Spatial Determination Of Organization Of Cultural-Communicative Eco-Environment

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the cultural and communication environment of the modern information society from the point of view of the ecophilosophical approach. Based on the objectives aimed to determine significant features of the modern cultural and communicative environment, this article explores what effective criterion of selection of the flows of information is in communicative environment, and what categories will help to describe successfully the processes occurring in the modern cultural and communicative environment. Based on the principles of integrity and consistency, the authors used the principles of holistic methodology, analysis and synthesis. The article shows that ecophilosophy as a perspective direction of modern philosophy, examines the human problem in his organic connections with the external and internal world in order to maintain the ecology as integrity, which is an effective criterion and a basis for selecting information flows in the communicative space. It also contains the target orientation connection of nature and culture, due to which the processes occurring in it can be regulated in time. It also constantly forms and establishes the criterion for human life-support, culture and nature connections in their unity. The article also reveals the concept of media-culture as one of the effective tools for regulating the contemporary cultural and communicative eco-environment. It also defines the important social and humanistic role of the media-cultural ecology as a world view and the doctrine of the media-culture and human relationship and the Earth as their environment in various aspects.

Keywords: Humanspace of eco-environmentcommunicationinformation societyeco-philosophyculture

Introduction

Communicative environment as a complex multilevel system, along with its primary function, namely, the function of information transfer, performs a number of tasks arising from its "human dimension" and the function of formation of regulative patterns, spaces of value orientations and systems of different scale (Barkova, 2015). In the context of globalization, transformations occur in the communicative environment, enhancing their status. These transformations complicate the structure of communicative environment and accelerate the functioning of all its elements. Encouraging or destroying time-honoured relations, forming new types of relationships at local and regional levels, they simultaneously interact with the world directional ratio of the message transmission in the way ensuring the conditions of comprehension and storing relevance of pass-through messages at specific time, meeting the urgency and timeliness requirements.

Cultural and communicative environment is one of the most important factors for the human society existence and functioning. Therefore, in recent decades, in connection with the special interest of philosophers in the processes, taking place in the society at the macro and micro levels, in relationships among people not only as participants of public relations but also as members of relations in the wider "society-nature" system, the issue of the communicative environment, its organization and the peculiarities of its determination have been the subject of active study and consideration. In the authors’ opinion, the beginning of a serious study of the socio-cultural environment as a whole was laid in the works of the famous French sociologist, R. Bourdeiu (Bourdeiu, 1977, 1984), who traced the mutual influence of traditions, social norms and habits and spatial factors in the social relations system. After, the socio-cultural environment issues were reflected in the sociological (Giddens, 1984; Searle, 1995; Jeffrey, 2003) and philosophical works (Gregory, D. and Urry J., 1985; Mitchell, 1995; Cosgrove, 1998; Tuan, Yi-Fu, S. Hoelscher and K. Till, 2001; Lees, 2011; Remm, 2015) and others. In its turn, the interest in the study of the communicative environment, its specifics and the impact on people's lives, in the authors’ opinion, appeared even earlier, in the works of the Canadian researcher, M. McLuhan (McLuhan, 1964; McLuhan and Fiore, 1967).

Cultural and communicative environment as an integral element of the socio-cultural environment basically can not exist without communication, live interaction among individuals, active verbal communication, recorded in the external media; in written sources, in mass media, in the Internet and etc. Accordingly, the interest of researchers from different fields of knowledge has emerged to the question what the cultural and communicative environment is, about its functioning features, its existence and development maintenance, its role in the life of society and social groups.

Many of these studies are based on the theory of communicative action of Jürgen Habermas (Habermas, 1984, 1987, 1991). Thus S. Kemmis and P. Grootenboer (Kemmis, and Grootenboer, 2008) study the communicative environment as a condition for constructing the practice of interpersonal communication. A. Bevan (Bevan, 2013) examines the features of the communicative environment as a set of actions in communication that develops intellectual abilities of social actors, C. Edwards-Groves (Edwards-Groves, 2013) studies the place of the communicative environment in professional communication, and Rönnerman & Salo (Rönnerman & Salo, 2014) consider the role of the communicative environment in pedagogical processes in the early childhood education.

The modern information society, the rapid development of computer technology, the transformation of information and knowledge into a strategic resource, becoming the object of philosophical research, determine the characteristics of the modern cultural and communicative environment. Today, the socio-cultural environment is characterized by the growth of intensity of various information and communication flows and connections. It interacts with different types of multi-scale communications. The qualitative change takes places in its structure, which is studied in scientific programs and technologies of modern management activity, and due to significant influence of these processes on existence and the functioning of the information society; its sustainable development is inconceivable without the ecology of information (Babik, 2008).

