Cultural studies reader. Reader on the theoretical foundations of cultural studies

Edited by A.A. Radugina

X restomatia in cultural studies

tutorial

God's gift- beauty;

and if you think about it without flattery,

Then you have to admit: this gift

not everyone has it

Beauty needs care

without him beauty dies,

Even if her face is similar to Venus herself.

Ovid

Moscow 1998

Publishing house

UDC008(09)(075.8)

BBK 63.3(0-7)ya73

Reader on cultural studies: Proc. manual / Compiled by:

X91 Laletin D. A., Parkhomenko I. T., Radugin A. A.

Rep. editor Radugin A. A. - M.: Center, 1998. - 592 p.

ISBN 5-88860-044-Х

Intended as a teaching aid for university students, technical schools, college students, gymnasiums, and high schools.

No announcement

ISBN 5-88860-044-Х

BBK63.3(0-7)ya73

Preface

Section one

ESSENCE AND PURPOSE OF CULTURE

E. Durkheim 12

Main schools and concepts of cultural studies

I.G. Herder 27

G.W.F. Hegel 43

A. Schopenhauer 49

F. Nietzsche 51

O. Spengler 58

ON THE. Berdyaev 81

Culture and the unconscious beginning of man: Freud's concept

Z. Freud 104

Culture and the collective unconscious: the concept of K.G. cabin boy

K.G. Jung 126

J. Huizinga 131

K. Lévi-Strauss 133

J. Derrida 137

Culture as a system

N.P. Ogarev 144

R. Bella 145

MM. Bakhtin 155

S. Norman 156

K.D. Kavelin 161

Relationships

ideological and

humanistic

trends in artistic culture

N.G. Chernyshevsky 203

J.P. Sartre 205

K. Marx 206

F. Engels 206

V.S. Soloviev 207

S.N. Bulgakov 210

MM. Bakhtin 213

M. Heidegger 214

Section two

DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD CULTURE

Myth as a form of culture

A.F. Losev 218

S.A. Tokarev 219

A.A. Potebnya 223

M. Mead 228

D.D. Fraser 232

E. Kassirer 236

A. Bely 244

Culture of the Ancient East

Bhagavad Gita 249

Mahabharata 250

Ramayana 255

Tipitaka 258

Nirvana 259

Lao Tzu 261

Confucius 263

History of ancient culture

Plato 266

Aristotle 276

Horace 283

Christianity as a spiritual core

European culture

Bible 288

M. Weber 292

Western European culture

in the Middle Ages

Augustine 305

Value as a fundamental principle of culture

P.A. Sorokin 308

R. Guenon 311

Le Goff J. 319

Culture of the Western European Renaissance

Humanism value basis of Renaissance culture

L. Valla 335

D. Pico Dela Mirandola 345

D. Bruno 353

M. Montaigne 355

Reformation

and its cultural and historical significance

M. Weber 373

Culture of the Enlightenment

N. Boileau 386

The cultural crisis of the twentieth century and ways to overcome it

ON THE. Berdyaev 404

Artistic culture of the twentieth century:

modernism and postmodernism

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature 416

The first manifesto of futurism by F.T. Marinetti 421

Manifesto of Surrealism 1924. Andre Breton 426

Dada Manifesto 446

Houseman et al 448

Manifesto of surrealism. Ivan Goll 449

J. Habermas 451

J.-F. Lyotard 467

Section three

MAIN STAGES OF CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTRussia

Formation and development of Russian culture

CM. Soloviev 472

P.N. Milyukov 480

L. Shestov 487

G.P. Fedotov 488

IN AND. Ivanov 495

D.S. Likhachev 498

V.V. Veidle 505

D.S. Likhachev 517

ON THE. Berdyaev 521

I.A. Ilyin 528

M. Gorky 529

IN AND. Lenin 546

"Silver Age" of Russian culture

V.Ya. Bryusov 552

IN AND. Ivanov 558

Soviet period of development of Russian culture

A.A. Zhdanov 556

HELL. Sakharov 570

Preface

The modern education system is focused on updating all the creative abilities of students: the harmonious development of their intellectual, professional, moral and aesthetic qualities. The study of the cycle of humanitarian and socio-economic disciplines is expected to play a significant role in solving this problem. A key role in the humanitarian training of specialists belongs to cultural studies. In accordance with the general education standard  "State requirements (Federal component) for the mandatory minimum content and level of preparation of higher school graduates in the cycle "General humanitarian and socio-economic disciplines" in the course of studying cultural studies, a student must learn to understand and be able to explain cultural phenomena and their role in human life, to distinguish forms and types of cultures, the main cultural and historical centers and regions, to know the history of world and domestic culture, to take care of the preservation and enhancement of national and world cultural heritage.

Textbooks and teaching aids on cultural studies can provide some assistance in mastering these problems. However, a deep comprehension of cultural phenomena is possible only as a result of familiarization with primary sources - the works of thinkers of different eras, as well as literary monuments of world culture. To acquaint the reader with the main works in the field of cultural studies, to make them feel the originality of cultural thought, its features and diverse forms is one of the main goals of the proposed textbook.

The selection of material for the book was subordinated to the solution of these problems. The compilers sought to ensure that the material presented in this publication represents the cultural process holistically and comprehensively. The selection of fragments was aimed at ensuring that they adequately expressed the views of the relevant thinkers and at the same time were accessible to understanding by a wide readership. The structure of the textbook corresponds to the program of the course "Cultural Studies".

Section one

ESSENCE

AND PURPOSE

CULTURES

Culture as a subject of cultural studies

DURKHEIM EMIL

On the division of social labor.- M.: Science,1991- WITH. 52 55

At first glance, nothing seems easier than to determine the role of the division of labor. Isn’t its effect known to everyone? Since it increases both the productive power and the skill of the worker, it constitutes a necessary condition for the material and intellectual development of society, the source of civilization. On the other hand, since absolute value is readily attributed to civilization, they do not even think about looking for another function for the division of labor.

That the division of labor really produces this result is impossible to even try to dispute. But if it had no other result and did not serve for something else, then there would be no reason to attribute to it a moral character.

Indeed, the services rendered to them in this way are very far from moral life, or at least have a very indirect and distant relationship to it. Although it is now customary to respond to Rousseau’s harsh criticism with praises to the contrary, it has not been proven at all that civilization is a moral thing. To solve this question one cannot resort to the analysis of concepts, which are inevitably subjective, but one must find a fact suitable for measuring the level of average morality, and then observe how it changes as civilization progresses. Unfortunately, we do not have such a unit of measurement; but we have it in relation to collective immorality. Indeed, the average number of suicides and crimes of all kinds can serve to indicate the height of immorality in a given society. But if we turn to experience, it speaks little in favor of civilization, for the number of these painful phenomena seems to increase as science, art and industry progress (See: Alexander von Oettingen. Moralstatistik. Erlangen, 1882. para. 37 etc.; Tarde. Criminalite comparee (P., F. Alcan) / chapter II (On suicide, see below, book II, chapter 1, para. II). Of course, it would be somewhat frivolous to conclude hence, that civilization is immoral, but it is possible, by

at least be sure that if it has a positive, beneficial influence on moral life, then this influence is rather weak.

However, if we analyze that ill-defined complex that is called civilization, we will find that the elements of which it consists are devoid of any moral character.

This is especially true for the economic activities that constantly accompany civilization. Not only does it not serve the progress of morality, but crimes and suicides are especially numerous in large industrial centers. In any case, it is obvious that it does not represent external signs by which moral facts are recognized. We replaced stagecoaches with railways, sailing ships with huge steamships, small workshops with factories; this whole flourishing of activity is generally regarded as beneficial, but it has nothing morally obligatory. The artisan and small industrialist who resist this general trend and stubbornly hold on to their modest enterprises perform their duty just as well as the large manufacturer who covers the country with a network of factories and unites a whole army of workers under his command. The moral consciousness of a nation does not err; it prefers a little justice to all the industrial improvements in the world. Of course, industrial activity has its basis: it satisfies certain needs, but these needs are not of a moral order.

This can be said with even greater justification about art, which is absolutely opposed to everything that looks like duty, since it is the kingdom of freedom. It is luxury and decoration, which may be wonderful to have, but it is not necessary to acquire them; what is superfluous is not necessary. On the contrary, morality is an obligatory minimum and a severe necessity, it is our daily bread, without which societies cannot live. Art responds to our need to expand our activity without a goal, for the pleasure of spreading it, while morality forces us to follow a certain road to a certain goal; whoever says “duty” also says “coercion.” Therefore, art, although it can be animated by moral ideas or intertwined with the evolution of moral phenomena proper, is not moral in itself. Observation may even establish that in individuals, as in societies, the immoderate development of aesthetic inclinations represents a serious symptom from the point of view of morality.

