Anatoly Karmin - Culturology. Short course. Karmin Anatoly Solomonovich Karmin Culturology

This book is a guide to the world of culture. It begins with a conversation about the meaning of the concept of "culture" and ends with a discussion of the concepts of the cultural-historical process developed by the greatest theorists of the 19th-20th centuries. It examines the sign systems of culture, various types of cultural worlds, the main stages in the history of Russian culture and ethno-cultural stereotypes of the Russian people. The structure of culture is analyzed, its various forms and their interrelation are characterized. We are talking about cultural mentality, about spiritual, social and technological culture, about cultural scenarios of activity.
The book is a textbook intended for students and high school students. The popularity of the presentation makes it accessible to a wide range of readers.

The study of the cultural life of various peoples and countries has long been a matter that has attracted the attention of philosophers, historians, writers, travelers, and simply many inquisitive people. However, culturology is a relatively young science. It began to stand out as a special field of knowledge from the 18th century. and acquired the status of an independent scientific discipline in fact only in the 20th century. The very word "culturology" was introduced for its name by the American scientist L. White in the early 1930s.

Culturology is a complex humanitarian science. Its formation expresses the general trend of integrating scientific knowledge about culture. It arises at the intersection of history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethnology, ethnography, art history, semiotics, linguistics, computer science, synthesizing and systematizing the data of these sciences from a single point of view.

In its short history, culturology has not yet developed a unified theoretical scheme that allows one to streamline its content in a fairly strict logical form. The structure of cultural studies, its methods, its relation to certain branches of scientific knowledge remain the subject of discussions in which there is a struggle between very different points of view. The complexity and inconsistency of the situation in which the development of culturology as a science is currently located are, however, not something extraordinary: firstly, in the humanities, such a situation is far from uncommon, and secondly, the very subject of culturology - culture - is the phenomenon is too many-sided, complex and self-contradictory to hope for a historically short period of time to achieve a single, integral and universally recognized description of it (philosophy has not reached this ideal even in three millennia!).

TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PART ONE MORPHOLOGY OF CULTURE
Chapter 1. WHAT IS CULTURE?
§ 1. Culture: word, concept, problem
§ 2. Origin and meaning of the term "culture"
§ 3. Information-semiotic understanding of culture
§ 4. Functions of culture
§ 5. Culture and cultures
Chapter2. SEMIOTICS OF CULTURE
§ 1. Typology of sign systems of culture
§ 2. Natural signs
§ 3. Functional signs
§ 4. Iconic signs
§ 5. Conventional signs
§ 6. Verbal sign systems - natural languages
§ 7. Sign systems of notation
§ 8. The development of sign systems as a historical and cultural process
§ 9. Functions of language in culture
§ 10. Secondary modeling systems
§ 11. Texts and their interpretation
§ 12. An example of the interpretation of a cultural text: the semiotics of the Bronze Horseman.
Chapter 3. CULTURES AND PEOPLES
§ 1. National cultures
§ 2. Ethnocultural stereotypes
§ 3. Europeans
§ 4. Americans
§ 5. Chinese
§ 6. Japanese
§ 7. Russians
§ 8. Is there a national character?
Chapter 4. SOCIO-CULTURAL WORLDS
§ 1. Types of sociocultural worlds
§ 2. Historical types of culture
§ 3. Regional cultures
§ 4. Civilizations
PART TWO ANATOMY OF A CULTURE
Chapter 1. SPACE OF CULTURE
§ 1. Theories and models in science
§ 2. Three-dimensional model of culture
§ 3. Cultural forms
§ 4. Properties of cultural forms
§ 5. Mental field of culture
§ 6. Structure of cultural space
Chapter 2. AXIAL CULTURAL FORMS
§ 1. Cognitive paradigms
§ 2. Value paradigms
§ 3. Regulatory paradigms
Chapter 3. SPIRITUAL CULTURE
§ 1. On the meaning of the concept of "spiritual culture"
§ 2. Mythology
§ 3. Religion
§ 4. Art
§ 5. Philosophy
Chapter 4. SOCIAL CULTURE
§ 1. Features of social culture
§ 2. Moral culture
§ 3. Legal culture
§ 4. Political culture
Chapter 5. TECHNOLOGICAL CULTURE
§ 1. What is technological culture?
§ 2. Technique
§ 3. Science
§ 4. Engineering
Chapter 6. CULTURAL SCENARIOS OF ACTIVITY
§ 1. Variety of cultural scenarios
§ 2. Culture of thinking
§ 3. Culture of communication
§ 4. Work culture
§ 5. Culture of learning
§ 6. Game culture
§ 7. Leisure culture
PART THREE DYNAMICS OF CULTURE
Chapter 1. SOCIETY AND CULTURE
§ 1. Society as a social organism
§ 2. Synergetic approach to understanding society
§ 3. The problem of the genesis of culture
§ 4. Culture and social reality
§ 5. Energy and dynamics of cultural development
§ 6. Culture as a collective intelligence
§ 7. Social conditions of cultural dynamics
§ 8. Spiritual production
§ 9. Culture as a means and culture as an end
Chapter 2. CREATIVITY IS THE DRIVING FORCE OF CULTURE
§ 1. Mythology of creativity
§ 2. The essence of creativity
§ 3. Creative process
§ 4. Sociocultural organization of creative activity
§ 5. Cultural background of creative activity: the attitude of society towards creativity
§ 6. Creative activity and the dynamics of culture
Chapter 3. MECHANISMS OF CULTURAL DYNAMICS
§ 1. Traditional and innovative culture
§ 2. Post-figurative, cofigurative and prefigurative culture
§ 3. Temporal stratification of culture
§ 4. The rhythm of cultural processes
§ 5. Graduality and explosions
§ 6. Synergetic interpretation of cultural dynamics
§ 7. Dynamics of ideals
§ 8. Semiotic processes
§ 9. Structural shifts in the cultural space
§ 10. Interaction of cultures
Chapter 4. CULTURE AND HISTORY
§ 1. Search for patterns of history
§ 2. N. Danilevsky: Russia and Europe
§ 3. O. Spengler: the decline of Europe. 849
§ 4. A. Toynbee: comprehension of history
§ 5. P. Sorokin: social and cultural dynamics
§ 6. M. Kagan: culture as a self-developing system
§ 7. From disunity - to the cultural unity of mankind.
INDEX.

Introduction

Culturology- science and academic discipline, which occupies an important place in the system of higher education. In modern programs of higher education, it acts as one of the main humanitarian disciplines necessary for the training of specialists in various fields. It is impossible to become an educated person without understanding the content of culture, without understanding its problems, without having a sufficiently broad cultural outlook. The study of cultural studies is the way to enrich the spiritual world of the individual.

This book is a textbook written in accordance with the state educational standard of higher education approved by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. vocational education. It can be used by students of all specialties in the process of studying this course.

Cultural studies is a relatively young science. Conventionally, it can be taken as the date of her birth in 1931, when the American professor Leslie White first read a course in cultural studies at the University of Michigan. However, culture became the subject of research long before that. Since ancient times, philosophers have raised and discussed issues related to the study of culture: about the peculiarities of the human way of life in comparison with the way of life of animals, about the development of knowledge and arts, about the difference between the customs and behavior of people in a civilized society and in "barbarian" tribes. . Ancient Greek thinkers did not use the term culture, but gave a meaning close to it to the Greek word paideia(upbringing, education, enlightenment). In the Middle Ages, culture was viewed mainly through the prism of religion. The Renaissance was marked by the division of culture into religious and secular, the comprehension of the humanistic content of culture, and especially art. But only in the XVIII century. - century of Enlightenment - the concept of culture entered into scientific use and attracted the attention of researchers as a designation of one of the most important spheres of human existence.

One of the first terms culture introduced into circulation I. Herder (1744-1803). In his understanding, culture includes language, science, craft, art, religion, family, state.

In the 19th century gradually began to realize the need to develop a science of culture as a special scientific discipline. The English anthropologist and ethnographer E. Taylor titled the first chapter of his book "Primitive Culture" (1871): "The Science of Culture"; at the beginning of the 20th century. the German philosopher G. Rickert published a book entitled "Sciences of nature and the sciences of culture", and the Nobel laureate chemist and philosopher W. Oswald in the book "System of Sciences" proposed the word "culturology" to refer to the doctrine of culture.

To date, culturology has become a fundamental humanitarian science that synthesizes and systematizes the data of philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethnology, ethnography, art history, science of science, semiotics, linguistics, computer science.

AT broad sense cultural studies covers the entire body of knowledge about culture and includes:

philosophy of culture,

theory of culture

cultural history,

cultural anthropology,

sociology of culture,

Applied Cultural Studies,

History of cultural studies.

AT narrow sense culturology is understood general theory of culture, on the basis of which culturological disciplines are developed that study certain forms of culture, such as art, science, morality, law, etc. the same as separate physical sciences (mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, etc.) - with general physics.

The university curriculum of cultural studies is mainly limited to the problems general theory and cultural history.

Part I. Culture as a subject of scientific research

Chapter 1

§ 1.1. Origin and purpose of the term "culture"

In everyday speech, "culture" is a well-known word: we are talking about the Palaces and Parks of Culture, about the culture of service and the culture of life, about museums, theaters, libraries.

But culture is not just a word of ordinary language, but one of the fundamental scientific concepts social and humanitarian knowledge, which plays the same important role in it as the concept of mass - in physics or heredity - in biology. This concept characterizes a very complex and multifaceted factor of human existence, which manifests itself and is expressed in a variety of diverse phenomena. social life called phenomena of culture, and constitutes their common basis.

What is the essence of culture as one of the most important factors of human existence? In order to understand what culture is, it is important to find out how ideas about it developed.

Word "culture" began to be used as a scientific term in historical and philosophical literature European countries from the second half of the eighteenth century. - Age of Enlightenment. Why did the educators need to refer to this term and why did it quickly gain popularity?

One of the most important topics that worried European social thought at that time was the "essence" or "nature" of man. Continuing the traditions of humanism, which originated in the Renaissance, and responding to the social demand of the time associated with the changes taking place then in public life, prominent thinkers in England, France, and Germany developed the idea of historical progress. They sought to understand what it should lead to, how in the course of it the rational free “essence” of a person is improved, how a society should be organized that corresponds to human “nature”. In reflection on these topics, the question arose about the specifics of human existence, about what in people's lives, on the one hand, is due to "human nature", and on the other hand, forms it. This question had not only theoretical, but also practical significance: it was about the development of ideals of human existence, that is, a way of life, the pursuit of which should determine the tasks of social forces fighting for social progress. So, in the eighteenth century. the problem of comprehension entered into social thought specifics of a person's lifestyle. Accordingly, a need arose for a special concept, with the help of which the essence of this problem can be expressed, the idea of the existence of such features of human existence, which are associated with the development of human abilities, his mind and the spiritual world, is fixed. Latin word culture and began to use to denote a new concept. The choice of this particular word for such a function, apparently, was largely facilitated by the fact that in Latin word culture, originally meaning cultivation, processing, improvement (eg. agriculture- tillage), opposed the word nature(nature).

Thus, the term "culture" in the scientific language from the very beginning served as a means by which to express the idea of culture as a sphere of development of "humanity", "human nature", "the human principle in man" - as opposed to natural, elemental, animal life.

However, this idea is open to ambiguous interpretation. The point is that the use of the term culture in this sense, its content leaves it very indefinite: what is the specificity of the human way of life, that is, what is culture?

§ 1.2. Enlightenment understanding of culture

18th century thinkers were inclined to associate the specifics of the human way of life with reasonableness person. Indeed, if the human mind is the main thing that distinguishes it from animals, then it is logical to believe that rationality is the main feature of the human way of life. Therefore, culture is a creation of the human mind. It includes everything that is created by the rational activity of people (“the fruits of enlightenment”). Such was the essence of the Enlightenment understanding of culture.

But does the human mind always serve the good? If he can give rise to both good and evil, should all his deeds be considered an expression of the “essence” of a person and be attributed to cultural phenomena? In connection with such questions, two alternative approaches to the interpretation of culture gradually began to emerge.

On the one hand, it is interpreted as a means of elevating a person, improving the spiritual life and morality of people, correcting the vices of society. Its development is associated with the education and upbringing of people. At the end of the eighteenth - beginning of the nineteenth century. the word "culture" was often considered the equivalent of "enlightenment", "humanity", "reasonableness". Cultural progress was seen as a path leading to the well-being and happiness of mankind. Obviously, in this context, culture appears as something unconditionally positive, desirable, “good”.

On the other hand, culture is seen as the real and historically changing way of life of people, which is due to the achieved level of development of the human mind, science, art, upbringing, education. Culture in this sense, although it means the difference between the human way of life and the animal, it carries in itself both positive, and negative, undesirable manifestations of human activity (for example, religious strife, crime, wars).

The difference between these approaches is based, first of all, on the understanding of culture in the light of the categories of "existent" and "due". In the first sense, culture characterizes then, what is, that is, the real-life way of life of people, as it appears among different peoples at different periods of their history. In the second sense, culture is understood as then, what should be, that is, what should correspond to the “essence” of a person, contribute to the improvement and exaltation of the “truly human principle” in him.

In the first sense, culture is the concept ascertaining, fixing both the advantages and disadvantages of the way of life of people. With such a statement, ethnic and historical features are revealed, which determine the originality of specific historical types of culture and become the subject of special studies. In the second sense, culture is the concept estimated, suggesting the selection of the best, “worthy of a person” manifestations of his “essential forces”. Such an assessment is based on the idea of an “ideal human” way of life towards which mankind is historically moving and only certain elements of which are embodied in cultural values already created by people in the course of the historical development of mankind.

From here, two main directions in understanding culture are born, which still coexist (and often mix): anthropological, based on the first of these approaches, and axiological, which develops the second of them.

§ 1.3. Axiological and anthropological approaches to culture

In the 19th century two approaches to understanding culture have become widespread, which exist at the present time: axiological and anthropological.

At the heart of the axiological (value) approach lies the idea that culture is the embodiment of "true humanity", "truly human being". It includes only that which expresses the dignity of a person and contributes to his development, therefore, not every result of the activity of the human mind can be called a cultural asset. Culture should be understood as the totality of the best creations of the human spirit, the highest spiritual values created by people.

