Features of the production and consumption of cultural values allowed culturologists to identify two social forms of existence of culture : mass culture and elite culture.
Mass culture is a type of cultural production that is produced daily in large volumes. It is assumed that mass culture is consumed by all people, regardless of place and country of residence. Mass culture - it is the culture of everyday life, presented to the widest possible audience through various channels, including the media and communications.
Mass culture (from lat.massa- lump, piece) - a cultural phenomenon of the 20th century, generated by the scientific and technological revolution, urbanization, the destruction of local communities, the blurring of territorial and social boundaries. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the mass media (radio, print, television, record and tape recorder) penetrated into most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. In its proper sense, mass culture manifested itself for the first time in the United States at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The well-known American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski liked to repeat the phrase, which became commonplace over time: “If Rome gave the world the right, England parliamentary activity, France culture and republican nationalism, then the modern USA gave the world the scientific and technological revolution and mass culture.”
The origins of the widespread dissemination of mass culture in the modern world lie in the commercialization of all social relations, while the mass production of culture is understood by analogy with the conveyor industry. Many creative organizations (cinema, design, TV) are closely associated with banking and industrial capital and are focused on the production of commercial, box office, and entertainment works. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is a mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and movie screens.
A striking example of mass culture is pop music, which is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population. It satisfies the momentary needs of people, reacts to any new event and reflects it. Therefore, samples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose their relevance, become obsolete and go out of fashion. As a rule, mass culture has less artistic value than elite culture.
The purpose of mass culture is to stimulate the consumer consciousness of the viewer, listener, reader. Mass culture forms a special type of passive, non-critical perception of this culture in humans. It creates a personality that is quite easy to manipulate.
Consequently, mass culture is designed for mass consumption and for the average person, it is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education. In social terms, it forms a new social stratum, called the "middle class".
Mass culture in artistic creativity performs specific social functions. Among them, the main one is illusory-compensatory: introducing a person to the world of illusory experience and unrealizable dreams. To do this, mass culture uses such entertainment types and genres of art as circus, radio, television; stage, hit, kitsch, slang, science fiction, action movie, detective, comics, thriller, western, melodrama, musical.
It is within the framework of these genres that simplified “versions of life” are created that reduce social evil to psychological and moral factors. And all this is combined with open or covert propaganda of the dominant way of life. Mass culture is more focused not on realistic images, but on artificially created images (image) and stereotypes. Today, the newfangled "stars of the artificial Olympus" have no less fanatical admirers than the old gods and goddesses. Modern mass culture can be international and national.
Peculiaritiesmass culture: general accessibility (comprehensibility to everyone and everyone) of cultural values; ease of perception; stereotypes created by social stereotypes, replicability, entertainment and fun, sentimentality, simplification and primitiveness, propaganda of the cult of success, a strong personality, the cult of the thirst for possession of things, the cult of mediocrity, the conventionality of primitive symbolism.
Mass culture does not express the refined tastes of the aristocracy or the spiritual searches of the people, the mechanism of its distribution is directly related to the market, and it is predominantly a priority of megacity forms of existence. The basis of the success of mass culture is people's unconscious interest in violence and eroticism.
At the same time, if we consider mass culture as a spontaneously developing culture of everyday life, which is created by ordinary people, then its positive aspects are the focus on the average norm, simple pragmatics, appeal to a huge reader, viewer and listener audience.
As the antipode of mass culture, many culturologists consider elite culture.
Elite (high) culture - the culture of the elite, intended for the upper strata of society, possessing the greatest ability for spiritual activity, a special artistic susceptibility and gifted with high moral and aesthetic inclinations.
The producer and consumer of elite culture is the highest privileged stratum of society - the elite (from the French elite - the best, selective, chosen). The elite is not only a tribal aristocracy, but that educated part of society that has a special "organ of perception" - the ability for aesthetic contemplation and artistic and creative activity.
According to various estimates, consumers of elite culture in Europe for several centuries have remained approximately the same proportion of the population - about one percent. Elite culture is, first of all, the culture of the educated and wealthy part of the population. Under the elite culture usually means a special sophistication, complexity and high quality of cultural products.
