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Файл:Culturology. Educational manual
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economics, science, the arts, literature, philosophy, and religion. All of these fields
find their roots in the primordial intuition, the “para-phenomenon” of a given culture,
which varies with specific historical and ethnic formations.
In Russia, this organicist concept of culture found its earliest expression in the
work of Nikolai Danilevsky, a late-nineteenth-century Slavophilic thinker who half
a century before Oswald Spengler outlined a certain number of cultural-historical
types, including “European” and “Slavic”. For Danilevsky, culture is the broadest
concept that embraces four kinds of activities: religious, political, socio-economic,
and cultural in the narrow sense (art, science, and technology). Culturological topics
were widely discussed in prerevolutionary Russian religious philosophy, where
Nikolai Berdiaev, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Pavel Florensky speculated on culture
as a complementary aspect of cult, that is, as a free creative response of man to God’s
act of creation. According to Berdiaev, “in social life, the spiritual primacy belongs
to culture. The goals of society are fulfilled in culture, not in politics and economics”.
The concept of culture proved to be central for many important thinkers in
post-Stalinist Russia as an alternative to the concept of society dominant in Marxist
theory. While society is divided into classes and parties, each fighting for power and
supremacy, culture has the potential to unite people and transcend social, national,
and historical divisions. From a culturological standpoint, culture can be defined as a
symbolic responsiveness: Any new artistic work or philosophical theory introduced
into the system of culture changes the meaning of all other elements, and in this way
not only does the past influence the present, but the present gives shape to the past.
The model of history as a unidirectional vector, which long held sway over the Soviet
mentality, was challenged by the concept of culture as a multidimensional continuum
on which epochs are not successive steps in humanity's progress but coexist on equal
terms and give meaning to each other”1.
Why is culturology important?
Read some citations:
۩ After Wilhelm Ostwald, an American anthropologist Leslie A. White in the
late 1940s introduced the term and concept of “culturology” into Anglo-American
scholarship. According to White, culturology is a discipline with a larger field and
intellectual capacity. It is more useful than sociology because “culture” itself is a
broader concept than that of “society”: “Instead of dealing with cultural determinants
upon their own level, i.e., culturologically, sociology brought them down to the sociopsychological level … The attempts of sociologists to explain culture in terms of
1
Epstein M. From Culturology to Transculture // Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of
Creative Communication. New York: St. Martin's Press (Scholarly and Reference Division), 1999. P. 15–30.
12
‘social process’ or ‘interaction’ failed as of course it must”
2
. Unfortunately, the term
was not accepted by Anglo-American scholarship.
Also L. White wrote: “The explanation of culture is and must be culturological …
'Culturology' specifies a sector of reality and defines a science. In so doing it trespasses
upon the prior claims of psychology and sociology. It does more than trespass, of
course; it expropriates as well. That is, it makes it clear that the solution of certain
scientific problems does not properly lie within the provinces of psychology and
sociology as previously supposed, but belong to - i.e., can be solved only by - a science
of culture <…> 'Sociology' <…> assimilates culture to its basic concept of interaction,
making culture an aspect, or a by-product, of the social process of interaction whereas
the structures and processes of human society are functions of culture”3.
۩ Mikhail Bakhtin in his studding in literature insists that “literature is an
inseparable part of culture and it cannot be understood outside the total context of
the entire culture of a given epoch. … [N]arrow specification is alien to the best
traditions of our scholarship. … In our enthusiasm for specification we have ignored
questions of the interconnection and interdependence of various areas of culture …
and we have not taken into account that the most intense and productive life of
culture takes place on the boundaries of its individual areas and not in places where
these areas have become enclosed in their own specificity”4.
۩ A Russian philosopher of XX century Aleksei Losev in his investigations of
Antient Greek aesthetics, shows deep parallels of ideas, principles in different aspects
of cultural phenomenon created in this historical period. We can find familiar features
in philosophy, art, literature as well as in myths and a worldview. Losev shows that
because of these links we can consider “all reality as a living organism”5. For Losev,
the principal goal of culturological research is to perceive the uniqueness of a given
phenomenon: “In exploring any fact from the culture of classical antiquity, I did not
rest until I found in it a quality that sharply distinguished it from everything that is
not classical <…> 'Style' and 'worldview' must be integrated by any means; they
must necessarily reflect each other”6.