The axiological approach narrows the sphere of culture, referring to it only values, that is, the positive results of people's activities, and excluding from it such phenomena as crime, slavery, social inequality, drug addiction, and many other things that cannot be considered a value. But such phenomena constantly accompany the life of mankind and play an important role in it. It is impossible to understand the culture of any country or era if one ignores the existence of such phenomena.

In addition, the question of whether or not to consider something a value is always decided subjectively. People tend to admire what is created in their culture, and not notice or downplay the alien and incomprehensible. The subjectivism of the axiological concept of culture leads him to a dead end, and some of the results of such subjectivism are close to nationalist and racist ideas.

Adherents of the anthropological approach believe, that culture covers everything that distinguishes the life of human society from the life of nature, all aspects of human existence. From this point of view, culture is not an absolute good. Some aspects of cultural life do not lend themselves to rational explanation at all, they are intuitive, emotional in nature. In it, along with the reasonable, there is also a lot of unreasonable. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce culture exclusively to the sphere of the rational. As a real, historically developing way of life of people, culture unites all the variety of types of human activity, includes everything that is created by people, and characterizes their life in certain historical conditions.

But then the content of culture expands so much that its specificity as a special sphere of social life disappears, its difference from other social phenomena is lost, since everything that exists in society enters into its culture. The concepts of "cultural" and "social" cease to differ. Therefore, culture in this sense turns into an object that, one way or another, is studied from different angles by all social sciences. Moreover, the main attention is paid not so much to the theoretical understanding of the problems of culture, but to the empirical description of its various elements.

The evolution of the anthropological approach to culture leads to the fact that in different social sciences culture begins to be understood in different ways. As a result, instead of a single concept of culture as a whole as a special sphere of public life, various private concepts of culture are created - archaeological, ethnographic, ethnopsychological, sociological, etc., each of which reflects only some of its individual aspects and manifestations.

Both of these interpretations of culture do not explain its essence, but only fix, describe its various manifestations and aspects. The axiological approach highlights the value aspect of cultural phenomena, but ignores its other manifestations. The anthropological approach, covering a wider range of cultural phenomena, blurs the line between them and other aspects of society.

It is possible to understand culture as a holistic social formation only at the level of theoretical analysis and generalization of factual material, that is, from the level of empirical description of cultural phenomena, it is necessary to move on to building a theory that reveals its essence. Currently, there are various approaches to the development of such a theory. One of the most promising is the information-semiotic approach.

Chapter 2. Information-semiotic concept of culture

§ 2.1. Basic provisions

As it is easy to understand by the name of this concept, culture is presented in it as Information system. It is an information environment that exists in society and in which the members of this society are “immersed”. The word "semiotics" (from the Greek. semeion- sign), meaning the science of signs and sign systems, indicates that culture as an information system appears to the observer in the form of a huge set of signs - cultural codes in which the information contained in it is embodied (encoded).

Such an approach to culture makes it possible, in accordance with the modern scientific methodology of social cognition, to build theoretical models that explain its specificity, structure and dynamics of evolution.

The development of the information-semiotic concept of culture is associated with the names of L. White, E. Cassirer, Yu. Lotman, F. Braudel, A. Mol, V. Stepin, D. Dubrovsky and other researchers who come to similar conclusions in different ways.

"The godfather of cultural studies" L. White (1900-1975) was one of the first to connect the essence of culture with what he called the human "ability to symbolize" - the ability to give meaning or meaning to things, phenomena, processes. Thanks to symbolization, they can act not only as objects that physically interact with the human body, but also as symbols, carriers of the meaning invested in them by man. The subjects considered in this aspect appear as signs and texts, bearing social information. White calls them "symbolic objects" or "symbols". He distinguishes three main types of symbols:

material objects;

External actions;

Ideas and relationships.

"We call the world of symbols culture, and the science that studies them - cultural studies." White said.

Symbolization, according to White, is what creates culture. The latter is an "extrasomatic context" of human life, that is, it is not a biological function of the human body and exists outside of its body. Culture arises, exists and develops because the mind of a person turns objects external to his body into symbols, with the help of which he fixes, comprehends and interprets everything he deals with.

F. Braudel, using a huge amount of factual material, showed how the realities of the daily material life of society - housing, household items, cooking, technical inventions, money, trade, etc. - embody a combination of things and meanings, forming a cultural environment, the “prisoner” of which becomes human.

In the works of the Tartu-Moscow school, headed by Yu. M. Lotman, the idea of understanding culture as an information process was developed and methods for the semiotic analysis of the semantic content of social information were developed.

Thanks to the works of A. Mol, V. S. Stepin, D. I. Dubrovsky and others, important structural characteristics of social information circulating in culture and the role of various cultural phenomena in programming both the behavior of individuals and social progress were revealed.

Systematizing the results obtained by the named authors, it is possible to formulate three main provisions from which the information-semiotic concept of culture comes:

culture is a world of artifacts;

culture is the world of meanings;

culture is the world of signs.

§ 2.2. Culture as a world of artifacts

Unlike nature, which exists on its own, regardless of man, culture is formed, preserved and developed thanks to human activity. In nature, all things and phenomena arise naturally, and everything related to culture is created artificially, is the work of the human mind and human hands. Activity is a way of human existence. First of all, the specificity of the human way of life, which the concept of culture is called upon to fix, is connected with its features.

The most important distinguishing features of the activity are as follows:

Man is characterized by conscious and free goal-setting, which animals do not have. In his activity, he himself creates new goals for himself, going far beyond the framework of biological needs.

Man himself creates and improves the means of activity, while animals use the means given to them by nature to achieve their goals.

Products and results of human activity, objects and phenomena artificially created by people are called artifacts(from lat. arte- artificial and factus- made). human handicrafts, human-born thoughts and images, the means and methods of action found and used by them - all these are artifacts. By creating them, people are building for themselves a "supernatural", artificially created cultural environment.

Throughout our lives, we are surrounded by this "supernatural" environment - diapers and toys, clothes and furniture, glass and concrete, houses and roads, electric light, speech and music, household appliances, vehicles… Traces of human influence are carried by what we eat and drink, even the air we breathe. Mankind lives, as it were, on the verge of two worlds: the world of nature that exists independently of it and the world of culture created by it (the world of human activity, the world of artifacts). In the course of the historical development of human society, the world of nature is increasingly obscured by the world of artifacts.

So culture is the world of human activity, or world of artifacts. This is its first major characteristic. But it alone is not enough to understand the essence of culture.

White's term "symbol" has a broad meaning, meaning any sign in general (below - see Chapter 3 - we will understand by symbols only a certain kind of signs).

Karmin, Anatoly Solomonovich

(b. 07/23/1931) - special. on the theory of knowledge, metodol. science, psychology creative; Dr. Philosophy sciences, prof. Genus. in Kyiv. Graduated from philosophy. Faculty of Leningrad State University (1953), Phys.-Math. Faculty of Ulyanovsk Ped. in-ta (1966). He taught philosophy. and psychol. in Ulyanovsk ped. in-those, in Leningrad. institute of water transport, Leningrad. Institute of Engineering ways of communication. Since 1990 - prof. departments of psychology and sociol. Petersburg. University of Communications. Dr. diss. - "Finite and Infinite as Philosophical Categories" (1974). Scientific K.'s works are devoted to understanding the nature of philosophy. knowledge, analysis of sociocultural and psychol. aspects to know. human activity, the categorical apparatus of philosophy. science, scientific methods. research, philosophy questions of physics and mathematics, problems of infinity, creativity, intuition. K. develops and substantiates the understanding of philosophy. as a special sphere of intellectual creativity, in which the initial, most general ideas, principles, attitudes of a person are identified and formed. consciousness (culture). Philos. categories are considered as a language, on the basis of which a person's knowledge about the world and about himself is built. Joint with V.P. Bransky and V.V. Ilyin K. developed an "attribute model" of the object of knowledge, which acts as a generalized scheme for describing any objects. Introduces new ideas about certain procedures for constructing scientific. knowledge in their logic. structure, offers a system of assessments of research methods. (according to the parameters of generality, productivity, rationality). Explores the logic of the development of the problem of the finite and the infinite, revealing the meanings of these concepts and their relationship; builds a philosophy. the concept of real infinity and substantiates the irreducibility of the latter to math. definitions; shows the unprovability and irrefutability of the idea of the infinity of the world in science. Analyzes various approaches to the definition of creativity. and their ratio; considers dialogic. creative structure. thinking and its basics. operations (generation and selection), develops a five-phase description of creativity. process; develops the concept of creativity. intuition as a "jump" from abstractions to visual images (eidetic intuition) and from visual images to abstractions (conceptual intuition).

Op.: On the formulation of the problem of infinity in modern science// VF. 1965. No. 2;Finite and infinite.[In col.]. M., 1966 ;Creative intuition in science.[In col.]. M., 1971 ;To the question of the genesis of theoretical thinking // Problems of Dialectics. Issue 4. L., 1974 ;Intuition and its mechanisms // Problems of methodology of science and scientific creativity. L., 1977 ;Methodological significance of the principle of the uniformity of nature in inductive reasoning // Materialistic dialectics and the structure of natural science knowledge. Kyiv, 1980 ;Knowledge of the infinite. M., 1981 ;Scientific thinking and intuition:Einstein's formulation of the problem // Scientific picture of the world. Kyiv, 1983 ;The problem of subject and object in Kant's theory of knowledge // Kant's collection. Issue 8. Kaliningrad, 1983 ;Dialogue in scientific creativity// FN. 1985. No. 4;Dialectics of the material world.[In col.]. L., 1985 ;Search and evaluation of research methods // Theory and Method. M., 1987 ;Dramaturgy of creativity // Noosphere:spiritual world of man. L., 1989 ;Specificity of social cognition // Natural science and socio-humanitarian knowledge:methodological problems. L., 1990 ;Lectures on philosophy.[In col.]. Yekaterinburg, 1992 ;Intellectual elite in the structure of the scientific community.[In col.]// Intellectual elite of St. Petersburg. Part 1. SPb., 1993.

Big biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .

Books

Intuition. Philosophical concepts and scientific research, Karmin Anatoly Solomonovich. Intuitive comprehension of the truth is one of the most mysterious phenomena of human cognitive activity. In literature and in everyday life, we constantly meet with references to ...

This book is a textbook written in accordance with the state educational standard of higher professional education approved by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. It can be used by students of all specialties in the process of studying this course.

One of the first terms culture introduced into circulation I. Herder (1744-1803). In his understanding, culture includes language, science, craft, art, religion, family, state.

AT broad sense cultural studies covers the entire body of knowledge about culture and includes:

philosophy of culture,

theory of culture

cultural history,

cultural anthropology,

sociology of culture,

Applied Cultural Studies,

History of cultural studies.

AT narrow sense culturology is understood general theory of culture, on the basis of which cultural disciplines are developed that study certain forms of culture, such as art, science, morality, law, etc.

If we draw an analogy between cultural studies and physics, then the general theory of culture is similar to general physics, and particular cultural sciences correlate with it in the same way as individual physical sciences (mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, etc.) - with general physics.

The university curriculum of cultural studies is mainly limited to the problems of the general theory and history of culture.

Part I. Culture as a subject of scientific research

Chapter 1

§ 1.1. Origin and purpose of the term "culture"

In everyday speech, "culture" is a well-known word: we are talking about the Palaces and Parks of Culture, about the culture of service and the culture of life, about museums, theaters, libraries.

But culture is not just a word of ordinary language, but one of the fundamental scientific concepts social and humanitarian knowledge, which plays the same important role in it as the concept of mass - in physics or heredity - in biology. This concept characterizes a very complex and multifaceted factor of human existence, which manifests itself and is expressed in a variety of diverse phenomena of social life, called cultural phenomena, and forms their common basis.

What is the essence of culture as one of the most important factors of human existence? In order to understand what culture is, it is important to find out how ideas about it developed.

Word "culture" began to be used as a scientific term in the historical and philosophical literature of European countries from the second half of the eighteenth century. - Age of Enlightenment. Why did the educators need to refer to this term and why did it quickly gain popularity?

One of the most important topics that worried European social thought at that time was the "essence" or "nature" of man. Continuing the traditions of humanism, which originated in the Renaissance, and responding to the social demand of the time associated with the changes taking place then in public life, prominent thinkers in England, France, and Germany developed the idea of historical progress. They sought to understand what it should lead to, how in the course of it the rational free “essence” of a person is improved, how a society should be organized that corresponds to human “nature”. In reflection on these topics, the question arose about the specifics of human existence, about what in people's lives, on the one hand, is due to "human nature", and on the other hand, forms it. This question had not only theoretical, but also practical significance: it was about the development of ideals of human existence, that is, a way of life, the pursuit of which should determine the tasks of social forces fighting for social progress. So, in the eighteenth century. the problem of comprehension entered into social thought specifics of a person's lifestyle. Accordingly, a need arose for a special concept, with the help of which the essence of this problem can be expressed, the idea of the existence of such features of human existence, which are associated with the development of human abilities, his mind and the spiritual world, is fixed. Latin word culture and began to use to denote a new concept. The choice of this particular word for such a function, apparently, was largely facilitated by the fact that in Latin the word culture, originally meaning cultivation, processing, improvement (eg. agriculture- tillage), opposed the word nature(nature).

§ 1.2. Enlightenment understanding of culture

§ 1.3. Axiological and anthropological approaches to culture

In the 19th century two approaches to understanding culture have become widespread, which exist at the present time: axiological and anthropological.

Chapter 2. Information-semiotic concept of culture

§ 2.1. Basic provisions

As it is easy to understand by the name of this concept, culture is presented in it as Information system. It is an information environment that exists in society and in which the members of this society are “immersed”. The word "semiotics" (from the Greek. sémeion- sign), meaning the science of signs and sign systems, indicates that culture as an information system appears to the observer in the form of a huge set of signs - cultural codes in which the information contained in it is embodied (encoded).

"The godfather of cultural studies" L. White (1900-1975) was one of the first to connect the essence of culture with what he called the human "ability to symbolize" - the ability to give things, phenomena, processes meaning or meaning 1
White's term "symbol" has a broad meaning, meaning any sign in general (below - see Chapter 3 - we will understand by symbols only a certain kind of signs).

