The relevance of this study lies in the need for historical reflection on successful models of intercivilizational dialogue, particularly the accommodation strategy that demonstrates the efficacy of cultural interaction. The focus is on the musical component of Matteo Ricci's mission in China, which remains a peripheral topic in the study of the particular style of musical thinking within Chinese culture. The aim of this research is to identify the philosophical and cultural foundations of the musical dimension of Ricci's mission and to describe them within the context of the cultural accommodation techniques he employed. To achieve this, the following objectives were set: 1) to systematize available data on China's first “musical encounter” with Europe and refine approaches to understanding the initial appearance of European music in China; 2) to identify the prerequisites for Ricci's use of musical activity as a missionary tool; 3) to clarify factual information regarding dates, names of musical instruments, compositions, and other aspects of Ricci's mission relevant to the topic; 4) to describe the communicatively significant outcomes of the musical “interaction” between Ricci and the Wanli Emperor, Chinese scholars, and officials; 5) to establish how the Jesuits utilized elements of European music theory in teaching the Chinese language. The research materials included primary sources, commentaries, and scholarly literature in Chinese and European languages pertaining to the theme of the “first encounter” between European music and Chinese culture. The methodology is based on a synthesis of hermeneutic analysis of compared texts (Ricci's works, letters, Latin and Chinese sources) and the principles of historical-cultural anthropology, enabling the reconstruction of symbolic meanings and communicative intentions embedded in musical practices. A comprehensive interdisciplinary approach was applied, combining perspectives from the philosophy of culture, history, musicology, semiotics, and linguistics. Hermeneutic analysis of the texts employed biographical and historical-genetic methods, as well as techniques for comparing corresponding European and Chinese names for instruments. The results demonstrate that music served as a key component of Ricci's missionary strategy due to its worldview significance in Chinese culture, its relative accessibility, the permissibility of using a “musical” form of preaching among the Chinese elite, and the rich potential for accommodating musical material to their worldview and ethical frameworks. These findings can be summarized as follows:1. Ricci's mission successfully overcame initial misunderstanding and rejection through a well-chosen initial accommodation strategy, in which music played a significant role. 2. The use of music as a specific “code” for evangelization was determined by Ricci's affiliation with the Jesuit Order and his education, which included music as a significant component. 3. Comparing a wide range of available data suggests with a high degree of probability that the first Western instrument brought to China by Matteo Ricci was a harpsichord, not a clavichord. Furthermore, discrepancies in existing data regarding the appearance of the first European instrument in China can be resolved by comparing key sources with known biographical facts: based on this, the construction year of the first Catholic church in mainland China was 1585, not 1583. 4. The gradual development of a “musical” dialogue with the Chinese elite led Ricci to closer interaction with its representatives based on technical interest in musical instruments, as well as the development of mutual respect due to a convergence of moral ideas embedded in the texts of Ricci's “Songs”. It is evident that the musical solutions in these works did not contradict the norms of Chinese scholarship, and that musical practices (performance, gifting of instruments, creation of song texts) were not merely a form of symbolic exchange but also a diplomatic gesture aimed at demonstrating intellectual and aesthetic equality between cultures. 5. Thanks to the “musical component” of Ricci's mission, the Jesuits created and expanded a strategy of using elements of European music theory in the process of teaching Chinese as a tonal language, which requires sound production and recognition techniques uncommon in European languages. Further study of the functional role of Western European music as an instrument of cultural accommodation, and subsequently adaptation, in the context of Chinese culture's interaction with foreign cultural environments can contribute to developing a more complete picture of the historical and contemporary pathways for interaction between representatives of Chinese culture and non-Chinese partners.

The article analyzes the problem of compiling dictionaries of ethnic cultural concepts. Such dictionaries are currently almost absent in Russian scholarship. To address this issue, the following tasks are undertaken: to examine debated fields within Russian linguoculturology, to clarify the contribution of concept dictionaries to the study of ethnic culture and language, to analyze publications dedicated to specific ethnic cultures or regions of Russia, and to formulate the main organizational and research challenges. Accordingly, the source base of this problem-oriented overview study consists of scientific publications on related topics, as well as existing concept dictionaries and thematically related editions, directly aligned with the study objectives. Russian linguoculturology possesses a rich theoretical foundation, including the capacity to develop and investigate concepts of various linguocultures and compile concept dictionaries in philological and cultural studies directions. However, a philological disciplinary bias and the predominance of research on Russian culture have been noticeable in the main trends and debates of this field over the past two decades. Studies of cultural concepts outside the philological scope remain scarce despite the example of Yu. S. Stepanov’s 1997 concept dictionary, which is regarded as exemplary. The cultural studies approach to cultural concepts allows for a broader consideration of both concepts and dictionaries than in philological works, considering not only textual sources but also sociocultural practices. Although comprehensive dictionaries of concepts do not exist, several projects focused on Bashkir and Tuvan cultures in the field of ethnocultural conceptualization are noted and recommended for consideration. The authors of such works in Russian scholarship are almost exclusively ethnocultural insiders working in national regions. Special attention is given to problems in regional science: the shortage of specialists, difficulties in collaboration between philologists, cultural scholars, and ethnographers, as well as institutional and sociocultural barriers for researchers working in the regions. This highlights the ongoing challenges faced by scholars in developing dictionaries of ethnic cultural concepts across Russian regions.

