Culturology

Culturology is the branch of Social Sciences concerned with the scientific understanding, description, analysis and prediction of cultural activities, cultural systems and culture broadly-construed.

History of the term in Russia

The notion of culturology (Russian: Культурология) in Russia may be traced to late 19th century and early 20th century and associated with the names of Mikhail Bakhtin, Aleksei Losev, Sergey Averintsev, Georgy Gachev, Yuri Lotman, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov and others^[1]. During the Stalinist era this kind or research was superseded by Marxist social studies. Culturology as an interdisciplinary field reemerged in late 1960s.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, culturology has been introduced into the VAK list of categories of specialties for which scientific degrees may be awarded^[2] and is a compulsory object of study during the first year in the institutions of higher education and in secondary schools. Defined as an integral study of human cultures as integral systems and their influence on human behavior, it may be formally compared to the Western discipline of cultural studies, although it has a number of important distinctions.

Contemporary use of the term

In contemporary Social Sciences, the word “culturology” is borrowed from American anthropologist Leslie White who defined it as the field of science which studies culture as cultural systems^[3] · ^[4] and presented in a series of essays "The Science of Culture". Following White, philosopher of science Mario Bunge defined culturology as the sociological, economic, political and historical study of concrete cultural systems. When synchronic, culturology is said to coincide with the anthropology, sociology, economics and politology of cultures. By contrast, diachronic culturology is a component of history. According to Bunge, scientific culturology also differs from traditional cultural studies in that the latter are too often the work of idealist literary critics or pseudo-philosophers ignorant of the scientific method and incompetent to the study of social facts and concrete social systems^[5].

Bunge’s systemic and materialist approach to the study of culture has given birth to a variety of new fields of research in the social sciences. Fabrice Rivault, for instance, is the first scholar to formalize and propose International Political Culturology as a subfield of International Relations in order to understand the global cultural system, as well as its numerous subsystems, and explain how cultural variables interact with politics and economics to impact on world affairs^[6]. This scientific approach differs radically from culturalism, constructivism and cultural postmodernism in that it is based on logics, empiricism, systemism and emergent materialism^[7].

While International Political Culturology is presently being studied by scholars around the world ^[8] · ^[9], "Teleculturology" has also emerged in international telecommunication standards organizations influenced by the work of Marshall McLuhan to describe studies of participation in cultural and medical practices at a distance. Teleculturology represents one dimension, among other, of Telehealth.

See also

• Cultural studies
• Cultural anthropology

References

1. ^ Mikhail Epstein, Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication. New York: St. Martin's Press (Scholarly and Reference Division), 1999, Chapter 1: From Culturology to Transculture
2. ^ Culturology specialties (Russian)
3. ^ White, Leslie "The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome". McGraw-Hill, New York (1959)
4. ^ White, Leslie, (1975) “The Concept of Cultural Systems: A Key to Understanding Tribes and Nations, Columbia University, New York
5. ^ Bunge, Mario, (1998) Social Science Under Debate, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
6. ^ Rivault, Fabrice, (1999) Culturologie Politique Internationale : Une approche systémique et matérialiste de la culture et du système social global, McGill Dissertation, Montréal, Culturology Press
7. ^ Bunge, Mario, (2009) Political Philosophy - Fact, Fiction and Vision, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick
8. ^ Xintian, Yu (2005) “Cultural Factors In International Relations”, Chinese Philosophical Studies.
9. ^ Xintian, Yu (2009),"Combining Research on Cultural Theory and International Relations"

External links

English

• The International Journal of Culturology

Russian

• The Russian Institute for Cultural Research