What does the Latin word culture mean? What is culture (3) - Report

What is culture

There are several interpretations of the origin and meaning of the word culture.

In the textbook on philosophy Radugin A.A. The term “culture” is considered to be of Latin origin – cultura. According to Radugin, initially this term meant cultivating the soil, cultivating it in order to make the soil suitable for meeting human needs, so that it could serve man. In this context, the author writes, culture meant all changes in natural site changes that occur under human influence, as opposed to those changes caused by natural causes.

According to other sources, culture in a figurative sense is the care, improvement, and ennoblement of a person’s bodily, mental, and spiritual inclinations and abilities; accordingly, there is a culture of the body, a culture of the soul, and a spiritual culture. The German word Kultur also meant a high level of civilization. In modern scientific literature there are more than 250 definitions of culture.

In a broad sense, culture is the totality of manifestations of the life, achievements and creativity of a people or group of peoples (the culture of a nation, states, civilizations - hence the many religions, beliefs, values). Culture, considered from the point of view of content, is divided into various areas, spheres: mores and customs, language and writing, the nature of clothing, settlements, work, perception, economics, the nature of the army, socio-political structure, legal proceedings, science, technology, art , religion, all forms of manifestation of the objective spirit of a given people. Cultured man owes everything to education and upbringing, and this constitutes the content of the culture of all peoples, preserving cultural continuity and traditions as a form of collective experience in relationships with nature.

The modern scientific definition of culture has discarded the aristocratic connotations of this concept. It symbolizes beliefs, values and means of expression(used in literature and art) that are common to a group; they serve to organize experience and regulate the behavior of members of this group. The beliefs and attitudes of a subgroup are often called a subculture.

Cultural theorists A. Kroeber and K. Kluckhohn analyzed over a hundred basic definitions and grouped them as follows.

1 Descriptive definitions that are based on the concept of the founder of cultural anthropology E. Taylor. The essence of these definitions: culture is the sum of all types of activities, customs, beliefs; it, as a treasury of everything created by people, includes books, paintings, etc., knowledge of ways to adapt to the social and natural environment, language, customs, a system of etiquette, ethics, religion, which have developed over centuries.

2 Historical definitions emphasizing the role social heritage and traditions inherited to the modern era from previous stages of human development. They are also accompanied by genetic definitions that assert that culture is the result of historical development. It includes everything that is artificial, that people have produced and that is passed on from generation to generation - tools, symbols, organizations, general activities, views, beliefs.

3. Normative definitions emphasizing meaning accepted standards. Culture is the way of life of an individual, determined by the social environment.

4. Value definitions: culture is the material and social values of a group of people, their institutions, customs, and behavioral reactions.

5. Psychological definitions based on a person’s solution to certain problems at the psychological level. Here, culture is a special adaptation of people to the natural environment and economic needs, and consists of all the results of such adaptation.

6. Definitions based on learning theories: culture is behavior that a person has learned and not received as a biological inheritance.

7. Structural definitions highlighting the significance of moments of organization or modeling. Here culture is a system of certain characteristics interconnected in various ways. Tangible and intangible cultural characteristics, organized around basic needs, form social institutions that are the core (model) of culture.

8. Ideological definitions: culture is the flow of ideas passing from individual to individual through special actions, i.e. using words or imitations.

9. Symbolic definitions: culture is the organization of various phenomena (material objects, actions, ideas, feelings), consisting in the use of symbols or depending on it.

It is easy to notice that each of the listed groups of definitions captures some important features of culture. However, in general, as a complex social phenomenon, it eludes definition. Indeed, culture is the result of human behavior and the activities of society, it is historical, includes ideas, models and values, selective, studied, based on symbols, “super-organic”, i.e. does not include human biological components and is transmitted by mechanisms other than biological heredity; it is emotionally perceived or rejected by individuals. And yet this list of properties does not give us a sufficiently complete understanding of the complex phenomena that are meant when it comes to the cultures of the Mayans or Aztecs. Ancient Egypt or Ancient Greece, Kievan Rus or Novgorod.

1.2 Idea of values

Culture is material and spiritual values. By value we mean the definition of a particular object of material or spiritual reality, highlighting its positive or negative significance for man and humanity. Only for man and society do things and phenomena have a special meaning, consecrated by customs, religion, art and, in general, the “rays of culture.” In other words, real facts, events, properties are not only perceived and cognized by us, but also evaluated, causing in us a feeling of participation, admiration, love or, on the contrary, a feeling of hatred or contempt. These various pleasures and pains constitute what is called taste. We, for example, experience pleasure when “seeing an object that is useful to us, we call it good; when it gives us pleasure to contemplate an object that is devoid of immediate usefulness, we call it beautiful.”

This or that thing has a certain value in our eyes due not only to its objective properties, but also to our attitude towards it, which integrates both the perception of these properties and the characteristics of our tastes. Thus, we can say that value is a subjective-objective reality. “Everyone calls pleasant what gives him pleasure, beautiful - what he only likes, good - what he values, approves, that is, what he sees as objective value.” There is nothing to say about how significant value judgments are for a person’s reasonable orientation in life.

Every thing involved in the circulation of public and personal life or created by man, in addition to its physical nature, also has a social existence: it performs a function historically assigned to it and therefore has social value. Values are not only material, but also spiritual: works of art, achievements of science, philosophy, moral standards, etc. The concept of value expresses the social essence of the existence of material and spiritual culture. If something material or spiritual acts as a value, this means that it is somehow included in the conditions of a person’s social life and performs a certain function in his relationship with nature and social reality. People constantly evaluate everything they deal with in terms of their needs and interests. Our attitude towards the world is always evaluative. And this assessment can be objective, correct, progressive or false, subjective, reactionary. In our worldview, scientific knowledge of the world and the value attitude towards it are in inextricable unity. Thus, the concept of value is closely related to the concept of culture.

Culture, being transformed, is passed on from one generation to another. In cultural heritage it is necessary to thoughtfully separate what belongs to the future from what has passed into the past.

1.3 Types, forms, content and functions of culture

The diversity of the subject type of culture is determined by the diversity of human activity itself. It is very difficult to classify different types of activities, as well as the type of culture represented. But let us accept conditionally that this can be applied to nature, society And to an individual person.

Types of culture in relation to nature

In this context, the culture of agriculture is distinguished, as well as the plant itself, landscape reclamation, i.e. complete or partial restoration of a certain natural environment disturbed by previous economic activities.

This also includes the general culture of material production as an impact on the natural environment. Basically, such an impact is detrimental to nature, and this is an environmental problem that threatens the existence of civilization itself.

Types of cultural activities in society

Material production as a mediator between society and nature also includes specifically social species cultural activities. This includes, first of all, labor. Even K. Marx distinguished between living and materialized labor. The culture of living labor is the culture of direct productive activity and the culture of managing something. Obviously, in the end we will come to the totality of knowledge, skills and abilities of an individual, which determines his culture and attitude to work.

The concept of “culture” is used when characterizing historical eras or monuments, when characterizing societies and regions, when characterizing nationalities.

This concept is applied in relation to certain spheres of activity and life (artistic, physical culture, everyday culture), as well as in relation to types of art (theater culture, architectural culture). The level or degree of development of society, represented in any achievements, is also characterized by the concept of “culture”.

The concept of “culture” in relation to an individual

The culture of an individual does not exist in isolation from the listed cultural species. The concept of “culture” is applied to literally every human ability - physical or spiritual (mental). General culture of a person still presupposes the unity and harmony of his body and soul (psyche). The ancient sages attached great importance to the culture of the human psyche.

