Safonov, A. L. Nation and Ethnos as Essentially Different Social Phenomena: the New Paradigm of Sociogenesis

Abstract: The author of the article discusses essential relations, differences and similarities of nation and ethnos as the two scientific categories of the social and philosophical discourse and as social communities that actually exist in the reality and describes their ontological grounds. The author also touches upon peculiarities of the processes of ethno-genesis and nation-genesis including the processes of ethno-cultural fragmentation of nations under the conditions of globalization and multi-culturalization, discusses the role of nations and ethnos as systematically important social group actors in the processes of formation, transformation and differentiation of the modern global society and provides an insight into the theories of socio-genesis, their classification and methodological concepts. The researcher carries out a comparative social and philosophical analysis of the main concepts of socio-genesis in terms of nation and ethnos as the actually existing phenomena of social reality and categories of the social and philosophical discourse studied in the process of their historical development. The author establishes a hypothesis about the qualitative difference between ethnos and nation as long-existing different social communities which genesis is related to different spheres of social existence, in particular, spheres of everyday life for ethnos and political spheres for nation. Results of the comparative analysis of the theories of socio-genesis show that a sustainable dualism of the theoretical approaches to the genesis of social communities (constructivism-primordialism) reflects the non-similarity of nation and ethnos as continuously stable phenomena of different social nature.

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