Of all the elements of civilization, only science under certain conditions has a moral character. Indeed, societies are increasingly striving to recognize the responsibility of the individual to develop

your mind through the assimilation of established scientific truths. There is now a certain amount of knowledge that we should all have. A man is not obliged to throw himself into a great industrial battle or to become an artist; but everyone is now obliged not to be ignorant. This duty makes itself felt so strongly that in some societies it is sanctioned not only by public opinion, but also by law. However, one can see where this privilege characteristic of science comes from. The fact is that science is nothing more than consciousness brought to the highest degree of clarity. But in order for societies to live under the current conditions of existence, it is necessary that the field of consciousness, both individual and social, expand and clarify. Indeed, the environment in which they live is becoming more and more complex and, therefore, more mobile, therefore, in order to exist for a long time, they need to change often. On the other hand, the darker the consciousness, the more resistant it is to change, because it does not see quickly enough either that changes need to be made, or in which direction to make them. On the contrary, an enlightened consciousness knows how to find a way to adapt to them in advance. That is why it is necessary that reason, guided by science, take a more active part in the course of collective life.

But the science, the mastery of which is now required of everyone, almost does not deserve this name. This is not science - it is at best the most general and simple part of it. It really comes down to a small number of mandatory pieces of information that are required from everyone simply because they are intended for everyone. Real science infinitely surpasses this ordinary level: it includes not only what it is a shame not to know, but everything that is possible to know. It presupposes in those who engage in it not only those average abilities that all people possess, but also special inclinations. Therefore, being available only to a select few, it is not obligatory. This is a useful and beautiful thing, but not necessary to such an extent that society imperatively demands it. It is advantageous to secure it; but there is nothing immoral in not mastering it. It is a field of action open to the initiative of all, but into which no one is forced to step. It is no more necessary to be a scientist than to be an artist. So science, like art and industry, is outside morality (“The essential feature of goodness compared to truth is to be obligatory. Truth in itself does not have this character” (Janet. Morale, p. 139).

The reason for much disagreement about the moral character of civilization is that very often moralists do not have an objective criterion for distinguishing moral facts from those that are not. Usually moral

they call everything that has nobility and value, everything that is the subject of some sublime aspirations - and only thanks to this excessive expansion of the meaning of the word is it possible to introduce civilization into the realm of morality. But the field of ethics is not so uncertain; it covers all the rules to which behavior is subject and to which sanctions are associated, but nothing more. Consequently, civilization, since there is nothing in it that would contain this criterion of morality, is morally indifferent. Therefore, if the division of labor did not create anything other than the very possibility of civilization, it would participate in the formation of the same morality of neutrality...

P.225 - 227:

Of course, there are many pleasures that are now available to us and which simpler creatures do not know. But we are subject to many sufferings from which they are spared, and we cannot be sure that the balance is in our favor. Thought is undoubtedly a source of joys which can be very powerful; but at the same time, how many joys she disrupts! For one solved problem, how many questions have been raised and left unanswered! For one resolved doubt, there are so many mysteries that confuse us! In the same way, if a savage does not know the pleasures brought by an active life, then he is not subject to boredom, this torment of civilized people. He allows his life to flow calmly, without feeling the constant need to hastily fill its too short moments with numerous and urgent matters. Let us not forget, moreover, that for most people work is still a punishment and a burden.

It will be objected to us that among civilized peoples life is more varied and that diversity is necessary for pleasure. But civilization, along with greater mobility, also introduces greater monotony, for it has imposed monotonous, continuous work on man. The savage moves from one occupation to another in accordance with his motivating needs and circumstances; A civilized person always devotes himself entirely to one and the same occupation, which presents the less variety the more limited it is. Organization necessarily presupposes absolute regularity in habits, for a change in the mode of functioning of an organ cannot take place without affecting the whole organism. On this side, our life leaves less room for the unexpected and at the same time, due to its greater instability, it robs pleasure of some of the security that it needs.

True, our nervous system, having become more subtle, is accessible to weak excitations that did not affect our ancestors, in whom it was very coarse. But at the same time, many excitements

which were previously pleasant have become too strong and, therefore, painful for us. If we are sensitive to more pleasures, then the same is true for suffering. On the other hand, if it is true that, as a rule, suffering produces a greater shock in the body than pleasure (See: Hartmann. Philosophic de 1 "inconscient, P), that unpleasant excitement gives us more pain than pleasant - pleasure, then this greater sensitivity would rather hinder happiness than favor it. Indeed, very refined nervous systems live in suffering and even eventually become attached to it. Is it not remarkable that the main cult of the most civilized religions is the cult of human suffering? The continuation of life now, as before, requires that on average pleasures prevail over pain, but it cannot be argued that this predominance has become greater.

Finally, and this is especially important, it has not been proven that this surplus has ever served as a measure of happiness. Of course, in these dark and still poorly understood questions nothing can be said for sure; it seems, however, that happiness and the sum of pleasures are not the same thing. This is a general and constant state that accompanies the regular activity of all our organic and mental functions. Continuous activities such as breathing or circulating blood do not provide positive pleasure; however, our good mood and mood mainly depend on them. Every pleasure is a kind of crisis: it is born, lasts for a moment and dies; life, on the contrary, is continuous. What constitutes its main charm must be continuous, just like it. Pleasure is local: it is an affect limited to some point in the body or consciousness; life is neither here nor there: it is everywhere. Our attachment to it must therefore depend on an equally general cause. In a word, happiness does not express the instantaneous state of some particular function, but the health of physical and moral life as a whole. Since pleasure accompanies the normal implementation of intermittent functions, the more place these functions occupy in life. But it is not happiness; even its level can only be changed within limited limits, for it depends on fleeting reasons, while happiness is something permanent. In order for local sensations to deeply affect this foundation of our sensory sphere, they must be repeated with exceptional frequency and constancy. Most often, on the contrary, pleasure depends on happiness: depending on whether we are happy or not, everything smiles at us or makes us sad. It was not for nothing that it was said that we carry our happiness within ourselves.

But if this is so, then there is no need to ask whether happiness increases with civilization. Happiness is an indicator of health. But the health of any species is not better because it is of a higher type. A healthy mammal does not feel any better than an equally healthy single cell. It should be the same with happiness. It does not become larger where the activity is richer; it is the same wherever she is healthy. The simplest and the most complex beings enjoy the same happiness if they realize their nature in the same way. A normal savage can be just as happy as a normal civilized person...

Edited by A.A. Radugina

READING READING ON CULTURAL SCIENCE

Gaudeamus igitur Juvenes dum sunuis! Post jucundam juventutem, Post molestam senectutem Nos habebit humus

Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere?

Transeans ad superos Transeans ad inferos Hos si vis videre!

Vita njstra brewis est, Brevi finietur;

Venit mors velositer, Rapit nos atrociter Neminu parcetur!

Vivat academy! Vivant professors!

Vivat memorum quodlibet! Semper sin in flore!

Edited by A.A. Radugina

x restomatia by

cultural studies

tutorial

God's gift of beauty; and if you think about it without flattery,

Then we have to admit: not everyone has this gift,

Beauty needs care, without it beauty dies,

Even if her face is similar to Venus herself.

Moscow 1998

Publishing house

UDC008(09)(075.8) BBK 63.3(07)ya73 X91

Reader on cultural studies: Textbook. manual / Compiled by: X91 Laletin D. A., Parkhomenko I. T., Radugin A. A.

Rep. editor Radugin A. A. M.: Center, 1998. 592 p.

ISBN 588860044Х

Intended as a teaching aid for university students, technical schools, college students, gymnasiums, and high schools.

Preface

Section one ESSENCE AND PURPOSE OF CULTURE

Culture as a subject of cultural studies

E. Durkheim 12

Main schools and concepts of cultural studies

I.G. Herder 27 G.V.F. Hegel 43 A. Schopenhauer 49 F. Nietzsche 51 O. Spengler 58 N.A. Berdyaev 81

Culture and the unconscious beginning of man: Freud's concept Z. Freud 104

Culture and the collective unconscious: the concept of K.G. Jung K.G. Jung 126 J. Huizinga 131

K. LeviStrauss 133 J. Derrida 137

Culture as a system

N.P. Ogarev 144 R. Bella 145 M.M. Bakhtin 155 S. Norman 156 K.D. Kavelin 161

The relationship between ideological and humanistic

trends in artistic culture

N.G. Chernyshevsky 203 Zh.P. Sartre 205

K. Marx 206 F. Engels 206 V.S. Soloviev 207 S.N. Bulgakov 210 M.M. Bakhtin 213 M. Heidegger 214

Section two DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD CULTURE

Myth as a form of culture

A.F. Losev 218 S.A. Tokarev 219 A.A. Potebnya 223 M. Mead 228 D.D. Fraser 232 E. Kassirer 236 A. Bely 244

Culture of the Ancient East

Bhagavad Gita 249 Mahabharata 250 Ramayana 255 Tipitaka 258 Nirvana 259 Lao Tzu 261 Confucius 263