Subject and personal types of culture.

Among the shortcomings in understanding culture, we note its reduction to an external, objective form. But the world of culture that we see is one of its parts. Seeing objects - all more or less developed living beings have this ability. A person is distinguished by intelligent vision, or mental vision. English writer O. Wilde believed that only a superficial person does not judge by appearance. For an intelligent person, the appearance of anything speaks volumes. Russian philosopher V.S. Soloviev once wrote:

Dear friend, don’t you know

That everything we see

Only a reflection, only shadows

From the invisible with our eyes...

The object form of culture is its visibility. Culture has a personal aspect that is imprinted in things. But to see a personal expression of culture, you need to be a person. Each of us sees the personal world of culture exactly as much as we ourselves are a person. To the same extent, we bring something of ourselves into culture, i.e. We serve as its source.

level, degree of development achieved in any branch of knowledge or activity (work culture, speech culture...) - the degree of social and mental development inherent in someone.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

CULTURE

a historically determined level of development of society, creative powers and abilities of a person, expressed in the types and forms of organization of people’s lives and activities, in their relationships, as well as in the material and spiritual values they create. K. is a complex interdisciplinary general methodological concept. The concept of "K." used to characterize a certain historical era(for example, ancient K.), specific societies, nationalities and nations (K. Maya), as well as specific spheres of activity or life (K. labor, political, economic, etc.). There are two spheres of K. - material and spiritual. Material culture includes the objective results of people’s activities (machines, structures, results of knowledge, works of art, moral and legal norms, etc.), spiritual culture unites those phenomena that are associated with consciousness, intellectual and emotional-psychic human activity (language, knowledge, skills, level of intelligence, moral and aesthetic development, worldview, methods and forms of communication between people). Material and spiritual K. are in organic unity, integrating into a certain unified type of K., which is historically changeable, but at each new stage of its development inherits everything that is most valuable created by the previous K. The core of K. consists of universal human goals and values, as well as historically established ways of perceiving and achieving them. But acting as a universal phenomenon, K. is perceived, mastered and reproduced by each person individually, determining his formation as an individual. The transfer of knowledge from generation to generation includes the mastery of the experience accumulated by mankind, but does not coincide with the utilitarian mastery of the results of previous activity. Cultural continuity is not automatic; it is necessary to organize a system of upbringing and education based on scientific research into the forms, methods, directions and mechanisms of personality development. The assimilation of K. is a mutually directed process for which all basic principles are valid. patterns of communicative activity. - a high level of something, high development, skill (eg, work culture, speech culture). (Chernik B.P. Effective participation in educational exhibitions. - Novosibirsk, 2001.) See also Culture of behavior, Culture of speech

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Material and spiritual values, traditions and experience of many generations, world heritage and morality - all these concepts are combined into one complex system called culture. No one has been able to give a clear definition of what culture is for many decades. Its contents include great amount concepts denoting the exchange of skills, knowledge and abilities. The only thing that can be traced is the structure and basic elements of culture, which are inherent in all humanity and become the basis for moral and spiritual development.

Concept and basic elements of culture

IN in a general sense culture is a concept that includes social activities and people's lives. Culture is usually understood as non-inherited material objects, ideas and images created by people. This created artificial environment of self-realization and existence regulates social behavior and interaction of people with each other. In other words, the concept of culture includes the following aspects: the degree of personal development, socio-cultural activity of a person and the results of this activity. To fully study culture, it is necessary to take into account what elements it consists of:

Concepts (or concepts). Mainly contained in the language and are main help in organizing and streamlining experience. This experience is given to a person by studying the words of a certain language.
Relationship. Any culture is characterized by views on the relationship between the real and supernatural worlds and contains ideas about what the world consists of and how its parts are related to each other in time and space.
Values. Certain moral doctrines, which are based on common human beliefs regarding the goals to be strived for.

Structure and basic elements of culture

There are two levels in the structure of culture - specialized and ordinary. The ordinary level, in turn, is divided into cumulative and translational. According to the anthropological model of man, cumulative culture is the interconnection of elements that represent a person’s predisposition to a particular activity. Various types of activities allow us to identify the following main structural elements cultures: religious, artistic, philosophical, legal, scientific and technical, political and economic. All these elements are closely interrelated and have a great influence on each other.

Despite such a diverse structure, culture is an integral universal concept, and it can only be discussed in singular. In addition to the culture of work, life, musical, moral, legal and political, there are also elements that cover the social side of humanity. For example, such as mass and elite culture. Morality, religion, science and art occupy a special place in the cultural system.

The essence and basic elements of culture also have a number of common functions, the main one of which is humanistic. Culture allows a person to become an individual and instills in him such qualities as love for other people, a sense of tact, mercy and altruism. Culture is an integral part of life, the possession of which is the highest value.

All dictionaries Automotive dictionary Architectural Dictionary Astronomical Dictionary Bible Encyclopedia Business Dictionary Biographical Dictionary Large accounting dictionary Jeans dictionary Culinary dictionary Medical dictionary Maritime dictionary Printing dictionary Political dictionary Psychological dictionary Religious dictionary Sexological dictionary Dictionary of thieves' jargon Dictionary of geographical names Dahl's Dictionary Efremova's Dictionary Dictionary of names Dictionary foreign words Dictionary of computer jargon Dictionary of resorts Dictionary of medicinal plants Dictionary of logic Dictionary of measures Fashion Dictionary Dictionary of youth slang Dictionary of peoples Dictionary of numismatists Dictionary of Ozhegov Dictionary of art Dictionary of landscape design Dictionary of mythology Dictionary of Russian surnames Dictionary of symbols Dictionary of synonyms Dictionary of phraseological units Dictionary of epithets Construction dictionary Dictionary Ushakova Financial Dictionary encyclopedic Dictionary Collier's Encyclopedia Etymological dictionary Vasmera Ethnographic Dictionary

What is Culture? Meaning and interpretation of the word kultura, definition of the term

1) Culture- (from lat. cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education, development, veneration) - English. culture; German Kultur. 1. A set of material and spiritual values, expressing a certain level of history. development of a given society and person. 2. The sphere of spiritual life of society, including the system of education, upbringing, and spiritual creativity. 3. Level of mastery of a particular area of knowledge or activity. 4. Forms of social human behavior determined by the level of his upbringing and education.

2) Culture- (from Lat. cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education, development, veneration) - specific. way of organizing and developing people. life activity, presented in the products of material and spiritual labor, in the social system. norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people’s relationships to nature, among themselves and to themselves. In the concept of K. it is fixed as general difference human life activity from biological forms of life, as well as the qualitative originality of historically specific forms of this life activity in various ways. stages of societies. development, within certain eras, social-economic. formations, ethnic. and national communities (for example, ancient K, K. Maya, etc.). K. also characterizes the characteristics of behavior, consciousness and activity of people in specific spheres of societies. life (K. labor, K. everyday life, artistic K., political. m In K. the way of life of an individual (personal K.), social group (for example, K. class) or the entire society as a whole can be recorded Lit.: Self-awareness of European culture of the twentieth century. M., 1991; Culture: theories and problems. M., 1995; Morphology of culture: structure and dynamics. M., 1994; Gurevich P.S. Culturology. M., 1996; Culturology XX century. Anthology. M., 1995. V. M. Mezhuev.