Thanks to symbolization, they can act not only as objects that physically interact with the human body, but also as symbols, carriers of the meaning invested in them by man. The subjects considered in this aspect appear as signs and texts, bearing social information. White calls them "symbolic objects" or "symbols". He distinguishes three main types of symbols:

material objects;

External actions;

Ideas and relationships.

"We call the world of symbols culture, and the science that studies them - cultural studies." White said.

Systematizing the results obtained by the named authors, it is possible to formulate three main provisions from which the information-semiotic concept of culture comes:

culture is a world of artifacts;

culture is the world of meanings;

culture is the world of signs.

§ 2.2. Culture as a world of artifacts

The most important distinguishing features of the activity are as follows:

Man is characterized by conscious and free goal-setting, which animals do not have. In his activity, he himself creates new goals for himself, going far beyond the framework of biological needs.

Man himself creates and improves the means of activity, while animals use the means given to them by nature to achieve their goals.

Products and results of human activity, objects and phenomena artificially created by people are called artifacts(from lat. arte- artificial and factus- made). Products of human hands, thoughts and images born by people, means and methods of action found and used by them - all these are artifacts. By creating them, people are building for themselves a "supernatural", artificially created cultural environment.

Throughout our lives, we are surrounded by this "supernatural" environment - diapers and toys, clothes and furniture, glass and concrete, houses and roads, electric light, speech and music, household appliances, vehicles ... Traces of human impact are carried by what we eat and drink, even the air we breathe. Mankind lives, as it were, on the verge of two worlds: the world of nature that exists independently of it and the world of culture created by it (the world of human activity, the world of artifacts). In the course of the historical development of human society, the world of nature is increasingly obscured by the world of artifacts.

So culture is the world of human activity, or world of artifacts. This is its first major characteristic. But it alone is not enough to understand the essence of culture.

The textbook is a brief and accessible summary of the cultural studies course, written in full accordance with the State Educational Standard for Higher Educational Institutions in this subject. The author of the book is a well-known culturologist A.S. Karmin. The manual is intended for university students, schoolchildren and anyone who wants to get acquainted with modern ideas about culture and its development.

Part I. Culture as a subject of scientific research

Chapter 1

§ 1.1. Origin and purpose of the term "culture"

In everyday speech, "culture" is a well-known word: we are talking about the Palaces and Parks of Culture, about the culture of service and the culture of life, about museums, theaters, libraries.

But culture is not just a word of ordinary language, but one of the fundamental scientific concepts social and humanitarian knowledge, which plays the same important role in it as the concept of mass - in physics or heredity - in biology. This concept characterizes a very complex and multifaceted factor of human existence, which manifests itself and is expressed in a variety of diverse phenomena of social life, called cultural phenomena, and forms their common basis.

What is the essence of culture as one of the most important factors of human existence? In order to understand what culture is, it is important to find out how ideas about it developed.

One of the most important topics that worried European social thought at that time was the "essence" or "nature" of man. Continuing the traditions of humanism, which originated in the Renaissance, and responding to the social demand of the time associated with the changes taking place then in public life, prominent thinkers in England, France, and Germany developed the idea of historical progress. They sought to understand what it should lead to, how in the course of it the rational free “essence” of a person is improved, how a society should be organized that corresponds to human “nature”. In reflection on these topics, the question arose about the specifics of human existence, about what in people's lives, on the one hand, is due to "human nature", and on the other hand, forms it. This question had not only theoretical, but also practical significance: it was about the development of ideals of human existence, that is, a way of life, the pursuit of which should determine the tasks of social forces fighting for social progress. So, in the eighteenth century. the problem of comprehension entered into social thought specifics of a person's lifestyle. Accordingly, a need arose for a special concept, with the help of which the essence of this problem can be expressed, the idea of the existence of such features of human existence, which are associated with the development of human abilities, his mind and the spiritual world, is fixed. Latin word culture and began to use to denote a new concept. The choice of this particular word for such a function, apparently, was largely facilitated by the fact that in Latin the word culture, originally meaning cultivation, processing, improvement (eg. agriculture- tillage), opposed the word nature(nature).

§ 1.2. Enlightenment understanding of culture

§ 1.3. Axiological and anthropological approaches to culture

In the 19th century two approaches to understanding culture have become widespread, which exist at the present time: axiological and anthropological.

Chapter 2. Information-semiotic concept of culture

§ 2.1. Basic provisions

“The godfather of cultural studies” L. White (1900–1975) was one of the first to connect the essence of culture with what he called the human “ability to symbolize” – the ability to give meaning or meaning to things, phenomena, processes. Thanks to symbolization, they can act not only as objects that physically interact with the human body, but also as symbols, carriers of the meaning invested in them by man. The subjects considered in this aspect appear as signs and texts, bearing social information. White calls them "symbolic objects" or "symbols". He distinguishes three main types of symbols:

material objects;

External actions;

Ideas and relationships.

"We call the world of symbols culture, and the science that studies them - cultural studies." White said.

Systematizing the results obtained by the named authors, it is possible to formulate three main provisions from which the information-semiotic concept of culture comes:

culture is a world of artifacts;

culture is the world of meanings;

culture is the world of signs.

§ 2.2. Culture as a world of artifacts

The most important distinguishing features of the activity are as follows:

Man is characterized by conscious and free goal-setting, which animals do not have. In his activity, he himself creates new goals for himself, going far beyond the framework of biological needs.

Man himself creates and improves the means of activity, while animals use the means given to them by nature to achieve their goals.

Throughout our lives, we are surrounded by this "supernatural" environment - diapers and toys, clothes and furniture, glass and concrete, houses and roads, electric light, speech and music, household appliances, vehicles ... Traces of human impact are carried by what we eat and drink, even the air we breathe. Mankind lives, as it were, on the verge of two worlds: the world of nature that exists independently of it and the world of culture created by it (the world of human activity, the world of artifacts). In the course of the historical development of human society, the world of nature is increasingly obscured by the world of artifacts.

So culture is the world of human activity, or world of artifacts. This is its first major characteristic. But it alone is not enough to understand the essence of culture.

§ 2.3. Culture as a world of meanings

Everything that people create by their activity does not arise contrary to the laws of nature, but in accordance with them. In this respect, artifacts - objects of culture - are no different from natural formations. However, man introduces into his creations something that in principle cannot arise without him.

The phenomena of nature, considered in their existence independent of man, have objectively inherent characteristics - objective certainty. Artifacts - objects of culture - have a dual certainty. On the one hand, they have an objective certainty, that is, they can be considered as a reality that exists in itself and is characterized by its objectively inherent properties. But, on the other hand, the artifacts differ in another way, subjective, certainty: they embody what is called "meaning", "meaning". This subjective certainty appears due to the fact that a person introduces his “humanity” into artifacts, that is, he “objectifies” his ideas, goals, desires, etc. in them. In other words, people not only materially, but also spiritually “process” objects their activities, putting into them something that is objective - outside of relation to a person, to his consciousness, they do not and cannot have. Once in the sphere of human activity, these objects acquire a new, “supernatural” quality: the ability to contain human meaning, to bear the imprint of the human spirit, to serve a person as his own reflection. Thus, they act as objects of culture due to the spiritual creative activity of people.

Most obviously, the ability of a person to endow his creations with meaning is manifested in speech: people attribute to the spoken sounds - vibrations of the air - meanings that they themselves do not possess. Everything that a person does and what makes up the cultural environment of his habitat has meaning: works of art and rules of etiquette, religious rites and scientific research, study and sports, etc. The meaning of any subject that people deal with is expressed at least in its purpose and functions. So, the meaning of the machine is that it is needed for production, the car - in its use as a means of transportation, household items, furniture and utensils - in the ability to satisfy household needs. In addition, these things may have other meanings. For example, for the owner of a Mercedes, the main meaning of the car may be the prestige of this brand.

Please note: objects taken by themselves, outside of their relation to a person, have no meaning. You can study, for example, the Egyptian pyramid as much as you like, peer into it, measure it, conduct physical and chemical analyzes, etc., but you will not be able to find any meaning in it if you consider it simply as a physical body. The meaning of the pyramid does not exist in itself, but in the culture of which it is a product. And in order to understand it, one must study this culture, and Not only pyramid.

From culture, people draw the opportunity to give meaning not only to words and things, but also to their behavior - both individual actions and their whole life as a whole. Therefore, for example, without knowing the culture of the past, it is difficult to understand the behavior of our ancestors.

So, culture is not just a collection of products of human activity, artifacts. culture– this is the world of meanings, that a person puts into his creations and actions. This is the second most important characteristic of culture.

A person lives not only in the material world of things, but also in the spiritual world of meanings, which is constantly expanding and enriching. Meanings are embodied in representations and concepts, turn into independent objects of thought, the operation of which leads to the formation of new, more abstract meanings. The creation of new meanings itself becomes the meaning of people's activity in the sphere of spiritual culture - in religion, art, science, philosophy. The world of meanings - the world of products of human thought - is great and immense, it is a kind of "second Universe", which arises and expands thanks to the efforts of mankind. Man is the creator of this universe. While creating and developing it, he also creates and develops himself.

§ 2.4. Culture as a world of signs

A sign is an object that acts as a carrier of information about other objects and is used for its acquisition, storage, processing and transfer. As carriers of meaning, artifacts become signs.

In culture, historically there are various sign systems (codes). Sign systems are both natural (spoken, verbal) languages - Russian, English, etc., as well as various kinds of artificial languages - the language of mathematics, chemical symbolism, "machine" languages, etc. Sign systems also include various signaling systems, languages of the visual arts, theatre, cinema, music, etiquette, religious symbols and rituals, heraldic signs, and in general any set of objects that can serve as means of expressing some content.

Thus, cultural phenomena are signs and sets of signs (“texts”) in which social information is “encrypted”, that is, the content, meaning, meaning embedded in them by people. To understand any cultural phenomenon means to perceive its “invisible” subjective meaning. It is insofar as the phenomenon acts as a sign, symbol, "text", which must not only be observed, but also comprehended, that it becomes a fact of culture.

We live not only in the world of things, but also in the world of signs. This is the third most important characteristic of culture.

If the consideration of culture as the world of human activity reveals mainly its material manifestations, and as the world of meanings - its spiritual content, then culture as a world of signs appears before us in unity of material and spiritual. Indeed, a sign is a sensually perceived material object, and its meaning (meaning, information) is a product of people's spiritual activity. Signs act as a kind of "material shell" of human thoughts, feelings, desires. In order for the products of human spiritual activity to be preserved in culture, so that they are transmitted and perceived by other people, they must be expressed, encoded in this sign shell. The connection between meaning and sign determines the inseparability of the spiritual and material aspects of culture.

§ 2.5. Theoretical definition of culture

So, from the information-semiotic point of view, culture appears in three main aspects - as a world of artifacts, meanings and signs.

Cultural phenomena are artifacts, which carry meanings, that is, they act as signs, which have values. Sets of signs form texts, which contain social information(Fig. 2.1).

Rice. 2.1

Considering all these aspects of culture, we can formulate a brief definition that expresses its essence:

Culture is social information that is stored and accumulated in society with the help of symbolic means created by people.

Culture is a special type of information process that nature does not know. In animals, information is biologically encoded, its carrier is the animal's body itself. The transfer of information from one generation to another occurs genetically, and also to some extent through imitation of parents (in higher animals). The experience accumulated by an individual in the course of life is not inherited by its descendants; each new generation begins to accumulate experience "from scratch". Therefore, the amount of information available to the clan does not increase from generation to generation.

With the advent of culture, people have a special, absent in animals, “suprabiological” form of storing and transmitting information. This is a fundamentally new and incomparably richer type of information process in terms of its capabilities. In culture, information is encoded not in genes, but in sign systems. Thoughts and ideas expressed in these systems are, as it were, separated from a person, acquiring an independent, impersonal existence. They become social information, the carrier of which is not a separate individual, but social culture. Unlike biological information, social information expressed in sign systems does not disappear with the death of the individual who obtained it. Culture forms a specifically human, non-genetic "mechanism" of its inheritance - social heredity. Thanks to culture, something becomes possible in society that is impossible in the animal world - the historical accumulation and multiplication of information that is at the disposal of man as a generic being.

It can be said that culture in human society is the same as information support in a computer. The latter includes machine language, memory, information processing programs. Similar components also characterize culture: languages are sign systems, social memory that stores the spiritual achievements of mankind, programs of human behavior that reflect the experience of many generations. Thus, culture acts as information support for society (although information support is invested in a computer from the outside, and society creates it itself). And just as a computer without programs embedded in it is just a pile of iron, so a society without culture would be nothing more than a herd of animals. Culture is a necessary condition not only for development, but also for the very existence of human society.

Chapter 3. Semiotics of culture

§ 3.1. The main types of iconic means of culture

Under semiotics of culture is understood as a set of sign means by which social information is encoded. To understand any culture means to understand its semiotics, to capture the meaning of the signs used in it and to decipher the texts made up of them (the word "text" in cultural studies refers not only to a written message, but to any object - a work of art, a thing, a custom, etc.). considered as a carrier of information).

Each person more or less understands the semiotics of his native culture. As for a foreign culture, even with great efforts, it is difficult to reach the same level as the understanding of one's own. The language of each culture is peculiar and unique. But they all use the same types of signs and sign systems, the knowledge of which is necessary to understand any culture.

We single out the following main types of signs used in culture:

natural;

functional;

iconic;

conventional;

verbal (national languages);

sign systems of notation.

Let us briefly characterize these types, focusing on verbal sign systems - verbal languages that form the semiotic basis of culture.

§ 3.2. natural signs

By "natural signs" is meant things and phenomena of nature. Not all objects act as signs, but only those that point to some other objects and are considered as carriers of information about them. Most often, a natural sign is part of something whole and therefore provides information about the latter. Natural signs are signs-signs. The simplest example: smoke as a sign of fire.

