What is elite culture? Elite culture: essence, features

Elite culture- this is high culture, contrasted with mass culture not by the nature of social content, not by the features of the reflection of reality, but by the type of impact on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective characteristics and providing a meaning-forming function. Its main ideal is the formation of a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality. This understanding of elite culture, explicated from its similar awareness as a culture high, concentrating spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience generations, seems more accurate and adequate than the understanding of the elite as avant-garde.

It must be emphasized that historically elite culture arises precisely as antithesis of mass and its meaning, its main meaning, manifests itself in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by J. Ortega y Gasset (“Dehumanization of Art,” “Revolt of the Masses”) and K. Mannheim (“Ideology and Utopia,” “Man and Society in the Age of Transformation,” “Essay in the Sociology of Culture”) who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamental important features, including the method of verbal communication - a language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergy, politicians, artists - use special languages closed to the uninitiated, including Latin and Sanskrit.

Subject elitist, high culture is personality - free, creative person capable of conscious activity. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and are designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the widespread dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of elite culture is a representative of the elite.

At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, But changing the presentation mode and acting in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, move into the category of mass culture. In this sense, we can talk about the ability of form to be a carrier of content.

If you mean art popular culture , then we can state the different sensitivity of its species to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful, even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translation classical music V electronic variant its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In area visual arts a similar result is achieved by translating an authentic image into another format - reproduction or digital version (even when trying to preserve the context - in virtual museum). As for literary work , then changing the mode of presentation - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure, are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the medium - printed or electronic - of this information. Defining such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works is made possible by a violation of their integrity, when their secondary, or at least non-primary, components are emphasized and act as leading ones. Changing the authentic format phenomena of mass culture leads to a change in the essence of the work, where ideas are presented in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, unlike high culture, the essence of mass culture is not creative activity, not in production cultural values, and in the formation « value orientations» , corresponding to the nature of prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes mass consciousness members of the "consumer society". Nevertheless, elite culture is for the masses a unique example, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.

Thus, elite culture is the culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I.V. Kondakova, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and recipients (in any case, the circle of both almost coincides). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes majority culture in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, official culture of one or another estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features:

· complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;

· the ability to form a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;

· the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;

· the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and “high”;

· a rigid system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates”;

· individualization of norms, values, evaluation criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;

· the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural horizon from the addressee;

· using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “defamiliarizing” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings closer cultural development reality by the subject to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the limit, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into meaning with conjecture and rethinking of the given;

· semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole national culture, which turns elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its bearers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, chosen ones of the gods, “servants of the muses,” “keepers of secrets and faith,” which is often played out and is poeticized in elite culture.

Elite culture is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. This is “high culture”, contrasted with mass culture by the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective characteristics and providing a meaning-forming function. A type of culture characterized by the production of cultural values, samples, which, due to their exclusivity, are designed and accessible mainly to a narrow circle of people (elite). Its main ideal is the formation of a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity. Elite culture is capable of concentrating the intellectual, spiritual and artistic experience of generations.

Historical origins of elite culture

The historical origin of elite culture is precisely this: already in primitive society, priests, magi, sorcerers, and tribal leaders become privileged owners of special knowledge, which cannot and should not be intended for general, mass use. Subsequently this kind the relationship between elite culture and mass culture in one form or another, in particular secular, has been repeatedly reproduced (in various religious denominations and especially sects, in monastic and spiritual knightly orders, Masonic lodges, in religious and philosophical meetings, in literary, artistic and intellectual circles that develop around a charismatic leader, scientific communities and scientific schools, in political associations and parties, including especially those that worked secretly, conspiratorially, underground, etc.). Ultimately, the elitism of knowledge, skills, values, norms, principles, traditions that was formed in this way was the key to sophisticated professionalism and deep subject specialization, without which cultural historical progress, progressive value-semantic growth, meaningful enrichment and accumulation of formal perfection - any value-semantic hierarchy. Elite culture acts as an initiative and productive principle in any culture, performing a predominantly creative function in it; while it stereotypes, routinizes, and profanes the achievements of elite culture, adapting them to the perception and consumption of the sociocultural majority of society.