The main function of elite culture is the production of social order in the form of law, power, structures of the social organization of society, as well as the ideology that justifies this order in the forms of religion, social philosophy and political thought. An elite culture involves a professional approach to creation, and the people who create it receive a special education. The circle of consumers of elite culture is its professional creators: scientists, philosophers, writers, artists, composers, as well as representatives of highly educated strata of society, namely: frequenters of museums and exhibitions, theater-goers, artists, literary critics, writers, musicians and many others.
Elite culture is distinguished by a very high level of specialization and the highest level of social claims of the individual: love for power, wealth, fame is considered the normal psychology of any elite.
In high culture, those artistic techniques are tested that will be perceived and correctly understood by wide layers of non-professionals many years later (up to 50 years, and sometimes more). For a certain period of time, high culture not only cannot, but must remain alien to the people, it must be endured, and the viewer must mature creatively during this time. For example, the painting of Picasso, Dali or the music of Schoenberg is difficult for an unprepared person to understand even today.
Therefore, elite culture is experimental or avant-garde in nature and, as a rule, it is ahead of the level of perception of it by an averagely educated person.
With the growth of the level of education of the population, the circle of consumers of elite culture is expanding. It is this part of society that contributes to social progress, therefore “pure” art should be focused on meeting the demands and needs of the elite, and it is to it that artists, poets, and composers should turn their works. Formula of elite culture: "Art for the sake of art".
The same types of art can belong to both high and mass culture: classical music is high, and popular music is mass, Fellini films are high, and action films are mass. The organ mass of S. Bach belongs to high culture, but if it is used as a musical ringtone on a mobile phone, it is automatically included in the category of mass culture, without losing its belonging to high culture. Numerous orchestrations
Bach's performances in the style of light music, jazz or rock do not compromise high culture at all. The same applies to the Mona Lisa on a toilet soap package or a computer reproduction of it.
Features of the elite culture: focuses on "people of a genius" capable of aesthetic contemplation and artistic and creative activity, there are no social stereotypes, a deep philosophical essence and non-standard content, specialization, sophistication, experimentalism, avant-gardism, the complexity of cultural values for understanding an unprepared person, sophistication, high quality, intellectuality .
Conclusion.
1. From the point of view of scientific analysis, there is no more complete or less complete culture; these two varieties of culture are culture in the full sense of the word.
2. Elitism and mass character are only quantitative characteristics related to the number of people who are consumers of artifacts.
3. Mass culture meets the needs of people in general, and therefore reflects the real level of humanity. Representatives of the elite culture, creating something new, thereby maintain a fairly high level of general culture.
Elite (from French elite - the best, chosen) culture is designed for a narrow circle of people who are versed in art; includes classics, as well as the latest trends known only to a few. In a certain sense, this is the culture of the so-called elite - highly educated people, endowed with spiritual aristocracy, value self-sufficiency. Critics of elite culture say that in it art exists only for art, although it should be oriented towards a person; it closes in its small little world and in fact does not benefit humanity. At the beginning of the 20th century, in the circles of the metropolitan Russian intelligentsia, decadence became very popular, a trend that proclaimed a complete break with the surrounding reality, the opposition of art to real life. At the same time, within the framework of the elite culture, there is a constant search for a new one, a creative understanding of ideals, values and meanings, aesthetic freedom and commercial independence of creativity are assumed, the complexity and diversity of forms of artistic exploration of the world are reflected.
Folk, or national, culture presupposes the absence of personalized authorship, is created by all the people. It includes myths, legends, dances, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs, proverbs, sayings, symbols, rituals, rituals and canons. Elements of folk culture can be individual (retelling of a legend), collective (performing a song) and mass (carnival processions). These works reflect the unique experience and specific character of a particular people (ethnos), everyday ideas, stereotypes of social behavior, cultural standards, moral norms, religious and aesthetic canons. Folk culture exists mainly in oral form, is characterized by homogeneity and traditionalism, based on people's ideas about themselves and the world around them. It can exist in two main forms - popular (reflects modern life, mores, customs, songs, dances) and folklore (reference to the past and its key moments).