To understand natural signs, one must know what they are signs of and be able to extract the information contained in them. Signs of the weather, traces of animals, the location of heavenly bodies can tell a lot to someone who is able to "decipher" these signs. The one who is not able to do this, most likely, simply will not perceive them as signs. The ability to understand and use natural signs for orientation in the natural environment was an essential component of primitive culture and is gradually lost with the development of civilization. In everyday experience, a huge number of natural signs are not subject to systematization. The construction of systems of natural signs is, as a rule, the result of a long development of practice and science. Examples of such systems are: a system of medical diagnostics that describes natural signs - symptoms of diseases; spectral analysis, which allows determining the chemical composition of a substance by the colors of the spectrum; celestial navigation based on the establishment of a systematic relationship between the observed arrangement of stars and the coordinates of the observer.

§ 3.3. Functional signs

An object becomes a functional sign if connection between him and, what does it indicate, arises in the process of human activity and is based on the way it is used by a person. For example, a weapon found by an archaeologist in a burial mound is a functional sign indicating that a warrior was buried in it. The decor of the apartment is a complex of functional signs (text) that carries information about the degree of wealth of the owners, and the selection of books on the bookshelf speaks of their tastes and interests. Glasses - a sign of weakness of vision; a shovel on the shoulder indicates that the person was engaged or is about to engage in earthworks.

Functional signs are also sign-signs. But unlike natural signs, the connection of functional signs with what they indicate is due not to their objective properties, but to those functions that they perform in the activities of people. These signs are created by man for practical use, and not with the aim of endowing them with a sign function; being used for their intended purpose, they also perform a symbolic function. They can act as signs only because they are included in human activity and carry information about it. To extract this information from them, it is required to have some prior knowledge about the conditions of their application in human activity.

Not only objects, but also the actions of people can act as functional signs. Every schoolboy knows: when a teacher runs his finger over a class magazine, this is a sign that he will now call someone to answer. Making involuntary body movements, a person, as a rule, does not suspect that he is giving signs signaling his feelings, emotions, intentions, thoughts.

Since objects and actions that act as functional signs are means, results, methods of human activity, they are ordered and systematized by this activity itself. Examples of systems of functional signs: production equipment (any mechanism or detail is a sign that carries information about the entire technical system, of which it is an element); furnishings; clothes; "body language" - facial expressions, gestures, postures, etc.

§ 3.4. Iconic signs

This is a fundamentally different class of signs in comparison with natural and functional ones. Iconic signs are signs-images that are similar to what they stand for. These are signs in the full sense of the word. If for objects that act as natural and functional signs, the sign function is secondary and is performed by them, as it were, “in combination”, then for iconic this function is main and main. They are usually artificially created such that they appearance reflected the appearance of the things they designated (although occasionally a naturally formed object is used as an iconic sign, very similar to what they need to designate).

Images differ in the degree of their similarity to the original. Some of them have a schematic, simplified character - for example, picture signs indicating pedestrian crossings, escalators, toilets; others are so similar to the depicted nature that they give a complete illusion of her actual presence (a realistically painted picture). To understand the image, to see what is depicted in it, is a task that requires a certain level of culture.

§ 3.5. Conventional (conventional) signs

The conventional sign serves as a designation of the subject " by condition"because people agreed consider it a sign of this subject. Conventional signs usually have little to do with what they indicate, and giving them a certain meaning is only the result of an agreement, a contract. Conventional signs are created specifically to perform a sign function, and are not needed for any other purpose.

The simplest examples of conventional signs: school bell; a red cross on an ambulance; "zebra" on a pedestrian crossing; stars and stripes on shoulder straps.

There are three main types of conventional signs:

1) Signals- Signs of notice or warning. The meaning attached to the most common and accepted signals in a given culture is familiar to people from childhood (for example, the meaning of the colors of a traffic light). The meaning of special signals becomes known only as a result of training (flag signaling in the fleet, navigational signals).

2) Indices- conventional designations of some objects or situations that have a compact, easily visible form and are used in order to distinguish these objects and situations from a number of others. Examples of index signs: instrument readings, cartographic signs, conditional icons in diagrams, graphs, school grades, etc.

3) Symbols- these are signs that not only designate some object, but also carry an additional meaning: they express general ideas and concepts related to the interpretation of this object. Examples of symbols: emblems, coats of arms, orders, banners; cross in the Christian religion; Gogol's "bird-troika"; Dove of Peace Picasso.

The symbol has a two-layer structure. Its outer, “primary” layer is the image of some object, and the “secondary”, proper symbolic layer is an idea mentally associated with this object (sometimes very far from it in its content). The symbolic layer can, in turn, contain ideas and concepts of varying degrees of generality and abstractness. The language of symbols expresses the most abstract ideas in a concrete and visual form.

The symbol is, for example, the coat of arms of the city. The coat of arms of St. Petersburg (Fig. 3.1) depicts two crossed anchors - sea and river. These are image signs. If their meaning was exhausted by this, then the coat of arms would be just a drawing of two anchors. But we know that we have before us not just a drawing, but the coat of arms of St. Petersburg, and this means that we see an additional meaning in it.

Rice. 3.1

The drawing is perceived not only as a visual image of anchors, but also as a symbolic image of the city. But this is only the first layer of the emblem's symbolic meaning. There is another semantic level behind it: crossed anchors symbolize the role of St. Petersburg as a center of sea and river navigation (there is also a scepter in the coat of arms - a symbol of the city as a center of sovereign power). If, however, we take into account that the river on which St. it is destined to cut a window into Europe,” an idea that defines the face of St. Petersburg as a city where Russia meets the West, the intersection of Russian and Western European culture (“all flags will be our guests”). In addition, the anchor is a symbol of salvation, which suggests the importance of St. Petersburg in the fate of Russia. Additional semantic associations arise when comparing the coat of arms of St. Petersburg with the coat of arms of Rome and the Vatican. Anchors (paws up) replace the crossed keys of the Apostle Peter depicted there (beards up). Thus, the motifs of the Roman coat of arms were used in the St. Petersburg coat of arms. This symbolically expresses the idea of St. Petersburg as the new Rome. Thus, the level of understanding of a symbol can be different, and in order to get to its deeper semantic layers, one must think about its content.

The meaning of a symbol is often formed historically: over time, new meanings are superimposed on the original meaning. The deep historical and cultural meaning of such a symbol can only be understood by those who know its origin and life in the development of culture.

Along with individual conventional signs, in the course of the development of culture, various systems of conventional signs arise. For example: heraldry, a system of traffic signs, ceremonial sign systems associated with rituals. Of particular importance are figurative-symbolic systems in art - “artistic languages”, which are different in each type of art (they will be discussed below).

§ 3.6. Verbal sign systems - natural languages

These are the most important of the sign systems created by people. They are called "natural" to distinguish them from artificial languages. Any one of several thousand natural languages is historical sign system, forming the basis of all culture the people who speak it. No other sign system can be compared with it in terms of its cultural significance.

The language has developed on the basis of the possibilities inherent in the biological nature of man. Apparently, a person has an innate and genetically inherited language ability, that is, a psychophysiological mechanism by which a child can learn speech during the first years of life. But the realization and development of language ability occurs in people only in the conditions of communication. Observations on children who found themselves outside human society (the so-called "Mowglis" - children who got lost and grew up among animals) showed that they do not know how to speak and, apparently, cannot learn to speak. Language is formed and developed by people only through joint, social life. Therefore, although it has biological prerequisites, it is in its essence social phenomenon.

In every language there are norms that determine the construction of speech. People who speak the same language are able to understand each other because they adhere to the same norms. Failure to comply with these norms creates confusion and misunderstandings. A good example of this is the well-known expression “You cannot hang for mercy”, which can acquire two opposite meanings depending on where to put a comma (or in oral speech - where to make an intonational pause). But at the same time, the boundaries of linguistic norms are not rigid. They are flexible and changeable enough to allow the imagination to run wild and to ensure that the language adapts to new cultural developments. For example, a fundamentally new idea requires new linguistic means to explain it: indeed, new idea cannot be defined or logically deduced from concepts already existing in the language. As a rule, one has to resort to new formations, which eventually become full-fledged elements of the language. This is how many scientific terms entered the language: “genes”, “unconscious” (an adjective that has become a noun!), “probability waves”, “quarks”, etc.

natural language - open system. He (unlike strict formalized systems, which will be discussed below) capable of unlimited development.

The history of the development of culture is reflected in the history of the development of language. But the evolution of language is not simply a consequence of changes in social life. Despite the changes taking place in the language, it remains the same for centuries, and children understand their ancestors, and grandfathers understand their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The fact is that, along with a rapidly changing layer of vocabulary, the language has basic vocabulary- the lexical "core" of the language, which has been preserved for centuries. This includes all root words. They are understandable to all native speakers of a given language, are characterized by a high frequency of use and serve as a source for new word formations. These are, for example, such words as “water”, “home”, “mother”, “work”, “ten”, “I”, “your”, etc. The main vocabulary fund also changes over time (for example, our ancestors did not say "plow the land", but "yell the land"). But these changes are made very slowly - otherwise people of different generations could not understand each other and the experience of the past would not accumulate in culture.

§ 3.7. Sign systems of notation

The most important of the sign systems is writing, a system for recording signs of natural language, oral speech. This type also includes musical notation, ways of recording dance, etc. A feature of sign systems of this type is that they arise on the basis of other sign systems - spoken language, music, dance, - and secondary in relation to them. The invention of sign systems of notation is one of the greatest achievements of human thought. An important role was played by the emergence and development of writing, which allowed human culture to emerge from its initial, primitive state. Without writing, the development of science, technology, art, law, etc., would be impossible.

The germ of writing was the so-called "subject writing"- the use of objects to convey messages that arose back in primitive society (for example, an olive branch as a sign of peace). The first stage in the history of writing was writing in drawings ( pictography). At the next stage, there ideographic script, in which the drawings become more and more simplified and schematic (hieroglyphs). Finally, in the third stage, a alphabetical letter, which uses a relatively small set of written characters that do not mean words, but the sounds of oral speech that make them up.

Music recording developed in a similar way - musical notation, and the dance notation system. Currently, technical means - audio and video systems - are often used to record music and dance.

The emergence and development of written language gives rise to fundamentally new opportunities for cultural progress. The basic sign of writing is not the word, but a smaller and more abstract unit, the letter. The number of basic signs of the system decreases and becomes visible. Thanks to this, qualitatively new ways of processing, perception and transmission of information become possible.

Recording creates the opportunity to significantly increase the vocabulary of the language. In tribal non-written languages, rarely used words simply disappeared from social memory, new words replaced the forgotten ones. The dictionary of such languages contains no more than 10-15 thousand words. AT modern languages through the use of writing, there is an accumulation of words and their number reaches half a million.

With the advent of writing, language norms and rules begin to take shape, a standardized literary language is created, and text processing techniques appear. As a result, the ways of expressing thoughts in the language are improved, the accuracy and depth of transmission of its nuances are increased.

The amount of information circulating in society is immeasurably increasing. Non-written languages could provide the transfer of only the amount of knowledge that was stored in folklore and was limited by the memory capabilities of the priest or storyteller. Writing allows society to transmit information, the amount of which far exceeds the memory capacity of an individual. Libraries are emerging that act as repositories of knowledge and make it available to future generations. The temporal and spatial boundaries of communication are removed: communication becomes possible between people living at great distances from each other and in different historical time. Thanks to writing, the quality of information stored in society changes. An original, non-standard thought, which among contemporaries is considered not worth remembering, without writing would be forgotten after the death of the author, and descendants would not know about it. Writing makes it possible to capture and preserve it. This opens up wide opportunities for the development of creativity.

Writing opened the way to the replication of texts - printing. When the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg from Mainz invented the printing press and typesetting from standard typefaces, books could be mass-produced. A new era of cultural progress has begun. The circle of readers has expanded enormously. There has been a democratization of written communication, it has become an everyday affair of millions of people. Conditions arose for mass education and enlightenment of the people. At the same time, literacy education has become an indispensable condition for the functioning of written speech, the preservation of linguistic traditions and the continuity of the existence of culture.

One of the important directions in the development of recording systems was the creation formalized languages, which play a large role in modern logic and mathematics, and, consequently, in all sciences that use the logical and mathematical apparatus. The development of electronic computing technology is connected with the development of formalized languages, which today largely determines the fate of the further cultural progress of mankind.

§ 3.8. Language features

Language serves people, firstly, means of thinking, Secondly, means of communication.

AT thinking process language performs three main functions (they are called cognitive functions of language):

1. nominative function. Thinking is always thinking about something, that is, about the subject of thinking. It is the operation of mental images of objects. Words of natural language act as names of objects of thought.

2. constructive function. In the course of thinking, words-names are linked into sentences that describe the properties and relationships of objects. Passing according to the rules of logic from one sentence to another, people build verbal constructions with the help of which reality is described and explained.

3. accumulative function. In the language, the results of thinking are accumulated, that is, fixed and stored, the results of thinking - various kinds of knowledge.

speaking as a means of communication, language performs communicative functions. They appear in speech. Language and speech are interrelated concepts, but not identical. Speech is language in action.

The act of speech communication has a structure, which is shown schematically in Fig. 3.2.

Rice. 3.2

In accordance with this structure, the following main communicative functions of the language can be indicated:

1. Expressive the function is related to the reflection of the author's personality in the message. Speech acts as a means of self-expression of the individual. The author conveys his feelings, experiences and emotions, his attitude to what is being discussed.

2. Impressive the function is focused on the addressee of the message and involves the impact on his state. Thanks to it, the addressee receives not only information about the subject of the message, but also emotional impressions - both about this subject and about the author. This function allows you to evoke certain moods, feelings, desires in the addressee and encourage him to take some action. To obtain the desired reactions, it is necessary to know the characteristics of the addressee, which determine how he will perceive the message and what effect it will have on him, and formulate the message taking into account these characteristics.

3. Reference the function is directed to the subject of the message. It consists in the transfer of information about him. The subject of the message can be a description of some phenomenon (both real and fictional), and a wish or command, and a question.

4. poetic(aesthetic) function. It concerns the aesthetic properties of the message and becomes especially important when speech (oral or written) acts as an artistic text, as a work of art. How this function is realized in artistic speech, what are the features of a poetic text, what is the secret of its emotional impact on listeners (readers) - these most interesting problems will be discussed below.

