The first of them – actually modernism – prevailed in the West in the 50's and
60's, emerging on the ideological heritage of the Enlightenment. And from the late 70's
to the beginning of the 90's postmodernism began to dominate in the West. The main
ideologists of this school were D. Harvey [15] and M. Foucault [7]. They idealized
neither the West nor the East, but proceed from the existence of the world's only
universal values that could bring humanity together in the future. Starting from
geopolitical constructions, postmodernists focused on the individual and advanced the
principle of world universality.
The Ukrainian sociologist, publicist and theoretician of Ukrainian conservatism –
V. Lipsky considered ideology as the driving force behind the national renaissance.
According to the scientist, the basic condition for the establishment of Ukrainian
statehood is unity – religious, regional, political, organizational, national. ‘The political
culture of one nation can not be mechanically overtaken by another one’, the scientist
remarked [3].
After the collapse of the USSR and socialism postmodernism was replaced by a
new direction, defined by J. Alexander, and others as neomodernism [1]. Other
researchers identified it as neoliberalism, since it opposed itself to state intervention.
Hence one step remained until the term, which is used now everywhere – globalization.
As globalization contributes significantly to westernization, there are raised a
number of issues related to the sense of modernization. In this regard, it was established
two main points of view. The first one is based on the belief that globalization is a
wider process than westernization, and practically equals to modernization. This thesis
is justified by researchers such as J.P. Nettl et R. Robertson [19] and others. Their
opponents believe that globalization is a global diffusion of Western modernism, which
is realized in the form of expanded Westernization and the spread of institutions of
Western capitalism. The ideologists of the modernism critic were N.J. Smelser et R.
Swedberg [23].
However, exactly the globalization of the economy forms the basis of all
globalization processes and affects on them. In spite of the fact that globalization is
predominantly an economic phenomenon, it has social, ideological and political
dimension. It was particularly noticed after the beginning of the global anti-globalist
movement, and as any social phenomenon, it became the case of study in all social
sciences without exception – philosophy, sociology, economics, history and political
science.
According to the French ecologist, social activist and anti-globalist:
‘Globalization is an economic project aimed at achieving a ful interdependence of all
countries in the world ... We must eliminate social, economic and currency dumping,
we need to protect our market. Thus we could gain political independence from
multinational companies and from world trade’ (L. Ozone) [20].
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