The relevance of studying religious coping strategies (RCS) is due to the growing scholarly interest in the role of religiosity as a factor in stress management and the demand for coping methods that perceive religiosity as a psychological protective mechanism. Despite a wealth of empirical studies on RCS, the field lacks comprehensive theoretical development. This paper aims to reconstruct the complex religious model within this theory and clarify its role in fostering an integrative theory of personality. To achieve this aim, the following objectives were set: 1) to trace the genesis of the concept of religious coping strategies; 2) to highlight and describe the most significant research on this phenomenon, identifying relationships and continuity between various scholarly approaches; 3) to delineate the key tenets of Kenneth Pargament's theory of religious coping, which remains the most developed framework to date; 4) to systematize current multidisciplinary approaches to RCS (primarily from psychology, sociology, and philosophy);  5) to identify the underlying attitudes that structure personal experience to refine the definition of religious coping strategies. The research is based on an analysis of scientific literature on coping and religious coping strategies. The methodology employs classification techniques followed by an analytical review of theoretical concepts and empirical studies, which allows us to trace the evolution of understanding RCS from H. Selye's early stress research to contemporary typologies of RCS. The methods of theoretical reconstruction and case study were also applied. As a result of the study, a conceptual model for the theory of religious coping is proposed. This model integrates elements from the psychology, sociology, and philosophy of religion, facilitating a dynamic and constructivist approach to developing an integrative theory of personality. In conclusion the genesis of the concept of religious coping strategies demonstrates a gradual shift from a purely instrumental to a more philosophical understanding. Researchers from diverse psychological schools are united by their common reference to the concept of personality in studying RCS. K. Pargament's comprehensive theory of religious coping strategies advances to the level of dynamic, rather than essentialist, philosophical generalizations. While the psychological perspective predominates in Pargament's theory, it also reaches philosophical levels of abstraction and offers solutions to sociological problems. Reconstructing the current model of religious coping theory must account for the constructivist interpretation of religion as an element of personal experience in human-world interaction, while also incorporating the enduring relevance of Fritz Heider's attribution theory and the focus on sourcing value resources from the transcendent, as emphasized by modern Jungian schools. Thus, refining the definition of religious coping strategies necessitates the identification of implicit personality models that underpin specific research in this field. Conversely, analyzing approaches to personality conceptualization must incorporate an understanding of religious coping practices.

The philosophical and theological legacy of Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344), better known as Gersonides or Ralbag, remains significant. Based on the study of the original text of Ralbag’s treatise Wars of the Lord, the article aims to identify and reconstruct the main principles of biblical exegesis employed by the Jewish philosopher. These principles were used to construct a vision of the creation of the world, which would correlate with both the Torah and the teachings of Aristotle as known to Jewish theological thought through Arab philosophers. Gersonides considered himself a follower of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). Gersonides’s commentaries on the Torah and biblical commentaries and excerpts from the second part of the Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides were also studied to create a more complete picture of the exegetical methods used by Ralbag. It was shown that the basic principles of exegesis used by Ralbag to interpret the sacred text in a philosophical manner are: (1) the Torah is understood as a perfect law, containing no false teachings; (2) philosophical reasoning must be consistent with what the Torah teaches; (3) rigorous lexical and grammatical analysis of the religious text contributes to a clear understanding of the Torah; (4) the passages in sacred books are explained by using available knowledge about nature. It is shown that the main method used by Ralbag to interpret the biblical text is the distinction between the narrow and broad meanings of words, with subsequent examples of the use of these meanings in the Tanakh. These distinctions are applied in the first part of Bereshit (Genesis) to words such as beginning, earth, tohu and bohu, spirit [of God], light, dark, firmament of the heavens, water. Gersonides also provides examples of the use of these meanings throughout the Tanakh. Using this method, Gersonides builds an essentially Platonic scheme of the creation of the world while employing Aristotelian natural philosophical terminology. The primary source texts used in the article are also presented in Russian for the first time.