Mass culture focuses primarily on commercial success and mass demand. It satisfies the unpretentious tastes of the masses, and its products are hits, whose life is often very short. They are quickly forgotten, displaced by the new flow of pop culture, and the momentary needs and demands of people become the guiding force of development. Naturally, such works are focused on average standards and a typical consumer. Mass culture has little to do with religious or class differences. Mass media and popular culture are inseparable from each other. A culture becomes "mass" when its products are standardized and distributed to the general public. A distinctive feature of the works of mass culture is their focus on commercial profit, satisfaction of mass demand. Today, we are confronted with mass culture almost every day. These are numerous series that are on television, and talk shows, satirical performances, variety concerts. All that is literally brought down on us by the media.
31. Cultural universals.
Cultural universals are such norms, values, rules, traditions and properties that are inherent in all cultures, regardless of geographical location, historical time and social structure of society.
In 1959, the American sociologist and ethnographer George Murdoch identified more than 70 universals - elements common to all cultures: age gradation, sports, body jewelry, calendar, cleanliness, community organization, cooking, labor cooperation, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative arts , divination, interpretation of dreams, division of labor, education, etc.
Cultural universals arise because all people in whatever part of the world they live are physically the same, they have the same biological needs and face common problems that the environment poses to humanity. People are born and die, so all nations have customs associated with birth and death. Since they live together, they have a division of labor, dances, games, greetings, etc.
Universals can arise from several bases. For example, science arises from the desire to achieve knowledge and the desire of a person to make life easier for himself. Politics arose from the desire of some people to stand out from others and from the desire of people to entrust the solution of some of their problems to other people. The desire for benefit (benefit) is one of the main human properties and universals. In this regard, one can notice the fragmentation - more precisely, the concretization - of universals.
The process begins with the most general universal, which says that a person exists. It is with the abstract awareness of being that the figurative thinking of a person begins. There is a universal - a name. There are stable images associated with birth and death.
From these universals, as well as from properties that are not included in them, universals of the second order, the most mobile ones, appear. They are the result of an increasing shift towards abstraction. At the same time, they are based on already existing universals and on the inherent properties of human nature. They are the most subject to change, since they incorporate many different parameters in various combinations. Such universals include, for example, the existence of the state. Politics emerges around the state.
And, finally, the universal of the third order is culture.
T. Parsons proposes the concept of evolutionary universals. These are ten properties or processes that consistently arise in the course of development and complication of any social systems, regardless of their cultural specificity and variety of external conditions. Four of these evolutionary universals are present in all known social systems: (1) the communication system; (2) kinship system; (3) some form of religion; (4) technology. Next is the emergence of social stratification (5), which is immediately followed by the cultural legitimization of this stratified community, its comprehension as a unity (6). Then there are: bureaucracy (7), money and the market complex (8), a system of generalized impersonal norms (9), a system
By the nature of the creations, one can single out the culture represented in single samples And popular culture. The first form, according to the characteristic features of the creators, is divided into folk and elite culture. folk culture is a single work of most often anonymous authors. This form of culture includes myths, legends, tales, epics, songs, dances, and so on. Elite culture- a set of individual creations that are created by well-known representatives of the privileged part of society or by its order by professional creators. Here we are talking about creators who have a high level of education and are well known to an enlightened public. This culture includes fine arts, literature, classical music, etc.
Mass (public) culture represents products of spiritual production in the field of art, created in large editions, counting on the general public. The main thing for her is the entertainment of the widest masses of the population. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education. Its main feature is the simplicity of ideas and images: texts, movements, sounds, etc. Samples of this culture are aimed at the emotional sphere of a person. At the same time, popular culture often uses simplified examples of elite and folk culture (“remixes”). Mass culture averages the spiritual development of people.
Subculture- this is the culture of any social group: confessional, professional, corporate, etc. It, as a rule, does not deny the universal culture, but has specific features. Signs of a subculture are special rules of behavior, language, symbols. Each society has its own set of subcultures: youth, professional, ethnic, religious, dissident, etc.