History of ancient culture

Plato 266 Aristotle 276 Horace 283

Christianity as the spiritual core of European culture

Bible 288 M. Weber 292

Culture of Western Europe in the Middle Ages

Augustine 305

Value as a fundamental principle of culture P.A. Sorokin 308

R. Guenon 311 Le Goff J. 319

Culture of the Western European Renaissance

Humanism ¾ value basis of Renaissance culture L. Valla 335

D. Pico Dela Mirandola 345 D. Bruno 353

M. Montaigne 355

The Reformation and its cultural and historical significance

M. Weber 373

Culture of the Enlightenment

N. Boileau 386

The cultural crisis of the twentieth century and ways to overcome it

ON THE. Berdyaev 404

Artistic culture of the 20th century: modernism and postmodernism

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature 416 The First Manifesto of Futurism by F.T. Marinetti 421 Manifesto of Surrealism 1924. Andre Breton 426 Dada Manifesto 446

Houseman and others 448 Manifesto of Surrealism. Ivan Goll 449

J. Habermas 451 J.F. Lyotard 467

Section three MAIN STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN CULTURE

Formation and development of Russian culture

CM. Soloviev 472 P.N. Miliukov 480 L. Shestov 487 G.P. Fedotov 488 V.I. Ivanov 495 D.S. Likhachev 498 V.V. Veidle 505 D.S. Likhachev 517 N.A. Berdyaev 521 I.A. Ilyin 528 M. Gorky 529 V.I. Lenin 546

"Silver Age" of Russian culture

V.Ya. Bryusov 552 V.I. Ivanov 558

Soviet period of development of Russian culture

A.A. Zhdanov 556 A.D. Sakharov 570

Preface

The modern education system is focused on the actualization of all creative abilities of students: the harmonious development of their intellectual, professional, moral and aesthetic qualities. The study of the cycle of humanities and socio-economic disciplines is expected to play a significant role in solving this problem. A key role in the humanities training of specialists belongs to cultural studies. In accordance with the general educational standard ¾ "State requirements (Federal component) for the mandatory minimum content and level of training of higher school graduates in the cycle "General humanitarian and socio-economic disciplines" in the course of studying cultural studies, a student must learn to understand and be able to explain cultural phenomena, their role in human life, distinguish forms and types of cultures, main cultural and historical centers and regions, know the history of world and domestic culture, take care of the preservation and enhancement of national and world cultural heritage.

Textbooks and teaching aids on cultural studies can provide some assistance in mastering these problems. However, a deep comprehension of cultural phenomena is possible only as a result of familiarization with primary sources, the works of thinkers of different eras, as well as literary monuments of world culture. To acquaint the reader with the main works in the field of cultural studies, to make them feel the originality of cultural thought, its features and diverse forms is one of the main goals of the proposed textbook.

The selection of material for the book was subordinated to the solution of these problems. The compilers strove for the material presented in this publication to represent the cultural process holistically and comprehensively. The selection of fragments was aimed at ensuring that they adequately expressed the views of the relevant thinkers and at the same time were accessible to understanding by a wide readership. The structure of the textbook corresponds to the program of the course "Cultural Studies".

Reader on cultural studies. Ed. Rudigina A.A.

M.: Center, 1998 - 592 p.

Intended as a teaching aid for university students, technical schools, college students, gymnasiums, and high schools.

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CONTENT
Section one ESSENCE AND PURPOSE OF CULTURE 12
Topic 1 Culture as a subject of cultural studies 12
E. Durkheim 12
Topic 2 Basic schools and concepts of cultural studies 26
I.G. Herder 27
G.W.F. Hegel 43
A. Schopenhauer 49
F. Nietzsche 51
O. Spengler 58
ON THE. Berdyaev 81
Culture and the unconscious beginning of man: Freud's concept 103
Z. Freud 104
Culture and the collective unconscious: the concept of K.G. Yunga 125
K.G. Jung 126
J. Huizinga 131
K. Lévi-Strauss 133
J. Derrida 137
Topic 3 Culture as a system 140
N.P. Ogarev 144
R. Bella 145
MM. Bakhtin 155
S. Norman 156
K.D. Kavelin 161
Topic 4 Relationship between ideological and humanistic trends in artistic culture 200
N.G. Chernyshevsky 203
J.P. Sartre 205
K. Marx 206
F. Engels 206
V.S. Soloviev 207
S.N. Bulgakov 210
MM. Bakhtin 213
M. Heidegger 214
Section two DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD CULTURE 218
Topic 5 Myth as a form of culture 218
A.F. Losev 218
S.A. Tokarev 219
A.A. Potebnya 223
M. Mead 228
D.D. Fraser 232
E. Kassirer 236
A. Bely 244
Topic 6 Culture of the Ancient East 248
Bhagavad Gita 249
Mahabharata 250
Ramayana 255
Tipitaka 258
Nirvana 259
Lao Tzu 261
Confucius 263
Topic 7 History of ancient culture 265
Plato 266
Aristotle 276
Horace 283
Topic 8 Christianity as the spiritual core of European culture 287
Bible 288
M. Weber 292
Topic 9 Culture of Western Europe in the Middle Ages 304
Augustine 305
Value as a fundamental principle of culture 307
P.A. Sorokin 308
R. Guenon 311
Le Goff J 319
Topic 10 Culture of the Western European Renaissance 333
Humanism is the value basis of Renaissance culture 334
L. Valla 335
D. Pico Dela Mirandola 345
D. Bruno 353
M. Montaigne 355
Topic 11 The Reformation and its cultural and historical significance 372
M. Weber 373
Topic 12 Culture of the Enlightenment 385
N. Boileau 386
Topic 13 The cultural crisis of the twentieth century and ways to overcome it 400
ON THE. Berdyaev 404
Topic 14 Artistic culture of the twentieth century: modernism and postmodernism 415
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature 416
The first manifesto of futurism by F.T. Marinetti 421
Manifesto of Surrealism 1924. Andre Breton 426
Dada Manifesto 446
Houseman et al 448
Manifesto of surrealism. Ivan Goll 449
J. Habermas 451
J.-F. Lyotard 467
Section three MAIN STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN CULTURE 469
Topic 15 Formation and development of Russian culture 470
CM. Soloviev 472
P.N. Milyukov 480
L. Shestov 487
G.P. Fedotov 488
IN AND. Ivanov 495
D.S. Likhachev 498
V.V. Veidle 505
D.S. Likhachev 517
ON THE. Berdyaev 521
I.A. Ilyin 528
M. Gorky 529
IN AND. Lenin 546
Topic 16 "Silver Age" of Russian culture 550
V.Ya. Bryusov 552
IN AND. Ivanov 558
Topic 17 Soviet period of development of Russian culture 555
A.A. Zhdanov 556
HELL. Sakharov 570

Title: Reader on cultural studies: Textbook. allowance
Author: Laletin D.A., Parkhomenko I.T., Radugin A.A. (comp.)
Publisher: M.: Center
Year: 1998
Pages: 592
Format: PDF
Size: 2.78 MB
Quality: excellent
Russian language
ISBN 5-88860-044-Х
Series: Alma mater

The book is an anthology of thematically structured cultural texts - extracts from the works of thinkers of different eras, as well as monuments of world literature. In accordance with the requirements for the mandatory minimum content and level of training for higher school graduates in the cycle “General Humanitarian and Socio-Economic Disciplines,” the texts highlight the essence and purpose of culture, the main schools in cultural studies, the history of world and domestic culture, issues of preserving world and national cultural heritage. Intended as a teaching aid for university students, technical schools, college students, gymnasiums, and high schools.
Content
Preface Article c. 10-10
Culture as a subject of cultural studies Article c. 11-26
Basic schools and concepts of cultural studies Article c. 27-80
About culture Article c. 81-104
Culture and the unconscious beginning of man. Freud's concept Article c. 104-126
Culture and the collective unconscious: the concept of C. G. Jung Article p. 126-130
Homo Ludens Article c. 131-133
Structural Anthropology Article c. 133-137
Letter to a Japanese Friend Article c. 137-142
Culture as a system Article c. 144-145
Sociology of religion Article c. 145-154
Literary and artistic articles Article c. 155-156
Sociology of Science Article c. 156-161
On the tasks of art Article c. 161-202
The relationship between ideological and humanistic trends in artistic culture.
Ethnic relation of art to reality (Dissertation) Article c. 203-205
Existentialism is humanism Article c. 205-206
German ideology Article c. 206-207
Step one to positive aesthetics Article c. 207-210
Chekhov as a thinker Article c. 210-212
Art and responsibility Article c. 213-213
The relationship between ideological and humanistic trends in artistic culture Article c. 214-216
Myth as a form of culture Article c. 217-231
The Myth of Adonis Article c. 232-236
Defining a person in terms of human culture Article c. 236-244
Paths of Culture Article c. 244-248
Culture of the Ancient East Article c. 249-265
History of ancient culture Article c. 266-287
Christianity as the spiritual core of European culture. Bible Article c. 288-292
Protestantism, ethics and the spirit of capitalism Article c. 292-304
Culture of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. On True Religion Article c. 305-308
The crisis of our time Article c. 308-310
On the meaning of “carnival” holidays Article c. 311-319
From heaven to earth Article c. 319-334
Culture of the Western European Renaissance Article c. 335-355
Experiments Article c. 355-372
The Reformation and its cultural and historical significance Article c. 373-385
Culture of the Enlightenment Poems c. 386-403
The cultural crisis of the 20th century and ways to overcome it Article c. 404-415
Artistic culture of the 20th century: modernism and postmodernism.
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature Article c. 416-421
The first manifesto of futurism Article c. 421-426
Manifesto of Surrealism 1924 Article c. 426-448
What is Dadaism and what goals does it set? Article c. 448-449
Manifesto of surrealism. The work of art must create
super real reality. Only this is poetry Article c. 449-451
Modern - an unfinished project Article c. 451-467
A note on the meanings of `post` Article c. 467-470
The main stages of the development of Russian culture Article c. 471-551
`Silver Age` of Russian culture Article c. 552-565
Soviet period of development of Russian culture Article c. 566-571
Briefly about the authors Article c. 572-589