Origin of the term

Elite culture as the antithesis of mass culture

Historically, elite culture arose as the antithesis of mass culture and its meaning manifests its main meaning in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by X. Ortega y Gasset (“Dehumanization of Art,” “Revolt of the Masses”) and K. Mannheim (“Ideology and Utopia,” “Man and Society in an Age of Transformation,” “Essay in the Sociology of Culture”) , who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamentally important features, including a method of verbal communication - a language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergy, politicians, artists - use special , languages closed to the uninitiated, including Latin and Sanskrit.

Deepening contradictions between elite culture and mass

This trend - the deepening of contradictions between elite and mass culture - intensified unprecedentedly in the 20th century and inspired many acute and dramatic events. collisions. At the same time, in the history of culture of the 20th century there are many examples that clearly illustrate the paradoxical dialectic of elite and mass culture: their mutual transition and mutual transformation, mutual influence and self-negation of each of them.

Elitarization of mass culture

So, for example, (symbolists and impressionists, expressionists and futurists, surrealists and dadaists, etc.) - artists, movement theorists, philosophers, and publicists - were aimed at creating unique samples and entire systems of elite culture. Many of the formal refinements were experimental; the theorists of the manifesto and declaration substantiated the right of the artist and thinker to creative incomprehensibility, separation from the masses, their tastes and needs, to the intrinsic existence of “culture for culture.” However, as the expanding field of activity of the modernists included everyday objects, everyday situations, forms of everyday thinking, structures of generally accepted behavior, current historical events and so on. (albeit with a “minus” sign, as a “minus technique”), modernism began - involuntarily, and then consciously - to appeal to the masses and mass consciousness. Shocking and mockery, grotesque and denunciation of the average man, buffoonery and farce - these are the same legitimate genres, stylistic devices and means of expression mass culture, as well as playing on cliches and stereotypes of mass consciousness, posters and propaganda, farce and ditties, recitation and rhetoric. Stylization or parody of banality is almost indistinguishable from the stylized and parodied (with the exception of the ironic author's distance and the general semantic context, which remain almost elusive for mass perception); but the recognition and familiarity of vulgarity makes its criticism - highly intellectual, subtle, aestheticized - little understandable and effective for the majority of recipients (who are not able to distinguish ridicule of base taste from indulging it). As a result, the same work of culture acquires double life with different semantic content and opposite ideological pathos: on one side it turns out to be addressed to elite culture, on the other - to mass culture. These are many works by Chekhov and Gorky, Mahler and Stravinsky, Modigliani and Picasso, L. Andreev and Verhaeren, Mayakovsky and Eluard, Meyerhold and Shostakovich, Yesenin and Kharms, Brecht and Fellini, Brodsky and Voinovich. The contamination of elite culture and mass culture in postmodern culture is especially contradictory; for example, in such an early phenomenon of postmodernism as pop art, there is an elitization of mass culture and at the same time a massification of elitism, which gave rise to the classics of modern times. postmodernist W. Eco characterize pop art as “lowbrow highbrow”, or, conversely, as “highbrow lowbrow” (in English: Lowbrow Highbrow, or Highbrow Lowbrow).

Features of high culture

The subject of elitist, high culture is the individual - a free, creative person, capable of carrying out conscious activities. are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the widespread dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of elite culture is a representative of the elite.

At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, but change the mode of presentation and appear in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, move into the category of mass culture. In this sense, we can talk about the ability of form to be a carrier of content.

If we keep in mind the art of mass culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its types to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful; even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translating classical music into an electronic version of its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In the field of fine arts, a similar result is achieved by translating an authentic image into another format - a reproduction or a digital version (even while trying to preserve the context - in a virtual museum). As for a literary work, changing the mode of presentation - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure, are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the medium - printing or electronic - of this information. Defining such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works is made possible by a violation of their integrity, when their secondary, or at least non-primary, components are emphasized and act as leading ones. A change in the authentic format of mass culture phenomena leads to a change in the essence of the work, where ideas are presented in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, in contrast to high culture, the essence of mass culture lies not in creative activity, not in the production of cultural values, but in the formation of “value orientations” corresponding to the nature of prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes of the mass consciousness of members of the “consumer society.” society." Nevertheless, elite culture is a unique model for mass culture, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, which are adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.