5. phatic function is to establish contact between the sender and the recipient.

6. Metalinguistic the function provides the ability to find language means of encoding the transmitted information that are generally understandable for the sender and recipient.

§ 3. 9. Culture of speech

The ability to most effectively use the communicative functions of the language is called the culture of speech. It characterizes how well a person speaks the language and is able to realize its expressive possibilities in order to give his speech a form corresponding to its content and goals. The culture of speech is determined by two main factors: 1) compliance with generally accepted language norms; 2) features of the individual style of speech.

1. Generally accepted language norms are the rules of grammar, stylistics, pronunciation, word usage and word formation that have become a tradition, enshrined in literary samples, dictionaries, textbooks. Cultural speech - "correct", "literate", "literary" - satisfies these standards. However, in real life there are various forms of deviations from the "correct" speech.

vernacular- “illiterate” speech, in which errors are made in pronunciation of words, construction of phrases, etc. Errors of this kind are often widespread and become a kind of standard of low culture of speech (“they want” instead of “want”, “lie down” instead of “ put”, “means” instead of “means”, etc.).

jargon, having circulation in any social group and characterized mainly by specific vocabulary. Known, for example, are student jargon, professional jargon, “thieves” jargon used in a criminal environment (it is also called slang). Youth jargon (or slang) - a layer of colloquial vocabulary, consisting of "fashionable" words that quickly gain and just as quickly lose popularity among young people. Youth slang is a kind of word game, behind which lies the desire to separate from the world of adults, to emphasize one's independence and independence, to demonstrate one's superiority over the older generation in understanding life.

Dialects, dialects and adverbs- varieties of the national language that have historically developed in a certain region and differ in the features of the sound system, word formation, and phrase construction. These features are usually not so great as to interfere with the understanding of dialectal speech. But against the background of “correct” speech, they act as deviations from the norm. In Russia, even Lomonosov identified three "main Russian dialects" - Moscow, northern and Ukrainian. The Moscow dialect became the literary norm. But the differences between these dialects have been preserved in our time. Muscovites pronounce the sound “ch” as “sh” (“shto”, “of course”), while Petersburgers clearly pronounce it (“what”, “of course”). Vologda residents “okayut”, in the South Russian dialect a soft “g” sounds close to “x”. There are also specific signs of pronunciation in some social groups: for example, the drawling "o" in the speech of the Orthodox clergy.

The norms of a living language cannot be rigid, given once and for all. They inevitably undergo changes in the course of language development. Therefore, it is hardly possible to justify the linguistic purism(from lat. purus- pure) - the desire at all costs to preserve the "purity of the language" and eliminate from it all sorts of jargon neoplasms, foreign borrowings, dialectisms, elements of colloquialism. Much of what is initially perceived as a deviation from the norm gradually takes root in the language and becomes “normal”. However, it is just as unjustified anti-normalization- justification of any violations of the established language norms. It is dangerous because it worsens the communicative qualities of the language and threatens to destroy its system, integrity, orderliness. The culture of speech implies a "sense of language", based on the possession existing regulations literary language and at the same time avoiding the extremes of purism.

The norms of the literary language vary depending on the style and genre of speech. Their specific norms exist in the field of official business communication, in scientific and technical texts, in the media, in everyday colloquial speech. For example, a doctor at a lecture at a medical institute says: Intramuscular injections penicillin did not lead to an improvement in the patient's condition. He can say about this in a private conversation: “We tried penicillin - it didn’t help.” Both options correspond to literary norms.

2. The individual style of speech reflects the preferences inherent in this individual in the use of expressive means of the language, his manner of presenting thoughts and constructing statements, a set of favorite words and expressions, rhythm, phonetics, etc. If following the norms of the literary language provides correctness of speech, then the improvement of individual style leads to the development the art of speech. Impeccably correct speech, which does not bear any imprint of the author's individuality, is perceived as "bookish" and seems unnatural and boring. A high culture of speech implies not only its correctness, but also the ability to choose the most effective and appropriate language means for a given situation. This skill is the true art of speech.

An essential aspect of youth slang is the abundance of words in it with a vague, indefinite meaning. As a result, speech becomes saturated with subtext, for the understanding of which additional hints are needed - with the help of gestures, facial expressions, special articulation and intonation. It becomes unnecessary to strive for the accuracy of the selection of words, to expand the vocabulary, you can arrange your statements as sloppily as you like and be content with any random word in which you can put any meaning, because "one's own" should focus not so much on the words as on the hidden behind them subtext. However, the hope that listeners will understand the implicit content of speech is not always justified. The interlocutors often speak each of their own, badly, or even not understanding each other at all (and not even realizing this mutual misunderstanding).

The real disaster of modern youth (and not only youth) speech is the mat. Cursing is one of the forms invectives- this is what philologists call insulting and obscene turns of speech. The initial and main purpose for which people began to turn to them was associated with the desire to express their negative feelings and cause moral damage to the addressee, a spiritual wound. Apparently, displaying or naming secret, concealed body parts and actions was an insult to the individual and shocking because it violated cultural taboos. At the same time, invective acted as the easiest and most accessible way to free oneself from the pressure of cultural norms, relieve tension caused by the difficulties of observing them, and get temporary mental relaxation.

However, at present, foul language has largely lost its original meaning. When almost every second or third word in a conversation is obscene, then their obscene meaning does not matter either to the one who pronounces it or to the one who listens. These words are not addressed with the aim of scolding, humiliating, insulting. They either do not mean anything at all and are used “to connect”, fill in pauses, or serve as a kind of “valves” for the release of emotions, or replace “normal” words that the speaker is simply unable to find. Saturation of speech with swearing is a fig leaf masking the poor development of the intellect and the paucity of vocabulary.

§ 3.10. Sociocultural differentiation of languages

How means of communication languages also function in different ways. In the waves world history some languages perish along with their native peoples and their culture (the ancient Egyptian language); others persist for millennia (Chinese); still others die, but leave a noticeable mark in other languages (Latin). There are languages that go out of use for a long time, but then resurrect again and become living spoken languages (Hebrew Hebrew). "Dead languages" no longer perform communicative functions. However, even among the several thousand living languages there is considerable differentiation. Some serve as a means of communication for hundreds of millions of people, others are spoken by only a few hundred, or even tens of people. The socio-cultural sphere of the circulation of languages is also differentiated - the area of their use.

The historical destinies of languages develop in such a way that some of them become universal means of social contact and exchange of information, acquire the status of state and even become globally widespread, while others are limited to a narrower sphere of circulation and are used only in everyday life. In this regard, the following types of languages can be distinguished:

Languages of international communication;

National languages that exist both in spoken and written form and serve as a universal means of communication for a particular people or region;

Tribal spoken languages that do not have a written language and are unable at this stage of their development to ensure the assimilation of the achievements of modern civilization (in developing countries, such languages often evolve rapidly, turning into national ones);

"one-aul" non-written languages with a narrow, mainly family-domestic sphere of circulation.

The languages of the first type are currently considered to be English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, French. These are languages spoken in different countries of the world and serve as a means of interethnic communication. They make up the so-called "world language club" and are usually the working languages at major international forums. These five languages and one more - Chinese - are the official working languages of the UN (Chinese is not included in the "club of world languages", as it is not used in interethnic communication).

In international languages, you can get acquainted with almost all the masterpieces of world literature that appeared in other languages. Without the translation of an artistic or scientific work into these languages, its world recognition is impossible. Knowledge of at least one of these languages is necessary for a person of modern culture. The study of them is an indispensable part of a good education all over the world.

The reasons why a particular language becomes the language of international communication are primarily related to the political status of the state, its socio-economic success and the level of cultural development. The sheer size of the population of countries that speak a language does not ensure its status as a language of international communication: neither Chinese nor Hindi are.

In modern times, French has received international recognition in Europe. For people of "high society" in different countries, knowledge of it was considered an obligatory sign of good taste. Russian aristocrats often knew French better than Russian and preferred to communicate with each other in it. The French language received such recognition as a result of the political influence that France then enjoyed in the European world, and its outstanding success in cultural development: many new trends in science, philosophy, and religion of that era were born on French soil.

In the twentieth century English is increasingly claiming the leading place among the languages of international communication. This trend is based on the political, economic and cultural achievements of the English-speaking countries. English language becomes a kind of "modern Latin". The main flow of scientific information is in English. It is used most often in business contacts and when communicating with representatives of different nationalities. Almost all significant works of non-English literature are translated into this language. Knowledge of English opens the doors to the whole world culture for a person.

The Russian language also belongs to the languages of international communication. Interest in Russian art, in Russian scientific and technical thought has motivated and continues to encourage many people in all countries of the world to study it. In the twentieth century for several decades it served as a means of interethnic contacts in the Soviet Union and beyond its borders - in the countries of the "socialist camp". With the collapse of the socialist system and the Soviet state, its role as a means of international communication is decreasing, although it still continues to be so. Whether it will retain such a role in the future depends on how high the world prestige of our economic, technical, scientific and artistic achievements will be.

§ 3.11. Secondary sign systems

In various forms of culture, on the basis of natural language and other types of signs, their own languages arise, adapted to express their content. Such languages are semiotic systems of a higher level. In the works of Yu. M. Lotman, Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, B. A. Uspensky and other representatives of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school, they were called “secondary sign systems”. They are also called "secondary modeling systems", "secondary languages of culture", "cultural codes".

Secondary sign systems are numerous and varied. These are the languages of such forms of culture as philosophy, science, law (philosophical language, scientific language, legal language). Advertising speaks its language, including verbal and visual means. In social life, languages of various kinds of ceremonials and rituals play an important role, which are combinations of ritual actions, objects, verbal formulas that have a symbolic meaning and determine the form of people's behavior.

Historically established rules of etiquette, manner of dressing, norms of relations between people consecrated by customs, etc. act as cultural codes in which people in every era express and perceive the meaning of the “text”, “context” and “subtext” of ongoing events. In the course of history, the secondary languages of a culture change. It happens that cultural texts turn out to be more durable than the codes in which they were “read” at the time of their creation. The text without a code reaches the descendants, and it costs a lot of work to restore it. Therefore, we are not always able to adequately understand the meaning that the cultural texts that have come down to us had in the past. Many myths, superstitions, recipes traditional medicine can be considered as texts of an ancient culture with a lost code.

A constantly growing and extremely rich in their expressive possibilities, a multitude of languages creates art. Artistic languages are formed on the basis of all semiotic means of culture - verbal (language of literature), gesture-mimic (language of dance, pantomime, acting), sound-intonation (musical language), plastic (languages of painting, graphics, sculpture and languages of architecture, applied arts, design). Some of the languages of art are superstructures over natural verbal language (for example, the language of poetry); others are formed as a result of the synthesis of different types of sign means (the language of the opera).

A characteristic feature of artistic languages is that they allow the creation polysemantic texts which allow different interpretations. In this respect, they are opposite to the languages of science, where semantic unambiguity of expressions and terminological rigor are necessary.

However, the ambiguity of artistic language in no way means its inaccuracy or uncertainty (which is sometimes seen as its specificity). In fact, he has his own criteria for accuracy. The languages of art are in a sense even more rigorous, and in any case more complex, than scientific ones. The scientist uses unambiguously defined terms and symbols and must operate with them in strict accordance with their predetermined meanings. The artist, on the other hand, turns to signs (words, sounds, lines, colors, dance movements), which often have different meanings. He needs to take into account the peculiarities of the context in which these signs fall, the associations that they can “pull” along with them, the symbolism that can be seen in them, the emotional nuances that sometimes implicitly accompany their perception, etc. If he sometimes it is not taken into account here, then the artistic image will fade, be distorted, and will not evoke the proper emotional reaction. That is why he has to be so picky about every word, sound or stroke.

Secondary languages of culture have a special, as a rule, more complex structure (they “acquire an additional superstructure”, as Lotman says) than primary languages, which allows them to “model” the world in which we live from different angles. To understand the content of various cultural forms, it is necessary to understand the secondary sign systems by which their content is encoded.

A variety of primary and secondary sign systems is a necessary condition for the functioning and development of culture. In accumulating life experience and expanding their education, people first of all have to learn both primary and secondary languages. Therefore, each person acts as "polyglot" who speaks many cultural languages.

Chapter 4. Paradigm Meanings of Culture

§ 4.1. Paradigms

Word "paradigm"(in Greek - example, sample) was used by the ancient Greek Platonist philosophers to designate an ideal general model of any class of things. In grammar, this word began to be called patterns, according to which forms of change of a verb or noun are built. The American historian of science T. Kuhn (1922–1996) in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) introduced it as a special term meaning a system of explicit and implicit prerequisites recognized by the community of scientists at a certain stage in the development of science that determine the formulation scientific problems and ways to solve them. Then paradigms began to be singled out in other areas of human experience, understanding them as some general attitudes, standards, patterns of thinking and actions in a particular area of life.

In cultural studies, the concept of a paradigm is used in different contexts in different ways. Here we mean by them semantic paradigms- typical, basic types of meanings that information carries in itself, stored and broadcast in cultural phenomena (texts).

Culture as a world of meanings contains three main types of them - knowledge(that which is given by knowledge), values(what is established by the evaluation) and regulations(that by which actions are regulated).

Knowledge(cognitive meaning) is information about the properties of an object. Knowledge is an essential part of culture. With the development of culture, the amount of knowledge that society has is constantly growing, although not all knowledge accumulated in culture is true. In every era there is knowledge that is not sufficiently substantiated by experience and logic. They are called beliefs. Over time, it turns out that many of them, considered at one time undoubted truths, turn out to be delusions (for example, pagan beliefs). There is also such knowledge that in some cultures is recognized as true, while in others it is assessed as false.

Value(value meaning) is the significance of the object for a person. An object has value if a person sees in it a means of satisfying some of his needs. Creating in their imagination mental images of objects that satisfy their desires and needs to the maximum extent, people form ideals- samples, standards of value. The value of actually existing material and spiritual goods is determined in comparison with them. It is the higher, the closer it approaches the ideal.

Regulator(regulatory meaning) is a rule or requirement according to which people build their behavior and activities. Regulators contained in the culture determine the accepted in this culture norms behavior and activities, that is, they indicate which ways and means of achieving goals are acceptable, “normal”, and which are not.

