times and meant, among other things, the existence of a single conceptual social science apparatus and methodology. It is generally recognized that the interdisciplinary approach that replaced this system, which was recognized in our country after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is based on the difference in concepts, subjects and objects of research of the sciences of the entire socio-humanitarian block. At the same time, Russian social science practically does not pay attention to the theoretical and methodological relationship between the interdisciplinary approach and the concept of globalization, developed in Western science mainly in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and which came to our country in the post-Soviet period in many ways in a “ready-made” form. At the same time, those researchers who state such a relationship consider this circumstance as a virtue of an interdisciplinary approach. In the first part of this article, an attempt is made to analyze the impact of the concept of globalization, in particular, its characteristic denial of the values of national statehood, sovereignty, including cultural and historical, on the formation and general principles of an interdisciplinary approach. The second part examines modern concepts of Russia as a civilization, first of all, the concept of state-civilization, currently introduced in the “Concept of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation” dated March 30, 2023 and “Fundamentals of state policy in the field of historical education” dated May 08, 2024, in the context of the advantages of the Soviet Union identified by the author the experience of the social sciences system. At the end of the article, proposals are made to combine some basic principles of Soviet social science with a modern civilizational approach in order to create a unified value framework for the disciplines of the socio-humanitarian block.