According to I.V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and recipients (in any case, the circle of both almost coincides). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of a technocratic society of the 20th century, etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamentally important features:

complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
the ability to form a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and “high”;
a rigid system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates”;
individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural horizon from the addressee;
the use of a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “defamiliarizing” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject’s cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, in the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into meaning - conjecture and rethinking of the given;
semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole of national culture, which turns elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its bearers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, chosen ones of the gods , “servants of the muses”, “keepers of secrets and faith”, which is often played out and poeticized in elite culture

Elements of high culture

The science
Philosophy
Specialized (professional) education, especially higher education(intellectual elite)
Literature, especially classical, poetry
Intellectual literature (as opposed to mass literature) and auteur cinema (as opposed to mass cinema)
art
Musical art, classical music, opera, ballet, symphonic music, organ music
Theater
Etiquette
Civil service
Military service as an officer
Fine cuisine and good wine
High-fashion
Expressing yourself as an individual

Elite culture

Elite culture- this is “high culture”, contrasted with mass culture by the type of impact on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective characteristics and providing a meaning-forming function [ style!] . Its main ideal is the formation of a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality [ style!] . This understanding of elite culture, explicated from its similar awareness as a high culture, concentrating the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations, seems, according to Russian cultural scientists, more accurate and adequate than the understanding of the elite as avant-garde [ style!] .

Origin of the term

Peculiarities

The subject of elitist, high culture is the individual - a free, creative person, capable of carrying out conscious activities. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the widespread dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of elite culture is a representative of the elite.

If we keep in mind the art of mass culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its types to this ratio. In the field of music, form is fully meaningful; even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translating classical music into an electronic version of its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In the field of fine arts, a similar result is achieved by translating an authentic image into another format - a reproduction or a digital version (even while trying to preserve the context - in a virtual museum). As for a literary work, changing the mode of presentation - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure, are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the medium - printing or electronic - of this information. Defining such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works is made possible by a violation of their integrity, when their secondary, or at least non-primary, components are emphasized and act as leading ones. A change in the authentic format of mass culture phenomena leads to a change in the essence of the work, where ideas are presented in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, in contrast to high culture, the essence of mass culture lies not in creative activity, not in the production of cultural values, but in the formation of “value orientations” corresponding to the nature of prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes of the mass consciousness of members of the “consumer society.” society." Nevertheless, elite culture is a unique model for mass culture, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, which are adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.

Thus, elite culture is the culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I.V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and recipients (in any case, the circle of both almost coincides). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features:

complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
the ability to form a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and “high”;
a rigid system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates”;
individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural horizon from the addressee;
the use of a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “defamiliarizing” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject’s cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, in the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into meaning - conjecture and rethinking of the given;
semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole of national culture, which turns elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its bearers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, chosen ones of the gods , “servants of the muses”, “keepers of secrets and faith”, which is often played out and poeticized in elite culture.

Notes

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See what “Elite culture” is in other dictionaries:

- (from French selective, chosen, best) a subculture of privileged groups about va, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. Appealing to a select few... Encyclopedia of Cultural Studies

Elite culture- a concept compared (contrasted) with mass culture. The basis for identifying elite culture is its production by representatives (and in the interests) social groups occupying a leading position in the spiritual life of society, its... ... Man and Society: Culturology. Dictionary-reference book

ELITE CULTURE- a specific sphere of cultural creativity associated with the professional production of cultural texts, which subsequently acquire the status of cultural canons. The concept of E.K. appears in Western cultural studies to designate cultural layers... ... Sociology: Encyclopedia

Elite culture- – cultural patterns that distinguish the elite of society... Dictionary-reference book for social work

CULTURE ELITE culture, designed for the “chosen few”. The concept of elite culture received citizenship rights in the 20th century. in connection with the wide spread of its antipode of mass culture, which has embraced all, including the uneducated, sections of the population... Philosophical Encyclopedia

This term has other meanings, see Culture (meanings). Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder (234-149 BC), the word cultura first appears in his treatise on agriculture De Agri Cultura (about ... Wikipedia

English culture, elitarian; German Kultur, elite. A type of culture characterized by the production of cults, values, samples, which, due to their exclusivity, are designed and accessible mainly to a narrow circle of people, the elite. Antinazi. Encyclopedia... ... Encyclopedia of Sociology