The concept of culturology, as it was elaborated by Leslie A. White and,
independently, by Russian scholars, presupposes that culture is a comprehensive
structure, “the extra-somatic continuum of symbol-borne events” (Leslie White) that
is irreducible to social interactions and political contexts.
2
Leslie A. White. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Cudahy, 1949. Р. 80, 81.
3
Ibid. Р. 393, 412, 414.
4
Bakhtin М. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays / ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1986. Р. 135.
5
Losev A.F. Istoriia antichoi estetiki. Poslednie veka. Book 2. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1988. Р. 379.
6
Losev A.F. Ocherki antichnogo simvolizma i mifologii. Vol. 1. Moscow: Izdanie avtora, 1930. Р. 690, 693.
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Questions
Elementary level:
- what is culturology?
- what is the difference between theoretical and historical parts of culturology?
- who has proposed the term ‘culturology’?
- what is the dynamics of culture?
- if we can see the cultural genesis in our time? In case of positive answer give
an example of it;
- what is the cultural diffusion? Give an example;
- what is the cultural revolution? Give an example;
- what is cultural borrowing?
Intermediate level:
- what is the disadvantage of the cultural assimilation?
- what are the reasons of the cultural rejection?
- what are the reasons of the cultural lag? In what kind of historical period
there are more reasons for appearing of a cultural lag — in nowadays or in the past?
Prove your answer;
- what provides cultural stagnation?
- if we can identify culturology as an interdisciplinary science? Prove your
answer;
- what is the key function of the cultural borrowing? What other cultural
processes have similar function?
Advanced level:
- what is the difference between the cultural evolution and the cultural
revolution?
- how do you understand the phrase “culture as an integral organism”?
- how do you understand the phrase “not only does the past influence the
present, but the present gives shape to the past”?
- what are the advantages of culturology in comparison to sociology in
studding culture, according to Leslie A. White?
- what is lack in studding of culture according to M. Bakhtin?
- what is the main goal of culture studding according to A. Losev?
Literature and Internet sources
1. Epstein M. From Culturology to Transculture // Transcultural Experiments:
Russian and American Models of Creative Communication. — New York : St.
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Martin’s Press (Scholarly and Reference Division), 1999. — P. 15–30. — URL:
https://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/tc_1.html.
2. Leslie A. White. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. —
New York : Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1949.
3. Sсherbakova A.I., Zorilova L.S., Anufrieva N.I., Kamenets A.V.,
Zinchenko E.O. Prospects of Further Evolution of Culturology // Rupkatha Journal
on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. — 2016. — Vol. VIII. — No. 3. — URL:
https://rupkatha.com/V8/n3/11_culturology.pdf.
4. Culturology // Encyclopedia.com : [website]. — URL: https://www.encyclo
pedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/anthropology-and-archaeology/anthropology-termsand-concepts/culture#E.
1.2. CULTURE AS A PHENOMENON
Content of the topic:
Culture as an object of culturology. Variety of concepts of culture. Typologies of
culture. Cultural relativism. Multiculturalism and cosmopolitism. Parallels between
cultural and biological mechanisms. In what way culture influences medicine?
This topic is aimed at discussing different concepts and approaches to
phenomenon of culture. Culture is represented as a comprehensive, constantly
changing reality that provides unity of the social life, and at the same time allows its
new forms to appear.
After the topic completion students should:
1) know:
- about culture as a phenomenon: notion, structure, typology, functions,
concepts of culture by M. Bakhtin and Yu. Lotman;
- essence of cultural relativism;
- sense of multiculturalism and cosmopolitism;
2) be able to:
- search and critically use the literature necessary for the explaining of the topic;
- use the knowledge gained in the course of cultural studies to assess the
phenomena of the cultural life of modern society;
- understand the role of cultural heritage in self-improvement and self-
development of the individual;
3) have:
- skills of studying and analyzing texts with cultural content;
- methods of discussion and polemics;
- skills of public speech and reasoned presentation of their own point of view.