Accordingly, three types of paradigms can be distinguished that determine the nature of information circulating in culture:

cognitive paradigms- types knowledge;

value paradigms- types values;

regulatory paradigms - types regulations.

The information contained in specific cultural phenomena usually includes various types of meanings, just as mechanical, electrical, and chemical phenomena are simultaneously present in specific physical objects. Nature did not graduate from the university, in which these phenomena are distributed among different faculties. It is we humans who separate them from each other and study them separately. Culture in its real existence also does not lay out cognitive, value and regulatory paradigms on different shelves. But for research in cultural studies, it is advisable to consider them separately - just as it is done in natural science when studying mechanical, electrical and chemical phenomena. And having understood their content, one can then move on to the study of more complex, synthetic forms of culture that combine various paradigms.

§ 4.2. Knowledge and Beliefs

In culture, there are three types of cognitive paradigms and, accordingly, three types of knowledge - worldly, mystical and rational.

Worldly knowledge reflect things and phenomena that people encounter in normal life conditions. The main means by which they are formed are ordinary experience, observation and common sense.

Everyday knowledge arises in the direct interaction of people with the environment and reflects the phenomena of reality in concepts that have a simple and visual meaning. Abstractions and complex logical constructions are alien to everyday knowledge. For a long historical time, it provided almost all the needs of people. The development of science and technology and their entry into the conditions of everyday life limit the scope of everyday knowledge. However, it remains necessary to navigate the environment.

Mysticism in colloquial speech they call something mysterious, incomprehensible. However, this concept has a deeper meaning. Mysticism means:

Belief in the existence of mysterious supernatural spiritual forces that work various miracles;

Belief in the existence of special signs, spells and procedures by which one can make contact with these forces;

The practice of using mystical symbols and rituals;

a special kind mental condition- mystical ecstasy, in which a person feels his "unity" with these forces;

Stories, legends about mysterious supernatural forces and people's contacts with them.

The ideas contained in these stories constitute that specific kind of knowledge called mystical belief.

Belief and belief are not the same thing. Faith represents a psychological attitude that ensures adherence to the object of faith and eliminates doubts about it. Faith is the belief in the truth of some knowledge in the absence of evidence for its truth. BUT belief It is knowledge based on faith.

Beliefs accompany human activity always and everywhere. Science cannot do without them, which, although it is constantly looking for a justification for its provisions, is nevertheless forced to introduce assumptions (hypotheses), in the correctness of which a scientist, not having sufficient evidence, can only believe. However, mystical beliefs differ from scientific beliefs in that the latter are consistent with the experience accumulated in science and acquire the status of scientific truths only when they receive sufficiently reliable evidence, and the former are accepted as the truth “on faith”, which does not need any evidence, even if speech is about miracles, that is, phenomena that violate the laws of nature established by science.

Mystical beliefs originate in primitive times and exist in one form or another even today. The development of enlightenment and science undermines faith in mystical miracles, there are many people who are not just interested in mysticism, but who believe in its secret powers and experience genuine fear of them.

In the history of culture, mysticism constantly accompanies religion and often merges with it. Religious mysticism, relying on the irrational element present in any religion, cultivates the idea of spiritual ecstasy, in which a person supposedly unites with God and attains the highest wisdom.

In modern society, the propensity for mystical beliefs is maintained and developed in people due to a number of conditions:

Psychological (fears of dangers and hopes that success will be achieved without any effort; an unconscious desire to return to the children's world of fairy tales, relieve the stress of adult life);

Cognitive (ignorance, lack of knowledge, stereotypical thinking, faith in authorities, disregard for science);

Social (crisis phenomena in the economic and political life of society; the transformation of mythology into the sphere of business).

Mysticism is a dead-end path in the development of human thought, leading it away from reality into the world of ghosts.

rational thinking develops in opposition to mystical beliefs. The main features that distinguish rationalist thinking:

He believes that human knowledge is based on experience and reason; seeks to solve problems by referring to facts and logic, and not to passions and emotions;

He attaches great value to scientific knowledge;

Refuses to accept, without any verification, as true information obtained by unknown or inexplicable means;

Considers possible a critical discussion of any issue, ready to listen to criticism and under the influence to revise their ideas.

In the course of rational cognition, one has to take “on faith” some provisions for which there are no sufficient grounds. However, until a justification has been found, these provisions are considered only more or less probable. hypotheses. Irrational thinking is ready on faith, without evidence, to accept as truth what various kinds of mystical revelations give.

Unlike worldly and mystical ideas, in which logic is not considered a reliable way to achieve truth, rational knowledge must satisfy the mandatory requirements of logic - the principles of validity, consistency, consistency.

In the most developed form, rational forms of knowledge are embodied in philosophy and science.

§ 4.3. Values and ideals

People not only cognize the objects of the surrounding reality, but also evaluate them in terms of their significance for their lives, that is, determine their value. Value is not an object, but a special kind of meaning that a person puts into it. Value cannot be inherent in the object itself, regardless of the person. This is a characteristic of the relationship of a person to an object, fixed in the human mind. Value is what a person sees in an object. property to satisfy some of his needs, and the object is only carrier values. In practice, value is called not only the specified property of the object, but also the object itself, which has such a property, however, strictly speaking, this is inaccurate.

To a person who knows nothing about the value of an object, it is of no value. Even if an object has properties that allow it to satisfy some human need, this does not make it a value. For an object to have value, a person must realized the presence of such properties. For example, gravity, air, vitamins, communication with other people are necessary for a person, he cannot exist without them; but if he does not realize this, then they have no value for him. Value is associated with knowledge, but is not reduced to it: knowledge only states the properties of an object, including the ability to satisfy some need, that is, value; but the latter is not knowledge, but attitude between person and object.

Usually values are divided into material and spiritual. The first include “material goods”, and the second - “spiritual goods”: the well-known triads “truth, goodness, beauty” and “faith, hope, love”; artistic, scientific, philosophical, religious ideas, etc. It should, however, be borne in mind that, speaking in general, all values are of a spiritual nature, since they represent a kind of meanings; "Material" and "spiritual" are actually called here not the values themselves, but the objects ("goods") that serve as their carriers. According to the content, economic, political, moral, aesthetic, etc. values are also distinguished.

Value must be distinguished from usefulness and from truth. So, a valuable thing can be completely useless, and a useful thing can have no value. Truth is often not considered a value and sacrificed for the sake of religious, political, moral, aesthetic and other values.

Human ideas about what values represent (goodness, beauty, comfort, etc.) are called value ideas. Imagination plays an important role in the formation of value ideas. Ideal, that is, the value representation of an imaginary object that satisfies the desires and needs of a person in the most perfect way, acts as a standard of value. However, the ideal is only an imaginary image. Objects that exist in reality never coincide with ideals.

Values are divided into final, instrumental and derivative.

Final- the highest values and ideals, more important and significant than which there is nothing. They are valuable in themselves, and not because they serve as a means to achieve some other values ( human life, freedom, justice, beauty, happiness, love).

Instrumental- the means and conditions necessary, ultimately, to achieve and maintain the final values. Instrumental values are utilitarian in nature, determined by utility. They are valuable because they are useful for achieving some goal.

Derivatives- consequences or expressions of other values that are significant only as signs and symbols of the latter (medal; diploma; a gift from a loved one as a sign of his love).

Each person has a more or less ordered hierarchical structure. value orientations, that is, representations with the help of which he orients himself in the world of values. In this structure, at the top of the hierarchy are the highest, final values and ideals, at lower levels - instrumental and derivative values.

The scale of value orientations varies from person to person. The same value can be final for one person and instrumental for another. For a person of high culture, the final values are those associated with the development of spiritual needs. They take precedence over all other values that perform an instrumental function in relation to them or are derived from them.

Personal, individual hierarchies of values are largely determined by the value paradigms that have developed in culture and the ideas accepted in it about how and by what means people should satisfy their desires and needs.

Two types or levels of value representations can be distinguished. The first one is the value paradigms that develop and function at the level everyday consciousness. They define the values that people strive for in their daily lives. The second is the paradigm of social values and ideals formed at the level of social ideologies. They define the tasks and goals towards the realization of which the development of society should be directed.

The values of everyday life are those qualities of its organization that provide comfort, pleasure and joy. The culture of everyday life tends to highlight the material-material "shell" of values and reduce their spiritual content to it. In other words, spiritual values are identified with their signs, their external expression, the possession of things-bearers of values is taken for the possession of the values themselves. Hence the cult of acquisition is born.

The substitution of values by their material carriers can ultimately lead to an indifferent, and even scornful and mocking attitude towards the highest spiritual values and ideals of human existence. Such valuable realities as honor, conscience, compassion, nobility, humanism, justice, lawfulness, etc., begin to seem like “empty chatter”, not worth the attention of a practical, business person (“this is all for fools”). The human personality also ceases to be a value: it is regarded as a thing, as an object for manipulation. As a result, it turns out that a person himself becomes a thing among other things.

So that everyday fuss does not suppress the personality and does not turn a person into a life-support machine, his life must have meaning.

About the meaning of life

Happy people usually do not think about the meaning of their lives. A happy person does not need to look for the meaning of life, because for him it is already filled with meaning even without these searches. When a person begins to reflect on the meaning of his life, the very fact of such reflections is evidence of dissatisfaction with it. The reason for dissatisfaction with one's life is most often associated with the fact that a person does not get what he wants. have for yourself, that is, his final values are of an egoistic nature, and if efforts to achieve them are in vain, then this is perceived by him as the greatest misfortune and makes his whole existence meaningless.

The problem of the meaning of life can only be solved taking into account the fact that the individual life of a person is a part of common life family, collective, people, all mankind. This common life is a gift that people share together. And at the same time, each person bears a personal and not shared responsibility for the preservation and improvement of this common life. He must live as a participant in it, obliged to take care not only of himself, but also of others. It is thanks to the care of people about each other that the common life of the human race does not stop, although the fate of death comprehends everyone. In this way, individual life acquires meaning as a particle of the joint, common life of people.

A person who lives only for himself loses the meaning of life because he separates his individual life from the common life. To have meaning in life, a person must be a person, mighty to have it. In other words, he must be able really fill your life meaning, and not just verbally formulate what this meaning is (such a formulation is a secondary matter and not even obligatory; many people live a life full of meaning, doing without any verbal expressions of it). A person who knows how to fill life with meaning is a person who carries love for people in his heart. Such a person finds the meaning of life in activities that are of value both to himself and to others.

Value paradigms Ideologies usually include four main layers:

1. Social (economic, legal, political, etc.) values. These include, for example, equality, democracy, freedom, justice, the state, law, education, etc.

2. Criticism of a society that is unable to provide these values.

3. Programs of activities to improve society. Participation in such activities is proclaimed the highest civic virtue, and its leaders and most active participants are portrayed as heroes and role models.

4. Projects of an ideal society in which the values protected by this ideological system are realized in the most perfect form.

The ideology is aggressive towards everyday life. It, as a rule, proclaims the priority of public, national, national interests over personal, family, group ones. State ideology demands from citizens that in order to protect the values of society, country, nation - for example, state sovereignty and independence - sacrifice the values of everyday life - comfort, family well-being, love, etc. The ideal citizen is, first of all, a patriot, for whom the good of the fatherland is higher than any personal benefits. Particularly persistently strive to ideologize everyday life its citizens totalitarian states.

The introduction of ideological values into everyday consciousness and the subordination of a person's private worldly interests to national, state goals is, undoubtedly, one of the ways that takes a person beyond the narrow framework of everyday life. Before it opens a wide field of choice of forms of socially useful activity and finding the meaning of life in it. The struggle for the realization of social ideals, no matter how different ideas about them, creates the conditions for the spiritual uplift of the individual, the development and actualization of his abilities. However, values in general and socio-political value orientations in particular cannot be imposed on a person by force. In response to ideological pressure, mechanisms for protecting the values of everyday life begin to operate. The undivided dominance of official ideology in society does not at all mean its dominance in ordinary consciousness. Everyday life develops "immunity" against an ideological "infection" alien to it.

However, there is no Chinese wall between ideology and everyday consciousness. The resistance of everyday consciousness to ideological propaganda is limited, and it always absorbs some elements of the ideology prevailing in society to a greater or lesser extent.

§ 4.4. Regulations and norms

The social conditions in which a person lives determine what behavior is possible for him and what is impossible. Some forms of behavior are approved by society, others are condemned. Man, as a social being, cannot ignore these demands and must, one way or another, reckon with them.

Possible ways of behavior in given social conditions are given to people in the form regulations. Regulations are informational "blocks" containing prescriptions ("it is necessary"), prohibitions ("it is impossible"), permissions and recommendations ("it is possible"). Unlike animals, humans cannot live on the basis of innate, genetically predetermined patterns of behavior. Only in the process of socialization does a person develop the ability to adapt in a social environment. Complex views human activities are not programmed in the genes, they must be learned. Culture carries non-genetic programs behaviors and activities expressed by the multitude of regulatives contained in it. Regulators are sociocultural mechanisms for managing human behavior. They regulate to a greater or lesser extent everything that our life is connected with - food and clothing, relations between men and women, work and entertainment.

Regulators are explicitly or implicitly expressed in a variety of cultural "texts":

In a language that contains the norms and rules of speech that determine the ways of expressing thoughts;

In socially sanctioned forms of morality, law, political life;

In the manuals and methods regulating labor activity;

In customs, rituals, ceremonies, the implementation of which is required by the traditions existing in society;

In the patterns of behavior that are demonstrated by parents, educators, prominent people, etc .;

In public institutions that regulate relations between people;

In the conditions and objects of our environment that require compliance with certain rules for handling them.

Growing up in a certain cultural environment, each person learns the regulatory paradigms adopted in it. He implements in his actions the programs of behavior prescribed for him by culture, often without even realizing it. The level of our mastery of culture is determined by how well we have learned the information contained in various cultural objects and adhere to the associated programs of behavior prescribed by culture.

A developed culture carries many programs, offers everyone a huge choice of opportunities and is open to the creative creation of new programs. No one is able to follow all the regulations that are contained in the culture of society. They have to be consciously or unconsciously chosen. This choice is associated with individual psychological personality traits. However, the selection field is limited to the existing culture.

