ПОПУЛЯРНАЯ КУЛЬТУРА И МАССОВАЯ КУЛЬТУРА: К ПРОБЛЕМЕ ОПРЕДЕЛЕНИЯ

Abstract

One of the most difficult theoretical issues of modern humanities is the question of typological relationship of various cultural phenomena, their mutual correlation and, consequently, their embeddedness in structural and typological schemes. Despite a significant number of studies devoted to this problem, it has not been solved to date. As a rule, the definition of popular culture and mass culture is based on descriptive method, where the description of external features allows to identify these types of culture. The article shows that it is impossible to determine their essential features by external signs, the leading of which is the wide extent of these phenomena. The most optimal here is the structural-typological approach, where the basis for distinguishing the phenomena is their functional nature. Hence, the structure of culture is shown, which includes traditional, highly specialized and mass culture. Each of these types was formed at a certain stage of historical development, providing a set of functions unique to it. In this sense, this structural-typological scheme can be considered as a model of cultural dynamics. Popular culture is a concept that denotes any of the phenomena belonging to one of these types of culture, which has become widespread.