Preface........................................................ ............................................. 4

White Leslie A. Culturology................................................. .................. 5

White Leslie A. The concept of culture................................................. ........... 13

Lotman Yu. M. Semiosphere............................................ ....................... 26

Sorokin P. Social and cultural dynamics.................................... 52

Huizinga J. Homo ludens.................................................... ........................... 69

Freud Z. The inconveniences of culture.................................................... ............... 88

Spengler O. Decline of Europe.................................................... ................... 110

Toynbee A. Comprehension of history................................................. .......... 124

Jaspers K. The meaning and purpose of history.................................................... 160

Danilevsky N. Ya. Russia and Europe.................................................... ........ 188

Mead M. Culture and the world of childhood.................................................... ............. 217

Berdyaev N. The fate of Russia................................................. .................... 237

Herder I. G. Ideas for the philosophy of human history.................................. 249

Gumilyov L. N. Ethnogenesis and biosphere of the Earth..................................... 264

Peccei A. Human qualities................................................. ........ 284

Schweitzer A. Reverence for life............................................. 306

Fromm E. To have or to be?.................................................... .................... 330

Brook D.H. Science and religion............................................. ........................... 342

Nietzsche F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra............................................ ........ 357

Horkheimer M., Adorno T. Dialectics of Enlightenment................................. 370

Ortega y Gasset H. Revolt of the masses............................................. .......... 378

Toffler E. The Third Wave.................................................... ........................... 400

Huntington S. Clash of Civilizations.................................... 413

Bibliography................................................ ........................... 435

Preface

This anthology on cultural studies is a collection that includes fragments from the works of famous cultural researchers who formed the basis of modern cultural studies. The presented work is an addition to the textbook “Culturology” by T.V. Tolpykina and V.E. Tolpykin, intended for students of higher educational institutions, and above all, students of an agricultural university. It contains materials that allow a more in-depth study of general and specific issues of cultural studies, presented in a systematic form in the specified textbook.

The compiler did not pursue the goal of grouping the works of the cited authors into certain topics or sections of the textbook, since the content of the texts often goes far beyond the boundaries of a particular issue in the theory of culture, presenting the author’s holistic and systematic vision of cultural problems. However, in this work an attempt was made to preserve the general outline and logic of revealing the key issues of cultural studies provided for in the textbook by T.V. Tolpykina and V.E. Tolpykin. Of course, many significant works in the field of cultural thought were not included in this anthology, and the compiler hopes that familiarity with the work of one or another scientist presented in this work will become an incentive for the reader to study the creative heritage of other equally significant authors whose works were not included in the collection. It also seems important that such a study will be of a different nature and will include not only certain fragments, even the most significant ones, in the works of famous cultural researchers, but will become holistic and comprehensive. Not just introducing the young reader to the work of outstanding scientists, but awakening his curiosity and research interest is the key task of this collection.

L. A. White

Cultural studies

Culturology is a branch of anthropology that considers culture (institutions, technologies, ideologies) as an independent ordering of phenomena, organized in accordance with their own principles and existing according to their own laws. The cultural process is defined as independent and independent. Variation in culture is explained in cultural terms, preferable to the terminology of biology or psychology. The science of culture, of course, had to go a long way leading to the creation of an adequate concept of culture. Uncivilized peoples were aware of the differences in traditions, language and ideas that existed between them. But even such an educated people as the Greeks contemporary to Aristotle did not know a word equivalent to our term “culture.”

This term was borrowed by the great founder of English anthropology E. B. Tylor from German cultural historians. Tylor defined culture as a complex whole that consists of “knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws, customs and some other abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” He came to the conclusion that culture is exclusively a property of the human species.

Symbolic process. Since Tylor's time, many different definitions of culture have been proposed, but his definition is the most common today. The word “culture” refers to those behavioral features that distinguish humans from other species: articulate speech; institutions; codes of ethics and etiquette; ideology; a constant, cumulative and progressive process of improving tools, etc. Only man has the unique ability to operate with symbols - to symbolize, that is, to freely and arbitrarily assign meaning to objects and events, phenomena and actions. Articulate speech is the most unique and important form of symbolization. All culture was created and reproduced through symbolization in general and through articulate speech in particular.

But symbolized objects and events (symbols) can be viewed in two different contexts. In a somatic context, their meaning is associated with their relationship to the human body and, in this capacity, implements behavior. In an extrasomatic context, their meaning is realized not in relation to the human organism that produces them, but in relation to others.

In this context they are culture. Thus, a custom that prohibits communication between son-in-law and mother-in-law is regarded as behavior from the point of view of the concepts, actions and relationships of human organisms; it is a culture when its relationship to other traditions is analyzed, such as forms of marriage, the place of residence of newlyweds, the roles of representatives of each sex in subsistence, warfare, defense, etc. Thus, culture is a class of symbolized objects and phenomena considered in an extrasomatic context.

Before the emergence of cultural studies in the process of expanding the scope of science, naturalistic (i.e., non-mythological, non-theological) explanations of human behavior were biological, psychological, or sociological in nature. Accordingly, this or that behavior of people was determined by their physical type; or the peculiarities of their thinking; or it was the result of some processes of social interaction. In all of these interpretations, the person, individually or collectively, was viewed as the independent variable; its customs, institutions, beliefs, etc. were the dependent variables. Man was the cause, culture was the effect.

Cultural explanation. The cultural revolution explains this relationship differently. People behave this way and not differently because they were born and raised in certain cultural traditions. The behavior of a people is determined not by the physical type or genetic code, not by ideas, desires, hopes and fears, not by the processes of social interaction, but by an external, extrasomatic cultural tradition. People brought up in the Tibetan linguistic tradition will speak Tibetan rather than English. Attitudes towards monogamy, polygyny or polyandry, an aversion to milk, taboo relationships with mother-in-law or the use of the multiplication table are all determined by people's reactions to cultural traditions. The behavior of a people is a function of its culture.

If a people's behavior is determined by its culture, what determines culture? The answer is that it defines itself. Culture can be considered as an independent process. This is a process during which the properties of a culture interact with each other, forming new permutations, combinations and connections. One property, or combination of properties, is the result of an antecedent and accompanying properties and combinations of properties. One form of language, writing, social organization, technology, or culture as a whole develops from a previous stage or is formed from a previous state.

Of course, any sociocultural system is subject to the influence of the earthly and celestial environment. Climate, topography, flora, fauna and mineral resources can and do affect cultural systems. But this or that environment simply allows or excludes the existence of certain elements or properties of culture; it does not define them. The influence of environmental factors is expressed only in cultural means and is carried out through them; therefore, they can be viewed culturally. A number of elements found in the environment, such as iron or oil, are involved in the cultural process only at certain stages of development. And finally, speaking about cultures in general or about culture as a whole, the environmental factor can be regarded as a constant and therefore not taken into account when interpreting the cultural process.

Although culturology, when considering the cultural process, does not include in its sphere of interest biological and psychological processes in people, the culturologist recognizes the existence of a close and necessary connection between culture as a whole and man as a whole. Culture itself is by its nature what it is, since man is precisely the type of animal that he embodies. If the human animal were different, the culture would be different. If man did not have spectroscopic, chromatic vision, his culture would be different. If he could live solely on meat or grains, his culture would be different. If he had an estrus season or if reproduction were not individual but through litters, his culture would be different. The emergence of culture is conditioned by the existence of the human species, and its functioning serves to satisfy the needs of this species. Therefore, when exploring the problem of the origin and functions of culture, one should take into account the biological person. When a culture has already arisen, its subsequent modifications - changes, expansion, reduction - should be explained without reference to the human animal, individual or collective. We do not need to turn to man when considering such issues as the evolution of mathematics or monetary circulation, sociocultural processes of integration and disintegration, connections between social systems and technological systems, diffusion and distribution of the keystone arch, etc. Of course, these cultural processes could not would be carried out without people. However, the reason for this or that behavior is in their culture, and not in the essence of their nature. Man is necessary for the existence and functioning of the cultural process, but he is not needed to explain its varieties.

An atom cannot be understood by simply taking into account its constituents; an atom is a system that must be understood in its own terms. The properties of sugar cannot be known through its constituent atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; its molecule functions as a molecular system. A living cell cannot be understood in terms of its constituent molecules; a biological organism cannot be understood in terms of its cells. Individual organisms do not exhibit the properties of societies. Each type of system exists in terms of its own structure and functions, its own principles and laws. Societies of the human species are cultural, that is, sociocultural systems. Like all other types of systems, they must be understood in their own terms.