Earlier, different areas of social philosophy focused their attention on the society, which is either opposed to the nature or interacts with it, using it only as a resource. In modern terms, the holistic information and ecological approach becomes relevant and in comparison with the previous social philosophy concepts, it studies the society deeper and more versatile, which interprets the latter as an integral, deterministic, meaningful information system, deeply and comprehensively connected with the nature (Eddy, at al., 2014). The ecology of cultural and communicative environment becomes an important condition for the development of a healthy anthroposystem as a complex interaction between individuals and groups of individuals (Anikin, 2011). The ecological approach, emphasizing the relationship between human beings and the ecosystem in general, the essential part of which is the information society, based on the principles of systematicity and holism, reveals new aspects both for society and for human being as an autonomous subject.

In the scientific literature, the approach that considers the communicative environment as the special type of the ecosystem is currently being developed (Baker and Bowker, 2007), which is able to maintain the sustainable existence of other ecosystems (Chen, at. al., 2008).

Problem Statement

It should be noted that despite the active interest of scientists in understanding, the issues and problems of cultural and communicative environment which modern stage of development is so complex and versatile, not all important issues have been highlighted. Thus having been established in recent years, the space of communications, including flows coming from major international organizations and structures designed to ensure not only the Information for all Programs, implemented by UNESCO, but also to create updated cultural standards for life-support of all the inhabitants of the earth, which seems to be not effective enough.

In this aspect, it becomes essential emphasizing the role of eco-oriented communications as the foundation for the being of modern mankind and as the element of a common culture that coordinate values and all the various different rhythms based on the characteristics of its existence. Such communications tend to preserve life, traditions, the content and richness of human relations. They keep the planetary eco-environment within the limits of the life measure and the conditions for its development. (Ivlev, et al., 2016).

Such cultural and communicative eco-environment is not formed directly in the flow of information and technological dimensions; therefore it does not directly depend on their internal accelerating time and extensions, which conveys the processes of informatization. This is the result of human meaningful connections that create, develop, transmit and preserve a type of the world view; humanity as the real subject in the era of globalization; culture as ways of activity of the Earth subject with all its history, including the highest achievements in the sphere of spiritual existence; society as an approval condition of environmental, economic, moral, aesthetic, legal, political and other social relations; nature and space as the major and irremovable constants, dictating the pace and rhythms of the holistic eco-environment development. Only the nature and the cosmos that have been shown in works of cosmo-philosophers regulate the intensification of the information flow in the modern world within certain limits, being natural constraints, restraining the increasing flow of information in the space of communication and producing in them a permanent selection of constructive and destructive, promising and not having cultural and natural perspectives of human lives of the earth.

Research Questions

In the study, in the state of the modern cultural and communicative environment, the authors have raised the following research issues. What selection criterion for the flow of information is effective in the communicative environment, what categories can be used to describe the processes occurring in the modern cultural and communicative environment in the system of philosophical discourse and to outline the ways of solving the problems of communicative environment functioning and development.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to research contemporary cultural and communicative environment as a systemic element of modern society from the point of view of ecophilosophical outlook.

Research Methods

When writing this article, the authors, on the basis of a holistic philosophical methodology, used methods of synthesis of data and conclusions received from previous researchers. Starting points of the research are the concepts of human – the subject of the information space, as a bio-socio-cultural being, as the whole of the ecosystem, as the unity of the individual, the society and the nature. The most important principle in this research is that of the world integrity, its internal unity, as well as the concept of a substantial expansion of the role and place of the information in the existence of objective reality, in terms of reducing the status of the physical processes in comparison with the status of information, which is the basis for formation of substantial properties, processes, relations and objects in society.

Findings

The criterion and the basis for the selection of information flows in communicative space are ecophilosophy – the direction of modern philosophy that explores the problem of human at the universe level, in his harmonic relations with the external and internal world aimed at maintaining the ecosystem as an integrity.

Thus, ecophilosophy from the position of the anthropic principle develops a paradigm of cognition on the basis of a new type of rationality - ecological rationality. The ecophilosophical approach of the logic, designed in the analysis of the cultural and communicative environment, is focused on the preservation of cultural and information-exchange diversity, aspirations for the world sustainability and the harmony between the nature and culture.

