КОНЦЕПЦІЯ ТА СТУДІЮВАННЯ КУЛЬТУРИ

Abstract

The article introduces an analogy of epistemology of culture. It demonstrates the specific political economy of the scientific fields of Ukrainian humanities. The factors that determine it should be sought in the realm of the competition of actors in the scientific field for primacy in the redistribution of cultural capital, the peculiarities of the formation of the expert field in the cultural sphere, as well as the mythology of “human universal values” inherited from the post-Soviet era. Its discourse is a means of reproducing the intellectual imperialism of Moscow-Russian culture. The implemented conventional understanding of culture is the key to distinguish cultural studies into an independent field in scientific knowledge. It is indisputable that Ukrainian humanities have made significant steps towards establishing cultural studies as an independent academic discipline. We must acknowledge the significant contribution of domestic scientists to defining the mission of university cultural education in Ukraine. The general purpose of this investigation is to highlight the conventional understanding of the concept and studies of culture. According to this approach, culture appears as an infrastructural unity of three universes: the universe of beliefs, the universe of application, and the symbolic universe. It opens the perspective of the emancipation of the study of culture or cultural studies into a scientific field, which should free itself from the residual influence of the post-Soviet intellectual tradition, the discourses of “universal humanity” brought from it. Conventional understanding of culture helps to liberate its understanding from the chains of its political, historical, geographical engagement, avoids its dispersion in various discourses of the scientific field of humanitarian and social knowledge, teaches to perceive and investigate culture in a different way than historians, experts in the political field, philologists and linguists, etc. do. Keywords: analogy of epistemology of culture, ambiguity of epistemological situation, political economy of scientific fields, epistemology of culture, conventional understanding of culture, engagement of cultural studies.