Cultural practices as a form of active cultural consumption

Abstract

This paper focuses on the influence of passive and active cultural practices on the processes of inculturation and socialization. Despite the various attention to cultural practices (and cultural consumption), there are a number of different interpretations, which are based on the basic perception of the interaction of the cultural producer with the consumer, and, accordingly, the proactive involvement of the consumer in the cultural life. The article examines the hypotheses of cultural practices that form the modern thesaurus of cultural theory, using relatively recent data on cultural practices in Ukraine. The basis of the conceptualization of cultural practices in the study is the perception of cultural producer-consumer relations as a system of access to resources and goods, where cultural consumption is determined by access to cultural goods, and the level of involvement (participation) in cultural consumption is distinguished as active and passive. Particular attention in the research is paid to the functions of cultural practices, in particular as a potential tool for revitalizing the socio-cultural and economic life of cities. The significance of the self-organizing potential of cultural practices, in our opinion, is most clearly traced in the studies of urbanists and social geographers, whose theoretical and practical theses indirectly deduce how — even if hypothetically — cultural consumption and cultural practices affect changes in society, and how society ultimately changes cultural practices.