«SOFT POWER» AS A COMPONENT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL: UKRAINIAN CONTEXT

Abstract

Abstract. The problems of using the «soft power» phenomenon for the protection and satisfaction of the national interests of Ukraine have been considered. It has been substantiated that «soft power» is not limited to the tools of affirmation of one-sided interests of this or that country in international relations; that is a means of improving society’s openness, increasing its internal and external attractiveness, that is the ability to offer social capital that meets general human needs in the post-modern society to the world. It is stressed that such elements of «soft power» as education, cultural infrastructure of the society, national intellectual resources are among the basic, fundamental pillars of the economy of knowledge, and shall, in their turn, be interpreted in the context of social capital development, the country’s human capacity growth, which is not sufficiently taken into account in the cultural and educational policy development so far. The economic and social components of «soft power» remain largely separated from one another. That is one of the core reasons for the paradox: staying in the group of fifty countries with the best systems of higher education in the world, Ukraine holds very modest places in the global rankings as far as the level of educational and cultural qualifications of its citizens are concerned. It has been pointed out that information technologies in current educational and cultural practices have extremely expanded the opportunities for those factors to influence human development, but, along with that, have created conditions for their transformation into a type of business activity, with substantial financial resources involved in it. Therefore, the issue of the methodology of estimating the economic contribution of educational, cultural, and creative industries into the country’s GDP is highly relevant, since it would help develop clear criteria for the state policy aimed at the development of those domains. The range of problems related to social costs of modernization of educational and cultural activity has been considered. The following conclusion has been substantiated: it is necessary to coordinate the process of modernization of the cultural domain and the educational system of Ukraine with the long-term social and economic development strategy as well as the technological structure of the national economy. The results obtained may be used for the determination of priorities in the state policy of educational and cultural infrastructure modernization. Keywords: soft power, culture, education, human development social capital. JEL Classification I31 Formulas: 0; fig.: 0; tabl.: 1; bibl.: 20.

Keywords

• soft power
• culture
• education
• human development
• social capital