Dominant culture- values, traditions, views, etc., shared only by a part of society. But this part has the ability to impose them on the whole of society, either because it constitutes the ethnic majority, or because it has a mechanism of coercion. A subculture that opposes the dominant culture is called a counterculture. The social basis of the counterculture is people who are alienated to a certain extent from the rest of society. The study of the counterculture makes it possible to understand the cultural dynamics, the formation and spread of new values.
The tendency to evaluate the culture of one's nation as good and correct, and another culture as strange and even immoral has been called "ethnocentrism". Many societies are ethnocentric. From the point of view of psychology, this phenomenon acts as a factor in the unity and stability of this society. However, ethnocentrism can be a source of intercultural conflicts. The extreme forms of manifestation of ethnocentrism are nationalism. The opposite is cultural relativism.
Elite culture
Elite, or high culture created by a privileged part, or by its order by professional creators. It includes fine arts, classical music and literature. High culture, such as the painting of Picasso or the music of Schnittke, is difficult for an unprepared person to understand. As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an averagely educated person. The circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society: critics, literary critics, frequenters of museums and exhibitions, theater-goers, artists, writers, musicians. When the level of education of the population grows, the circle of consumers of high culture expands. Its varieties include secular art and salon music. The formula of elite culture is “ art for art”.
Elite culture It is intended for a narrow circle of highly educated public and opposes both folk and mass culture. It is usually incomprehensible to the general public and requires good preparation for correct perception.
The avant-garde trends in music, painting, cinema, complex literature of a philosophical nature can be attributed to the elite culture. Often the creators of such a culture are perceived as inhabitants of the "ivory tower", fenced off by their art from real everyday life. As a rule, elite culture is non-commercial, although sometimes it can be financially successful and move into the category of mass culture.
Modern trends are such that mass culture penetrates into all areas of "high culture", mixing with it. At the same time, mass culture reduces the general cultural level of its consumers, but at the same time, it itself gradually rises to a higher cultural level. Unfortunately, the first process is still much more intense than the second.
folk culture
folk culture is recognized as a special form of culture. In contrast to the elite culture of the people, culture is created by anonymous creators who do not have professional training. The authors of folk creations are unknown. Folk culture is called amateur (not by level, but by origin) or collective. It includes myths, legends, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs and dances. In terms of execution, elements of folk culture can be individual (retelling of a legend), group (performing a dance or song), mass (carnival processions). Folklore is another name for folk art, which is created by various segments of the population. Folklore is localized, that is, associated with the traditions of the given area, and democratic, since everyone participates in its creation. Anecdotes and urban legends can be attributed to modern manifestations of folk culture.
Mass culture
Mass or public does not express the refined tastes of the aristocracy or the spiritual quest of the people. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when mass media(radio, print, television, records, tape recorders, video) penetrated into most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. Mass culture can be international and national. Popular and pop music is a vivid example of mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education.
Popular culture is usually less artistic value than elitist or popular culture. But it has the widest audience. It satisfies the momentary needs of people, reacts to any new event and reflects it. Therefore, samples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose their relevance, become obsolete, go out of fashion. This does not happen with works of elite and folk culture. pop culture is a slang term for mass culture, and kitsch is a variation of it.
Subculture
The set of values, beliefs, traditions and customs that guide the majority of members of society is called dominant culture. Since society breaks up into many groups (national, demographic, social, professional), each of them gradually forms its own culture, i.e., a system of values and rules of conduct. Small cultures are called subcultures.
Subculture- part of a common culture, a system of values, traditions, customs inherent in a certain. They talk about the youth subculture, the subculture of the elderly, the subculture of national minorities, the professional subculture, the criminal subculture. The subculture differs from the dominant culture in language, outlook on life, behavior, hair, dress, customs. The differences can be very strong, but the subculture does not oppose the dominant culture. Drug addicts, the deaf and dumb, the homeless, alcoholics, athletes, and the lonely have their own culture. The children of the aristocrats or the middle class are very different in their behavior from the children of the lower class. They read different books, go to different schools, follow different ideals. Each generation and social group has its own cultural world.
