Ethnicity and tradition in changing communication contexts: a view through the “Galaxies” of Gutenberg, Makljuen and Zuckerberg

Abstract

The article analyzes the phenomena of ethnicity and tradition in the context of the development of society from the traditional type to the globalised one. In the conducted analysis of various approaches to their interpretation, the vulnerable positions of such trends as primordialism, constructivism, and instrumentalism are considered. As an alternative, helping to eliminate controversial points, an attempt is made to use the theories of M.G. Мakljuen and M. Castells. Application of the paradigm of informationalism provides an opportunity to use the optics of communication to analyse the transformation of the semantic and functional content of the cultural/ethnic tradition in the life of society. The influence of the evolution of mass media on the existence of a cultural tradition can be traced within the framework of various social systems: a primitive tribal community and an agrarian society; industrial and post-industrial; globalized and digital society. A comparative analysis of the characteristic features of the social development of each of the types of societies is intended to reveal the factors influencing the transformation of the functional and semantic continuum of traditional/ethnic culture in different eras. Among essential aspects of these changes are the following: changing the role and function of traditional culture in the life of society; transformation of subject-object relations in the communication field that forms ideas about ethnicity and tradition. This, in turn, significantly affects the identification processes at the personal and group levels of the modern society.