The Orthodox area of Poland, geographically extensive but numerically insignificant, represents a particularly interesting phenomenon in terms of its confessional, linguistic and cultural specificity. This study focuses on how the image of modern Russia and the concept of the Russian world are reflected in public opinion in Poland. These reflections are widely represented and are not limited to media publications alone. The goal of this study is to determine the main vectors through which these phenomena are assessed, based on cases that have become part of public discourse in Poland, especially among those who assess the area of Polish Orthodoxy from within the Polish Orthodox community itself. The objectives of the study are as follows: 1) to substantiate a relevant methodology for analyzing public opinion in the light of expert assessments of one of the parties to the public discussion; 2) to clarify modern approaches to the concept of the Orthodox Pole and to reveal the institutional features of Polish Orthodoxy; 3) to describe the specifics of the phenomenon of Russophobia as one of the variants of the negative image of Russia and to identify its historical foundations and modern emphases in Polish society; 4) to identify the linguocultural specifics of current processes in modern Polish Orthodoxy based on confessional vocabulary, as well as to determine the evaluative linguocultural markers associated with the peculiarities of the perception of Polish Orthodoxy through the lens of the image of Russia and the Russian world in modern Poland; 5) to establish the specifics of Polish societal attitudes towards the Cyrillic alphabet as a shared heritage of the Slavic peoples in the context of modern national-cultural, confessional and ethno-religious distinctions. The study is based on comparative and axiological approaches and uses the methods of imagology and linguacultural studies. Specific research methods of expert interviews, discourse and SWOT analysis, and the case study method are also used. The research materials include publications of Polish media (including Orthodox ones), journalism, fiction, philosophical and scientific works, as well as expert assessments of problems related to Orthodoxy in Poland and the perception of the image of Russia and the Russian world in the country. As a result, the study reveals the existence of a civilizational rift running along the line of self-identification of Orthodox Poles, one of the key markers of which, paradoxically, is the attitude to Russian culture. The study substantiates the role of imagology and linguacultural studies in the analysis of the specifics of public opinion, which today is based on the image of Russia and the Russian world, even within the framework of Polish Orthodoxy. Analysis of approaches to the very concept of an Orthodox Pole reveals a shift in its content from the ethno-confessional specification to community’s self-description in the language of national-cultural and civil identity. In turn, a clarification of the influence of the institutional features of modern Polish Orthodoxy shows the presence of “fractures” (for example, the problem of recognizing the legitimacy of receiving autocephaly from the Patriarch of Constantinople or Moscow) in the very organizational structure of this confession. As a result, Russophobia is intensifying in the form of objectifying the negative image of Russia, multiplying stereotypes and complicating the processes of self-perception for Orthodox Poles themselves. The linguocultural specificity of modern Polish Orthodoxy is reflected in evaluative polarities within its own self-perception, because of which the images of Russia and the Russian world often take on a pejorative role. At the same time, the Cyrillic alphabet, perceived through lenses of science, church life and politics as the shared heritage of the Slavic peoples, the custodian of which is Poland, has clearly positive connotations among Poles.

The article analyzes the debate on migration policy, integration, and cultural and national identity in the Danish media during the 1990s–2010s. The relevance of the study is determined by the significance of this phenomenon for the current national migration policy. The purpose of the study is to examine trends in the public debate on migration and national identity, and to reveal a correlation between the mass media coverage and political development in the country over those decades. To achieve this goal, the study fulfills the following objectives: outlines the background of the issue; points out key directions in the debate; identifies the main viewpoints and traces their evolution during the debate; detects links between the debate and the political process, as well as its role in shaping subsequent political developments in the country. The work, based on a large corpus of Danish press and social media texts, employs the method of content analysis. The chosen chronological framework is justified by the fact that during this period the migration debate in Denmark became particularly dynamic and intense, leading to significant political and administrative changes. Thirty years of public debate have had an impact on both public opinion and national policies towards foreigners. The study revealed that over the course of three decades the migration debate evolved alongside changes in Denmark’s social and political life, with rhetoric gradually tightening. At the same time, within this context, migration legislation was steadily tightened. The stages of the debate’s development were identified, and the connection between key trigger events and changes in the nature and themes of the discussion were traced. Such events include phenomena of different orders: the expansion of migration flows, legislative initiatives in the sphere of migration policy, the emergence of new parties, terrorist attacks — all of which directly influenced the perception of migrants by the native population of the country. The study concludes that there is a mutual influence between public debate and political reality. Although migration had traditionally been a key issue for right-wing parties, the major beneficiary of the debate was the Social Democratic Party — which recognized the situation and chose the right moment to shift its policy.