Counterculture
Counterculture denotes a subculture that is not only different from the dominant culture, but opposes, is in conflict with the dominant values. The terrorist subculture opposes human culture, and the hippie youth movement in the 1960s. denied the dominant American values: hard work, material success, conformity, sexual restraint, political loyalty, rationalism.
Culture in Russia
The state of the spiritual life of modern Russia can be characterized as a transition from upholding the values associated with attempts to build a communist society, to the search for a new meaning of social development. We have reached the next round of the historical dispute between Westernizers and Slavophiles.
The Russian Federation is a multinational country. Its development is due to the peculiarities of national cultures. The uniqueness of the spiritual life of Russia lies in the diversity of cultural traditions, religious beliefs, moral norms, aesthetic tastes, etc., which is associated with the specifics of the cultural heritage of different peoples.
At present, in the spiritual life of our country, there are conflicting trends. On the one hand, the mutual penetration of different cultures contributes to interethnic understanding and cooperation, on the other hand, the development of national cultures is accompanied by interethnic conflicts. The latter circumstance requires a balanced, tolerant attitude towards the culture of other communities.
according to the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and providing a meaning-forming function. Its main ideal is the formation of consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality. This understanding of elite culture, explicated from such an understanding of it as a high culture, concentrating the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations, seems to be more accurate and adequate than the understanding of the elite as avant-garde.It must be emphasized that historically elite culture arises precisely as the antithesis of mass culture and its meaning, its main meaning, manifests itself in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by J. Ortega y Gasset ("Dehumanization of Art", "The Revolt of the Masses") and K. Manheim ("Ideology and Utopia", "Man and Society in an Age of Transformation", "Essay on the Sociology of Culture") who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features, including the method of verbal communication - the language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergymen, politicians, artists - use special , closed to the uninitiated languages, including Latin and Sanskrit.
The subject of an elitist, high culture is a person - a free, creative person capable of conscious activity. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the wide dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of an elite culture is a representative of the elite.
At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, but change the mode of presentation and appear in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, pass into the category of mass culture. In this sense, we can talk about the ability of form to be the bearer of content.
If we keep in mind the art of mass culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its types to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful, even its slight transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translating classical music into an electronic version of its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In the field of fine arts, the translation of an authentic image into a different format - a reproduction or a digital version - leads to a similar result (even if the context is preserved - in a virtual museum). As for a literary work, changing the presentation mode - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the carrier - printing or electronic - of this information. Defining such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works allows the violation of their integrity, when secondary or, at least, not their main components are accentuated and act as leading ones. Changing the authentic format of the phenomena of mass culture leads to the fact that the essence of the work changes, where ideas appear in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, unlike high culture, the essence of mass culture is not in creative activity, not in the production of cultural values, but in the formation of "value orientations" corresponding to the nature of the prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes of the mass consciousness of members of the "consumer society". society". Nevertheless, elite culture is a kind of model for the mass, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.
Thus, elite culture is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closeness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I.V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and addressees (in any case, the circle of those and others almost coincides). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features:
- complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
- the ability to form consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
- the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
- the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and "high";
- a rigid system of norms accepted by this stratum as obligatory and strict in the community of "initiates";
- individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
- the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural outlook from the addressee;
- using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, "deleting" interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject's cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in an elitist culture with its transformation, imitation - with deformation, penetration into the meaning - conjecture and rethinking given;
- semantic and functional "closedness", "narrowness", isolation from the whole national culture, which turns the elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its carriers turn into a kind of "priests" of this knowledge, the chosen ones of the gods , "servants of the muses", "keepers of secrets and faith", which is often played up and poeticized in elite culture.
Forms of existence of culture (folk, elite and mass culture).
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Culture can be divided according to various criteria into different types:
1) by subject (bearer of culture) into social, national, class, group, personal;
2) by functional role - into general (for example, in the system of general education) and special (professional);
3) by genesis - into folk and elite;
4) by type - into material and spiritual;
5) by nature - into religious and secular.
