24.11.2021, 10:36 - Baxış sayı: 497
Professor İlham Məmmədzadənin məqaləsi beynəlxalq jurnalda nəşr olunub
Bolqarıstan Elmlər Akademiyası Fəlsəfə və Sosiologiya İnstitutunun təşkilatçılığı ilə 2021-ci il mayın 17-də “Qaçqınlar – qorxu, axtarış, təhlükəsizlik və təhlil” layihəsi çərçivəsində keçirilən beynəlxalq konfransın məqalələr toplusu işıq üzü görüb. Konfrasda iştirak edən AMEA Fəlsəfə və Sosiologiya İnstitutunun baş direktoru, f.e.d., professor İlham Məmmədzadənin “Mədəniyyət və sivilizasyon əlaqəsi mənzərəsində qaçqınlar (miqrasiya) məsələsi haqqında” mövzusunda məruzəsi həmin topluda ingilis dilində nəşr olunub.
Həmin məqaləni təqdim edirik:
ON THE ISSUE OF REFUGEES (MIGRATION) IN THE CONTEXT OF CORRELATION OF CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION
Ilham Mammadzade
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of
Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences
Ilham_mamedzade@mail.ru
Abstract: The issue of refugees and migration has become one of the most important problems related to globalization, a problem that needs to be understood and resolved. It is most often perceived as a managerial, economic, political, transport, sociological, and statistical issue. But it has a philosophical context and, above all, it involves a serious contradiction between culture and civilization. In principle, the problems associated with refugees are wars, great violence, placement in camps, all of which seem far removed from philosophical matters. But this is only at first glance. In fact, the situation of refugees, how they have fallen into this category, and how the host country resolves the problem make topical for philosophy the question as to how civilized cultures are.
Keywords: refugees, migration, philosophy, culture, civilization
Introduction
Many of us are ready to admit that globalization is inseparably connected with migrants, with streams of displaced persons, and that the society and mobility of individuals belonging to different cultures is a topic worth analyzing. No wonder, for example, that, already in the early 2000s, in his studies, Ulrich Beck made topical the concept of a “united cosmopolitan society”, emphasizing that globalization is a multidimensional phenomenon associated with the formation of transnational social space. He wrote about this in his works “What is Globalization?” (Beck 2001) and The Cosmopolitan Vision (Beck 2008). In Azerbaijan, back in the early 1990s, we faced the problem of the influx of Azerbaijanis fleeing from Armenia. Their subsequent fate is equally of historical and political, cultural, and sociological interest. The movement of these refugees was connected with the violence to which they were subjected by Armenia after the breakdown of the Soviet Union; but in our opinion, at that moment, they also encountered the grimace of globalization. It became clear then that globalization seems to be a natural process only to the mind, but not in practice. Much has been written in our country about this; I will mention only one book, The Global Migration Crisis: International Relations and Western Politics on the Eve of a New Historical Turnabout (The Global Migration Crisis… 2018). In our opinion, globalization has not only determined, but, to one degree or another, has 156
come to depend on the mobility of individuals, societies, cultures, on how societies and states cope with these problems, on who is migrating and what share of migrants are refugees, meaning groups, and even multitudes, of people fleeing from violence and finding themselves outside the legal framework. The waves of migration first aroused hopes that the policy of multiculturalism would be able to cope with the integration of resettled persons, refugees, migrants in the countries of settlement; then, when their number grew, it became clear that the problem was more complicated than previously imagined by sociologists, psychologists, etc. To this problem, we have devoted separate articles and books, published both in Azerbaijan and abroad. Of the latter, we would point out the Philosophy of Modernity, History and Culture (on the Outline of Historical-Cultural Epistemology) (Mammadzade 2019).