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Main notions
Culture is a certain historical stage in the development of society, expressed
(objectified) in the material and spiritual activity of people, that is called also ‘second
nature’.
Spiritual culture is the results of a projective, cognitive, value-oriented and
normative activity of a person that satisfies his spiritual needs. For example, religion,
science, values, traditions, etc.
Material culture is a culture associated with the production and development
of objects and phenomena of the material world, with a change in the physical nature
of a person. These are crafts, equipment, buildings and structures, tools, etc.
Artistic culture is an activity that reflects reality and at the same time creates
a special artificial reality using figurative means of expression. For example,
sculpture, architecture, fine arts.
Traditional culture is a culture that is characterized by the dominance of
traditions, mythological and religious ideas, collectivist relations between people.
Innovative culture is a culture that is characterized by an orientation towards
innovation, instrumental values, sciences and technologies, and a distinguished
personality.
Mass culture is the dominant type of culture in mass society, focused on
satisfying and shaping the needs of the general population through the dissemination
of standardized mass media products created by the ‘entertainment industry’.
Elite culture is a ‘high culture’, opposed to mass culture in terms of the type of
influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and
providing a meaning-forming function.
Cultural relativism is the idea that the system of moral and ethics, which varies
from one culture to another, are all equal, and that no system ranks above the other.
Multiculturalism is a position that is associated with acceptation of cultural
diversity based on ethnic, national, and religious differences.
Cosmopolitism is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political
affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community.
Mentality is a way of thinking and behavior that is formed in the process of
enculturation, which is characteristic of both a single individual and wider groups of
people.
Culture shock is emotional or physical discomfort, disorientation of the
individual, caused by falling into a different cultural environment, a collision with
another culture, an unfamiliar place. It can last for several months. Culture shock has
more than just negative consequences. Modern researchers consider it as a normal
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reaction, as part of the normal process of adaptation to new conditions. Moreover, in
the course of this process, a person not only acquires knowledge about a new culture
and about the norms of behavior in it, but also becomes more culturally developed,
although it experiences stress. It is especially actual for people who have moved to
other country, for example, for foreign students.
Task: every notion has its synonyms and antonyms, that help to understand the
key idea of the notion better. Fill in the table with synonyms and antonyms of culture
and explain your choice. Point 1 and 2 are examples for you.
Culture
Synonym
Antonym
Explanation
1. education
1. ignorance
“culture” typically referred to the
educational process through which an
individual had undergone; in other
words, for centuries “culture” was
associated with an education.
2. politeness
2. discourtesy
if person is polite, we talk that he/she
is a person of culture.
So, culture here is equal to politeness.
3.
4.
5.
Concepts of culture
Concept of culture by Mikhail Bakhtin
There are some excerpts from an article by Andrew Robinson about the
concept of culture by Mikhail Bakhtin. Read them and answer the questions:
“In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin developed the concepts which
were to inform much of his work. The concept of ‘polyphony’ (borrowed from
music) is central to this analysis. Polyphony literally means multiple voices. Bakhtin
reads Dostoevsky’s work as containing many different voices, unmerged into a single
perspective, and not subordinated to the voice of the author. Each of these voices has
its own perspective, its own validity, and its own narrative weight within the novel.
17
The author does not place his own narrative voice between the character and
the reader, but rather, allows characters to shock and subvert. It is thus as if the books
were written by multiple characters, not a single author’s standpoint. Instead of a
single objective world, held together by the author’s voice, there is a plurality of
consciousnesses, each with its own world. The reader does not see a single reality
presented by the author, but rather, how reality appears to each character.