3) Culture- - a set of traditions, customs, social norms, rules governing the behavior of those who live now and transmitted to those who will live tomorrow.

4) Culture- - a system of values, life ideas, patterns of behavior, norms, a set of methods and techniques of human activity, objectified in objective, material media (tools, signs) and transmitted to subsequent generations.

5) Culture- - some complex whole, including spiritual and material products that are produced, socially assimilated and shared by members of society and can be transmitted to other people or subsequent generations.

6) Culture - – specific method organization and development of human life, represented in the products of material and spiritual production, in the system of social norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people’s relationships to nature, among themselves and to themselves. Culture embodies, first of all, the general difference between human life and biological forms of life. Human behavior is determined not so much by nature as by upbringing and culture. Man differs from other animals in his ability to collectively create and transmit symbolic meanings– signs, language. Outside of symbolic, cultural meanings (designations), not a single object can be included in the human world. In the same way, no object can be created without a preliminary “design” in a person’s head. The human world is a culturally constructed world; all boundaries in it are of a sociocultural nature. Outside the system of cultural meanings, there is no difference between king and courtier, saint and sinner, beauty and ugliness. The main function of culture is the introduction and maintenance of a certain social order. They distinguish between material and spiritual culture. Material culture includes all areas of material activity and its results. It includes equipment, housing, clothing, consumer goods, a way of eating and living, etc., which together constitute a certain way of life. Spiritual culture includes all spheres of spiritual activity and its products - knowledge, education, enlightenment, law, philosophy, science, art, religion, etc. Outside of spiritual culture, culture does not exist at all, just as not a single type of human activity exists. Spiritual culture is also embodied in material media (books, paintings, diskettes, etc.). Therefore, the division of culture into spiritual and material is very arbitrary. Culture reflects the qualitative originality of historically specific forms of human life at various stages of historical development, within different eras, socio-economic formations, ethnic, national and other communities. Culture characterizes the characteristics of people’s activities in specific social spheres (political culture, economic culture, culture of work and life, culture of entrepreneurship, etc.), as well as the characteristics of the life of social groups (class, youth, etc.). At the same time there are cultural universals- some common to everything cultural heritage elements of humanity (age gradation, division of labor, education, family, calendar, decorative arts, dream interpretation, etiquette, etc.). J. Murdoch identified more than 70 such universals. Modern meaning The term "culture" acquired only in the 20th century. Initially (in Ancient Rome, where this word came from) this word meant cultivation, “cultivation” of the soil. In the 18th century, the term acquired an elitist character and meant civilization opposed to barbarism. However, in 18th century Germany, culture and civilization were opposed to each other - as the focus of spiritual, moral and aesthetic values, the sphere of individual perfection (culture) and as something utilitarian-external, “technical”, material, standardizing human culture and consciousness that threatens the spiritual world of man (civilization). This opposition formed the basis of the concept of cultural pessimism, or criticism of culture, in fact, criticism of modernity, allegedly leading to the collapse and death of culture (F. Tennis, F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler, G. Marcuse, etc.). In modern science, the term “civilization” remains ambiguous. The term “culture” has lost its former elitist (and generally any evaluative) connotation. From the point of view of modern sociologists, any society develops a specific culture, because it can only exist as a sociocultural community. That is why the historical development of a particular society (country) is a unique sociocultural process that cannot be understood and described using any general schemes. Therefore, any social changes can only be carried out as sociocultural changes, which seriously limits the possibilities of direct foreign borrowing cultural forms– economic, political, educational, etc. In a different sociocultural environment, they can acquire (and inevitably acquire) completely different content and meaning. For analysis cultural dynamics Two main theoretical models have been developed - evolutionary (linear) and cyclic. Evolutionism, whose origins were G. Spencer, E. Taylor, J. Fraser, L. Morgan, was based on the idea of the unity of the human race and the uniformity of cultural development. The process of cultural development was presented as linear, general in content, passing through general stages. Therefore, it seemed possible to compare different cultures as more or less developed, and to identify “standard” cultures (Eurocentrism and later American centrism). Cyclic theories represent cultural dynamics as a sequence of certain phases (stages) of change and development of cultures, which naturally follow one another (by analogy with human life - birth, childhood, etc.), each culture is considered as unique. Some of them have already completed their cycle, others exist, being at different phases of development. Therefore, we cannot talk about a common, universal history of humanity; we cannot compare and evaluate cultures as primitive or highly developed - they are simply different. In modern science, the founder of cyclic theories that arose in antiquity was N.Ya. Danilevsky (“Russia and Europe,” 1871). He was followed by O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. Sorokin, L. Gumilyov and others. Both evolutionary and cyclic theories emphasize and absolutize only one side of the real process of cultural dynamics and cannot give its exhaustive description. Modern science offers fundamentally new approaches (for example, the wave theory of culture put forward by O. Toffler). Now humanity is experiencing perhaps the most profound technological, social and cultural transformation in terms of content and global in scope. And it was culture that was at the center of this process. A fundamentally new type of culture is emerging – the culture of a post-industrial, information society. (See postmodernism).

7) Culture- - a system of specifically human activities that create spiritual and material values, and the resulting set of social meaningful ideas, symbols, values, ideals, norms and rules of behavior through which people organize their life activities.

8) Culture- - a system of values, life ideas, patterns of behavior, norms, a set of methods and techniques of human activity, objectified in objective, material media (tools, signs) and transmitted to subsequent generations.