Programming by the culture of human behavior does not deprive a person of freedom of action, but allows him to show this freedom only in a given field of choice of regulators. The problem of freedom, however, is not that the choice of regulators is limited, but how much a person is capable of their free choice and how much he is able to consistently implement what his free choice pushes him to.

In culture, heterogeneous and contradictory regulatory paradigms can simultaneously exist, the implementation of which generates different forms of behavior. The generally accepted, expected, characteristic behavior for the majority is called normative, behavior that deviates from generally accepted standards - deviant, or deviant.

Regulators of normative behavior are called sociocultural norms. They are not introduced by official instructions, but are determined and supported by traditions, customs, and public opinion. Obviously, not all regulators are norms, and the types of behavior determined by them are normative. Norms are regulations that are generally recognized and approved by society.

The fulfillment of sociocultural norms is based on intuitively found or consciously developed ideas of a person about what can and cannot be done. However, society exercises social control over people's behavior, stimulating normative and suppressing deviant behavior. The main mechanisms of social control are public opinion and administrative management.

The set of sociocultural norms is divided into three main layers:

general cultural rules that apply to all members of society. These are rules of conduct in public places, rules of courtesy, civil rights and obligations, etc.

Group norms, which include standards of behavior that are characteristic of a certain class, social group, as well as special rules that establish for themselves some separate groups, communities or organizations.

role-playing norms that determine the nature of behavior expected from a person performing a certain social role. The roles of a leader, an official, a buyer, a father, a husband, a daughter, a friend are a kind of social “cells” woven from certain sets of behavioral norms. Having occupied such a “cell”, a person must act in accordance with these norms. Different cultures have different degrees of normativity. "Regulatory failure" culture can lead to an increase in crime, a decline in morality, and the disorganization of social relations. "Normative Redundancy" On the contrary, it contributes to the stability of society, the firmness and stability of the social order, but limits freedom, initiative and creative activity. Both "normative excess" and "normative insufficiency" become an obstacle to social progress.

Where there are norms, there is also the possibility of deviation from them. It makes sense to talk about the norm only when it is assumed that it can be violated. This also applies to cultural norms: along with normative behavior, non-normative behavior is possible, deviant. It relies on adherence to such regulations, which, although they exist in culture, are not recognized as norms in it. Deviations - deviations from normative behavior - are of two kinds.

Random deviations arise due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, when a person is forced to violate some norm. Often he himself repents of his deed and tries not to allow it to happen again.

Regular deviations- these are intentionally, consciously implemented forms of deviant behavior of people, more or less common in the life of society. Deviations of this kind include a wide variety of violations of generally accepted sociocultural norms - from crossing the street on a red light to robberies and murders.

Random deviations can take on a regular character, and regular deviations can become normal. This is how new cultural norms arise and are established in society. For example, in the field of fashion, many novelties first acted as deviations, and then became the norm. At the same time, cultural norms become obsolete, go out of use, and then following them becomes a deviation.

Deviations are a way of changing sociocultural norms. Therefore, they are inextricable from any developing culture.

Chapter 5. Typology of cultures

§ 5.1. Culture and cultures

The meaning of many words changes depending on the context. For example, the word "man" sometimes means a separate individual, and sometimes - a certain person in general or humanity. Often we do not even notice that we give the same word a different meaning. Usually the context tells us in what sense the word is used, and this allows us to understand what is meant. But this is not always the case, and as a result, misunderstandings and confusion arise. The same applies to the word "culture". In different contexts, it can refer to different phenomena, areas and aspects of socio-historical reality.

The word "culture" can mean universal culture, world culture in general. This is its meaning, for example, in the expressions: “development of human culture”, “contribution to world culture”. Culture in this global sense is one, it can only be spoken of in the singular.

The word "culture" can also be understood as local culture, that is, the culture of some specific, historically defined society. In the process of human development, various local cultures arise, each of which has its own specific features and characteristics. This is due to differences in the geographical and socio-historical conditions of the existence of countries and peoples and their relative isolation from each other (the latter is overcome as the means of transportation and communication improve, which leads to a convergence of cultures).

Among local cultures, a special place is occupied by ethnic and national cultures created by individual tribes, peoples, nations. In the early stages of human history, when societies existed in the form of tribes, communities, ethnic groups, as local cultures were ethnic culture. With the consolidation of ethnic communities into nations and the formation of nation-states, culture became the main type of local culture. national.

Cultures are also called socio-cultural formations that cover entire historical epochs and include the cultures of various countries and peoples: for example, cultures that take shape at different stages of human history (primitive culture, medieval culture, modern culture), or supra-ethnic cultural communities (European culture, Christian culture, Arab culture, Soviet culture, Eastern and Western cultures). To designate formations of this kind, the terms are also used "regional culture", "civilization", "metaculture".

In a society, within its own culture, there can be distinguished subcultures. These are the cultures of separate demographic or social strata and groups that embody the differences in their way of life, thinking and behavior from the norms generally accepted in a given society (youth subculture, the subculture of the underworld, a religious sect, etc.). Sometimes the departure of a subculture from the general culture goes so far that its adherents become in opposition to society and come into conflict with the traditions and rules of life existing in it. In such cases, the subculture becomes counterculture. Historically, the germs of a new type of culture appear in society as countercultures that oppose themselves to the dominant culture. Thus, Christianity acted as a counterculture in relation to the Hellenistic culture of the Roman Empire, the culture of the Renaissance originated in the medieval world as a counterculture in opposition to it. But the counterculture that claims to replace the existing culture does not always have a positive content that makes it capable of doing so. When in the 1960s in Western countries, a wave of youth protests against the "culture of fathers" swept, the ideologists of this youth movement declared that it was a counterculture that was alternative to the existing culture. However, such attitudes of the rebellious youth were reduced only to criticism of public order, there was no positive program, and the youth counterculture of the 1960s. died, leaving, however, its mark - the awareness of contradictions in relations between generations.

The concept of culture is also used to refer to individual areas and components culture. Using it in this sense, they talk about the culture of work, life, behavior, artistic, musical, moral, legal, political culture, etc.

To understand the diversity of cultures that have existed and exist as part of the universal human world culture, their phenomenological description alone (that is, the description of real, specific cultures as special socio-historical phenomena) is not enough. Need them typology. It involves finding out the similarities and differences between cultures and dividing them into different types. If the phenomenological description characterizes specific cultures, then the typological description characterizes the types of cultures. Many cultures may belong to a certain type, or there may be only one. But even in the latter case, the typological description is not a description of this culture alone, but of common features that other cultures of this type would have if they existed.

The definition and study of types of culture encounters considerable difficulties. A type is an ideal, abstract construction that, in a generalized, schematized form, expresses some essential (“typical”) features of cultures, abstracting from their specific features. But each real culture is unique, and it is possible to put it on a Procrustean bed of a certain type only with some simplifications and reservations. The historically real and existing concrete cultures correspond only approximately to this or that type. They may deviate somewhat from his typical traits and include features of other types.

§ 5.2. sociocultural worlds

Culture cannot be considered in isolation from the society in which it exists, and its type characterizes not only this culture itself, but society as a whole. A society distinguished by its own type of culture forms a special sociocultural world.

Sociocultural worlds are relatively isolated from the external environment. The influence of other cultures does not significantly affect either the content of their life or their historical evolution (unless it is interrupted forcibly by conquerors). Each socio-cultural world is a kind of separate island of the archipelago of human culture, existing relatively independently of its other islands. All parts of this archipelago are united by the common nature of mankind. Perhaps in the future they will merge into one whole, but so far human culture has developed and continues to develop in the conditions of the coexistence of various socio-cultural worlds.

Sociocultural worlds can be closed in the sphere of any particular ethnic culture (for example, the world of Ancient Egypt or the world of the Incas), but they can also cover different peoples and countries (the world of the European Middle Ages, the world of Arab culture, etc.). In cultural studies, approaches to the construction of a typology of sociocultural worlds are most often used, in which the following are distinguished:

historical types of culture– successive eras in the development of society (for example, the ancient world, the medieval world);

national cultures– cultures of different peoples;

regional cultures- supra-ethnic cultural communities that develop in a certain geographical area (for example, culture Latin America, African culture);

civilization- socio-cultural worlds, which are special types of social systems that exist autonomously during large historical epochs (for example, Sumerian civilization, European civilization).

The historical types of culture will be discussed in the third part of the book, devoted to the dynamics of the historical development of human culture (see Chapter 12). And now let's consider the specifics of national, regional and civilizational types of culture.

§ 5.3. National cultures

Ethnic (folk) cultures arise in antiquity along with ethnic groups. Their historical first form is tribal culture.

The specificity of ethnic culture is largely due to the natural environment, the dependence on which in the past was greater. It expresses the age-old folk experience of life and rational housekeeping in given natural conditions. It is no coincidence that it is preserved to a greater extent in the countryside than in the city.

Ethnic culture covers mainly the sphere of work and life and carries the "customs of the ancestors". Its features are manifested in the features of food and clothing, folklore, folk crafts, traditional medicine, etc. It usually develops as a non-literate culture, but with the spread of literacy, it is gradually clothed in written clothes.

Conservatism, continuity going back to the distant past, orientation towards the preservation of "roots" are the characteristic features of ethnic culture. Some of its elements become symbols of the identity of the people and patriotic attachment to their historical past - “trunks of white-winged birches”, “cashi and porridge”, a samovar and a sundress for Russians; oatmeal and legends about "ghosts in the castle" among the British; Scots plaid skirt; sausages with cabbage from the Germans; Italian spaghetti. Any nation has similar ethnic symbols.

In the culture of a developed nation there is always an ethnic component - the culture of ethnic groups (one or more), from which the nation was formed. Ethnic culture is the most ancient layer of national culture. But national culture is not limited to ethnic. Its wealth develops on the basis of writing and education. It is embodied in literature and art, science and philosophy, socio-political and technological development of society. The best achievements of national culture are the product of creativity of the most talented representatives of the nation, enlightened, erudite people. Its focus is not so much the village as the city with its theatres, museums, libraries and educational institutions. Mastering the national culture does not happen by itself - it is achieved through education and self-education and requires serious intellectual efforts. The well-known Russian linguist, literary critic and psychologist D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky wrote: “Nationality is a phenomenon, mainly of an intellectual order. Therefore, the intelligentsia expresses the national "underlying background" of the people more fully than other strata of the population.

Ethnic culture is the initial basis of national culture. She is the source of the folk language (which becomes in the national culture literary language). Writers borrow plots and images from it, composers borrow musical melodies and rhythms, architects borrow styles and techniques for designing buildings. The originality and uniqueness of the "face" of any national culture largely depends on its ancient traditions that have developed over the centuries.

However, the relationship between national culture as a whole and ethnic culture as its most ancient component is very complex and contradictory. Ethnic culture conserves archaic, in many respects no longer meeting modern conditions, norms of life, any changes and innovations are alien to it, while national culture is full of movement and change, it lives with the creativity of the new. Ethnic culture tends to be closed, it suffers xenophobia- hostility to everything alien and unfamiliar, while the national one, on the contrary, the higher it is developed, the more open it is for contacts with other cultures, becoming only richer because it absorbs their achievements. Ethnic culture seeks to preserve the differences between local, local, peculiar to individual groups of the population, the features of life, behavior, pronunciation, etc., and in the national culture these differences are leveled and gradually disappear with its development.

It is not surprising that there were periods in the history of nations when the divergence between the ethnic culture of the "lower classes" (peasant, "common people", "peasant") and the culture of the educated strata ("high", "aristocratic") reached almost the point of rupture and antagonism. In Russia in the XVIII-XIX centuries. between the culture of the nobility and the culture of the "common people" formed a real abyss. And the language, and mores, and customs were so different that it was easier for some Russian nobleman to understand a stranger than his own serf. Many representatives of the highest aristocracy, fluent in French, could hardly speak Russian. It took the genius of Pushkin, who managed to combine in his work the “common people” principle with aristocratic education, the passionate speeches of the Slavophiles in defense of the “Russian folk spirit”, the “going to the people” of the intelligentsia, in order to build bridges across this abyss.

In our time, the undoubtedly correct idea about the need for a cultural upsurge in Russia is often framed in the slogan of "the revival of Russian culture." But what exactly needs to be revived? There are many ultra-patriots who, under this slogan, advocate the revival of Russian ethnic culture. Some even go so far as to call for a return to the "origins of the Russian spirit", referring to the pre-Christian, pagan religion of the ancient Slavs. For anyone who understands the place and role of ethnic culture in national culture, such views are unacceptable. Following them would lead not to a rise, but to a decline in the cultural level of the Russian people. Leave from folk life bast shoes, a poker, fortune-telling at the thrower of straw, the custom of kidnapping girls at “games between villages” (that is, in a field between villages) and other “signs of antiquity deep”. Urban culture penetrates rural life along with books and audiovisual equipment, electricity and plumbing, a refrigerator and a computer. Ethnic culture is increasingly moving into museums. It must be known and studied, but to live in modern culture.

Of course, not everything in modern culture can please us, and much of the ethnic culture deserves to be preserved in modern life. But concern for the preservation or even restoration of some undeservedly forgotten fruits of ancient folk wisdom should be dictated not only by love for the past, but above all, by love for the future, not by the desire to retain at all costs the specifics that distinguish this people from others, but the desire to contribute to the progress of national culture. Love for the past is beautiful when inspired by love for the future. Patriotism benefits the people only when it is aimed not at the vigilant protection of the "origins", "soil", "purity of blood", but at the prosperity of the people.

The cultural progress of a nation is not at all a continuous series of victories and acquisitions. It is full of contradictions and losses. Just as a person, growing up, loses the ability to be content with childish naive joys, so the people, developing culture, are deprived of much that worried and amused their ancestors. We got the opportunity to fly on airliners, but lost the pleasure of traveling in dashing coachman troikas. VCRs started up in our houses, but quiet home evenings accompanied by cricket singing disappeared. Cultural progress brings peoples together and evens out, and in many ways even unifies and standardizes the conditions of their cultural life. Production and household equipment, footwear and clothing, basic human rights and principles of law and order, scientific knowledge and much more - in all this, countries with a developed modern culture differ little from each other. One can regret the loss of national specificity, but it is hardly expedient to give up the benefits of civilization just for the sake of preserving it.