Language systems are explained in terms of vocabulary, grammar, syntax, phonetics, and so on. Without people, of course, language could not exist. But the science of language develops as if humanity did not exist at all. The same applies to culture taken as a whole. The evolution of culture can be represented as a cause-and-effect chain of cultural phenomena. The influence of technology on social systems, the relationships between technologies, social systems and ideologies can be defined and clarified without referring to people as carriers of these systems. Problems such as the evolution of mathematics or tribal alliances, the processes of integration and disintegration of social systems, or the mechanisms of regulation and control of this, can be studied and solved without referring to people as living organisms. Without respiration and metabolism, we would not have created symphonic music, trial by jury, or the Ten Commandments, but accounting for these physiological processes will in no way contribute to a better understanding of these cultural phenomena.

Cultural phenomena, like biological and physical phenomena, should be subjected to scientific analysis from four points of view. Our approach can be temporary or timeless, generalizing or clarifying. Combining these two dichotomies, we get a fourfold classification of the scientific interpretation or study of cultural or some other type of natural phenomena, as follows:

The study of objects and phenomena with a clarifying time approach creates the history of culture. The temporal generalization approach yields evolutionary interpretations. Timeless generalizing interpretation explores the structures and functions of sociocultural systems. And a timeless, clarifying approach yields descriptive ethnography. This classification of types of interpretation covers all schools of ethnological theory: simple ethnographic description, historical schools of Graebner, Eliot, Smith, Boas; evolutionary schools of Tylor, Morgan and others; functional schools of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown and their followers, the structuralists of modern English social anthropology. Therefore, cultural studies uses these four approaches to the study of cultural phenomena.

The cultural approach has faced significant opposition across disciplines. Many scientists argue that it is people, not cultures, who meet and interact. Culturologists are accused of “reifying” culture in the form of some mystical formation that exists separately from society.

To regard culture—language, institutions, ideologies, and technological systems—as distinct orders of phenomena explicable in their own terms is not to reify them. They are real, observable objects and phenomena of the external world, just like atoms, cells and stars.

The origin and development of such phenomena as trial by jury, firearms, constitutional government, the theory of relativity, and so on, cannot be explained psychologically; they can only be interpreted in terms of the development of the cultural process. And in this regard, people are necessary for the existence of cultural phenomena, but not in order to explain the origin or diversity of these phenomena.

Psychological explanation. Emile Durkheim contrasted psychological and cultural interpretations of human behavior and institutions. When “the organization of the family is seen as a logically necessary expression of human feelings inherent in every consciousness, the true order of facts is distorted. On the contrary, it is the social organization of kinship relationships that determines the corresponding experiences of parents and children.” “Whenever a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, there can be no doubt that the explanation is false.” In the above quote, “social phenomenon” can rightfully be replaced by “cultural phenomenon”. Racial prejudice, war, capitalism, etc. cannot be explained as “the logically necessary expression of the concepts and feelings inherent in the human mind.” On the contrary, it is the structure and behavior of the extrasomatic cultural process that gives rise to racial, marital, capitalist ideas and feelings in the minds of individuals.

Sociologists tend to think of culture as a product of social interaction. The result of one type of interaction is polygyny, and the other - polyandry; one gives rise to capitalism, the other leads to communism. But if social interaction alone could produce culture, we would find culture in baboons. The institutions of polygyny and polyandry cannot be explained by the interaction of individuals. But the interaction of one man (husband) and more than one woman (wife) or one woman (wife) and more than one man (husband) can be explained by the influence of external, extrasomatic cultural structures on them. And these institutions—their origins and diversity—must be explained in terms of other cultural elements, such as the requirement for a sexual division of labor, the nature and type of housing, the dangers associated with the occupation and mortality rate of each sex, wealth, prestige, and so on. Further.

There is and cannot be any basis for a conflict between the science of psychology and the science of cultural studies; These sciences complement each other rather than conflict with each other. Both are important for fully understanding everything that a person does as a member of his species. Just as institutions should be explained culturally, the experience of people in these institutions should be studied from the perspective of psychology. What concepts and attitudes are guided by those people who are directly related to the taboo on communication with the mother-in-law, namely, the man, his wife and his wife's mother? Are these concepts and relationships somehow related to the supernatural or are they naturalistic in nature? Do they show respect, fear, contempt? What does it mean to be a wife in polygyny? Or a husband in polyandry? These questions arise before a psychologist than before a culturologist.

Anthropocentric approach. Opposition to anthropology arises primarily from the ancient and deeply rooted philosophy of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. Man is seen as the prime mover, the first cause, and is often endowed with free will. Sapir put it this way: “It is always the individual who really thinks, acts, dreams and rebels.” There were others who argued that the source of culture was the creative activity of the individual, or that only one individual really existed.

The anthropological concept is supported by the fact that the behavior of all species except humans is a function of corresponding biological organs. The biological principle also applies to ducks, sharks, sunflowers and all other species except humans. It does not apply to people who live among symbols and are associated with various types of extrasomatic traditions. Human institutions must be explained in cultural terms.

The anthropological point of view is also based on the fact that, as a biological organism, man is a dynamic system. He reacts positively to his earthly abode and the culture around him. But with regard to the latter, he can strive for conformity only within his own culture.

L. A. White

Concept of culture

No one involved in cultural anthropology questions the fact that the central concept of this branch of knowledge is “culture.” But everyone understands this term in their own way. For some, culture is learned behavior. For others, it is not behavior as such, but its abstraction. For some anthropologists, stone axes and ceramic vessels are culture, for others, not a single material object is such. Some believe that culture exists only in the minds of people, others consider culture to be only tangible objects and phenomena of the external world. Some anthropologists imagine culture as a body of ideas, but argue with each other about where these ideas live: some believe that it is in the minds of the people they study, others that it is in the minds of the ethnologists themselves. What follows is an understanding of “culture as a set of components of “n” different social signals, which correspond to “m” different responses,” then complete confusion and confusion reigns. I wonder what physicists would do if they had as many different ideas about energy!

There were, however, times when scientists had a more or less unambiguous understanding of the essence and use of this term. In the last decades of the CIC century and at the very beginning of the twentieth century, cultural anthropologists shared predominantly the point of view of E. B. Tylor, expressed in the opening lines of Primitive Culture: “Culture ... is composed as a whole of knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws , customs and some other abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” Tylor does not emphasize here that culture is inherent only to man, although this is implied; in his other works this idea is expressed more clearly (for example, in Tylor E. B. 1881: 54 he talks about the huge gap between the intelligence of animals and humans). Consequently, E. B. Tylor refers to culture as the entire set of objects and phenomena characteristic of man as a species. In "Primitive Culture" he lists beliefs, customs, material objects, etc. (Tylor E. B. 1913:5-6).

Tylor's concept of culture reigned in anthropology for several decades. Back in 1920, Robert Lowe opened his work “Primitive Society” with a quote from “Tylor’s famous definition.” However, in recent years the number of concepts and definitions of culture has increased significantly. The most widespread idea is that culture is an abstraction. This is how culture is ultimately defined by Kroeber and Kluckhohn in their comprehensive study Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Kroeber A. L., Kluckhohn C. 1952: 155, 169). Beals and Hoijer define culture in a similar way in the textbook “Introduction to Anthropology” (Beals R. L., Hoijer H. 1953:210, 507, 535). And in his recent work “Cultural Anthropology,” Felix M. Keesing characterizes culture as “the totality of learned behavior common in society” (Keesing F. 1958: 16, 427).

Recently, the discussion around the concept of culture has focused on the problem between the terms “culture” and “human behavior”. For many years, anthropologists quite calmly defined culture as learned behavior characteristic of the human species and transmitted from one individual, group of individuals or generation to another through the mechanism of social heredity. However, now doubts have arisen on this score, which have led to the assertion that culture is not behavior itself, but only its abstraction. Culture, Kroeber and Kluckhohn argue, “is an abstraction of concrete human behavior, but not behavior itself.” A similar point of view is expressed by Beals, Hoijer et al.

However, those researchers who define culture as an abstraction do not explain what exactly they mean by this term. It is considered obvious (1) that they themselves know exactly what they call “abstraction”, and (2) that others can understand it too. In our opinion, neither of the two assumptions is sufficiently justified; We will return later to a more detailed analysis of this concept. But no matter what meaning anthropologists put into the term “abstraction,” if culture is an abstraction, then, therefore, it is unknowable, incommensurable and generally unreal. According to Linton, “culture itself is elusive and cannot be adequately perceived even by those individuals who participate directly in it” (Linton R. 1936:288-289). Herskovits also calls culture “elusive” (Herskovits M.J. 1945:150). At Kluckhohn and Kelly's imaginary symposium, anthropologists asked: Everyone sees man, his actions and interactions with other people, but who has ever seen culture? (Klackhohn C., Kelly W.H. 1945: 79, 81). Beals and Hoijer also believe that “the anthropologist is unable to observe culture directly” (Beals R.L., Hoijer H. 1953: 210).

