To the question of the status of the “island” approach in the domestic scientific civilizational discourse

The article is of a theoretical nature and is aimed at clarifying the scientific weight of the “island” approach of V. Tsymbursky and S. Khatuntsev in the context of considering the domestic civilizational discourse. Within the Russian scholarly community, there are proponents of both major paradigms that initiate a certain vision of civilizational phenomenon: the universalist-evolutionary and the local-relativist. The island approach, leaning towards the second, nevertheless does not deny a certain universal component (the concept of “urban revolution”). The strengths of the analyzed concept are its potential for methodological flexibility, as well as a certain emphasis on the study of intermediate territories, the processes in which are comparable in their significance with those occurring in the civilizational core. The author concludes that the island approach is one of the most “working” within the Russian civilizational discourse.