9) Culture- (Latin cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education) - a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of human activity, behavior and communication, which act as a condition for reproduction and change social life in all its main manifestations. The programs of activity, behavior and communication that make up the K. corpus are represented by diversity various forms: knowledge, skills, norms and ideals, patterns of activity and behavior, ideas and hypotheses, beliefs, social goals and value orientations etc. In their totality and dynamics, they form a historically accumulated social experience. Communication stores, transmits (transmits from generation to generation) and generates programs for the activities, behavior and communication of people. In the life of society, they play approximately the same role as hereditary information (DNA, RNA) in a cell or complex organism; they ensure the reproduction of the diversity of forms of social life, types of activities characteristic of a certain type of society, its inherent objective environment (second nature), its social connections and types of personalities - everything that makes up the real fabric of social life at a certain stage of its historical development. The concept of "K." developed historically. It initially denoted the processes of human development of nature (cultivation of the land, handicraft products), as well as education and training. The term became widely used in European philosophy and historical science starting from the second half of the 18th century. K. begins to be considered as a special aspect of social life, associated with the way human activity is carried out and characterizing the difference human existence from animal existence. Several lines emerge in the development of the problem of culture. In the first of them, culture was considered as a development process human mind and intelligent forms of life, opposing the savagery and barbarism of the primitive existence of mankind (French enlighteners); as the historical development of human spirituality - the evolution of moral, aesthetic, religious, philosophical, scientific, legal and political consciousness, ensuring the progress of humanity (German classical idealism - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; German romanticism - Schiller, Schlegel; German enlightenment - Lessing, Herder). The second line focused attention not on the progressive historical development of society, but on its features in various types of society, considering different society as autonomous systems of values and ideas that determine the type social organization(neo-Kantianism - G. Rickert, E. Cassirer). O. Spengler, N. Danilevsky, Sorokin, Toynbee adjoined the same line. At the same time, the understanding of culture was expanded by including in it the entire wealth of material culture, ethnic customs, diversity of languages and symbolic systems. At the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. When studying cultural issues, the achievements of anthropology, ethnology, structural linguistics, semiotics and information theory began to be actively used (cultural anthropology - Taylor, Boas; social anthropology - Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown; structural anthropology and structuralism - Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan; neo-Freudianism, etc.). As a result, new prerequisites for solving the problem of society and society arose. On the one hand, society and society are not identical, and on the other hand, society permeates all areas and states of social life without exception. The problem is solved if K. is considered as an informational aspect of the life of society, as socially significant information that regulates the activities, behavior and communication of people. This information, acting as a cumulative historically developing social experience, can be partially recognized by people, but very often it functions as the social subconscious. Its transmission from generation to generation is possible only due to its consolidation in a sign form as the content of various semiotic systems. K. exists as a complex organization of such systems. Their role can be played by any fragments of the human world that acquire the function of signs that record programs of activity, behavior and communication: a person and his actions and deeds when they become models for other people, natural language, various types of artificial languages (the language of science, the language arts, conventional systems of signals and symbols that provide communication, etc.). Objects of second nature created by man can also function as special signs that consolidate accumulated social experience, expressing a certain way of behavior and activity of people in the objective world. In this sense, they sometimes talk about tools, technology, and household items as material culture, contrasting them with the phenomena of spiritual culture (works of art, philosophical, ethical, political teachings, scientific knowledge, religious ideas, etc.). However, this opposition is relative, since any phenomena of K. are semiotic formations. Items of material K. are performed in human life a dual role: on the one hand, they serve practical purposes, and on the other, they act as a means of storing and transmitting socially significant information. Only in their second function do they act as phenomena of K. (Yu. Lotman). Programs of activities, behavior and communication, represented by diversity cultural phenomena, have a complex hierarchical organization. They can be divided into three levels. The first is relict programs, fragments of past K., which live in modern world, having a certain effect on a person. People often unconsciously act in accordance with behavioral programs that were formed in the primitive era and which have lost their value as a regulator that ensures the success of practical actions. This includes many superstitions, such as the omens among Russian Pomors that sexual intercourse before going fishing can make it unsuccessful (a remnant of a taboo primitive era, which actually regulated the sexual relations of the primitive community during the period of the group family, thus eliminating clashes based on jealousy in the community that disrupted joint production actions). The second level is a layer of programs of behavior, activity, and communication that ensure the current reproduction of a particular type of society. And finally, the third level of cultural phenomena is formed by programs of social life addressed to the future. They are generated by K. through internal operation of sign systems. Theoretical knowledge developed in science, causing a revolution in the technology of subsequent eras; ideals of the future social order that have not yet become the dominant ideology; new moral principles, developed in the field of philosophical and ethical teachings and often ahead of their time - all these are examples of programs for future activities, a prerequisite for changes in existing forms of social life. The more dynamic the society, the greater the value of this level of cultural creativity, addressed to the future. In modern societies, its dynamics are largely ensured by the activities of a special social stratum of people - the creative intelligentsia, which, by its social purpose, must constantly generate cultural innovation. The diversity of cultural phenomena at all levels, despite their dynamism and relative independence, are organized into an integral system. Their system-forming factor is the ultimate foundations of each historically defined culture. They are represented by worldview universals (categories of culture), which in their interaction and cohesion define a holistic, generalized image of the human world. Worldview universals are categories that accumulate historically accumulated social experience and in the system of which a person of a certain K. evaluates, comprehends and experiences the world, brings into integrity all the phenomena of reality that fall within the sphere of his experience. Categorical structures that provide rubrication and systematization of human experience have been studied by philosophy for a long time. But she explores them in a specific form, as extremely general concepts. In real life, however, they act not only as forms of rational thinking, but also as schematisms that determine human perception of the world, its understanding and experience. We can distinguish two large and interconnected blocks of K universals. The first include categories that capture the most general, attributive characteristics of objects included in human activity. They act as the basic structures of human consciousness and are universal in nature, since any objects (natural and social), including symbolic objects of thinking, can become objects of activity. Their attributive characteristics are fixed in the categories of space, time, movement, thing, relationship, quantity, quality, measure, content, causality, chance, necessity, etc. But besides them, in the historical development of culture, special types of categories are formed and function, through which the definitions of a person as a subject of activity, the structure of his communication, his relationship to other people and society as a whole, to the goals and values of social life are expressed. They form the second block of universals of culture, which includes the categories: “man”, “society”, “consciousness”, “good”, “evil”, “beauty”, “faith”, “hope”, “duty”, “ conscience", "justice", "freedom", etc. These categories are recorded in the most general form historically accumulated experience of an individual’s inclusion in the system of social relations and communications. There is always a mutual correlation between the indicated blocks of K. universals, which expresses the connections between subject-object and subject-subject relations of human life. Therefore, the universals of culture arise, develop, and function as an integral system, where each element is directly or indirectly connected with others. In the system of universals K. are most expressed general ideas about the main components and aspects of human life, about the place of man in the world, about social relations, spiritual life and values of the human world, about the nature and organization of its objects, etc. They act as a kind of deep programs that predetermine the coupling, reproduction and variations of the entire variety of specific forms and types of behavior and activities characteristic of a certain type of social organization. In worldview universals of K. one can distinguish a peculiar invariant, some abstractly universal content inherent various types K. and forming the deep structures of human consciousness. But this layer of content does not exist in pure form by myself. It is always connected with specific meanings inherent in culture of a historically specific type of society, which express the peculiarities of the ways of communication and activity of people, the storage and transmission of social experience, and the scale of values adopted in a given culture. It is these meanings that characterize national and ethnic characteristics each K., its characteristic understanding of space and time, good and evil, life and death, attitude to nature, work, personality, etc. They determine the specifics of not only distant but also related cultures - for example, the difference between Japanese and Chinese, American from English, Belarusian from Russian and Ukrainian, etc. In turn, what is historically special in the universals of culture is always concretized in the huge variety of group and individual worldviews and world experiences. For a person formed by the corresponding K., the meanings of its worldview universals most often appear as something self-evident, as presumptions in accordance with which he builds his life activity and which he often does not recognize as its deep foundations. The meanings of the universals of mathematics, which form a categorical model of the world in their connections, are found in all areas of mathematics of this or that historical type in everyday language, phenomena moral consciousness, in philosophy, religion, artistic exploration of the world, the functioning of technology, in political culture, etc. Resonance various fields K. during the period of formation of new ideas that have ideological meaning, was noted by philosophers, cultural scientists, historians when analyzing in a synchronous cross-section of various stages of the development of science, art, political and moral consciousness, etc. (Spengler, Cassirer, Toynbee, Losev, Bakhtin). It is possible, for example, to establish a peculiar resonance between the ideas of the theory of relativity in science and the ideas of the linguistic avant-garde of the 1870-1880s (J. Winteler and others), the formation of a new artistic concept of the world in impressionism and post-impressionism, new to the literature of the last third of the 19th century. ways of describing and understanding human situations (for example, in the works of Dostoevsky), when the consciousness of the author, his spiritual world and his worldview concept do not stand above the spiritual worlds of his heroes, as if describing them from the outside from an absolute coordinate system, but coexist with these worlds and enter into an equal dialogue with them. The transformation of society and the type of civilizational development always presupposes a change in deep life meanings and values enshrined in the universals of K. The reorganization of societies is always associated with a revolution in minds, with criticism of previously dominant ideological orientations and the development of new values. No major ones social change are impossible without changes in K. As a social individual, a person is a creation of K. He becomes a person only through the assimilation of the social experience transmitted in K. The process of such assimilation itself is carried out as socialization, training and education. In this process, there is a complex joining of biological programs that characterize his individual heredity, and supra-biological programs of communication, behavior and activity, which constitute a kind of social heredity. By engaging in activities, thanks to the assimilation of these programs, a person is able to invent new patterns, norms, ideas, beliefs, etc., which may correspond to social needs. In this case, they become involved in K. and begin to program the activities of other people. Individual experience turns into social experience, and new states and phenomena appear in culture that consolidate this experience. Any changes in K. arise only due to the creative activity of the individual. Man, being the creation of K., at the same time is also its creator. See also: Categories of culture. V.S. Stepin

