CIVILIZATIONAL BORROWING AS A FACTOR OF THE HISTORICAL PROCESS (THEORETICAL ASPECT)

Abstract

The article presents a theoretical analysis of borrowing as a phenomenon of intercivilizational relations. The ability of a civilization to take as borrowing and build into its structures the cultural, social, economic and technological achievements of other civilizations manifests itself as civilizational diffusion. The processes of civilizational diffusions are of a planetary nature and are manifested at any stages of development of local civilizations. They are the most important factor in historical development due to the fact that civilizations have never been closed social systems. Civilizational borrowings can provoke social development, serve as an inventory of problem solving, create bifurcation points, and cause cultural fractures. Civilizational borrowings as a universal factor in the historical process have their own patterns. Such borrowings are a manifestation of inter-civilizational interaction, both peaceful and non-peaceful. The process of accepting or rejecting borrowing is determined by rational and irrational factors. Borrowing can be accepted involuntarily or voluntarily. Some borrowings caused syntheses and led to the emergence of new civilizational systems. Any civilizational borrowing is selected, and those that are fundamental in nature are not accidental. The most difficult are those borrowings that relate to the value core of civilization and social relations. Elites play a big role in the selection of borrowings. Nowadays, the process of civilizational interaction is global in nature and the diffusion of civilizations has received new opportunities for distribution through modernization, westernization and migration processes. The problems of civilizational diffusion as a process of penetration of borrowings are reflected in the works of such representatives of the theory of civilizations as F. Braudel, A. Toynbee, W. McNeill. It attracts special attention from representatives of the post-Toynbean theory of civilizations. It is thanks to the representatives of the civilizational approach to history that the process of civilizational diffusion, which occurs through the borrowing of innovations, began to be considered as one of the significant factors in the historical process.