So, since culture, being abstract, elusive, unknowable, does it really exist? And Ralph Linton quite seriously considers this question: “...can it be said at all about it (about culture) that it exists” (Linton R. 1936: 363). Radcliffe-Brown tells us that the word “culture” “denotes not a concrete reality, but an abstraction, and most often a very vague abstraction” (Radcliffe-Brown A.R., 1940:2). Spiro comes to the conclusion that according to the dominant “position of modern anthropology... culture has no ontological reality” (Spiro M.E. 1951: 24).

When culture turns into an abstraction, it not only becomes invisible and elusive, but generally ceases to exist as such. It is difficult to imagine a concept less consistent with the actual state of affairs. Why then do so many eminent and highly respected anthropologists support the “abstract” concept?

The key to understanding this - and perhaps just an explanation of this phenomenon - is given by Kroeber and Kluckhohn: “Behavior for psychology is a material of primary importance, but culture is not, it is already a secondary thing, interesting only insofar as it influences behavior; and it is quite natural that psychologists and sociopsychologists consider behavior as their subject of research, first of all, and only then extend their interests to culture” (Kroeber A. L., Kluckhohn C. 1952: 155).

The motivation is simple and unambiguous: if culture is behavior, then (1) culture becomes the subject of study of psychological science: since behavior is studied by psychology, it is given over to the power of psychologists and sociopsychologists; (2) non-biological anthropology remains without a subject of study. Such a danger began to seem real and inevitable, the situation was approaching critical. We had to look for some way out. But which one?

Kroeber and Kluckhohn proposed a simple and tactful solution: let psychologists deal with behavior and anthropologists deal with abstractions of behavior. These abstractions, they say, are culture.

By concluding such a deal, anthropologists gave the best to psychologists: real objects and phenomena that exist in the real material world, in time and space, and can be known; and left themselves with elusive abstractions that are not “ontological reality.” However, they finally received, albeit ephemeral and unknowable, their own object of study!

It may be doubted whether it was precisely the latter consideration that led Kroeber and Kluckhohn to define culture as “not behavior itself, but its abstraction,” but they certainly did so with sufficient clarity. And whatever the reason—or reasons, for there could be several—the question of whether culture should be considered as behavior or as its abstraction has since become fundamental in all attempts to develop an adequate, constructive, fruitful and reliable concept culture.

The author of these lines, like Kroeber and Kluckhohn, does not at all intend to hand over culture to psychologists; indeed, it is difficult to find an anthropologist who would make so much effort to distinguish between psychological and cultural problems. And to an even lesser extent he is inclined to replace the material essence of culture with its ghost. No science can have as its object of study something consisting of elusive, invisible, intangible, ontologically non-existent “abstractions”; science must deal with real stars, mammals, foxes, crystals, cells, phenomena, gamma radiation and elements of culture. We consider it possible to offer an analysis of the situation that will allow us to distinguish between psychology as a science that studies behavior and cultural studies as a science that studies culture, and give each of these sciences a real, material object of study.

In science, it is customary to distinguish between the consciousness of the observer and the external environment - objects and phenomena that exist outside the consciousness of the observer. The scientist comes into contact with the outside world through his own senses, and he develops sensations. They are transformed into concepts that, due to manipulation in the thought process, form premises, assumptions, generalizations, conclusions, and so on. The truth of these premises, assumptions and conclusions is verified by experiments in the external environment (Einstein A. 1936: 350). This is how scientific knowledge is obtained.

The first step in the process of cognition is observation, or perception, of the external world through the senses. The next step, after sensations have been transformed into concepts, is the classification of observed objects and phenomena. Objects and phenomena of the external world are grouped into classes of various types: acids, metals, stones, liquids, mammals, stars, atoms, particles, and so on. And now it becomes obvious that there is a whole class of phenomena, extremely important in the study of man, for which there is no name in science - the class of symbolized objects and phenomena. It’s amazing, but this is true: this class of objects and phenomena has no name. And this happened because these objects and phenomena were always studied and designated not on their own, depending on their inherent properties, but only in certain contexts.

The thing is important in itself: “A rose is a rose.” The action is not inherently an ethical, economic or erotic action. Action is action. It becomes ethical, economic or erotic only when considered in an ethical, economic or erotic context. Take, for example, a Chinese porcelain vase: is it an object of scientific study, a work of art, a commodity, or material evidence in legal proceedings? The answer is obvious. To call an object a “Chinese porcelain vase” already means to introduce it into a specific context; First of all, one should say: “A glazed baked clay mold is a glazed baked clay mold.” And as a Chinese porcelain vase, this object can become a work of art, an object of scientific research or a commodity depending on whether it is viewed in an aesthetic, scientific or commercial context.

Let us now return to the class of symbolized objects and phenomena: the word, a stone ax, a fetish, the attitude towards one’s mother-in-law or milk, saying a prayer, sprinkling with holy water, a ceramic vessel, participating in voting, observing the Holy Sabbath, “as well as some other abilities, habits (and objects) inherent in man as a member of society” (Tylor E. B. 1913: 1). They are what they are: objects and actions associated with human symbolic ability.

These objects and phenomena associated with the human ability to symbolize can be considered in a variety of contexts: astronomical, physical, chemical, anatomical, physiological, psychological and cultural; and they, in turn, will become respectively astronomical, physical, chemical, anatomical, physiological, psychological and cultural phenomena. After all, all objects and phenomena that depend on human symbolic ability also depend on solar energy, which supports life on our planet - this is an astronomical context. These objects and phenomena can be considered and explained in the terminology of anatomical, nervous and mental processes occurring in humans. They can also be considered and explained in relation to the human body, that is, in a somatic context. In addition, they can be considered in an extrasomatic context, that is, in connection with other similar objects and phenomena, and not with the human body. In the case when symbolized objects and phenomena are considered in connection with the human body, that is, in a somatic context, they can rightfully be called human behavior, and the science that studies them can be called psychology. When symbolized objects and phenomena are considered and explained in connection with each other, and not with the human body, we call them culture, and the science that studies them is culturology...

Thus, it is obvious that there are two different scientific approaches to the study of this kind of objects and phenomena that depend on a person’s ability to symbolize... Human psychology and cultural studies have the same phenomena as the object of study: objects and phenomena that depend on a person’s ability to symbolize (symbols). And these two sciences differ from each other in the different contexts in which these phenomena are studied.

A similar analysis, but only in relation to another specific class of objects and phenomena, words, was carried out by linguists several decades ago.

A word is an object (a sound, a combination of sounds or symbols) or an action, depending on a person's ability to symbolize. Words are what they are: words. But for scientists they are of interest in two contexts: somatic or organic, and extrasomatic or extraorganic. This distinction is usually expressed in terms of la langue and la parole, or speech and language.

In a somatic context, words represent a type of human behavior: verbal behavior. The scientific study of words in a somatic context is the psychology (with elements of physiology and, possibly, anatomy) of speech. This science examines the connection between words and the human body: how a word is reproduced, what its meaning is, the attitude towards the word, perception and reaction to the word, and so on.

In an extrasomatic context, words are considered in relation to each other, regardless of the human body. This is what linguistics does, the science of language. Phonetics, phonemics, syntax, lexicology, grammar, dialectology, history of language and so on are various aspects, emphases of the science of linguistics.

...Thus, culture is a class of objects and phenomena that depend on a person’s ability to symbolize, which is considered in an extrasomatic context. This definition rescues cultural anthropology from intangible, elusive and ontologically non-existent abstractions and provides it with a real, material, knowable subject of study. For it draws a clear line between behavior and culture; between the science of the psyche and the science of culture.

Location of culture

If we define culture as a set of objects and phenomena that actually exist in the surrounding world, then the question is inevitable: where are they located, that is, what is the location of culture? The answer is: objects and phenomena that make up culture are located in time and space 1) in the human body (ideas, beliefs, emotions, relationships); 2) in the processes of social interaction between people; 3) in material objects (axes, factories, clay vessels) located outside the human body, but within the framework of models of social interaction between people...

People may object to me that earlier you argued that culture consists of extrasomatic phenomena, but now you admit that it is partly located inside the human body. Isn't this a contradiction? No, this is not a contradiction, but a misunderstanding. We weren’t talking at all about the fact that culture consists of objects and phenomena considered in an extrasomatic context. These are completely different things.

Each element of culture has two aspects: subjective and objective. At first glance, it may seem that axes are “objective” and ideas and attitudes are “subjective.” But this will be only a superficial, artificial view. The ax includes a subjective component: the object is meaningless without a specific idea and relationship. On the other hand, an idea or attitude would also be meaningless without external expression in behavior or speech (which is a form of behavior). So every element, every feature of culture has a subjective and an objective aspect. But ideas, relationships or emotions - phenomena located in the human body - can be interpreted in an extrasomatic context, that is, in connection with other symbolic objects and phenomena, and not with the human body. We can consider the external aspect of the taboo on relations with the mother-in-law, that is, the relationship of the ideas and relationships involved in this prohibition not with the human body, but with other symbols, such as forms of family and marriage, the place where spouses live together, and so on. But we can also consider the ax in relation to the human body: that is, a person’s idea of an ax, his relationship to this object, and not to other symbolic objects and phenomena, such as arrows, hoes, laws regulating the division of labor in a team, and so on Further.

