The Intellectual Environment as an Object for Research: Factors of Development and Points of Vulnerability

This article reveals the concept of an intellectual environment as a community of people aimed at creating an intellectual and creative product and connected by a certain communication field. This community is considered as a cumulative subject of production of an innovative product, as a part of the public space, responsible for the production, exchange, distribution and reproduction of intellectual resources. The article provides an overview of existing approaches and concepts used to study this phenomenon, such as “epistemic community,” “intellectual milieu,” “knowledge society,” “Information society,” “knowledge economy”, “free-floating intelligentsia”, “human capital”, “intellectual capital”, etc. The basic factors contributing to the effective development of the intellectual environment are considered: socio-political, economic, communicative, and socio-cultural. Particular attention is paid to the specifics of the Russian tradition of the formation of the intellectual environment, revealing the discontinuous and nonlinear type of its evolution both in relation to the global intellectual environment and in relation to its own intellectual roots and tradition. The specific dual nature of the intellectual field of Russia, associated with the peculiarities of the process of its modernization, is emphasized. In conclusion, the idea is expressed about two possible vectors for the development of the global intellectual environment: segmental and integrative, as an important dilemma of modern international politics.