All social heritage can be viewed as a synthesis of material and non-material cultures. Non-material culture includes spiritual activity and its products. It combines knowledge, morality, upbringing, enlightenment, law, religion. Non-material (spiritual) culture includes ideas, habits, customs and beliefs that people create and then maintain. Spiritual culture also characterizes the inner wealth of consciousness, the degree of development of the person himself.
material culture is a collection of artificially created material objects: buildings, monuments, cars, books, etc.
Non-material, or spiritual culture combines knowledge, skills, ideas, customs, morality, laws, myths, patterns of behavior, etc.
The elements of material and non-material culture are closely related: knowledge (phenomena of spiritual culture) is transmitted through books (phenomena of material culture). Non-material culture plays a decisive role in the life of society: objects of material culture can be destroyed (as a result of war, disaster, for example), but they can be restored if knowledge, skills, and craftsmanship are not lost. At the same time, the loss of objects of intangible culture is irreplaceable. Sociology is primarily interested in non-material, spiritual culture.
Material culture includes the entire sphere of material activity and its results. It consists of man-made items: tools, furniture, cars, buildings and other items that are constantly being modified and used by people. Non-material culture can be viewed as a way of society's adaptation to the biophysical environment through its appropriate transformation.
Comparing both of these types of culture with each other, one can come to the conclusion that material culture should be considered as the result of non-material culture. The destruction caused by the Second World War was the most significant in the history of mankind, but despite this, cities were quickly restored, as people have not lost the knowledge and skill necessary to restore them. In other words, non-destroyed non-material culture makes it quite easy to restore material culture.
Depending on who produces cultural standards, what is the level of elements of culture and what group is its bearer, there are three forms of culture: elite, folk and mass.
Elite culture created by a privileged part of society or by its order by professional creators. It includes the fine arts, so-called serious music, and highly intellectual literature. An elitist or "high" culture, such as painting or music, is difficult for an unprepared person to understand. As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an average educated person, and the circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society. When the level of culture of the population grows, the circle of consumers of high culture expands, this is the high role of elite culture - to raise the general level of culture of members of society.
elite culture. Its elements are created by professionals, it is focused on a trained audience.
folk culture created by anonymous creators with no professional training. popular culture is called amateur(by origin, as it can be very high in terms of performance) and collective. It includes myths, legends, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs, dances. By execution, elements of folk culture can be individual(exposition of a legend, tradition, epics), group(performing a dance or song), mass (carnival processions). Another name for folk art - folklore. Folklore is closely connected with the traditions of the given area, and is democratic, since everyone who wishes participates in its creation.
Folk culture is created by anonymous creators. Its creation and functioning are inseparable from everyday life.
Mass culture created by professional authors and distributed through the media. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the mass media (radio, print, television, various types of audio recording, video recording) made mass samples of culture available to all social strata of society. Mass culture can be international and national. Examples of mass culture are popular and variety music, circus, newspaper "sensations", etc. They are understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education. Mass culture, as a rule, has less artistic value than elite or folk culture, its works live less and are quickly forgotten. But mass culture has the widest audience, it satisfies the momentary needs of people, reacts to any new event, which is why the samples of mass culture, the so-called hits, quickly lose their relevance, become outdated, go out of fashion, are replaced by new ones. This does not happen with works of elite and folk culture. pop culture- slang term for mass culture, and kitsch- mass cultural production, designed for an external effect - its variety.
Mass culture. These are cinema, print, pop music, fashion. It is publicly available, targeted at the widest audience, and the consumption of its products does not require special training. The emergence of mass culture is due to certain prerequisites:
1) the progressive process of democratization (destruction of estates);
2) industrialization and the associated urbanization (the density of contacts increases);
3) the progressive development of means of communication (the need for joint activities and recreation).
Depending on who creates the culture and what is its level, sociologists distinguish three of its forms: elite, mass, folk.
Elite culture (from French élite - selective, chosen, best) is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closeness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency.