Now we will consider a number of cultural concepts that are most widely used in ethnological literature, and comment on them taking into account the position presented in this article.

Some anthropologists prefer to define culture only in terms of ideas and concepts. They are guided, in all likelihood, by the consideration that ideas are primary, they are the root cause, that they form behavior, which, in turn, creates material objects, such as, for example, ceramic vessels. “Culture consists of ideas,” writes Tylor, “it is a mental phenomenon, not material objects or external behavior... For example, in the Indian mind there is an idea of \u200b\u200bdance. This is a cultural trait. This idea causes his body to behave accordingly, that is, to dance” (Taylor W.W. 1948: 98–110, passim).

This idea of sociocultural reality is naive. It is based on primitive, pre-scientific and already overcome metaphysics and psychology. This is reminiscent of the concept of the Thought Woman among the Pueblo (Keresan) Indians, who supposedly causes various events to occur by first thinking about them. The thought of the god Ptah was believed to have created the entire culture of Ancient Egypt. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. But we can no longer explain the origin and development of culture simply by saying that it arose from human thought. Of course, thought was involved in the invention of firearms, but if we state that firearms are a product of human thought, this will clearly not be enough. Why did such an idea suddenly arise, when, where and under what conditions did it come to life? And, besides, ideas - those ideas that can lead to real results - are born from a collision with real life. Working with soil gave ancient man the idea of pottery; the calendar is a by-product of intensive farming. Culture is only partly contained in ideas; but relationships, external actions and material objects are also culture.

Among the many classes of objects and phenomena considered by modern science, there is one for which there is no name. This is a class of phenomena associated with the uniquely human ability to attach symbolic meaning to thoughts, actions and objects and to perceive symbols. We proposed to call objects and phenomena associated with symbolization symbols. It is absolutely necessary to give a name to this class of phenomena so that it becomes possible to distinguish it from other classes of objects and phenomena.

This class includes ideas, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, actions, behavior patterns, customs, laws, institutions, works and forms of art, language, tools, tools, mechanisms, utensils, ornaments, fetishes, spells, and so on.

It so happened that these objects and phenomena associated with the human ability to symbolize were considered by scientists in two different contexts, which can be designated as somatic and extrasomatic. In the first case, the relationship between these objects and phenomena and the human body is important for the researcher. Considered in a somatic context, objects and phenomena associated with a person’s symbolic ability are called human behavior; more precisely, behavior is ideas, attitudes, actions; axes and ceramics cannot directly be called behavior, but they are created by human labor, that is, they are materialized human behavior. In an extrasomatic context, the relationship of these objects and phenomena with each other is more important than their relationship with the human body. And in this case the name will be “culture”.

The advantage of our approach is the following. The distinction can be made clearly and to the point. Culture is clearly distinguished from human behavior. It is defined in the same way as the objects of study of other sciences, that is, in terms of real objects and phenomena existing in the objective world. Our approach takes anthropology out of the environment of intangible, unknowable, ephemeral “abstractions” that have no ontological reality.

The proposed definition also takes us away from the problems that we inevitably face when taking a different point of view. We no longer think about whether culture consists of ideas and whether these ideas are located in the minds of the people being observed or in the minds of the anthropologists; can material objects be culture; can a trait shared by one, two or more individuals be a culture; whether only characteristic features should be considered culture; whether culture is reification and whether culture can paint its nails.

Between behavior and culture, psychology and cultural studies, we make exactly the same distinction that exists between speech and language, speech psychology and linguistics. If it turns out to be productive in one case, it can be productive in another.

Finally, our approach and our definition are in accordance with a long-standing anthropological tradition. A glance at the text of Primitive Culture shows that Tylor had the same approach. And practically all non-biological anthropologists used it. What did they study during field research and what did they describe in their monographs? Really existing objects and phenomena that are symbolized. It is unlikely that anyone will undertake to claim that they have studied intangible, unknowable, elusive ontologically non-existent abstractions. Of course, a field researcher can also be interested in objects and phenomena in a somatic context; in this case he will study psychology (just as if he were interested in words in a somatic context). Anthropology includes a whole range of studies: anatomical, physiological, genetic, psychoanalytic and cultural. But this does not mean that psychology is not fundamentally different from cultural studies. It is different, and quite significantly.

The main points of our article are not new. This is not at all a break with the anthropological tradition. On the contrary, in essence it is a return to tradition, to the tradition founded by Tylor and continued by many, many anthropologists. We just gave it a precise verbal definition.

Yu. M. Lotman

Semiosphere

Culture and information

Culture and language

So, culture is a sign system, organized in a certain way. It is the moment of organization, manifested as a certain sum of rules and restrictions imposed on the system, that acts as a defining feature of culture. Lévi-Strauss, defining the concept of culture, emphasizes that where the Rules are, Culture begins. It is opposed, according to Lévi-Strauss, by Nature. “What is a universal human constant is inevitably not included in the area of customs, production, institutions, with the help of which people are divided into different and opposed groups ‹…› Let us conclude that everything universal in human nature belongs to nature and is characterized by spontaneous automatism, while while everything that is determined by coercive norms belongs to culture, representing the relative and particular.”

It follows that “natural behavior” is given to man as the only possible way to organize each situation. It is automatically determined by the context and cannot have an alternative. Therefore, the norms of natural behavior completely cover the entire sphere of the corresponding “texts of behavior.” “Natural behavior” cannot have “wrong” natural behavior opposed to it. Otherwise, “cultural behavior” is built. It necessarily implies at least two possibilities, of which only one stands out as “correct”. Therefore, "cultural behavior" never covers everyone human actions in an area that goes beyond natural behavior. Culture exists in opposition not only to Nature (in the meaning defined above), but also to non-culture - a sphere that functionally belongs to Culture, but does not follow its rules.

The definition of culture as a sign system subject to the structural rules allows us to look at it as a language in the general semiotic meaning of this term.

Since the possibility of concentrating and storing the means of supporting life - the accumulation of information - takes on a completely different character from the moment of the emergence of signs and sign systems - languages - and since it is after this that a specifically human form of information accumulation arises, the culture of mankind is built as a sign and linguistic one. It inevitably takes on the character of a secondary system, built on top of one or another natural language adopted in a given community, and in its internal organization reproduces the structural diagram of the language. Moreover, being a communication system and serving communicative functions, culture, in principle, must obey the same constructive laws as other semiotic systems. From this follows the legitimacy of extending to the analysis of culture those categories whose fruitfulness has already been shown in general semiotics (for example, the categories of code and message, text and structure, language and speech, highlighting the paradigmatic and syntagmatic principles of description, etc.).

However, as we will see later, to consider both this or that specific culture of the human collective and the Culture of the Earth in in general as a single language, that is, a system of signs organized according to a single hierarchical structure and a unified hierarchy of rules for their combination, is possible only at a certain meta-level, sometimes extremely abstract. Upon closer examination, it is not difficult to see that the culture of each group is a collection of languages, and that each of its members acts as a kind of “polyglot”. Having divided each culture into its constituent “languages”, we get a solid basis for typological comparisons: the linguistic composition of the culture (the presence or absence of certain sublanguages, the tendency towards a minimum or maximum of semiotic systems), the relationship between its constituent structures (creolization, incompatibility, parallel, separate existence, folding into a single supersystem) provide material for judgments about the typological relationship of cultures. So, culture is a historically established bundle of semiotic systems (languages), which can form a single hierarchy (superlanguage), but can also represent a symbiosis of independent systems. But culture includes not only a certain combination of semiotic systems, but also the entire set of historical messages in these languages (texts). Considering culture as a set of texts could be the simplest way to build cultural models if, for certain reasons that will be discussed later, this approach did not turn out to be too narrow.

The two noted features of culture: its attraction to multilingualism and the fact that it does not cover all available texts, functioning against the background of non-culture and in complex relationships with it, determine the very mechanism of the work of culture as an information reservoir of human groups and humanity as a whole. Translating the same texts into other semiotic systems, identifying different texts, moving the boundaries between cultural texts and those located outside of it constitute the mechanism of cultural assimilation of reality. Translating a certain area of reality into one or another cultural language, turning it into text, that is, into information recorded in a certain way, and entering this information into collective memory - this is the sphere of everyday cultural activity. Only what is translated into one or another system of signs can become the property of memory; in this sense, the intellectual history of mankind can be seen as a struggle for memory. It is no coincidence that any destruction of culture proceeds as the destruction of memory, erasure of texts, oblivion of connections. The emergence of history (and before it, myth) as a certain type of consciousness is a form of collective memory.

