subject: The Perspectives of Culturology in the Modern World [print this page] The Perspectives of Culturology in the Modern World
As the world cultures constantly interact and communicate nowadays, the study of cultures is becoming more significant month after month. Culturology is a certain discipline that dwells upon the research of culture, cultural activities and systems. It also involves the research of mentality, material as well as spiritual features of the society etc. The subject is the complex of principles, rules and norms, communication and socialization mechanisms that make social life possible. Culturology contains the following general areas of study:
1.Traditional Culturology that is the field of study concerning mythology, folklore, religions, customs and traditions, national literatures and others.
2.Social Culturology that contains basic Culturology, the theory of Culturology, Anthropology etc.
3.Applied Culturology that concerns itself with the supervising and regulation of culture, especially in the fields of religion, education, recreation and others. The questions studied by Culturology are religion, mythology, philosophy, behavior norms and art as the elements of culture. It also concentrates on the research of culture as human social and historical experience, its representation in norms, activities and the so called cultural texts.
There are several approaches to the issues of Culturology like:
1.Social-historical approach that is based upon the studies of historians and also philosophers and is regarded as rather classical.
2.Racial-anthropological approach which studied the correlation between the race and the culture it made - the school is considered not appropriate and rarely used these days.
3.Sociological approach that has a strong connection to sociology and focuses on the study of society, its structure and cultural properties as well as institutions for culture is possible only within human society.
4.Symbolic approach that is the most modern and most influential trend in the research of Culturology. The symbolic school considers the cultural processes as specific kinds of communication on the basis of symbols made in the process of human social activities.