10) Culture- (culture) - human creation and the use of symbols, crafts. Culture can be understood as the "life path" of an entire society, and this will include norms of customs, dress, language, rituals, behavior and belief systems. Sociologists emphasize that human behavior is primarily the result not so much of nature (biological determinants) as of nurture (social determinants) (see The nature-nurture debate). Indeed, what distinguishes its being from other animals is its ability to collectively create and communicate symbolic meanings (see Language). Knowledge of culture is acquired through a complex process that is essentially social in origin. People act on the basis of culture and are influenced by it back, and also give rise to its new forms and meanings. Therefore, cultures are characterized historical character, relativity and diversity (see Cultural relativism). They are affected by changes in the economic, social and political organization of society. In addition, people are culturally transformed due to the unique ability to be reflective (see Reflexivity). In many societies there is a belief that culture and nature are in conflict with each other; that the former must strive to conquer the latter through the process of civilization. This idea can also be found in natural science traditions. Western societies, as well as in the theory of Freud, who sees culture emerging beyond the containment and sublimation of the motives of human behavior (Eros and Thanatos). Many, however, regard this relationship not as a contradiction, but as a complement. Feminist work in recent years has suggested that belief systems that advocate an antagonistic relationship between nature and culture have proven to be environmentally destructive. After all, humans are nature and have nature consciousness (Griffin, 1982). They are not only capable of creating cultural forms and, in turn, being maintained by those forms, but also theorizing about culture itself. In many sociological approaches there were hidden ideas about the relative merits of certain life paths and cultural forms. For example, cultural theorists both within and outside their discipline have made distinctions between “higher” and “lower” cultures, popular culture, and popular and mass culture. The latter concept has been used by both radical and conservative critics to express dissatisfaction current state art, literature, language and culture in general. With very different political ideologies, both groups argue that 20th-century culture has become impoverished and weakened. The place of an independent, knowledgeable and critical public has been replaced by an unstructured and largely indifferent mass. Radical theorists see a threat to the quality of culture not from this mass, but from the aforementioned public. This is most clearly expressed in the definition of the “capitalist cultural industry” of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, because capitalist means mass media have the ability to control the tastes, shortcomings and needs of the masses. However, conservative and elitist cultural theorists, led by Ortega y Gasset (1930) and T.S. Eliot (1948), take the opposite view: through increasing power, the masses endanger the culturally creative elites. Human behavior virtually cannot exist outside the influence of culture. What initially seemed like a natural feature of our lives - sexuality, aging, death - has become significant culture and its transformative influence. Even food consumption, despite its obvious naturalness, is permeated cultural significance and customs. See also Anthropology; Mass society; Subculture.

Culture

(from lat. cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education, development, veneration) - English. culture; German Kultur. 1. A set of material and spiritual values, expressing a certain level of history. development of a given society and person. 2. The sphere of spiritual life of society, including the system of education, upbringing, and spiritual creativity. 3. Level of mastery of a particular area of knowledge or activity. 4. Forms of social human behavior determined by the level of his upbringing and education.

(from lat. cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education, development, veneration) - specific. way of organizing and developing people. life activity, presented in the products of material and spiritual labor, in the social system. norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people’s relationships to nature, among themselves and to themselves. In the concept of K. it is fixed as a general difference between people. life activity from biological forms of life, as well as the qualitative originality of historically specific forms of this life activity in various ways. stages of societies. development, within certain eras, social-economic. formations, ethnic. and national communities (for example, ancient K, K. Maya, etc.). K. also characterizes the characteristics of behavior, consciousness and activity of people in specific spheres of societies. life (K. labor, K. everyday life, artistic K., political. m In K. the way of life of an individual (personal K.), social group (for example, K. class) or the entire society as a whole can be recorded Lit.: Self-awareness of European culture of the twentieth century. M., 1991; Culture: theories and problems. M., 1995; Morphology of culture: structure and dynamics. M., 1994; Gurevich P.S. Culturology. M., 1996; Culturology XX century. Anthology. M., 1995. V. M. Mezhuev.

A set of traditions, customs, social norms, rules governing the behavior of those who live now and transmitted to those who will live tomorrow.

A system of values, life ideas, patterns of behavior, norms, a set of methods and techniques of human activity, objectified in objective, material media (tools, signs) and passed on to subsequent generations.

Some complex whole that includes spiritual and material products that are produced, socially learned and shared by members of society and can be transmitted to other people or subsequent generations.

- a specific way of organizing and developing human life, presented in the products of material and spiritual production, in the system of social norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people’s relationships to nature, among themselves and to themselves. Culture embodies, first of all, the general difference between human life and biological forms of life. Human behavior is determined not so much by nature as by upbringing and culture. Man differs from other animals in his ability to collectively create and transmit symbolic meanings - signs, language. Outside of symbolic, cultural meanings (designations), not a single object can be included in the human world. In the same way, no object can be created without a preliminary “design” in a person’s head. The human world is a culturally constructed world; all boundaries in it are of a sociocultural nature. Outside the system of cultural meanings, there is no difference between king and courtier, saint and sinner, beauty and ugliness. The main function of culture is the introduction and maintenance of a certain social order. They distinguish between material and spiritual culture. Material culture includes all areas of material activity and its results. It includes equipment, housing, clothing, consumer goods, a way of eating and living, etc., which together constitute a certain way of life. Spiritual culture includes all spheres of spiritual activity and its products - knowledge, education, enlightenment, law, philosophy, science, art, religion, etc. Outside of spiritual culture, culture does not exist at all, just as not a single type of human activity exists. Spiritual culture is also embodied in material media (books, paintings, diskettes, etc.). Therefore, the division of culture into spiritual and material is very arbitrary. Culture reflects the qualitative originality of historically specific forms of human life at various stages of historical development, within different eras, socio-economic formations, ethnic, national and other communities. Culture characterizes the characteristics of people’s activities in specific social spheres (political culture, economic culture, culture of work and life, culture of entrepreneurship, etc.), as well as the characteristics of the life of social groups (class, youth, etc.). At the same time, there are cultural universals - certain elements common to the entire cultural heritage of mankind (age gradation, division of labor, education, family, calendar, decorative arts, dream interpretation, etiquette, etc. ). J. Murdoch identified more than 70 such universals. The term “culture” acquired its modern meaning only in the 20th century. Initially (in Ancient Rome, where this word came from), this word meant cultivation, “cultivation” of the soil. In the 18th century, the term acquired an elitist character and meant civilization opposed to barbarism. However, in Germany in the 18th century, culture and civilization were opposed to each other - as the focus of spiritual, moral and aesthetic values, the sphere of individual perfection (culture) and as something utilitarian-external, “technical,” material, standardizing human culture and consciousness, threatening the spiritual world human (civilization). This opposition formed the basis of the concept of cultural pessimism, or criticism of culture, in fact, criticism of modernity, allegedly leading to the collapse and death of culture (F. Tennis, F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler, G. Marcuse, etc.). In modern science, the term “civilization” remains ambiguous. The term “culture” has lost its former elitist (and generally any evaluative) connotation. From the point of view of modern sociologists, any society develops a specific culture, because it can only exist as a sociocultural community. That is why the historical development of a particular society (country) is a unique sociocultural process that cannot be understood and described using any general schemes. Therefore, any social changes can only be carried out as sociocultural changes, which seriously limits the possibilities of direct borrowing of foreign cultural forms - economic, political, educational, etc. In a different sociocultural environment, they can acquire (and inevitably acquire) completely different content and meaning. To analyze cultural dynamics, two main theoretical models have been developed - evolutionary (linear) and cyclical. Evolutionism, whose origins were G. Spencer, E. Taylor, J. Fraser, L. Morgan, was based on the idea of the unity of the human race and the uniformity of cultural development. The process of cultural development was presented as linear, general in content, passing through general stages. Therefore, it seemed possible to compare different cultures as more or less developed, and to identify “standard” cultures (Eurocentrism and later American centrism). Cyclic theories represent cultural dynamics as a sequence of certain phases (stages) of change and development of cultures, which naturally follow one after another (by analogy with human life - birth, childhood, etc. ), each culture is viewed as unique. Some of them have already completed their cycle, others exist, being at different phases of development. Therefore, we cannot talk about a common, universal history of humanity; we cannot compare and evaluate cultures as primitive or highly developed - they are simply different. In modern science, the founder of cyclic theories that arose in antiquity was N.Ya. Danilevsky (“Russia and Europe,” 1871). He was followed by O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. Sorokin, L. Gumilyov and others. Both evolutionary and cyclic theories emphasize and absolutize only one side of the real process of cultural dynamics and cannot give its exhaustive description. Modern science offers fundamentally new approaches (for example, the wave theory of culture put forward by O. Toffler). Now humanity is experiencing perhaps the most profound technological, social and cultural transformation in terms of content and global in scope. And it was culture that was at the center of this process. A fundamentally new type of culture is emerging – the culture of a post-industrial, information society. (See postmodernism).