The relevance of studying the translations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) into the Russian language is due not only to the novels continued popularity worldwide, including in Russia, but also to a cultural dimension of interest: its transfer into different cultural landscapes. One of the important layers of studying this problem from our point of view is an appeal to methods of analyzing the image of Mr. Darcy, which focus discussions on the horizon of interpretations of culturally given meanings both in English literature itself and in its reception abroad. This article explores how the cultural semantics of Mr. Darcy’s character are conveyed into Russian through two key translations of the book — the first by I. Marshak (1967) and the most recent by A. Livergant (2023) — which together with the original novel Pride and Prejudice serve as the material for the study. The purpose of the study is to establish the possibilities and limits of translating the cultural names (culturonyms) used in Jane Austen's original text to describe the character of Mr. Darcy into Russian. To achieve that goal the study aims to: (1) identify the main features of Austen’s literary reception in Anglophone culture; (2) clarify the scope and transformation of the so-called “Austen cult”; (3) analyze the reception of Austen’s work in Russia, with attention to the perception of her novels, namely the translations of Pride and Prejudice, as “women’s fiction”; (4) compare selected lexical and stylistic strategies used to convey Mr. Darcy’s image in the original text and in Marshak’s and Livergant’s translations. Based on the theories of pragmatic and stylistic equivalence, interpretative and imagological approaches are used in line with the results of the analysis of culturonyms. Biographical, comparative-historical, textual-critical, and autoethnographic methods are also employed. As a result of the study, it was established that Marshak’s translation of the novel to a greater extent takes into account the ambivalence of meanings inherent in such cultural names as “noble”, “rudeness”, “pride”, “confidence”, etc. The translation made by A. Livergant demonstrates a narrowing of the semantic horizon of these concepts to meet the task of adapting the text to the modern cultural situation, significantly simplifying the original culturally significant contexts. In Conclusion, firstly, the key features of the perception of J. Austen's novels in the English-speaking cultural space relate to the line of divergence between scientific approaches to studying the significance of this author in English literature and, on the other hand, the popularization of the images she created, primarily through the film adaptations of her novels. Secondly, the phenomenon of “Janeism” (“Austen cult”), which has been traced in literature for more than a century, has today gone far beyond the framework of “strict” literary imitation, spreading Austen’s psychologism, attention to culturally significant details, and sharp social and everyday satire to other themes, plots, types and genres of art. Thirdly, in Russia, the writer's work received wide recognition mainly through the film adaptations of the novel Pride and Prejudice, which led to its deliberately simplified assessment as “women's prose”; at the same time, the depth of perception of Austen's prose was ensured primarily by literary translations of the novel. Finally, the identified culturonyms characterizing the image of Mr. Darcy in the original text allow us to consider I. S. Marshak's translation as more in line with the task of a “rich description” of English culture by means of the Russian language, while A. Livergant's translation represents a variant of cultural adaptation that emphasizes the demands of modern mass culture for emotionally charged evaluation and structural simplicity of possible interpretations of the initially multi-layered cultural meanings.  Both types of translations, however, construct ideas about the “old” English culture, overcoming some stereotypes and creating new ones, which, in light of the theory of translation equivalence (more precisely, the unattainability of complete equivalence in any translation), opens up the possibility of both scientific and readerly interactive interaction with the text, echoing Austen’s own strategy of challenging entrenched social and cultural biases and overcoming prejudices.

