The conference "Social Processes in the Countries of the East", held at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences on April 9-11, 2007, was organized by the Department of Comparative Theoretical Research of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was attended by employees of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Bashkir Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and other scientific institutions. The conference participants focused on the problems of the development of Eastern society in the context of globalization, the contradictory consequences of globalization for the countries of the East and (using the terminology of A. Toynbee) those" answers "to the" challenges " of globalization that the countries of the East managed to find. One of these "responses" was the strengthening of the economic power of Asian giants-China and India, the new industrial countries of Asia, and the development of high technologies in these countries. Another "response" to the challenges of globalization is to increase the role of religion and return to traditional, non-Western values. The growing role of the Eastern countries in world development is also associated with the growing confrontation between the Islamic world and the West. The most topical issues of political Islam, Islamic radicalism and extremism, and the perception of Islam in Western countries and in Russia were discussed at the conference. In general, with all the variety of topics of the conference reports, we can distinguish four main areas:: 1) the Eastern society as a whole and especially in the context of globalization, the contradictory consequences of modernization; 2) increasing the role of the Eastern countries in the world economy, the development of a "new economy", high technologies, socio-economic problems of the Eastern countries and such problems as "East and West" and "East in the West". This ... Read more