A system of specifically human activities that create spiritual and material values, and the resulting set of socially significant ideas, symbols, values, ideals, norms and rules of behavior through which people organize their life activities.

– a system of values, life ideas, patterns of behavior, norms, a set of methods and techniques of human activity, objectified in objective, material media (tools, signs) and transmitted to subsequent generations.

(Latin cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education) - a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of human activity, behavior and communication, which act as a condition for the reproduction and change of social life in all its main manifestations. The programs of activity, behavior and communication that make up the body of knowledge are represented by a variety of different forms: knowledge, skills, norms and ideals, patterns of activity and behavior, ideas and hypotheses, beliefs, social goals and value orientations, etc. In their totality and dynamics, they form a historically accumulated social experience. Communication stores, transmits (transmits from generation to generation) and generates programs for the activities, behavior and communication of people. In the life of society, they play approximately the same role as hereditary information (DNA, RNA) in a cell or complex organism; they ensure the reproduction of the diversity of forms of social life, types of activities characteristic of a certain type of society, its inherent objective environment (second nature), its social connections and types of personalities - everything that makes up the real fabric of social life at a certain stage of its historical development. The concept of "K." developed historically. It initially denoted the processes of human development of nature (cultivation of the land, handicraft products), as well as education and training. The term became widely used in European philosophy and historical science starting from the second half of the 18th century. K. begins to be considered as a special aspect of social life, associated with the way human activity is carried out and characterizing the difference between human existence and animal existence. Several lines emerge in the development of the problems of culture. In the first of them, culture was considered as a process of development of the human mind and intelligent forms of life, opposing the savagery and barbarism of the primitive existence of mankind (French enlighteners); as the historical development of human spirituality - the evolution of moral, aesthetic, religious, philosophical, scientific, legal and political consciousness, ensuring the progress of humanity (German classical idealism - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; German romanticism - Schiller, Schlegel; German enlightenment - Lessing, Herder). The second line focused attention not on the progressive historical development of society, but on its features in various types of society, considering various society as autonomous systems of values and ideas that determine the type of social organization (neo-Kantianism - G. Rickert, E. Cassirer). O. Spengler, N. Danilevsky, Sorokin, Toynbee adjoined the same line. At the same time, the understanding of culture was expanded to include the entire wealth of material culture, ethnic customs, and the diversity of languages and symbolic systems. At the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. When studying cultural issues, the achievements of anthropology, ethnology, structural linguistics, semiotics and information theory began to be actively used (cultural anthropology - Taylor, Boas; social anthropology - Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown; structural anthropology and structuralism - Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan; neo-Freudianism, etc.). As a result, new prerequisites for solving the problem of society and society arose. On the one hand, society and society are not identical, and on the other hand, society permeates all areas and states of social life without exception. The problem is solved if K. is considered as an informational aspect of the life of society, as socially significant information that regulates the activities, behavior and communication of people. This information, acting as a cumulative historically developing social experience, can be partially recognized by people, but very often it functions as the social subconscious. Its transmission from generation to generation is possible only due to its consolidation in a sign form as the content of various semiotic systems. K. exists as a complex organization of such systems. Their role can be played by any fragments of the human world that acquire the function of signs that record programs of activity, behavior and communication: a person and his actions and deeds when they become models for other people, natural language, various types of artificial languages (the language of science, the language arts, conventional systems of signals and symbols that provide communication, etc.). Objects of second nature created by man can also function as special signs that consolidate accumulated social experience, expressing a certain way of behavior and activity of people in the objective world. In this sense, they sometimes talk about tools, technology, and household items as material culture, contrasting them with the phenomena of spiritual culture (works of art, philosophical, ethical, political teachings, scientific knowledge, religious ideas, etc.). However, this opposition is relative, since any phenomena of K. are semiotic formations. Material objects play a dual role in human life: on the one hand, they serve practical purposes, and on the other, they act as means of storing and transmitting socially significant information. Only in their second function do they act as phenomena of K. (Yu. Lotman). Programs of activity, behavior and communication, represented by a variety of cultural phenomena, have a complex hierarchical organization. They can be divided into three levels. The first is relict programs, fragments of past K., which live in the modern world, exerting a certain impact on people. People often unconsciously act in accordance with behavioral programs that were formed in the primitive era and which have lost their value as a regulator that ensures the success of practical actions. This includes many superstitions, such as the omens among the Russian Pomors that sexual relations before going fishing can make it unsuccessful (a relic of the taboos of the primitive era, which actually regulated the sexual relations of the primitive community during the period of the group family, thus eliminating clashes based on jealousy in community that violated joint production activities). The second level is a layer of programs of behavior, activity, and communication that ensure the current reproduction of a particular type of society. And finally, the third level of cultural phenomena is formed by programs of social life addressed to the future. They are generated by K. through internal operation of sign systems. Theoretical knowledge developed in science, causing a revolution in the technology of subsequent eras; ideals of the future social order that have not yet become the dominant ideology; new moral principles developed in the field of philosophical and ethical teachings and often ahead of their time - all these are examples of programs for future activities, a prerequisite for changes in existing forms of social life. The more dynamic the society, the greater the value of this level of cultural creativity, addressed to the future. In modern societies, its dynamics are largely ensured by the activities of a special social layer of people - the creative intelligentsia, which, according to its social purpose, must constantly generate cultural innovations. The diversity of cultural phenomena at all levels, despite their dynamism and relative independence, are organized into an integral system. Their system-forming factor is the ultimate foundations of each historically defined culture. They are represented by worldview universals (categories of culture), which in their interaction and cohesion define a holistic, generalized image of the human world. Worldview universals are categories that accumulate historically accumulated social experience and in the system of which a person of a certain K. evaluates, comprehends and experiences the world, brings into integrity all the phenomena of reality that fall within the sphere of his experience. Categorical structures that provide rubrication and systematization of human experience have been studied by philosophy for a long time. But she explores them in a specific form, as extremely general concepts. In real life, however, they act not only as forms of rational thinking, but also as schematisms that determine human perception of the world, its understanding and experience. We can distinguish two large and interconnected blocks of K universals. The first include categories that capture the most general, attributive characteristics of objects included in human activity. They act as the basic structures of human consciousness and are universal in nature, since any objects (natural and social), including symbolic objects of thinking, can become objects of activity. Their attributive characteristics are fixed in the categories of space, time, movement, thing, relationship, quantity, quality, measure, content, causality, chance, necessity, etc. But