In Search for New Research Paradigms

Abstract

Permanent socio-cultural transformations, reflection on which is the main scope of Changing Societies & Personalities, continue to generate social theories with their own methodologies for constructing and representing social reality. The poly-paradigmatic nature of contemporary social knowledge implies its embeddedness in various theoretical systems that create alternative pictures of the world. On the one hand, social knowledge is pluralistic, that is, allowing for a plurality of equivalent explanatory concepts; on the other, it is interdisciplinary, that is, irreducible to the methodology of a single social or humanities discipline. The paradigms of social knowledge are immanently linked to social, political, economic and cultural contexts of a particular society. Structurally, these paradigms comprise not only explicit (conscious), but also hidden (unconscious) elements. The articles presented in the current issue of Changing Societies & Personalities demonstrate all these qualities: they are based on different conceptual foundations; they reflect specific features of the current state of the described societies; they are self-critical and leave room for further research. In thе article Knowledge: From Ethical Category to Knowledge Capitalism, Dmitry M. Kochetkov and Irina A. Kochetkova assert that contemporary economics considers knowledge as one of the main factors in economic growth, along with scientific and technological progress. The economic interpretation of knowledge is currently changing, and a new neoliberal paradigm of science and higher education is emerging. The authors aim to define “knowledge” as an economic category in comparison with various knowledge-based economic concepts. The authors analyze the learning economy where learning “is understood not simply as an access to information but as acquisition of certain knowledge and skills”; they describe the knowledge economy as an economic system where “knowledge is a key factor (or resource) in production and economic growth”. They examine the economics of scientific knowledge (ESK), an approach to understanding science, which relies on the concepts and methods of economic analysis in the study of the epistemic nature and value of scientific knowledge.