Understanding some of the problems of the refugee flow
When Samuel Huntington wrote about the “clash of civilizations”, it had already become clear that every society was failing to cope with refugees, mi¬grants, the mobility of individuals coming from other societies, countries, etc. Clearly, in the countries from which the flow of refugees was coming, something was happening: a war or a pandemic, revolutions, etc. In fact, at that moment, the United States and some European countries were making attempts to change some governments, the political order in some countries in Africa, Asia, the post-Soviet space. Actually, it was a matter of creating a unipolar world. Only ten years have passed since, and now we are talking about multipolarity, a new division of the world, new clashes. This is not contributing to stability and will not change the refugee situation. The pandemic has added some specific fea¬tures, but that is the topic of a separate study. The rejection of multiculturalism in Europe and its collapse were recognized by many well-known European poli¬ticians. The critique of the ideas of the interaction of cultures has become a daily theme in scientific and journalistic literature, which, to some extent, confirms our conclusion. It is clear that the increasingly changing ratio between the num¬bers of the indigenous population and of the newly arrived people, who have different cultural and social stereotypes, education, habits, requires that both the government structures and the citizens in every country be seriously prepared. In our opinion, if some countries have been able to cope with this problem, it was due to the quality of the decisions made, the testing of those decisions through the civilized resolution of the problems, the ability of those countries to solve the problems in a civilized and moral way. But besides this, it is true that the in¬creasing flow of refugees results from the fact that dominant states are imposing their own order and that the political systems of many states are being changed by force. The Middle East is a clear example of this approach. In this respect, we can well understand that scientists from the Balkan countries should pay special attention to these issues.157
Attention, as we understand it, has already been devoted to these problems in the past. Migration, as a trend, has been studied throughout the twentieth century; its new aspect today is connected not only with the increased number of migrants but also with the phenomenon’s new features that might change the map of the world, destroy many states, cause wars for a new division, as well as cultural and moral degradation. Hence, this phenomenon apparently requires not only interdisciplinary research but also a search for a philosophical approach to it for new concepts – not only in the countries from which these people are fleeing but also in the receiving countries.
At the same time, it is necessary to clarify many terms used to express these concepts and contexts. It is necessary to describe the situation leading to migration, including to determine the differences between migration and emigration, mobility and migration movement, resettlement and flight. Such concepts as the migration chain, refugees and displaced persons, multiculturalism and assimilation, also require new definitions and approaches. But even this is not enough; we need to reconsider that which is called the relationship between culture and civilization, and to understanding that there are civilized and uncivilized ways of solving the problem.
Towards the concept of the correlation between culture and civilization
This formulation of the question leads us to an understanding of the relevance of the issues of the correlation between culture and civilization, the need to comprehend the process of changing these relations. Many authors, and they really are numerous, do not see the differences between culture and civilization; we will not enter into a debate with them. There are some who proceed on the premise that ethnic cultures should not be compared. We obviously mean conducting a discussion with those who have noticed that cultures are changing, and that this process of change does not always take place within the boundaries of civilization and a moral attitude towards other cultures. Essentially, within the framework of today’s global civilization, if such there be, there arises the problem of civilized relations between separate civilizations, between civilizations and national cultures. Globalization forces us to redefine that cultures may integrate and disintegrate. In the course of their integration, a phenomenon arises that does not overlap with the concept of empire but is a formation that can be designated as a civilization of several national cultures. This process has been known to occur within the framework of Christian civilizations.
The Muslim world, as designated by many researchers of the Islamic civilization, is not united; within its framework, the Iranian, Arab and Turkic Islamic civilizations do not always coexist unproblematically. In this context, in our opinion, the question is not about differences and comparisons; clearly, each of these civilizations, in turn, consists of separate cultures, which are
more or less different from one another but together constitute a kind of unity, a civilization.
