Culturology: A New Syntesis (Science of Culture in Central Europe)

Bd.1,Nr.1(2010)

Abstract
The concept of Culturology was introduced into social sciences in the 1st half of the 20th century by an American cultural anthropologist Leslie A. White. According to White, the subject of Culturology is the study of culture as a relatively independent extrasomatic layer of reality – a phenomenon “sui generis”, which advances with its own laws independently on man. Contemporary Culturology is not a simple revival of L. A. White’s ideas but it first of all represents a reaction on a constantly growing differentiation, specialization and disintegration of human, social and cultural sciences. Modern Culturology is based on a global anthropological understanding of culture as a system of meta-biological means and mechanisms, through which a man adapted to the outer environment. Culturology is trying to overcome the disunity of approach to the culture and to reveal interrelations existing among qualitatively different fields of culture. It proceeds from the assumption that culture can be studied on three basic levels: In attributive sense on the level of genus Homo as a universally human phenomenon, which distinguishes man from other living creatures. From this standpoint culture represents a specific mechanism of adaptation – a universal human technology. In a distributive sense on the level of concrete sociocultural systems – local cultures, subcultures and countercultures. From this point of view culture represents a system of artifacts, sociocultural regulations and ideas shared and bequeathed by the members of a specific society.

Schlagworte:
culturology; bioculturology; culture; generic culture; sociocultural systems; individual culture
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