The approval of general principles in communication standards is the way to overcome the violations which are one of the sources of global issues growth. Today it can not be solved only by using the financial investments or means, active environmental policies, ethical and business codes, etc. It is obvious that these means will not be effective without their interaction with the ecophilosophic paradigm for transformations in order to form the communicative environment. In this aspect, an important methodological role is played by such emphasized concepts as the space of cultural and communicative environment, which prospects and constructive views are defined in the following points.

Firstly, it includes ecological and cultural constants that specify the boundaries of the space availability. Therefore, it is a complexly-structured norm, which regulates the process and directions of these communications development. And since this norm is set not only for subject’s immediate tasks, but also for its organic and not technological connections with the natural environment, it becomes obligatory for a person and it can not be cancelled by him. The recognition and development of this space determination are included into the content of communicative culture. But this means that the space of the cultural-communicative eco-environment, along with relational features, preserves its substantive foundations, acting in eco-cultural communications as some law or a constant of the communicative environment continuum.

Secondly, the space of the cultural and communicative eco-environment, as it includes the target orientation of the connection between nature and culture, corrects any processes of relevant communication from the point of view of its internal time. In this case, as A.Toffler (Toffler, 1990) has shown, there are restrictions for unlimited acceleration of information processes; otherwise, the communication subjects are not able to comprehend their continuously- updated life environment.

Thirdly, the space of cultural and communicative eco-environment adjusts the communications that constantly form and sets the criterion for life support. Due to it, only vital information communications, cultural and redundant flows of communications do not destroy within the eco-cultural norm human interaction with nature, they do not generate such destructive-aggressive and false worlds-simulacra, which is aimed at destroying people connections, culture and nature in their unity.

Of course, the regulatory role of space in organizing cultural and communicative eco-environment is revealed also in other directions. However, the initial directions of determination of the revealed here are relevant to the contemporary world, requiring their further specification. Here the authors speak about the formation in the modern communicative environment of a planetary eco-responsibility, which includes the development of eco-rationality, ecological ethics and aesthetics, changes in the consumption norms and other parameters.

One of the effective tools of cultural and communicative regulation of eco-environment has become media culture, which covers all communications, including the media. On the basis of its use, a new ecology of Human and Culture can be formed, eliminating the tendency of dehumanization existence. The problem of regulating the orientation of the space-time continuum of culture through the processes of media communications, may be solved in the context of the eco-oriented development.

But for this a new philosophical paradigm of communication is required, which would include the ecology of media culture as the worldview and the knowledge of connection between media culture and a human and the Earth as an environment and a habitat. (in different aspects - social, psychological, economic, technological, medical), which determines the optimal conditions of human existence. In this sense, the ecology of media culture acts as a logical extension of these tools of social control and adjustment of outlook, which is focused on ascending to the norms of classical culture. These norms existed everywhere and in every era (in Russia, in western and eastern civilizations), providing a humanistic vector of cultural impact. The strategy of humanistic development and potential of Russia lies in the development of the traditional categories of culture, such as sophiness and unity. Following the ethical stance of philosophy of Russian cosmism, using media tools, Russia is able to open and comprehend, not to compose and design, the planetary processes of noospheric self-consciousness, the spiritual and planetary determination of the fate of man and humanity.

This allows us to identify the initial and key features of the function of media-culture ecology in the space of communications. First of all, the value-orientation function appears, the meaning of which is a peculiar clarification of space of mass communications and their reorientation to the higher sense of culture. On this basis, it is possible to form a subject who uses professionally the media technology for his nature perfection, the growth of demand, interests and cultural level; a subject aimed to humanistic forms of self-realization.

The other function is inseparably connected with the world outlook formation of planetary humanity, including on the basis of the Internet megaprojects use, which will bring the content of true and high culture into the communication space, fulfilling enlightening functions and humanizing the worldview. Comprehending the ecology of media communications as a space-time of their communication, a person can become a carrier and a conductor of cosmoplanetary relations on the basis of development of the intellect and Culture, taking personal responsibility for the state of nature and society, for transforming the content of communication networks and communicative strategies of the information society.

Conclusion

Research related to the study areas and criteria of spatial determination of cultural-communicative eco-environment are relevant in conditions of seeking the most successful and effective ways of the development of human society. They seem to act as a basis of methodological and philosophical searches for approval planetary environmental responsibility of mankind for the content, forms and directions of the functioning of modern communication systems, as well as philosophical guidelines for the development of communicativistics, further development of its problems, analysis of heuristic ideals, methods of cognition, preserving man and humanity on the Earth with a natural and cultural variety.

From the authors’ point of view, the formation on this basis of metaculture of ethical orientation, in which communication environment of the information society is formed, can become the ground for the idea of a worthy development of Russia and the world.

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