Language is undoubtedly of decisive importance for this unity, but is clearly not enough. In the history of civilizations and cultures, there have been many clashes between speakers of the same language (civil wars or, for example, clashes between Turkic and Turkic Slavic states). We think that the development of cultures similar and dissimilar in language, origin and religion sooner or later leads to the establishment and, most importantly, to the understanding of the significance that civilized relations have for development, which in turn makes topical the philosophical discourse about how culture and civilization differ not in the remote past but now, and what a civil relationship between cultures and within culture means. Of course, in the history of philosophy, one can always find some texts that point to this direction of thought. In M. Mamardashvili’s text Consciousness and Civilization (1984), the author, first of all, relates an “anthro¬pological catastrophe” to “the absence of civilizational foundations to the process of life and communication” (Mamardashvili 2019: 5-6). Then he connects civili¬zation and history, designating them as “a second universe”. In our opinion, these Mamardashvili’s ideas indicate that “history” can be twofold or even threefold: before civilization, uncivilized and civilized. Apparently, if we are talking about a threat, an anthropological catastrophe, a stage of post-civilizational history can also be possible. Many allusions, interpretations, themes and ideas arise here, ranging from dehumanization to artificial intelligence and robotization. But in our particular case, we are interested in something else, namely, that our usual knowledge about civilizations (Danilevsky, Toynbee, etc., divide them into 8, 9, or even 21) somewhat conflicts with how Mamardashvili and, in our case, we too, understand history and civilization.
Conclusion
Finally, the point is not about the differences in those cases when civilizations are seen as “big” cultures, when the authors do not want to see the internal mechanism of self-development of culture, which turns it into a civilized culture, providing it with the possibility of civilized “cohabitation” with other similar and dissimilar cultures, allowing the passage from one history to another. Clearly, each culture has its own “history”, its own path from non-civilization to civiliza-tion, to civilized relations within and outside. That path does not guarantee there will be no reversion to non-civilization. Apparently, along with the whole importance of bureaucracies, parties, societies, and nations, this forward or reverse movement is provided by the man himself and his relationship to others. Apparently, an “anthropological catastrophe” would threaten us if the kind of person capable of appealing, of seeing what civilized relations mean, what a relationship with the other means, how to respect another human being, regardless of his identity, were to disappear. And then we find that this problem of respect for the other 159
was already faced by cultures in the past, and that in each age, in each historical situation, people had to learn to recognize that other anew.
References
Beck, U. 2001. What is Globalization? The Fallacies of Globalism – Answers to Globalisation. Moscow, Progress-Tradition (in Russian).
Beck, U. 2008. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Moscow, Center for Research on Post-Indus¬trial Society (in Russian).
Mamardashvili, M. 2019. Consciousness and civilization. St. Petersburg, Azbuka (in Russian).
Mammadzade, I. 2019. Philosophy of Modernity, History and Culture (on the Outline of Historical-Cultural Epistemology). Baku, Elm və Tehsil (in Azerbaijani).
The Global Migration Crisis: International Relations and Western Politics on the Eve of a New Historical Turnabout. 2018. Baku, SAM (in Azerbaijani).
Həmin məqaləni təqdim edirik:
ON THE ISSUE OF REFUGEES (MIGRATION) IN THE CONTEXT OF CORRELATION OF CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION
Ilham Mammadzade
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of
Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences
Ilham_mamedzade@mail.ru
Abstract: The issue of refugees and migration has become one of the most important problems related to globalization, a problem that needs to be understood and resolved. It is most often perceived as a managerial, economic, political, transport, sociological, and statistical issue. But it has a philosophical context and, above all, it involves a serious contradiction between culture and civilization. In principle, the problems associated with refugees are wars, great violence, placement in camps, all of which seem far removed from philosophical matters. But this is only at first glance. In fact, the situation of refugees, how they have fallen into this category, and how the host country resolves the problem make topical for philosophy the question as to how civilized cultures are.
