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AbstractThe cosmopolitan sociology of Ulrich Beck has been widely recognized as making vital contributions to crosscutting conversations on globalization and transnational studies, including these debates that are being played out on the pages of Global Networks. Beck's impassioned critique of 'methodological nationalism' in his own discipline of sociology, in particular, has often served as a springboard for programmatic calls to attend more closely to transnational actors, issues, and processes. However, beyond the occasional acknowledgement, comparatively less attention has been paid so far to the potentialities, specificities, and practicalities of Beck's affirmative alternative vision for the socio‐cultural sciences, that of 'methodological cosmopolitanism'. Building on and extending out from research experiences obtained in Beck's East Asia and Europe‐focused Cosmopolitan Climate Change (Cosmo‐Climate) project, this special theme brings together experts from across a range of socio‐cultural research fields to discuss and critically interrogate the challenges and capacities of doing methodological cosmopolitanism.

The purpose of the article is to consider and reveal the peculiarities of socio-cultural "turn" in public relations science on the example of functionalism critics, postmodern influences, and cultural appropriation in the XXI century. The research methodology is based on a paradigmatic approach in science that helps to reveal the context and dynamics of the transition from the functional paradigm, whose representatives reduce public relations to a "management function" and level the potential of the "cultural function" of the industry, till sociocultural in the measures of which public relations are an influential social and cultural practice in the modern world. Besides, in the article the Cultural Studies methodological tool kit was applied that helped to reveal the problem of cultural approbation in the way of post-colonialism and the role of PR campaigns in the (re)production of a postmodern understanding of consumption. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the article reveals the peculiarities of the cultural or socio-cultural "turn" in the science of public relations in the context of criticising the functional approach. Conclusions. It was found that the sociocultural "turn" and the related criticism of the epistemological and ideological foundations of the functional approach, which reduces PR to the organisational function of companies in order to increase their efficiency and attractiveness on the market, drew the attention of researchers in the field to the methodological potential anthropology, sociology, post-colonialism, cultural studies, feminism, political economy, among others, as well as scholars from other disciplinary fields to the problem of testing their own tools in PR theory and practice. It was proved that the socio-cultural "turn" is a movement of thought from understanding public relations as a functional process in an organisational context to its perception as a cultural practice and "intermediary" in cultural appropriation, in the creation of meanings and constitution of a hyper-real environment.

Abstract:The main part of the philosophical activity of Charles Taylor may be characterized as philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology is above all an attempt to overcome what he calls the epistemological construal i. e. a set of false anthropological beliefs spread in the modern western philosophy like: disengaged subject, the punctual self and social atomism. His critique of the anthropological beliefs draws, among other thinkers, heavily on Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on language and his social nature in Philosophical Investigations. To the disengaged subject and punctual self Taylor opposes the embodied subject, a human agent that is impossible to define without his language depending entirely on the "form of life", an inescapable social context in which he is embedded. Thus Taylor emphasizes the basic connection between the self and the community, which is being falsely compromised by social atomism. This emphasis on the community, on the essential role of the link between individual and his social environment rank him among so called communitarians, the critics of the predominant individualistic liberal way of thinking. In his more recent works, especially A Secular Age Taylor reflects on the phenomenon of secularization of the modern West. Here the notion, inspired partially by Wittgenstein, of "background" – an implicit framework for the beliefs of an agent – plays an important role. The following text will show more in detail the most important Wittgensteinian inspirations in the philosophical reflection of Charles Taylor considering modern western culture.

Discusses aspects of the use of reproduction models in sociological analysis. (AM)