Modelling culture as a social system
Theoretical study of culture brings up many research questions, and the ways they are answered shape a specific interpretation of the phenomenon of culture. Scholars build their own hierarchies of questions in accordance with their general outlook and their understanding of culture. We suggest that individual cognitive interests of a scholar can be seen as the main instrument of scholarly self-determination. Correspondingly, an individual model of theory of culture is a reflection of a historical and sociological approach to culture. This research problem determines our take on the following issues: What is culture, its social functions and morphology? What is the main reason for the culture’s historical stability and the most powerful factor of its enduring historical changeability? What are the possible principles of scientific study of culture? We define culture as a behavior program of providing the collective nature of human activity. Thus, the question of the essence of culture is expanded to cover the whole variety of human social behavior, including both activity and interaction as its main constituent parts. Culture is the major tool of normative and communicative support of human activity in its collective form, and thus the main manifestation of human sociality. The structure of culture matches the basic directions of social practice. Culture is historically both stable and changeable due to the stability and changeability of techniques of human activity and its preferred material, intellectual, artistic, social, political and other products (or results). We look at the problem of the variety of methodologies of scientific study of culture through the prism of V.S. Stiopin’s theory of three paradigmatic stages in the development of rationality - classic, non-classic and post-non-classic. The main research problem of culturology, as we believe, lies in searching for the adequate understanding of cultural artifacts and in their relevant interpretation. In the course of these, a lot depends on the correct choice of the cognitive perspective of study.