§ 5.4. Regional cultures

A characteristic feature of regional cultures is that each of them exists in a certain geographical area. The scale of the area of regional culture can be different. Regional cultures of a smaller scale can be included in regional cultures of a larger scale (for example, the culture of Indochina is one of the components of the culture of South Asia, and that, in turn, is the culture of the East). In some cases, we can talk about regional cultures that cover one people, that is, coinciding with its national culture (for example, the culture of Korea). However, as a rule, they are a conglomeration of different cultures created by several peoples inhabiting the region. The presence of similar natural living conditions in this area and territorial ties ensure the kinship between the cultures of these peoples living next to each other.

In the course of history, the composition of the peoples inhabiting the region may change. But since the same geographical, climatic and other features of people's life in a given region continue to exist, the newcomers somehow perceive the forms of life and customs of the local population, and as a result, a historical continuity is formed that preserves the specifics of this regional culture. This happened, for example, in India: the cultures of different peoples who settled on Indian soil absorbed ancient traditions that still make up the specific flavor of the life of this country.

When a regional culture invades areas occupied by another regional culture, it either undergoes significant changes there, assimilates and merges with the latter (as the Negro culture in North America or Western culture in Japan), or displaces the local culture from there (as happened with culture of American or Australian aborigines during the seizure of their lands by Europeans). Thus, the area of regional culture can expand or shrink.

The largest regions of the Earth, in which cultures that differ significantly from each other historically, are "West" and "East", as well as "North" and "South".

West and East

The concepts "East" and "West" do not have a clearly defined meaning. Most often, the East is understood to mean Asia, and the West - Europe and North America. However, this is not about geography. The difference between East and West interests cultural studies as a difference between two types of cultures. There is no doubt that the culture of the East and the culture of the West have specific features. To many people in the West, Eastern culture seems incomprehensible and exotic, and representatives of Eastern culture often look at Western culture with bewilderment and disapproval. However, the differences between these cultures are more intuitively grasped than strictly logically formulated and substantiated. About the features that distinguish them from each other, one can speak only with a greater or lesser degree of convention. Firstly, because these cultures are diverse in their content, and if we characterize them in a generalized way, abstracting from the specifics of the national cultures included in them, then such a characterization will be very poor. Secondly, oriental culture heterogeneous to a much greater extent than the western one: there is a Buddhist East, a Muslim East, an Arab East; there is a big difference in the way of life of the peoples of such countries as India, China, Japan, Iran, while the culture of the West is united by one religion - Christianity (although it breaks up into a number of different faiths), and the dissimilarity in the way of life between Western countries is not so striking like in the East. Therefore, acad. V. M. Alekseev called the culture of the East "horizontal", and the West - "vertical".

For a long time, the problem of "East - West" was considered mainly from the standpoint of Eurocentrism. The difference between Eastern and Western culture was seen in the fact that the East simply lagged behind the West in its cultural development. At present, this view no longer seems as obvious as before. It became clear that the development of culture in different regions goes in different ways. From this point of view, East and West are not stages of cultural progress located one above the other, but two powerful branches of human culture, developing simultaneously, but in different ways.

In the vast literature devoted to the specifics of national and regional cultures, different, often even incompatible and contradictory judgments are expressed about the features and characteristics of Western and Eastern culture.

Many researchers note that different types of worldview prevail in the East and West. The Eastern worldview is based on the self-isolation of a person from the outside world and withdrawal into the inner spiritual life; Western, on the contrary, aims a person at the knowledge of the external world and active influence on it. The East is characterized by the passive submission of man to the "universal life force", acting as a deity, for the West - the initiative of man. Eastern culture “affirms only an inhuman God”, while Western culture “strives first of all to the exclusive affirmation of a godless person” (Vl. Solovyov).

In Western philosophy, in the foreground is the idea of being, in Eastern philosophy, the idea of non-being. True knowledge in Eastern philosophy is thought to be inexpressible in words, while Western philosophy in its classical forms is imbued with the desire of thinkers to comprehend and formulate the truth. Eastern culture values thoughtful silence, concentrated immersion in oneself (meditation). Oriental sages win recognition not so much with brilliant sermons or learned treatises, but with an example of personal life. Western culture is more talkative, and for an Eastern person even excessively talkative. In it, a thinker, sage, teacher is required, first of all, to possess the gift of words, oratorical skills, wit, and the ability to convince.

Until recently, science in the East lagged far behind that of the West, and only in the 20th century began to overcome this lag. For a long time among the sciences in the East, the practical branches, especially medicine, occupied a central place.

Eastern art, in comparison with Western art, is more sublime and elegant, less realistic and utilitarian; it has more symbolism, understatement, mystery. Emerging from the nineteenth century. in European art, modernist trends to a certain extent owe their origin to the influence of the East.

The famous masterpieces of oriental sculpture and architecture are distinguished by their bright decorativeness, refinement of forms, and careful study of details. Such, for example, are Indian jewelry made of gold and precious stones, or Chinese products made of porcelain and ivory.

In the traditional genres of oriental painting, there is neither direct nor reverse perspective. The paintings do not have a clearly defined center, they do not fix the point of view from which they are painted. The artist, as it were, is dissolved in the world he depicts - he does not have a specific place in it. In the classical poetry of China and Japan, the authors also avoid expressing or even somehow designating their personality. In verse, in general, personal pronouns are almost completely absent, and verbs are used in such a way that it is difficult to unambiguously determine the characteristics of the subject. An accurate translation of these verses into European languages would have to do without words like “I”, “you”, “mine”, “you” and put all verbs in the infinitive, but such an “impersonal” expression of feelings would be incomprehensible to Europeans.

In Eastern art, the boundaries between art forms, familiar to Europeans, often disappear. A specific synthesis of painting, graphics, poetry and calligraphy is the traditional Chinese "art of the brush": here both a laconic, delicate drawing, and exquisitely written hieroglyphs, and poetic imagination merge into a holistic artistic image created with the help of a single tool - a brush.

In the ethical attitudes of the East, there is a noticeable tendency towards contemplation, conservatism, asceticism, while Western ethics is more aimed at activity, liberalism, eudemonism and utilitarianism. Traditions dating back to antiquity and the religion of Islam widespread in the East significantly limit the participation of women in public affairs (even in the theater, female roles are usually performed by male actors).

Eastern culture is more prone to "normative redundancy", while Western culture is more prone to "normative insufficiency". The East is characterized by strict behavioral regulations, respect for customs and traditions, and ceremonial social contacts. For the West, it is a great diversity and lability of the norms of social behavior, the desire for social creativity, enterprise, an accelerated pace of life, leading to an ever greater reduction and simplification of all kinds of rituals, to a faster loosening of traditions. The basis of Eastern culture is tradition, and therefore the idea of progress, which is so significant for the West, does not arouse much enthusiasm in the East. Innovations are usually accepted there only when they somehow fit into forms acceptable from the point of view of the old traditions. The dynamism of the Western way of life contrasts sharply with the inertia of Eastern society, the slow pace of its development.

The reasons for the emergence of differences between Eastern and Western cultures are varied.

First, it is the difference in natural conditions. Nietzsche wrote that the East is a region of a continental tropical climate, it is characterized by extreme opposites - a sharp change of day and night, a quick change in weather, a wasteful transfusion of nature over the edge of abundance; in the West, there is a clear but not shining sky, clean (this was the case under Nietzsche), almost unchanging air, coolness, sometimes even cold.

Secondly, the difference in the dynamics of the socio-economic development of society. Its slow pace in the East is due not only to the vastness of the territories, the difficulty of trade and economic relations between them, but also to the long existence of large imperial systems in which the power common to several peoples prevented their independent development.

Thirdly, the difference in the nature of intercultural contacts. The Western world is characterized by a constant exchange of ethnic cultures, attention to the experience gained in other cultures, a willingness to assimilate it, to absorb the best achievements of other cultures. It was precisely this intensity of intercultural contacts, largely based on the religious unity of the Western world, that ensured the rapid development of the cultures of Western peoples. In the East, on the contrary, there are several coexisting religions, the isolation of ethnic cultures, and the weakness of interchange between them.

Despite the differences, there is a certain parallelism in the cultural development of the East and West. Thus, according to the opinion of Orientalists (although not entirely unanimous), the East, like the West, had its own Renaissance, which was expressed, of course, in specifically oriental forms. The coincidence of a number of artistic canons in Eastern and Western art has been established - for example, in ancient, Byzantine, Indian, Tibetan painting and sculpture, the ideals of human beauty were built on the same iconometric proportions (arm span is equal to height, face is equal to the length of the brush, etc.). ). There is a curious similarity in the development philosophical ideas(by Heraclitus and Hui Shi, Zeno and Gunsun Lin), in the content of works of art (by Horace and Lu Tzu, who lived three centuries later).

There are two opposite views on the problem of interaction between the cultures of the West and the East. One of them is expressed in Kipling's famous poem: "The West is the West, and the East is the East, and they will not leave the place"; another was formulated by Goethe: “Thoughts of the wise with a fast current will connect the West with the East.” It has now become almost universally recognized that the interaction of Western and Eastern cultures is necessary and beneficial for the cultural progress of mankind. However, this interaction does not mean the disappearance of all differences between them. An example here is the experience of Japan.

Russia occupies a special place at the junction of East and West. She, in essence, is forced to solve the problem of the dialogue of two different socio-cultural worlds as a problem of her internal cultural policy.

North and South

Along with the East-West problem, recent times the North-South problem is becoming increasingly important. The "South" here refers to the socio-cultural world of the peoples of the subtropical zone - the African continent, Melanesia, Oceania. The peoples living to the north form the socio-cultural world of the "North", in which Western culture plays a leading role. The geographic boundaries between North and South are difficult to clearly define. The world of the South partially intersects with the world of the East and is opposed mainly to the world of the West. Its specificity appears most clearly in the way of life of the natives of the Pacific Islands and "black Africa".

The "southern" region is the ancestral home of mankind: modern anthropologists tend to recognize monocentric theory of the origin of man, according to which the human race originates from the pre-humans who lived on the African continent 3-4 million years ago. Natural conditions (wealth of flora and fauna, warm climate) did not require from the southern peoples the development of forms of material production, characteristic of the more severe zones of the globe. For thousands of years, their culture has transmitted from generation to generation the same, little-changing body of knowledge and traditions that ensure the life of people on the basis of a primitive, but well-adapted to the natural environment, economy. Once upon a time, this type of economy and culture brought the South to a leading place in the development of mankind. However, the stagnation characteristic of the southern type of cultural and economic life turned Africa and the islands of Oceania into colonies of European states. The peoples of the South, who fell into colonial dependence on European states, only in the 20th century. began to free themselves from it and create independent states. The movement for independence caused in them a rapid rise in national self-consciousness and a desire to protect, affirm and elevate the dignity of their original culture.

To date, the population of the South is about one billion people. Its ethnic composition is extremely diverse. Traditional forms of mythology and magic, including ancient beliefs in spirits, shamanism and sorcery, worship of idols and fetishes, are preserved everywhere and play a large role in the organization of life. Along with the ancient local pagan religions, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity are widespread.

The art of the peoples of the South is distinguished by expression - a stormy expression of emotions, which is especially felt in the art of music and dance. Fine arts are dominated by bright colors, sharp, angular forms, grotesque emphasis on the characteristic features of animals and people. Surprisingly diverse options for decorating the human body. Music and dance, painting and sculpture are imbued with magical symbols. Its hidden meaning is clear only to the initiates. What exactly these or those works and their individual elements mean, sometimes only members of the clan or shamans who have passed initiation know.

Sharp clashes on ethnic and religious grounds are shaking the states that have arisen on the site of former colonies. But at the same time, the idea of a cultural community uniting the peoples of the South is gradually becoming more widespread. In its most expanded form, this idea was embodied in Negritude- a direction of social thought that is widespread in the South, affirming the exclusivity of the historical destinies of Africa and the special role of Negro culture in the development of mankind.

One of the negritude ideologists, the modern African thinker L. Senghor, argues that blacks have a different attitude to nature and the environment than Europeans. Europeans are people of action, for them nature is a world of objects from which they are separated. They are conquerors, "predators", consumers who use and destroy nature. Negroes, on the contrary, live in merger with the environment. The Negro is a child of nature, he is in a living, direct connection with her. He does not "consume", does not "use" nature, but "participates" in her life. If for a European the main tool for understanding the world is rational thinking, then for a Negro - feelings, emotions, "direct empathy" of the processes taking place in the world. He instinctively nurtures respect for life, instinctively captures the beauty of nature. For the Negro, the visible, the carnal is only a manifestation of the invisible, the spiritual. The world for him is full of magic and animated. The element of the African is dance, music, sports, the warmth of human relationships. He does not need a soulless technique that fences people off from the world. The abstract, impersonal science of white people is also alien to him: he comprehends everything without it - with the help of his “African science” of feeling and empathy.

According to Senghor, Negro culture is the opposite of the culture of the white peoples of the North. He believes that African culture not only stands on a par with Western culture, but also surpasses it in many ways. Pointing to the neuroticism of Western industrialized society, Senghor believes that the future of mankind must lie in the ways of accepting the values of Negro culture.

In such a description of the culture of the South, it is not difficult to recognize the features characteristic of the primitive mythological culture - the "childhood of mankind". The organic fusion of the subject with the object, the naive-childish, emotional, intuitive way of seeing the world - this was once in Western culture, but disappeared over time.

However, the “return to childhood” in the life of society, as well as in the life of an individual, can resurrect the freshness of feelings and the joy of being lost over the years. To some extent, this is happening in Western society. The infusion of "fresh African blood" noticeably updated and emotionally enriched the art of the North, especially music and dance (jazz, reggae, disco, rap, breakdance). The art of the South left its mark on the work of outstanding European artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Dali, etc.). The echo of African culture can also be seen in the field of philosophy (for example, in the concept of "respect for life" by the European thinker of the twentieth century A. Schweitzer). Thanks to Negro athletes, many sports spectacles have become livelier, sharper and more dynamic - football, basketball, boxing, athletics.

End of introductory segment.