Mass culture- a culture that is accessible and understandable to all segments of the population and has less artistic value than elite or popular culture. Therefore, it quickly loses relevance and goes out of fashion, but is very popular among young people, often... ... Pedagogical dictionary

A peculiar phenomenon social differentiation modern culture. Although the functional and formal analogues of the phenomena of M.K. found in history starting from ancient civilizations, genuine M.K. emerges only in modern times during the processes... Encyclopedia of Cultural Studies

Culture that is placed above mass culture. Elite culture (high) is a creative avant-garde, a laboratory of art, where new types and forms of art are constantly being created. It is also called high culture, because... it is created by the elite of society, or ... Wikipedia

Elite culture has rather blurred boundaries, especially nowadays with the tendencies of mass elements to strive for the expression of individuality. Its peculiarity is that it is doomed to be misunderstood by most people, and this is one of its main characteristics. In this article we will find out elite culture, what its main characteristics are and compare it with mass culture.

What it is

Elite culture is the same as “high culture”. It is contrasted with mass, which is one of the methods for detecting it in general cultural process. This concept was first identified by K. Mannheim and J. Ortega y Gasset in their works, where they derived it precisely as the antithesis of the concept of mass culture. They meant by high culture one that contains a core of meaning capable of developing human individuality, and from which the continuation of the creation of its other elements can follow. Another area that they highlighted is the presence of special verbal elements accessible to narrow social groups: for example, Latin and Sanskrit for clergy.

Elite and mass culture: contrast

They are contrasted with each other by the type of impact on consciousness, as well as by the quality of the meanings that their elements contain. Thus, the mass one is aimed at a more superficial perception, which does not require specific knowledge and special intellectual efforts to understand the cultural product. Currently, there is an increased spread of popular culture due to the process of globalization, which, in turn, is distributed through the media and is stimulated by the capitalist structure of society. unlike elitist, it is intended for a wide range of people. Now we see its elements everywhere, and it is especially pronounced in programs television channels and cinema.

Thus, Hollywood cinema can be contrasted with arthouse cinema. Moreover, the first type of film focuses the viewer’s attention not on the meaning and idea of the story, but on the special effects of the video sequence. Here quality cinema implies an interesting design, an unexpected but easy-to-understand plot.

Elite culture is represented by arthouse films, which are assessed by different criteria than Hollywood products of this kind, the main one of which is meaning. Thus, the quality of the footage in such films is often underestimated. At first glance the reason Low quality filming is due to either the lack of good funding or the amateurism of the director. However, this is not so: in arthouse cinema, the function of video is to convey the meaning of an idea. Special effects can distract from this, so they are not typical for products of this format. Arthouse ideas are original and deep. Very often, in the presentation of a simple story, it is hidden from superficial understanding. deep meaning, the real tragedy of the individual is revealed. While watching these films, you can often notice that the director himself is trying to find the answer to the question posed and studying the characters as he shoots. Predicting the plot of an arthouse movie is almost impossible.

Characteristics of high culture

Elite culture has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from mass culture:

Its elements are aimed at displaying and studying the deep processes of human psychology.
It has a closed structure, understandable only to extraordinary individuals.
It is distinguished by original artistic solutions.
Contains a minimum of visual aids.
Has the ability to express something new.
It tests what may later become a classic or trivial art.

Introduction

Culture is a general concept that covers various classes of phenomena. It is a complex, multi-layered, multi-level whole, including various phenomena. Depending on from what point of view, on what grounds it is analyzed, one or another can be distinguished. structural elements, differing in the nature of the carrier, in the result, in the type of activity, etc., which can coexist, interact, oppose each other, change their status. Structuring culture based on its carrier, we will single out as the subject of analysis only some of its varieties: elite, mass, folk culture. Since on modern stage they receive an ambiguous interpretation, then in this test we will try to understand the complex modern cultural practice, which is very dynamic and contradictory, as well as contradictory points of view. The test paper presents various historically established, sometimes opposing views, theoretical justifications, approaches, and also takes into account a certain sociocultural context, the relationship of various components in the cultural whole, and their place in modern cultural practice.

