Fruitful cooperation and interaction between the subject committees of OTPC ONTU and the departments of ONTU continues constantly. On 18 February 2025, lecturers of the Subject Committee for Social Sciences and Humanities Raisa Spirzhenko and Viktor Myroshnychenko, with the support of the Deputy Director for Educational and Extracurricular Work Tetiana Kopaihorodska and the Head of the Economics Division Yuliia Voronkova, organised a meeting of ONTU lecturers with students of the Economics Division. With the assistance of the Head of the Department of Public Administration of ONTU, Olena Nikoliuk, a lecture was organised by Olha Vakhtanhivna Purtskhvanidze, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences (PhD) and Associate Professor of the department. Olha Vakhtanhivna delivered a vivid and rich presentation, “Multiculturalism in the Modern World”, to students of groups 2 TT, 2 IM and 2 OB-FB, which provoked a lively discussion among the students and lecturers present.
The relevance of the talk stems from the fact that the problem of cultural diversity in our world often gives rise to difficult challenges. The importance of this problem is also confirmed by the report of the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD), which notes that about a billion people (one in seven inhabitants of the Earth) belong to a group that in one form or another becomes a victim on the basis of ethnic, racial, religious or, more broadly, “cultural” grounds.
The term “multiculturalism” itself is considered to have entered scientific usage at the end of the 1980s. It meant a respectful attitude of the majority of the population towards minorities, the equal status of different cultural customs, and an individual’s right to choose their identity. In a multicultural society, a person preserves their uniqueness despite the influence of other cultures. An analysis of the main socially significant components of culture (cognitive, normative and value-based, evaluative, behavioural, etc.) shows that every individual can belong to several cultures, that members of minorities can fully integrate into society while preserving at least in part the set of their own ethnocultural, psychological, value-based and other specific nationally conditioned characteristics. Multiculturalism means the symbiosis within a single political society of several important civilised groups that wish to, and in principle are able to, renew their distinctive identity.
At the end of the meeting, those present expressed deep gratitude to Olha Vakhtanhivna and agreed on new meetings and discussions on topical issues of our time.