Culture as an object of culturology

The subject of culturology allows you to get acquainted with the history of the formation of problems of a culturological nature, to develop skills in applying the categorical apparatus in life, provides necessary knowledge about cultural values, helps to understand their cultural and national traditions.

Culture as an object of cultural studies is viewed from different perspectives, since it is a complex concept, including, as an artificial environment of human existence, also its self-realization.

The subject and tasks of cultural studies are concluded in the transfer of the accumulated cultural knowledge, and they also enable one to independently expand his horizons.

The term culturology was widely used by the scientist L. White. It was he who first tried to create general theories of culture.

The subject of cultural studies is a complex sociohumanitarian discipline that seeks to form a system of knowledge about culture, treating it as a holistic phenomenon. The subject and tasks of cultural studies are studies aimed at describing culture, analyzing different cultures and comparing them, understanding intercultural communications, and explaining the origins of specific and general, variable and sustainable in culture.

The subject of culturology is now an integrative field of knowledge. The basis of cultural studies is the individual sciences - history, archeology, art history, ethnography, etc. Cultural science as a sociohumanitarian knowledge considers the general significance of the multifaceted phenomenon of culture, including the ways of its study. Culture as an object of culturology is the goal of research leading to an understanding of one's own and another culture, while the subject matter is the filling of public life. Consequently, culturology is the interaction of various elements of culture: norms, traditions, customs, values, cultural codes, social institutions, ideologies, technologies, etc.

Culturology is based on the unity of empirical and theoretical knowledge, because it considers not only specific cultural processes and phenomena, but also ultimate abstractions. The subject of cultural studies includes both applied and fundamental research.

Let's list the main tasks of cultural studies:

• analysis of culture;

• study of the content of culture;

• identification of interrelations between elements of culture;

• study of cultural units and typologies of cultures;

• solving problems identified by socio-cultural dynamics;

• study of cultural communications and codes.

In practice, cultural studies find their application in the field of management and mass communications.

Culturology uses the following methods:

• empirical - collection and description of factual material;

• comparative-historical - providing the opportunity to compare the unique phenomena of the cultural complex in the historical context;

• structural-functional - allowing to decompose the studied cultural object into its component parts and to reveal their internal connection;

• genetic - allows you to learn the phenomenon being studied from the standpoint of its origin and subsequent development;

• Semiotic - is defined by the understanding of culture as a symbolic mechanism that allows the transfer of experience from generation to generation, as a symbolic system that ensures social inheritance.

Culturology includes several sections and is an integrated science:

- Philosophy of Culture;

- The theory of culture;

- Sociology of culture;

- History of culture;

- Cultural anthropology.

Thus, cultural studies not only describes the cultural values accumulated by mankind, but also comprehends them.