And so, the goal test work is to consider the varieties of culture, elite, mass and folk.

culture elite mass folk

The emergence and main characteristics of elite culture

Elite culture, its essence, is associated with the concept of elite and is usually contrasted with folk and mass cultures. The elite (elite, French - chosen, best, selected), as a producer and consumer of this type of culture in relation to society, represents, from the point of view of both Western and domestic sociologists and cultural scientists, the highest, privileged strata (stratum), groups, classes , carrying out the functions of management, development of production and culture. This affirms the division of the social structure into the higher, the privileged and the lower, the elite and the rest of the masses. Definitions of the elite in various sociological and cultural theories are ambiguous.

The identification of an elite layer has a long history. Confucius already saw a society consisting of noble men, i.e. minorities, and a people in need of constant moral influence and guidance from these noble ones. In fact, Plato stood in an elitist position. Roman Senator Menenius Agrippa most classified the population as “draft animals”, which require drivers, i.e. aristocrats.

Obviously from ancient times, when in primitive community a division of labor began to occur, the separation of spiritual activity from material activity, processes of stratification according to property, status, etc. began to occur, and not only the categories of rich and poor began to be separated (alienated), but also the people most significant in any respect - priests (magi, shamans) as carriers of special secret knowledge, organizers of religious and ritual actions, leaders, tribal nobility. But the elite itself is formed in class, slave society when, due to the labor of slaves, privileged layers (classes) are freed from exhausting physical labor. Moreover, in societies different types the most significant, elite strata, constituting a minority of the population, are, first of all, those who have real power, backed up by the force of arms and law, economic and financial power, which allows them to influence all other areas public life, including sociocultural processes (ideology, education, artistic practice etc.). Such is the slave-owning, feudal aristocracy (aristocracy is understood as the highest, privileged layer of any class, group), the highest clergy, merchants, industrial, financial oligarchy, etc.

Elite culture is formed within the framework of layers and communities that are privileged in any area (in politics, commerce, art) and includes, like culture folk values, norms, ideas, ideas, knowledge, way of life, etc. in their sign-symbolic and material expression, as well as methods of their practical use. This culture embraces different areas social space: political, economic, ethical and legal, artistic and aesthetic, religious and other areas of public life. It can be viewed on different scales.

IN in a broad sense elite culture can be represented by a fairly large part of the national (nationwide) culture. In this case, it has deep roots in it, including folk culture, in another, narrow sense, declares itself to be “sovereign”, sometimes opposed to the national culture, to a certain extent isolated from it.

An example of elite culture in a broad sense is knightly culture as a phenomenon secular culture Western European Middle Ages. Its bearer is the dominant noble-military class (knighthood), within which they have developed their own values, ideals, their own code of honor (loyalty to the oath, adherence to duty, courage, generosity, mercy, etc.). Their own rituals were formed, such as, say, the ritual of knighting (concluding an agreement with a lord, an oath of allegiance, taking vows of obedience, personal perfection, etc.), ritualized and theatrical holding of tournaments to glorify knightly virtues. Special manners and the ability to lead are developed. small talk, play on musical instruments, write poems, most often dedicated to the lady of the heart. Knightly musical and poetic creativity, nurtured on national languages and not alien to folk musical and intonation traditions, constituted a whole trend in world culture, but it faded away with the weakening and departure of this class from the historical arena.

Elite culture is contradictory. On the one hand, it quite clearly expresses the search for something new, still unknown, on the other hand, an orientation toward conservation, the preservation of what is already known and familiar. Therefore, probably in science, artistic creativity the new achieves recognition, sometimes overcoming considerable difficulties. Elite culture, including trends of an experimental, even demonstratively nonconformist nature, contributed to the enrichment of the ideological, theoretical, figurative and content outline, to the expansion of the range of practical skills, means of expression, ideals, images, ideas, scientific theories, technical inventions, philosophical, socio-political teachings.

Elite culture, including its esoteric (internal, secret, intended for initiates) directions, are included in different spheres of cultural practice, performing different functions (roles) in it: informational and cognitive, replenishing the treasury of knowledge, technical achievements, works of art; socialization, including a person in the world of culture; normative-regulatory, etc. In elite culture, the cultural-creative function, the function of self-realization, self-actualization of the individual, and the aesthetic-demonstration function (it is sometimes called the exhibition function) come to the fore.