besides them, in the historical development of culture, special types of categories are formed and function, through which the definitions of a person as a subject of activity, the structure of his communication, his relationship to other people and society as a whole, to the goals and values of social life are expressed. They form the second block of universals of culture, which includes the categories: “man”, “society”, “consciousness”, “good”, “evil”, “beauty”, “faith”, “hope”, “duty”, “ conscience", "justice", "freedom", etc. These categories capture in the most general form the historically accumulated experience of an individual’s inclusion in the system of social relations and communications. There is always a mutual correlation between the indicated blocks of K. universals, which expresses the connections between subject-object and subject-subject relations of human life. Therefore, the universals of culture arise, develop, and function as an integral system, where each element is directly or indirectly connected with others. The system of universals of culture expresses the most general ideas about the main components and aspects of human life, about the place of man in the world, about social relations, spiritual life and the values of the human world, about the nature and organization of its objects, etc. They act as a kind of deep programs that predetermine the coupling, reproduction and variations of the entire variety of specific forms and types of behavior and activities characteristic of a certain type of social organization. In ideological universals of philosophy, one can distinguish a unique invariant, some abstractly universal content, characteristic of various types of philosophy and forming the deep structures of human consciousness. But this layer of content does not exist in its pure form by itself. It is always connected with specific meanings inherent in culture of a historically specific type of society, which express the peculiarities of the ways of communication and activity of people, the storage and transmission of social experience, and the scale of values adopted in a given culture. It is these meanings that characterize the national and ethnic characteristics of each culture, its inherent understanding of space and time, good and evil, life and death, attitude to nature, work, personality, etc. They determine the specifics of not only distant but also related cultures - for example, the difference between Japanese and Chinese, American from English, Belarusian from Russian and Ukrainian, etc. In turn, what is historically special in the universals of culture is always concretized in the huge variety of group and individual worldviews and world experiences. For a person formed by the corresponding K., the meanings of its worldview universals most often appear as something self-evident, as presumptions in accordance with which he builds his life activity and which he often does not recognize as its deep foundations. The meanings of the universals of culture, which form a categorical model of the world in their connections, are found in all areas of culture of one or another historical type in everyday language, phenomena of moral consciousness, philosophy, religion, artistic exploration of the world, the functioning of technology, political culture, etc. .P. The resonance of various spheres of culture during the period of the formation of new ideas that have ideological meaning was noted by philosophers, cultural scientists, and historians when analyzing in a synchronous cross-section the various stages of the development of science, art, political and moral consciousness, etc. (Spengler, Cassirer, Toynbee, Losev, Bakhtin). It is possible, for example, to establish a peculiar resonance between the ideas of the theory of relativity in science and the ideas of the linguistic avant-garde of the 1870-1880s (J. Winteler and others), the formation of a new artistic concept of the world in impressionism and post-impressionism, new to the literature of the last third of the 19th century. ways of describing and understanding human situations (for example, in the works of Dostoevsky), when the author’s consciousness, his spiritual world and his worldview concept do not stand above the spiritual worlds of his heroes, as if describing them from the outside from an absolute coordinate system, but coexist with these worlds and enter into an equal dialogue with them. The transformation of society and the type of civilizational development always presupposes a change in the deepest life meanings and values enshrined in the universals of culture. The reorganization of societies is always associated with a revolution in minds, with criticism of previously dominant ideological orientations and the development of new values. No major social changes are possible without changes in K. As a social individual, a person is a creation of K. He becomes a person only through the assimilation of the social experience transmitted in K. The process of such assimilation itself is carried out as socialization, training and education. In this process, there is a complex joining of biological programs that characterize his individual heredity, and supra-biological programs of communication, behavior and activity, which constitute a kind of social heredity. By engaging in activities, thanks to the assimilation of these programs, a person is able to invent new patterns, norms, ideas, beliefs, etc., which may correspond to social needs. In this case, they become involved in K. and begin to program the activities of other people. Individual experience turns into social experience, and new states and phenomena appear in culture that consolidate this experience. Any changes in K. arise only due to the creative activity of the individual. Man, being the creation of K., at the same time is also its creator. See also: Categories of culture. V.S. Stepin

(culture) - human creation and the use of symbols and crafts. Culture can be understood as the "life path" of an entire society, and this will include norms of customs, dress, language, rituals, behavior and belief systems. Sociologists emphasize that human behavior is primarily the result not so much of nature (biological determinants) as of nurture (social determinants) (see The nature-nurture debate). Indeed, what distinguishes its being from other animals is its ability to collectively create and communicate symbolic meanings (see Language). Knowledge of culture is acquired through a complex process that is essentially social in origin. People act on the basis of culture and are influenced by it back, and also give rise to its new forms and meanings. Therefore, cultures are characterized by historical character, relativity and diversity (see Cultural relativism). They are affected by changes in the economic, social and political organization of society. In addition, people are culturally transformed due to the unique ability to be reflective (see Reflexivity). In many societies there is a belief that culture and nature are in conflict with each other; that the former must strive to conquer the latter through the process of civilization. This idea can be found in the natural scientific traditions of Western societies, as well as in the theory of Freud, who sees culture emerging beyond the containment and sublimation of the motives of human behavior (Eros and Thanatos). Many, however, regard this relationship not as a contradiction, but as a complement. Feminist work in recent years has suggested that belief systems that advocate an antagonistic relationship between nature and culture have proven to be environmentally destructive. After all, humans are nature and have nature consciousness (Griffin, 1982). They are not only capable of creating cultural forms and, in turn, being maintained by those forms, but also theorizing about culture itself. Implicit in many sociological approaches were ideas about the relative merits of certain life paths and cultural forms. For example, cultural theorists both within and outside their discipline have made distinctions between “higher” and “lower” cultures, popular culture, and popular and mass culture. The latter concept has been used by both radical and conservative critics to express dissatisfaction with the current state of art, literature, language and culture in general. With very different political ideologies, both groups argue that 20th-century culture has become impoverished and weakened. The place of an independent, knowledgeable and critical public has been replaced by an unstructured and largely indifferent mass. Radical theorists see a threat to the quality of culture not from this mass, but from the aforementioned public. This is most clearly expressed in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory's definition of the "capitalist culture industry", for capitalist media have the ability to manipulate the tastes, vices and needs of the masses. However, conservative and elitist cultural theorists, led by Ortega y Gasset (1930) and T.S. Eliot (1948), take the opposite view: through increasing power, the masses endanger the culturally creative elites. Human behavior virtually cannot exist outside the influence of culture. What initially seems to be a natural feature of our lives - sexuality, aging, death - has been made significant by culture and its transformative influence. Even food consumption, while apparently natural, is imbued with cultural meaning and customs. See also Anthropology; Mass society; Subculture.