In this sense, the ancient Russian chronicles are very interesting, representing an extremely interesting type of organization of the historical experience of a collective. If for modern consciousness history, as the sum of real events, is reflected in the totality of numerous texts, each of which represents reality only in a certain aspect, then the chronicle is a Text, written adequate to life in its integrity. Like life itself, it had a marked beginning (all events were marked precisely by their initial boundary; the universe - by the act of creation, Christianity - by the birth of the Savior, national history, the founding of a city, the emergence of princes, the emergence of strife - beginnings, origins; in fact, “The Tale of Bygone Years " - a list of initiators and initiatives, initiators and ancestors, as evidenced by the opening line: “Behold the time of time, from where the Russian land came and began to eat") and did not imply an end in the meaning in which this concept is inherent in modern texts. The chronicle was isomorphic to reality: the weather record made it possible to construct an endless text, constantly increasing along the time axis. The concept of the end in this case acquired an eschatological connotation, coinciding with ideas about the end of time (that is, the earthly world). The highlighting of the marked end in the text (the transformation of the chronicle into history or a novel) coincided with cause-and-effect modeling. In this case, the transformation of life into text was associated with an explanation of its hidden meaning. In the chronicle construction, a different scheme is implemented:

life → text → memory

Turning life into text is not an explanation, but the entry of events into collective (in this case, national) memory. The presence of a single national memory was a sign of the existence of a national collective in the form of a single organism. Common memory was a fact of conscious unity of existence. In this sense, it is the chronicles and functionally close to them memorial signs(graves and inscriptions on monuments, the monuments themselves, inscriptions on the walls of buildings, toponymy), rather than historical texts in a pragmatic presentation, presenting not an explanation of events, but memory about them, could perform a function for the team sign of existence.

Mastering the world by turning it into text, “culturalizing” it, in principle allows for two opposing approaches.

1. The world is text. It represents a meaningful message (the creator of the text can be God, the natural laws of nature, an absolute idea, and the like). The cultural development of the world by man - the study of his language, the decipherment of this text , translation it into a language understandable to humans. In this regard, one could point to a stable image of nature as books, and understanding its mysteries is how reading in texts of the Middle Ages (compare: “The Pigeon Book”) and Baroque. We encounter similar ideas (not without the influence of Schellingism) in the era of romanticism:

With nature alone he breathed life:

The stream meant babbling,

And I understood the conversation of tree leaves,

And I felt the vegetation of the grass;

The starry book was clear to him,

And the sea wave spoke to him.

("To Goethe's Death")

With this we can compare the early medieval idea that the adoption of Christianity (introduction to the truth) is associated with the translation of sacred books into the national language (comprehension of the rules of the world - translating them into the language of people). Indicative in this regard is the existence, for example, of a special holiday in the Armenian Church holy translators, celebrated as the day of national culture.

2. The world is not a text. It doesn't make sense.

Nature is a sphinx. And the more faithful she is

His temptation destroys a person,

What may happen, no longer

There is no riddle and she never had one.

Cultivation is about giving the world a cultural structure. This is the Kantian view of the relationship between thought and reality. In other respects, the concepts of cultural development of the “barbarian” world by introducing into it the structure of civilization are similar (development of the ecumene - cultural - by the Greeks, military-state - by Rome, religious - by Christianity). In this case, we are not dealing with the translation of a text, but with the transformation of non-text into text. The transformation of a forest into arable land, the draining of swamps or the irrigation of deserts - that is, any transformation of a non-cultural landscape into a cultural one - can also be considered as the conversion of a non-text into a text. In this sense, there is a fundamental difference, for example, between a forest and a city. The latter carries information about various aspects of human life enshrined in social signs, that is, it is a text - to the same extent as any production structure. It should be recalled that monuments of material culture, tools of production in the society that creates and uses them play a dual role: on the one hand, they serve practical purposes, on the other hand, concentrating the experience of previous work activity, they act as a means of storing and transmitting information. For a contemporary who has the opportunity to receive this information through numerous more direct channels, the first function is the main one. But for a descendant, for example, an archaeologist or historian, it is completely replaced by the second. Moreover, since culture is a structure, the researcher can extract from the tools of labor not only information about the production process, but also information about the structure of the family and other forms of organization of the team.

The problem of the sign and the sign system
and typology of Russian culture of the 11th–19th centuries

Above, a definition of culture was given as the entire totality of non-hereditary information, as the common memory of humanity or any narrower groups: national, class and others - from this it follows that we have the right to consider the sum of the texts that make up culture at two levels: as certain messages and as the implementation of codes with the help of which this message is deciphered in the text.

Considering culture from this point of view convinces us of the possibility of describing types of culture as special languages and, therefore, makes it possible to apply to them the methods used in the study of semiotic systems. It should be noted, however, that real texts of various cultures, as a rule, require for their decipherment not just one code, but a complex system of codes, sometimes hierarchically organized, and sometimes resulting from the mechanical connection of various, simpler systems.

However, in this complex unity, one of the coding systems inevitably emerges as dominant. This is due to the fact that communication systems are simultaneously modeling and that culture, while building a model of the world, simultaneously builds a model of itself, condensing and emphasizing some of its elements and eliminating others as unimportant. Thus, a researcher, examining a particular text, can discover in it a complex hierarchy of coding structures, and a contemporary, in this system, is inclined to reduce everything to this single structure. It is therefore possible that different socio-historical groups create or reinterpret texts, choosing from a complex set of structural possibilities that which corresponds to their models of the world.

However, cultures are communication systems, and human cultures are created on the basis of that comprehensive semiotic system that is natural language. Therefore, the classification of cultural codes can be a priori based on their relationship to the sign. In this case, the set of possibilities from which this or that cultural model of the world is built will be exhausted by the invariant elements of the semiotic system (a system, the number of elements of which is not limited, cannot serve as a means of information, and this contradicts the definition of culture).

Since the social forces dominant at different stages of history created their models of the world in an environment of acute conflicts, each new stage in the history of culture drew contrasting principles from the set of possibilities prescribed by the conditions of communication in human society. But since the very set of these principles is finite, the history of the sequence of dominant cultural codes will simultaneously be the history of ever deeper penetration into the structural principles of sign systems.

Already in our everyday ideas there is a connection between the concepts of meaning and value. When we say, “This is a significant event,” or, “Never mind, it doesn’t mean anything,” we are saying that “to matter” in our minds is synonymous with “to be valuable” or even “to exist.” Thus, this or that event can be assessed differently depending on whether it is simply a fact of material life (non-sign) or has some additional social (sign) meaning. There is a very serious circumstance behind this everyday fact. As is known, any construction of a social model implies the division of the reality surrounding a person into the world of facts and the world of signs, with the subsequent establishment of certain relationships between them (semiotic, value-based, existential, and so on). However, a phenomenon can become a carrier of meaning (a sign) only if it is included in the system. To do this, it must enter into a relationship with some stranger or other sign. The first relationship - substitution - gives rise to semiotic meaning, the second - connection - syntactic. Since in the world of social models, cultural models, to be a sign means to exist, the first case can be defined: “Exists because it replaces something more important than itself.” Second: “It exists because it is part of something more important than it.”

If we assume that this or that cultural system can be built on the basis of the presence or absence of each of these principles of existential-value classification, we obtain the following matrix:

	II. Syntactic meaning
I. Semantic meaning	1. I (+) II (–)	2. I (–) II (+)
3. I (–) II (–)	4. I (+) II (+)

1. – The culture code is only a semantic organization.

2. – The cultural code is only a syntactic organization.

3. – The culture code represents an attitude towards the negation of both types of organization, that is, the negation of iconicity.

4. – The culture code is a synthesis of both types of organization.

The ideal cultural scheme is always organized by analogy with certain types of communication known in a given group. The types of cultural code described above are based on the antinomy of word and text. The first and third cases are organized as “non-text” (although the third is also a “non-word”). The second and fourth are text-oriented, with the second being musical and the fourth being verbal.

Of course, real cultures that arose in the course of historical development exist as complex interweavings of various simple types and can be organized differently at different hierarchical levels. However, the logic of the internal development of a particular cultural cycle in its dominant structures is constructed as the exhaustion of some general possibilities of semiosis, the progressive enrichment of the communication system. In this sense, it is curious that the dominant types of organization of Russian culture of the classical period (from Kievan Rus to the mid-nineteenth century) are constructed as sequential change of the four types of cultural code described above.

In characterizing each of them, we will, however, remember the great degree of simplification to which we have to resort for heuristic reasons.

I. Semantic (“symbolic”) type

This type of culture, built on the semantization (or even symbolization) of both the entire reality surrounding a person and its parts, can also be called “medieval”, since in its purest form it is represented in Russian culture in the early Middle Ages.

It is no coincidence for this type of reality modeling that the idea that in the beginning there was a word. The world was represented as a word, and the act of creation as the creation of a sign. Therefore, in an ideal case, the cultural code under consideration does not raise the question of the syntactics of signs: different signs are just different guises same value, synonyms (or antonyms) of it. Changes in meaning are only degrees of deepening into one meaning, not new meanings, but degrees of meaning in its approach to the absolute.

Medieval cultural consciousness divided the world into two groups, sharply opposed to each other on the basis of significance/insignificance.

One group included phenomena that were significant, and the other group included those belonging to practical life. The latter seemed to not exist. This division did not yet mean evaluation: the sign could be good and evil, heroism and crime, but it had an obligatory attribute - social existence. Non-sign in this sense is simply not a being