Specific features: 1) has a marginal (marked, marked) character within any historical or national type of culture; consciously opposes the culture of the majority, but needs the latter, because it is based on the mechanism of repulsion from the values and norms accepted in mass culture, destroying its patterns; 2) is distinguished by a high level of innovation (innovation): creatively develops its own, fundamentally new mechanisms of self-regulation and value-semantic criteria that go beyond social and political requirements (for example, the creation of special languages of science, experimentation with literary language); 3) the cultural elite does not coincide with power and often opposes it (Socrates, Plato, Pushkin, who refused to “serve the tsar, serve the people”, L. Tolstoy), although fragile alliances are possible between them (the flourishing of sciences and arts at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent; support scientific and educational projects by Catherine II; the union of the Russian intelligentsia and the Soviet government in the 20s). Spheres of manifestation: art, religion, science.
As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an averagely educated person. The circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society: critics, literary critics, frequenters of museums and exhibitions, theater-goers, artists, writers, musicians. When the level of education of the population grows, the circle of consumers of high culture expands. Its varieties include secular art and salon music. The formula of elite culture is "art for art's sake".
In general, the elite culture acts as an initiative and productive beginning in any culture, performing a predominantly creative function in it.
Mass culture is the culture of everyday life, represented by the widest possible audience. The concept of "mass culture" is directly related to the concept of "mass". The mass is a specific form of community of people, which is characterized by aggressiveness, primitive aspirations, reduced intelligence and increased emotionality, spontaneity, willingness to obey a strong-willed cry, changeability, etc.
Reasons for the emergence of mass culture:
Regarding the origins of mass culture in cultural studies, there are a number of points of view: 1) the appearance at the dawn of Christian civilization of simplified versions of the Holy Books, designed for a mass audience; 2) the appearance in European literature of the 17th - 18th centuries. adventure, detective, adventure novel, which significantly expanded the audience of readers due to huge circulations. (D. Defoe "Robinson Crusoe" and others); 3) the law on compulsory universal literacy adopted in 1870 in Great Britain, which allowed many to master the main genre of artistic creativity of the 19th century. - novel.
In its proper sense, mass culture manifested itself for the first time in the United States at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It affected all areas: economics and politics, management and communication between people. The role of mass culture in the development of society was analyzed in a number of philosophical works of the 20th century. (Spanish philosopher X. Ortega y Gasset in his work "The Revolt of the Masses" (1930), American sociologist, professor at Columbia University D. Bell "The End of Ideology" (1960)).
The origins of the widespread dissemination of mass culture in the modern world lie in the commercialization of all social relations. A predetermined commercial installation, conveyor production - all this in many ways means the transfer to the spheres of artistic culture of the same financial-industrial approach that reigns in other branches of industrial production. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is the mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and movie screens.
Specific features: 1) mass culture belongs to the majority; it is the culture of everyday life; 2) mass culture is not a culture of social "lower classes", it exists in addition to and "above" social formations; 3) is aimed at infringing on the creativity of the individual and suppressing his freedom; 4) standard and stereotypical; 5) limited by conservatism (unable to quickly and adequately respond to changes in culture); 6) is more often of a consumer nature, which in turn forms a special type of passive, non-critical perception of this culture in humans; there is a manipulation of the human psyche and the exploitation of emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, self-preservation; 7) in mass culture there is a mechanical replication of spiritual values.
Spheres of manifestation: mass media, the system of state ideology (manipulating consciousness), mass political movements, general education school, the system of organizing and stimulating mass consumer demand, the system of image formation, leisure, etc.
Folk culture consists of two types - popular and folk culture. When a company of tipsy friends sings the songs of Alla Pugacheva or "Noisy reeds", then we are talking about popular culture, and when an ethnographic expedition from the depths of Russia brings material about carol holidays or Russian lamentations, then they talk about folklore culture. As a result, popular culture describes today's life, customs, songs, dances of the people, and folklore - its past. Legends, fairy tales and other genres of folklore were created in the past, and today they exist as a historical heritage. Some of this legacy is still being performed today, which means that part of the folklore culture has entered popular culture, which, in addition to historical legends, is constantly replenished with new formations, for example, modern urban folklore.
Thus, in folk culture, in turn, two levels can be distinguished - a high one, associated with folklore and including folk legends, fairy tales, epics, old dances, etc., and a lower one, limited by the so-called pop culture.