<…> Dostoevsky’s ‘dialogical principle’ is counterposed to the ‘monologism’
(single-thought discourse; also termed ‘homophony’ — single-voice) characteristic of
traditional writing and thought. In monologism, one transcendental perspective or
consciousness integrates the entire field, and thus integrates all the signifying
practices, ideologies, values and desires that are deemed significant. Anything
irrelevant to this perspective is deemed superfluous or irrelevant in general.
<…> In monologism, ‘truth’, constructed abstractly and systematically from
the dominant perspective, is allowed to remove the rights of consciousness. Each
subject’s ability to produce autonomous meaning is denied. Qualitative difference is
rendered quantitative. This performs a kind of discursive ‘death’ of the other, who, as
unheard and unrecognised, is in a state of non-being. The monological word
‘gravitates towards itself and its referential object’.
<…> Dialogism in contrast recognises the multiplicity of perspectives and
voices. It is also referred to as ‘double-voiced’ or ‘multi-voiced’. It is a ‘principle’
which can become the main referent of a particular aesthetic field. Each character has
their own final word, but it relates to and interacts with those of other characters.
Discourse does not logically unfold (as in analytical philosophy), but rather, interacts.
This makes dialogical works a lot more ‘objective’ and ‘realistic’ than their
monological counterparts, since they don’t subordinate reality to the ideology of the
author.
<…> It is a consciousness lived constantly on the borders of other
consciousnesses.
<…> Bakhtin criticises the view that disagreement means at least one of the
people must be wrong. Because many standpoints exist, truth requires many
incommensurable voices. <…> Separateness and simultaneity are permanently with
us. There is no single meaning to be found in the world, but a vast multitude of
contesting meanings. Truth is established by addressivity, engagement and
commitment in a particular context”.
<…> This literary analysis has implications for social analysis. For
Bakhtinians, the social world is also made up of multiple voices, perspectives, and
subjective ‘worlds’. To exist is to engage in dialogue, and dialogue must not come to
18
an end. Dialogues does not occur between fixed positions or subjects. People are also
transformed through dialogue, fusing with parts of the other’s discourse. The other’s
response can change everything in one’s own consciousness or perspective. Dialogue
can produce a decisive reply which produces actual changes.
Bakhtin views humanity as fundamentally indeterminate and unfinalizable.
People constantly struggle against external definitions of their thoughts and actions,
which have a deadening effect on them. There is something within each concrete
person which can only be actualised through a free discursive act, and not in a predefined context.
For Bakhtin, dialogism characterises the entire social world. Authentic human
life is an open-ended dialogue. The world thus merges into an open-ended, multivoiced, dialogical whole. Its separation or splitting is overcome through awareness of
its dialogical character — in effect, as one big borderland. This is a world of many
worlds, all equally capable of expressing themselves and conceptualising their
objects.
<…> we might think of the state’s perspective as monological. If the state is
concerned with border security, it takes this concern as sufficient grounds to put up
fences, walls and checkpoints. The fact that these fences might intersect ancient tribal
territories which are meaningful to those who live there is deemed superfluous.
In many ways, the police are the epitome of monologism. Police power is
constructed around the assertion of a non-debatable demand, sometimes analysed as a
fundamental refusal of dialogue and creativity.
We can also think about dialogism in everyday terms — whether people listen
to their partners or housemates, whether parents respond to the needs of their
children, whether opposing views are able to get a hearing in meetings, whether
political views are treated as self-enclosed ‘opinions’ to which one is ‘entitled’ or can
rather be rebutted by a decisive reply”.
<…> Thise position will be denied by those who insist that an objective reality
can be specified, separately from perspectives (for example, positivists and orthodox
Marxists). It will also be denied by those who believe scarcity is ineliminable, and
relations among perspectives are necessarily mediated by power. <…>
A Bakhtinian utopia would be a space of abundance of dialogue, of coexistence
of differences, of the absence of any overarching regulation of the free selfactualisation of different perspectives. It would be something like a permanent
carnival. Objections to this vision (‘but who’d get the work done?’, ‘what if everyone
started killing each other?’, ‘how would you stop invasions?’) generally refer back
implicitly to a monological standpoint: there is taken to be some overarching extra-
19
perspectival necessity to which dialogue must be subordinate (in these cases:
production, order, power). Such objections must be rejected by referring back to the
issue of dialogism: who decides that this particular good is so important as to render
others’ needs unimportant?
