Culturology or thescience of culture is a branch of thesocial sciences concerned with the scientific understanding,description,analysis, andprediction ofcultures as a whole. Whileethnology andanthropology studied different cultural practices, such studies includeddiverse aspects:sociological,psychological, etc., and the need was recognized[by whom?] for a discipline focused exclusively on cultural aspects.[1]
The notion of culturology (Russian:культурология), as aninterdisciplinary branch of the humanities, may be traced in the Soviet Union to the late 1960s and associated with the work ofMikhail Bakhtin,Aleksei Losev,Sergey Averintsev, Georgy Gachev,Juri Lotman,Vyacheslav Ivanov,Vladimir Toporov, Edward Markarian, and others.[2] This kind of research challengedMarxist socio-political approach to culture.
Between 1980 and 1990, culturology received official recognition in Russia and was legalized as a form of science and a subject of study for institutions of higher learning. After thedissolution of the Soviet Union, it was introduced into theHigher Attestation Commission's list of specialties for which scientific degrees may be awarded inRussia and is now a subject of study during the first year at institutions ofhigher education and insecondary schools.[3] Defined as the study of humancultures, their integral systems, and their influence on human behavior, it may be formally compared to the Western discipline ofcultural studies, although it has a number of important distinctions.
Over past decades the following basic cultural schools were formed:
From 1992, research was started by the Russian Institute for Cultural Research. Today, along the line of the central office located in Moscow, three branches of RIC have been opened – Siberian (opened in 1993 in Omsk), St. Petersburg Department (opened in 1997) and the Southern Branch (opened in 2012 in Krasnodar).
In 1990, at the faculty of philosophy, a chair of the history and theory of world culture was created. Many prominent Soviet and Russian scholars like V. V. Ivanov, S. S. Averintsev, A. Y. Gurevich, M. L. Gasparov, G. S. Knabe, E. M. Miletinskiy, V. N. Romanov, T. V. Vasilyeva, N. V. Braginskaya, V. V. Bibikhin,Alexander Dobrokhotov have worked there.[4]
Yuri Rozhdestvensky founded a school of Culturology at the Department of Language Studies ofMoscow Lomonosov University. Rozhdestvensky's approach to the development of culture (accumulation and mutual influence of layers) can be compared to the approach used inmedia ecology.[citation needed]
TheOxford English Dictionary records usage of the word "culturology" with the meaning "[t]he science or study of culture or a culture" from 1920 onwards.[5]American anthropologistLeslie White (1900-1975) popularised the termculturology among contemporary Anglophonesocial scientists.[6][7][8]White defined culturology as a field of science dedicated to the study of culture andcultural systems.[9][page needed][10][citation needed] He notes that "culturology" was earlier known as "science of culture" as defined by English anthropologistEdward Burnett Tylor in his book 1872Primitive Culture.[1] White also notes that he introduced this term in 1939,[11]and that for the first time the term appeared in English dictionaries in 1954. He also remarks that the corresponding German term,Kulturwissenschaft, was introduced byWilhelm Ostwald in 1909.[1]
Following White, philosopher of scienceMario Bunge (1919-2020) defined culturology as the sociological, economic, political, and historical study of concrete cultural systems. "Synchronic culturology" is said to coincide with theanthropology,sociology,economics, andpolitical ideology of cultures. By contrast, "diachronic culturology" is a component ofhistory. According to Bunge, "scientific culturology" also differs from traditionalcultural studies as the latter are often the work of idealist literary critics or pseudo-philosophers ignorant of thescientific method and incompetent in the study of social facts and concrete social systems.[12]
Bunge's systemic and materialist approach to the study of culture has given birth to a variety of new fields of research in thesocial sciences.Fabrice Rivault, for instance, was the first scholar to formalize and propose international political culturology as a subfield ofinternational relations in order to understand the global cultural system, as well as its numerous subsystems, and explain how cultural variables interact withpolitics andeconomics to impact world affairs.[13] This scientific approach differs radically fromculturalism,constructivism, and culturalpostmodernism because it is based onlogic,empiricism,systemism, andemergent materialism.[14] International political culturology is being studied by scholars around the world.[15][16]
[...] a supra-psychological science of culture: culturology.
Recently,Julian Huxley has presented, as a matter of course, as a thesis that does not need to be defended, the theory of evolution as being as relevant to culturology as to biology and quite as necessary to its development.
Application of the viewpoint and principles of the philosophy of evolution is as essential to the solution of many problems in culturology as it is in biology or physics.
