In the context of contemporary socio-cultural transformations, product design increasingly functions as a key mediator between global artistic trends and local cultural identity. Within this framework, the creative experience of Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campana is examined as a representative case of articulating national cultural codes through the language of contemporary design. The article analyzes the core strategies underlying the Campana brothers’ method, including the deconstruction of traditional materials (such as rattan and recycled objects), the reinterpretation of folk ornaments and craft techniques, as well as the integration of elements of everyday Brazilian culture into the international design context. Particular attention is given to the collaborations with international brands, which are considered for the first time as a systemic component of their creative method aimed at transmitting Brazilian cultural identity on a global scale. The findings demonstrate that the Campana brothers’ creative method generates an original visual language, capable of transcending entrenched cultural clichés and constructing a multilayered image of Brazilian identity within the context of glocalization. An art-historical analysis of specific projects reveals how national traditions are not merely reproduced but are transformed through the lens of contemporary design. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying specific mechanisms of cultural transmission through product design, characteristic of the era of glocalization. The results have theoretical potential for research in the field of visual anthropology, design criticism and cultural studies and may also serve as a methodological framework for promoting national heritage through creative industries. The article contributes to the contemporary discussion on design as a tool of “soft power” in a globalizing world.
This article examines the image of Russia in Spain in the mid-19th century, a pivotal moment when regular diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored after a long interruption. A significant role in shaping and popularizing Russia’s image was played by the Spanish diplomat Juan Valera, whose detailed letters sent to Madrid during his sixmonth stay in Russia not only attracted wide readership but also secured him a reputation of a writer. The study seeks to reconstruct an axiological portrait of the Russian state reflected in Juan Valera’s letters of 1856–1857, with particular attention paid to analyzing the written accounts of his predecessors, envoys of the 18th-century who left extensive reports on their experiences in Russia. The analysis shows that Juan Valera, as well as other Spanish diplomats, tended to interpret Russian reality through a distinctly European lens and tended to exaggerate negative aspects, such as «universal» corruption and «cruelty» at «all levels» of authority, thereby echoing the Western European stereotype of «Russian barbarism». The research draws upon the published letters of Juan Valera and the diary of the Duke of Liria, as well as archival manuscripts of diplomatic reports by the Marquis de Almodóvar, Miguel José de Azanza and Antonio de Colombi, previously only partially introduced into scholarly circulation. The study is carried out within the framework of historical and linguistic imagology and employs discursive, retrospective, and historical-comparative methods of analysis. Ultimately, the findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how enduring images of the Other are constructed, stabilized and transmitted within European diplomatic and cultural discourse.
Quantum physics can be understood as an epistemological rupture that transforms the foundations of modern scientific rationality. In contrast to the Newtonian mechanistic worldview that underpinned universalist notions of progress, objectivity, and control, quantum mechanics introduces uncertainty, contextuality, non-locality, and the constitutive role of observation into scientific knowledge. These features destabilize the image of reality as a unified, hierarchically structured, and fully transparent domain, thereby challenging the epistemic premises of Western universalism. At the cultural level, this rupture finds expression in forms of scientific magical realism, where the quantum world appears as strange, paradoxical, elusive and fundamentally ungraspable. Such representations allow the quantum revolution to be interpreted not only as a theoretical breakthrough in physics but as an internal epistemological transformation of modern rationality itself. The issue is not the abandonment of rationality, but the reconfiguration of its foundations: the acknowledgment of uncertainty, contextuality, and the participatory role of the observer as structural features of knowledge. This shift is comparable to the epistemological tensions identified by postcolonial theory in situations where hegemonic discourses encounter forms of knowledge that cannot be reduced to their universalist logic. In this sense, quantum physics emerges as a form of internal epistemological alterity within Western science: while remaining part of its canon, it simultaneously rearticulates its ontological assumptions and limits its claim to constitute the sole normative regime of rationality. Extending quantum logic into social theory enables a shift from mechanistic social ontology toward a quantum social ontology, in which relationality, co-constitution, and process take precedence over fixed entities and linear causality. This transformation unfolds as a form of passive revolution, in the Gramscian sense: a profound ontological reorientation achieved not through the destruction of disciplinary institutions, but through their gradual conceptual reconfiguration. The epistemological outcome of this shift is the pluralization of knowledge and the emergence of a pluriversal onto-epistemological horizon, where scientific rationality becomes compatible with multiple cosmologies and situated ways of knowing. In this sense, the quantum turn opens a pathway toward the decolonization of knowledge and the rethinking of global order beyond universalist epistemic hierarchies.
In order to overcome regional stability challenges stemming from limited power resources, Latin American states have developed a legalistic foreign policy tradition. The authors highlight an original combination of incentives and constraints shaped by the external environment and analyze the historical, political, and civilizational origins of the foreign policy tradition embodied in a series of influential politico-legal doctrines of regional stability, such as the Drago, Calvo, Tobar, Estrada, Larreta, Saavedra Lamas, and Brum doctrines. They also trace the legalistic approach to historical and political factors, including limited resources for developing a symmetrical response capacity to external challenges, as well as the historical context in which independence was gained prior to the universalization of international legal norms related to decolonization and self-determination of peoples. The authors conceptualize the Iberian intellectual heritage as a civilizational source, emphasizing the role which was played by the School of Salamanca and Enlightenment ideas in shaping the tradition. While the evolution of Latin American foreign policy behavior demonstrates the dominance of the legalistic or Bolivarian tradition, it also reveals an antagonistic Santanderian approach: the former rests on the rule of law whereas the latter is grounded in the principle that might makes right. The authors also conceptualize the situational choice between doctrinal and counter-doctrinal approaches to addressing regional stability challenges as a core dichotomy within Latin American foreign policy. At the core of the methodology applied in the article is a comparative-historical method employed for identifying specific features of the Latin American tradition, alongside methods of historical reconstruction (process tracing) and the systemic approach developed by M.A. Khrustalev.