Anti-communism - English anticommunism; German Anticommunismus. Ideologies and organizations...

Our button code.

Culture can be defined in different ways. For example, it can be considered as general patterns of behavior and interaction, cognitive constructs and understandings that are learned through socialization. Thus, it can be seen as the development of group identity created social structures, unique to the group.

What is culture

This concept unites religion, education, etiquette, upbringing, material and spiritual development people, their achievements in various types activities. Culture includes the whole body of knowledge and skills shared by groups of people, covering language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music, art and much more.

Elements of culture

Culture can be defined as the collection of symbols, languages, beliefs, values and artifacts that are part of any society. As this definition suggests, there are two ideas and symbols on the one hand, and artifacts (material objects) on the other.

The first type, called intangible culture, includes the values, beliefs, symbols and language that define a society. The second type, called material culture, includes all the physical objects of a society, such as its tools and technologies, clothing, utensils and vehicles.

Symbols

Every culture is filled with symbols or things that have specific meanings and often evoke different reactions and emotions. Some symbols are actually types of nonverbal communication, while others are material objects. As the symbolic interaction perspective emphasizes, shared symbols make social interaction possible.

For example, non-verbal categories include the handshake, which is traditional in some societies but never used in others. Every society has various gestures, movements of the hands or other parts of the body that are intended to convey certain ideas or emotions. However, the same gesture can have opposite meanings among different nationalities.

Some of our most important symbols are objects. These can be political (flag) or religious (crucifix).

Shared symbols, both nonverbal communication and material objects, are an important part of any culture, but can also lead to misunderstandings and even hostility. These issues highlight their importance for social interaction.

Language

Perhaps the most important set of characters is language. As long as people agree on how to interpret different words, communication and therefore society is possible. Likewise, differences in languages can make communication difficult. This symbol is crucial to communication and therefore to the culture of any society. Children learn the language of their culture in the same way they learn about handshakes, gestures, and the meaning of flags and other symbols. Humans have a capacity for language that other animal species do not. Our communication skills, in turn, enable cultural interaction.

One of major events in the evolution of society was the creation of a written language. Some of the before industrial societies had a written language, while others did not, in the rest it consisted mainly of pictures rather than words.

Norms

Cultures vary greatly in their norms, standards, or expected behavior. Norms are often divided into two types: formal and informal. The first refers to the standards of behavior that are considered the most important in any society. An example could be traffic rules, the criminal code, student conduct rules, etc.

Informal norms, also called folk customs, refer to standards of behavior that are considered less important but still influence how we behave. A common example of informal norms, as well as everyday behavior, would be the way we interact with a cashier or how we ride in an elevator.

Many norms differ greatly across cultures. For example, this is manifested in the distance at which it is customary to stand from each other when talking.

Rituals

Various cultures also have different rituals or established procedures and ceremonies that often mark transitions from one life stage to another. Thus, rituals reflect and transmit cultural norms and other elements from one generation to the next.

Graduation ceremonies at schools and universities are familiar examples of time-tested rituals. In many societies, rituals help define gender identity. For example, girls in many cultures undergo various initiation ceremonies to mark their transition to adult life. Boys also have their own rites of passage, some of which involve circumcision.

Culture as a social phenomenon

Thus, culture can be represented as a phenomenon that unites various aspects of human activity, relating, among other things, to self-expression, self-knowledge, accumulation of knowledge and skills. In fact, culture is the totality of everything that man has created, that which does not belong to nature.

Culture can also be considered as an activity because it has a result. The nature of the latter determines the type of culture. Based on this criterion, material or spiritual values of society are distinguished.

Material culture

This type of human culture includes everything that is connected with the material world and provides a person with the satisfaction of primary and urgent needs. Its main elements are:

objects (or things), that which directly represents material culture(houses, clothes, toys, tools);
technologies, represented by methods and means that allow you to create new ones with the help of objects;
technical culture, including practical skills, abilities and abilities, as well as experience that has been accumulated over generations.

Spiritual culture

This type of culture relates to feelings, emotions and intellect. It is represented by the following elements:

spiritual values (the main element serving as a standard);
spiritual activity (combining art, science and religion);
spiritual needs;
spiritual consumption.

Criteria for classification

Various characteristics serve as the basis for determining which types of culture can be distinguished. For example, based on the relationship of culture to religion, one can distinguish between the secular and religious spheres, according to the degree of distribution it can be national or global, based on geographical criteria - eastern, western, Russian, Latin American, African, Indian, etc. Based on the level of urbanization , distinguish between urban and rural cultures. It can also be traditional, industrial, postmodern, medieval, ancient, primitive, etc.

Typology

Among the main types of culture, several can be distinguished.

Main focus artistic culture is the aesthetic development of the surrounding world, it is formed around art, and beauty acts as the determining value.

Economic culture is formed by human activity in various areas of the economic sector: production, management, etc., where labor acts as a formative value.

Legal culture refers to activities related to the protection of human rights, relations between the individual and society, and the state. The fundamental value is the law. To identify the types of legal culture, its bearer is determined; accordingly, the legal culture of society, individual and professional group is distinguished.

The formation of a political culture occurs when an individual has an active position related to the management of the state, attitude towards individual social groups and political institutions. The main value of political culture is power.

The field of physical education is associated with improving the body and strengthening human health. There are several:

physical education;
professional applied physical culture;
recreation;
motor rehabilitation;
background physical culture, adaptive physical culture.

Several years ago it was considered physical culture and sports, however they were separated into a separate category.

Level ecological culture determines a person’s relationship with nature, it helps maintain harmony between man and the environment. The main value that determines the formation of ecological culture is the flora and fauna of the Earth.

At the core moral culture there are ethical standards based on traditions and social attitudes that are fundamental in society. The main value here is morality.

Ethnoterritorial typology

It is considered one of the main ones. The culture of socio-ethnic communities includes several components: tribal, national, folk, regional. These types of cultures belong to different peoples and ethnic groups. Modern society comprise more than 4,000 nationalities that make up almost two hundred states. Ethnic and national cultures develop under the influence of geographical, climatic, historical, religious and other factors.

Ethnic and folk cultures have similar features. Their origin does not have a specific authorship; the entire people acts as the subject. Works of culture (epics, myths, legends, fairy tales) are preserved for a long time. The main characteristic is traditionalism.

Forms

Based on various reasons, types and forms of culture are distinguished. There are three in total:

High (elite) culture consists of examples of art created at a high level, forming cultural canons and serving as a model. It is non-commercial in nature and requires intellectual decoding to understand it. As an example we can imagine classical music and literature.
Mass or pop culture is characterized by low level difficulties. It is intended for consumption by the masses. Characterized by a commercial focus, intended to entertain a large audience.
Folk culture is distinguished by its non-commercial nature and the absence of specific authors.

Moreover, despite the differences in the nature of these forms of culture, their elements are interacting, interpenetrating and complementary.