From the early 2000s to the present, characters who can be identified as Muslims have become widespread in the Swedish film industry. Religious themes have always occupied a special place in Swedish cinema, but during this period the cultural discourse associated with Islam has changed. The aim of this study is to identify strategies for constructing images of Islam and Muslims in the Swedish film industry from 2000–2024. To achieve this goal it was necessary to first assess the degree to which the issue of the image of Muslims in world and Swedish cinema is problematized in connection with the demands of cultural diplomacy and the theory of soft power; second, to establish the structural features of the phenomenon known as “Islamic cinema”; third, using specific material, describe the techniques for creating and the features of interpreting film images as possible sources of stereotypes introduced into public opinion. This required combining the optics of a comprehensive cultural studies approach with discourse analysis and SWOT analysis applied to the visual materials of Swedish feature films, media publications (critical articles, interviews, etc.), as well as analytical scientific articles and published surveys conducted by various public organizations on the issues under investigation. The study concluded that there are three main strategies for constructing the image of Islam and Muslims in Swedish cinema: positive, negative and conditionally neutral. These film images influence public opinion and create both, consciously and unconsciously as well as directly and indirectly, a significant part of the agenda discussed by society, while simultaneously acting as a kind of brand of Swedish culture abroad. Cinematic discourse extends beyond direct discussions of films, although measurements of the influence of films on the audience show the absence of straightforward assessments such as 'good' or 'bad,'. More often, we are talking about problematization through the initial fixation of attention on topics related to traditional moral concepts and social roles accepted in different communities. As a result, through the expansion of the area of discussions about the role of the Other in culture, polarization of discourses enters public consciousness, which, in turn, sharply raises the question of the cultural role of constructing the Other in the prism of postcolonial studies, when the very fact of otherness is associated with imposed separation and secondary provocation of clashes of counter-discourses, fraught with an increase in social tension. The very structure of Swedish Islamic cinema, which incorporates not only films about Islam and Muslims, but also describes their creators according to their cultural-religious and ethno-religious affiliation, contributes to such separation. This is how the concepts of “immigrant cinema”, “diaspora cinema” and the oxymoron of international Swedish cinema, which is filmed by directors of the first two groups in collaboration with foreign partners, who often also position themselves as followers of Islam, arise. The positive, negative and neutral images created by Swedish cinema are interpreted, reinterpreted, and deconstructed by the professional community, the media, researchers, and viewers. “New Swedish cinema” as an expression of the “migrant problem” in the prism of Islam is gaining popularity all over the world, which makes it necessary to continue researching this phenomenon, including from the standpoint of cultural studies.

The work of David McKitterick, former librarian of Trinity College and now emeritus professor at Cambridge, offers profound insight into bibliophilia and the concept of the book as an object. What is the value of a book? What makes a book rare? Why are some old books so sought after by collectors? The author is among the first to clearly establish a connection between the politics of memory and the book as a physical object of cultural heritage. The common understanding of a book is often limited to its text, rather than its material embodiment. This is partly because a text must be distributed to reach a wide audience. Yet, replication is incompatible with terms like uniqueness or collectible value. Modern cultural studies question the primacy of information over its physical carrier. This new perspective calls for seeing a printed book not merely as a passive vessel for information, but as a “thing in itself”, which demands new methods and approaches. David McKitterick emphasizes that digitization, though increasingly in demand today, strips a book of its material dimension. The availability of digital copies can make readers oblivious to the existence of tangible books. The other extreme is to attribute excessive value to any old book. The author employs the method of historiography to define rarity as the core criterion for a book's value. Rarity involves not only a scarce number of copies but also a wide variety of individual aspects specific to an entire edition or a particular copy. McKitterick's work clearly demonstrates how a rare book, regardless of how we define the term, becomes an object of memory akin to a work of art, reflecting the cultural experience of a country and its generation.

An interview with Dr. Saman Pushpakumara, University of Sri Lanka, discusses the relevance and significance of Marxist philosophy in global and national contexts. The discussion is structured around three key themes. First, Dr. Saman Pushpakumara highlights the historical trajectory of the adaptation of Marxist ideas in Sri Lanka, tracing the path from the anti-colonial struggle to the contemporary political life of the state. Second, the significant political influence of Marxism is confirmed by the recent electoral success of a Marxist-oriented party. Thirdly, this influence illustrates the synthesis of universalist narratives of Marxism and their national interpretations. S. Pushpakumara continues the idea of the transformation of the universal, defending the idea of conditional absolutes balancing between universal principles and contextual interpretation. In this logic, he considers the idea of class justice, which exists today not only as a moral category, but also an instrument for promoting group interests, a form of moral entrepreneurship. In his discussion of higher education, S. Pushpakumara attributes the dominant position of Western analytical philosophy in higher education to the colonial past of South Asian countries. He notes that the dominance of analytical philosophy threatens to marginalize alternative philosophical traditions. This universalist paradigm of globalized science is opposed to sovereign science, which defends the autonomy of regional intellectual thought. Russia is cited as an example of effective resistance to Western dominance. The interview concludes with an argument for developing and strengthening dialogue between Russia and the countries of the Global South. Such dialogue is presented as an alternative project of Eurasian philosophy, promoting the decentralization of knowledge production, in which there will be room for a broader discussion of existential, ethical, and cultural issues.