Civilization as an Inter-Ethnic Community: The Experience of Conceptualization

The article highlights and critically evaluates the existing models of describing civilization in terms of its internal ethnic diversity. It is concluded that these models are not capable of removing the theoretical problem of the unity of civilization. The idea of considering civilization as an interethnic community that acts as a product of cooperative and conflict interactions of ethno-social entities is justified as a variant of solving this problem. It is shown that the state and nature of these interactions largely determine the development trends of civilizations – the largest sociocultural units of the world-historical process.

Keywords: civilization, ethnic diversity, interethnic community, models of unity, sociocultural dynamics.