Keywords: refugees, migration, philosophy, culture, civilization
Introduction
Many of us are ready to admit that globalization is inseparably connected with migrants, with streams of displaced persons, and that the society and mobility of individuals belonging to different cultures is a topic worth analyzing. No wonder, for example, that, already in the early 2000s, in his studies, Ulrich Beck made topical the concept of a “united cosmopolitan society”, emphasizing that globalization is a multidimensional phenomenon associated with the formation of transnational social space. He wrote about this in his works “What is Globalization?” (Beck 2001) and The Cosmopolitan Vision (Beck 2008). In Azerbaijan, back in the early 1990s, we faced the problem of the influx of Azerbaijanis fleeing from Armenia. Their subsequent fate is equally of historical and political, cultural, and sociological interest. The movement of these refugees was connected with the violence to which they were subjected by Armenia after the breakdown of the Soviet Union; but in our opinion, at that moment, they also encountered the grimace of globalization. It became clear then that globalization seems to be a natural process only to the mind, but not in practice. Much has been written in our country about this; I will mention only one book, The Global Migration Crisis: International Relations and Western Politics on the Eve of a New Historical Turnabout (The Global Migration Crisis… 2018). In our opinion, globalization has not only determined, but, to one degree or another, has 156
come to depend on the mobility of individuals, societies, cultures, on how societies and states cope with these problems, on who is migrating and what share of migrants are refugees, meaning groups, and even multitudes, of people fleeing from violence and finding themselves outside the legal framework. The waves of migration first aroused hopes that the policy of multiculturalism would be able to cope with the integration of resettled persons, refugees, migrants in the countries of settlement; then, when their number grew, it became clear that the problem was more complicated than previously imagined by sociologists, psychologists, etc. To this problem, we have devoted separate articles and books, published both in Azerbaijan and abroad. Of the latter, we would point out the Philosophy of Modernity, History and Culture (on the Outline of Historical-Cultural Epistemology) (Mammadzade 2019).
Understanding some of the problems of the refugee flow
When Samuel Huntington wrote about the “clash of civilizations”, it had already become clear that every society was failing to cope with refugees, mi¬grants, the mobility of individuals coming from other societies, countries, etc. Clearly, in the countries from which the flow of refugees was coming, something was happening: a war or a pandemic, revolutions, etc. In fact, at that moment, the United States and some European countries were making attempts to change some governments, the political order in some countries in Africa, Asia, the post-Soviet space. Actually, it was a matter of creating a unipolar world. Only ten years have passed since, and now we are talking about multipolarity, a new division of the world, new clashes. This is not contributing to stability and will not change the refugee situation. The pandemic has added some specific fea¬tures, but that is the topic of a separate study. The rejection of multiculturalism in Europe and its collapse were recognized by many well-known European poli¬ticians. The critique of the ideas of the interaction of cultures has become a daily theme in scientific and journalistic literature, which, to some extent, confirms our conclusion. It is clear that the increasingly changing ratio between the num¬bers of the indigenous population and of the newly arrived people, who have different cultural and social stereotypes, education, habits, requires that both the government structures and the citizens in every country be seriously prepared. In our opinion, if some countries have been able to cope with this problem, it was due to the quality of the decisions made, the testing of those decisions through the civilized resolution of the problems, the ability of those countries to solve the problems in a civilized and moral way. But besides this, it is true that the in¬creasing flow of refugees results from the fact that dominant states are imposing their own order and that the political systems of many states are being changed by force. The Middle East is a clear example of this approach. In this respect, we can well understand that scientists from the Balkan countries should pay special attention to these issues.157
Attention, as we understand it, has already been devoted to these problems in the past. Migration, as a trend, has been studied throughout the twentieth century; its new aspect today is connected not only with the increased number of migrants but also with the phenomenon’s new features that might change the map of the world, destroy many states, cause wars for a new division, as well as cultural and moral degradation. Hence, this phenomenon apparently requires not only interdisciplinary research but also a search for a philosophical approach to it for new concepts – not only in the countries from which these people are fleeing but also in the receiving countries.
At the same time, it is necessary to clarify many terms used to express these concepts and contexts. It is necessary to describe the situation leading to migration, including to determine the differences between migration and emigration, mobility and migration movement, resettlement and flight. Such concepts as the migration chain, refugees and displaced persons, multiculturalism and assimilation, also require new definitions and approaches. But even this is not enough; we need to reconsider that which is called the relationship between culture and civilization, and to understanding that there are civilized and uncivilized ways of solving the problem.