Still, from within dialogism, it seems that such conflicts do not go away. The
valuing of dialogue would have to be immanent to the space, something recognised
from each perspective. A dialogical world would also need means to ‘convert’ those
who continue to believe in monologism, or to include them in the dialogue without
dominating it. Some of the means towards such a world can be found in theories of
conflict transformation”
7
.
Task and questions
Elementary level:
1. What is polyphony in literature according to M. Bakhtin?
2. What other notion is familiar to the notion ‘polyphony’?
3. What is in common between literary analysis and social analysis, according
to M. Bakhtin?
4. Why is it impossible to remove the ‘truth’ of an individual consciousness in
dialogism?
5. What examples of dialogism are in the text?
6. In what way does dialogism of culture influence development of a person?
Intermediate level:
1. Give some your own examples of dialogism from everyday life;
2. What advantages does dialogism in literature have over monologism?
3. What is the difference between the truth in monologism and dialogism?
4. As the author shows us, police is an epitome of monologism. If it is right for
police to exist this way? What do you think about it?
Advanced level:
1. How do you understand the phrase: “dialogical works a lot more ‘objective’
and ‘realistic’ than their monological counterparts”;
2. Explain the phrase: “a consciousness lives constantly on the borders of other
consciousnesses”;
3. Why does truths of two people about the same situation can be different?
Can you give an example of such situation?
7
Robinson A. Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony and Heteroglossia // Ceaserfire. 2011. July 29. URL:
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-1/.
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4. Explain the phrase: “To exist is to engage in dialogue”. Is it possible to live
monological life?
5. What is criticized in Bakhtin`s concept of culture?
6. Tell your opinion about relationship between a doctor and a patient based on
the principle of monologism;
7. Tell your opinion about relationship between a doctor and a patient based on
the principle of dialogism.
Semiosphere is the result and the condition
of development of culture. Concept by Yuri Lotman
“With reference to the different cognitive functions of the two hemispheres of
the human brain, Lotman postulates the fundamental paradox that ‘within one
consciousness there are, as it were, two consciousnesses’ creating two kinds of
‘texts,’ verbal and pictorial. Verbal texts consist of discrete linear signs, and to
construct the totality of a verbal text, its elements must be read in a ‘bottom up’
direction; beginning with the elements, the reader gradually arrives at the totality of
the textual space. Visual ‘texts,’ by contrast, consist of a non-discrete visual space
which is cognitively constructed in the opposite direction, that is, ‘top down.’ Their
semantic space emerges holistically; the totality of the textual space is apprehended
first, while its elementary constituents are constructed by derivation from it. Lotman
emphasizes the essential difference between discrete and non-discrete texts and
postulates the impossibility of their mutual translatability, since ‘the equivalent to the
discrete and precisely demarcated semantic unit of one text is, in the other, a kind of
semantic blur with indistinct boundaries and gradual shadings into other meanings’.
However, the dilemma of untranslatability between incompatible semantic
spheres, according to Lotman, can be overcome by means of metaphors. Metaphors
can serve as mediators between the two spheres of the human mind. Although the
results of such mediations between the spheres of discreteness and continuity are
never ‘precise translations’ but always only ‘approximate equivalences determined by
the cultural psychological and semiotic context common to both systems’ <…>
‘Humanity, immersed in its cultural space, always creates around itself an
organized spatial sphere; this sphere includes both ideas and semiotic models, and
people’s recreative activity’, Lotman argues <…>
Lotman offers a dualistic theory of the Universe of the Mind consisting of a
semiotic and a nonsemiotic sphere. The latter not only comprises the biosphere of
humans, animals, and biological organisms, but also a sphere of nonsemiotic
phenomena in human cognition that Lotman calls ‘nonsemiotic reality.’ This
nonsemiotic sphere comprises objects devoid of ‘semiotization,’ which have no
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