The authors of folk creations (tales, lamentations, epics) are often unknown, but these are highly artistic works. Myths, legends, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs and dances belong to the highest creations of folk culture. They cannot be attributed to an elite culture only because they were created by anonymous folk creators: “Folk culture arose in ancient times. Its subject is the whole people, not individual professionals. Therefore, the functioning of folk culture is inseparable from the work and life of people. Its authors are often anonymous, works usually exist in a variety of versions, are passed orally from generation to generation. In this regard, we can talk about folk art (folk songs, fairy tales, legends), folk medicine (medicinal herbs, charms), folk pedagogy, the essence of which is often expressed in proverbs and sayings.
In terms of execution, elements of folk culture can be individual (retelling of a legend), group (performing a dance or song), mass (carnival processions).
The audience of popular culture is always the majority of society. So it was in traditional and industrial society. The situation changes only in a post-industrial society.
Depending on the social structure of society, the following types of culture are distinguished:
1) an elite subculture (new cultural patterns are born in it);
2) supporting subcultures (they adapt the elite subculture to the masses of consumers);
3) the main subculture is the “subculture of the public” (a part of society that understands highly cultural values, the intelligentsia);
4) mass culture - the subculture of the mass consumer: is irrational, has an entertaining character, individual cultural samples are a commodity to satisfy consumers;
5) traditional culture - it stands above all cultures, is timeless, has uniqueness.
Along with the noted types of culture, sociologists distinguish a number of its varieties for individual social groups. In this regard, the concepts of "dominant culture", "subculture" and "counterculture" are used.
1) Dominant culture is a set of beliefs, values, norms, rules of conduct that are accepted and shared by the majority of members of society. This concept reflects the system of norms and values that are vital for society and form its cultural basis. Without such a generally accepted system of cultural norms and values, no society can function normally.
According to individual social groups in the culture of society, a number of its varieties can be distinguished. In this regard, sociologists use the concepts of "dominant culture" and "subculture". Since society breaks up into many social groups - national, demographic, social, professional - gradually each of them forms its own culture, i.e. system of values and rules of conduct. Small cultural societies were named subcultures.
Subculture- part of a common culture, a system of values, traditions, customs inherent in a large social group.
In our culture, one can single out a youth subculture, a subculture of national minorities, professional subcultures, etc. A subculture may differ from the dominant culture in language, outlook on life, demeanor, dress style, customs, and so on. The differences can be very strong, but the subculture does not oppose the dominant culture: for all cultural differences, the basic values of the subculture and the general culture remain the same. Youth subculture - the culture of a certain age population, which has a common style of life, behavior, group stereotypes. A subculture includes the tastes, judgments, knowledge, language, and behavior accepted in a given community.
2) Subculture- this is a special system of cultural values and norms inherent in a certain social group and differing to one degree or another from the dominant culture. Any subculture implies its own rules and patterns of behavior, its own style of dress, its own manner of communication. This is a kind of small cultural world, which reflects the peculiarities of the way of life of various communities of people.
There are many subcultures: age, professional, territorial, national, confessional. Due to a number of social, political or economic reasons, a subculture can transform into a counterculture.
3) A counterculture is understood as a subculture that not only differs from the dominant culture, but is in open conflict with it (hippies are a counterculture).
At the same time, the existence of such subcultures is possible, the values and norms of which differ significantly from the generally accepted ones and have received the name of the counterculture.
Counterculture denotes a subculture that not only differs from the dominant culture, but also opposes it, is in conflict with state values. Today, counterculture is a type of protesting attitude, an alternative lifestyle, anti-traditional forms of artistic creativity (For example, the subculture of the underworld. It has all the most important features of culture: language, values, and norms that differ little from generally accepted ones (but are mandatory for execution only according to attitude towards “ours”, they do not apply to outsiders), its own system of ranks and statuses, its own art (“thieves” songs, for example).
Subcultures. These are parts of culture inherent in certain social groups or associated with certain types of activities (youth subculture). The language takes the form of jargon. Certain activities give rise to specific names.