Towards the concept of the correlation between culture and civilization
This formulation of the question leads us to an understanding of the relevance of the issues of the correlation between culture and civilization, the need to comprehend the process of changing these relations. Many authors, and they really are numerous, do not see the differences between culture and civilization; we will not enter into a debate with them. There are some who proceed on the premise that ethnic cultures should not be compared. We obviously mean conducting a discussion with those who have noticed that cultures are changing, and that this process of change does not always take place within the boundaries of civilization and a moral attitude towards other cultures. Essentially, within the framework of today’s global civilization, if such there be, there arises the problem of civilized relations between separate civilizations, between civilizations and national cultures. Globalization forces us to redefine that cultures may integrate and disintegrate. In the course of their integration, a phenomenon arises that does not overlap with the concept of empire but is a formation that can be designated as a civilization of several national cultures. This process has been known to occur within the framework of Christian civilizations.
The Muslim world, as designated by many researchers of the Islamic civilization, is not united; within its framework, the Iranian, Arab and Turkic Islamic civilizations do not always coexist unproblematically. In this context, in our opinion, the question is not about differences and comparisons; clearly, each of these civilizations, in turn, consists of separate cultures, which are
more or less different from one another but together constitute a kind of unity, a civilization.
Language is undoubtedly of decisive importance for this unity, but is clearly not enough. In the history of civilizations and cultures, there have been many clashes between speakers of the same language (civil wars or, for example, clashes between Turkic and Turkic Slavic states). We think that the development of cultures similar and dissimilar in language, origin and religion sooner or later leads to the establishment and, most importantly, to the understanding of the significance that civilized relations have for development, which in turn makes topical the philosophical discourse about how culture and civilization differ not in the remote past but now, and what a civil relationship between cultures and within culture means. Of course, in the history of philosophy, one can always find some texts that point to this direction of thought. In M. Mamardashvili’s text Consciousness and Civilization (1984), the author, first of all, relates an “anthro¬pological catastrophe” to “the absence of civilizational foundations to the process of life and communication” (Mamardashvili 2019: 5-6). Then he connects civili¬zation and history, designating them as “a second universe”. In our opinion, these Mamardashvili’s ideas indicate that “history” can be twofold or even threefold: before civilization, uncivilized and civilized. Apparently, if we are talking about a threat, an anthropological catastrophe, a stage of post-civilizational history can also be possible. Many allusions, interpretations, themes and ideas arise here, ranging from dehumanization to artificial intelligence and robotization. But in our particular case, we are interested in something else, namely, that our usual knowledge about civilizations (Danilevsky, Toynbee, etc., divide them into 8, 9, or even 21) somewhat conflicts with how Mamardashvili and, in our case, we too, understand history and civilization.
Conclusion
Finally, the point is not about the differences in those cases when civilizations are seen as “big” cultures, when the authors do not want to see the internal mechanism of self-development of culture, which turns it into a civilized culture, providing it with the possibility of civilized “cohabitation” with other similar and dissimilar cultures, allowing the passage from one history to another. Clearly, each culture has its own “history”, its own path from non-civilization to civiliza-tion, to civilized relations within and outside. That path does not guarantee there will be no reversion to non-civilization. Apparently, along with the whole importance of bureaucracies, parties, societies, and nations, this forward or reverse movement is provided by the man himself and his relationship to others. Apparently, an “anthropological catastrophe” would threaten us if the kind of person capable of appealing, of seeing what civilized relations mean, what a relationship with the other means, how to respect another human being, regardless of his identity, were to disappear. And then we find that this problem of respect for the other 159
was already faced by cultures in the past, and that in each age, in each historical situation, people had to learn to recognize that other anew.
References
Beck, U. 2001. What is Globalization? The Fallacies of Globalism – Answers to Globalisation. Moscow, Progress-Tradition (in Russian).
Beck, U. 2008. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Moscow, Center for Research on Post-Indus¬trial Society (in Russian).
Mamardashvili, M. 2019. Consciousness and civilization. St. Petersburg, Azbuka (in Russian).
Mammadzade, I. 2019. Philosophy of Modernity, History and Culture (on the Outline of Historical-Cultural Epistemology). Baku, Elm və Tehsil (in Azerbaijani).
The Global Migration Crisis: International Relations and Western Politics on the Eve of a New Historical Turnabout. 2018. Baku, SAM (in Azerbaijani).