Globalization, while bringing major change to the forms of social interaction, not only transforms and destroys previous civilizational, cultural, ethnic, national, political, state and other forms of civil life and corresponding civil communities, but also, out of necessity, engenders a growing diversity of social agents and manifestations of their appearance and development. First of all, those forms which, during the preceding historical development, have achieved a sufficiently independent local existence undergo a transformation.
Divergent processes – that is, the creation of new, more or less unstable social communities and other phenomena of a collective nature as a result of the transformation and fragmentation of previous agents and forms of social life – are inevitable in the course of this transformation. This flow of transformation, involving increasingly large flows of material, financial, human and other resources, inevitably leads to the appearance of a wide range of unstable social groups as typical dissipative structures, studied under synergetics, some of which will determine the shape of the future while others are doomed to disappear.
Moreover, at the present stage of the development of globalization, one may speak of the sociogenesis vector turning towards divergence, which manifests itself clearly in the ethnocultural fragmentation of local communities, principally in the crisis of identity and ethnocultural fragmentation of nations. In any case, the intensity of divergent social processes will increase as global crisis processes strengthen.
At the same time, one of the leading attributive characteristics of globalization is the existence of powerful tendencies of a divergent nature, including ethnocultural differentiation and fragmentation of local communities and of humankind in general, the increasing multi-agency of global processes, major sophistication and the diminishing stability of the historical process.
1.4. The crisis of the contemporary nation as the manifestation of the essence of globalization
Globalization is a global systemic crisis of a united world-system not only through the unity of economic and informational space, but also through the all-encompassing nature of the conflict of agents of global development, whose interests are objectively antagonistic.172
Thus, another attribute of globalization is its crisis-like – or, more precisely, multi-crisis – character. The real globalization is not just a global crisis at the stage of acceleration, but a system of interconnected crises connected in space and time, impossible to reduce to the sum of its parts. That is why increasing complexity, instability, total competitiveness and propensity for conflict are characteristic of globalization.
Everything that was considered part of the expenditures, contrasts or transition processes of globalization is, in fact, its essential content.
The model of globalization as a system of sub-crises of varying quality presents a more acceptable vision of the complexity and dynamics of globalization and its ability suddenly to engender major new social phenomena, including global challenges and threats.
Correspondingly, understanding globalization as an all-encompassing system of interacting crises and catastrophes engendered not so much by growth limits for resources as by the unprecedented growth of global interconnectedness, allows us to move beyond the limits of theoretical approaches formed in the last century that see the destruction of the basis of the industrialized civilization as growth expenditure. In fact, the very notion of growth is losing its primary meaning of exploration of the outer environment resources under the conditions of fundamental limits on natural resources.
Ultimately, the multi-crisis and multi-faceted structure of globalization as a qualitatively new form of systemic social crisis finishes the era of stable socioeconomic progress and signifies the transition to a descending, regressive branch of historical development, from the social progress of the industrialized era to self-preservation under the total antagonism and instability characteristic of the post-industrialized era. This signifies a gradual loss of the crucial social achievements and possibilities of the industrial era up to the loss of agency and dissolution of nations.
At the same time, the multi-agent and critical nature of social challenges and threats, which are attributes of globalization, has a positive side – a possibility to manoeuvre and govern, which is maintained not only on a global level but also on a local one, and is determined by the level of understanding of current social processes.
Therefore, looking at globalization as a systemic crisis connected to the exhaustion of the progress of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a transition of the society and system-building social groups into a phase of descent and crisis development allows us to conclude that the most acute social problems of current times are not the legacy of the past, but an objective result of globalization and its characteristics.
This means that the global social problems of the present cannot be solved within the limits of the existing paradigm of global development, which is based on universalization of the money economy, non-state and post-state, post-national forms and development priorities, antagonistic to the state forms of the organization of society.
Correspondingly, overcoming the negative social consequences of globalization and its attributes is possible only through controlled curbing of globalization processes.
On the whole, globalization is the development of systemic social crisis as a multi-dimensional system of interacting crises in various spheres of social being, strengthening one another, which engenders a qualitatively new level of complexity and acuteness of contradictions typical of social phenomena of the new era.
The contemporary, essentially post-globalization stage of the development of the united world-system, which has largely exhausted the potential of convergent processes and convergent development, is characterized by the dominance of processes of divergence and the diversification of local communities. Forced adaptation of social groups and structures to the new barrier-free and transparent but more competitive and unstable world forces them to strengthen their own barrier and protective functions.
Transnational and transcultural convergence and integration that were not so long ago considered leading sociocultural processes of globalization are, in reality, increasingly limited by minimum consumer communication and common consumer standards sufficient for the existence of the individual in a global market sphere and by the extended communicative standard required to work in transnational structures.
While, during the early stages, differentiation – cultural-civilizational, ethnic, political – had a largely spatial character, social differentiation of non-spatial character is dominant during globalization.
Thus, social processes of divergent types, including the direct separation of certain social groups and the increase of barriers among groups, is a vital characteristic of globalization.
The chief mechanism and chief cause of differentiation and divergence is dissolution, the major weakening and loss of social importance of nation states and civil nations as system-building social groups and the degradation and fragmentation of institutions and social groups of a lower order.
Furthermore, differentiation and divergence are direct results of crisis and conflict processes linked to the battle of social agents for the redistribution of increasingly scarce resources, during which not so much separate individuals as whole social groups are being deemed rejects and pushed aside from resources.
In particular, mass marginalization of the population of industrialized countries – first of all, of the middle class, making up the basis not