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35УДК 303.03
Cultural and anthropological problem of Social Engineering (Methodological Problem at Modern Applied Culture Studies)
Natalia P. Koptzeva*
Siberian Federal University, 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 11.02.2010, received in revised form 18.02.2010, accepted 25.02.2010
Today the level of culture studies makes researchers solve the problem of applied availability of these studies in Russian science. The object of all human and social sciences, as well as cultural anthropology, is social engineering and rational control over social processes and precognition of possible intended and unintended changes of social institutions on the basis of science. From the very start, cultural anthropology has posited itself as science able to create scientific apparatus for positive social control.
Control over social processes based on science is a problem, which is going to last for centuries. But at present Russian culture studies are in danger of turning into one of the versions of the old scholastic ideology combining peripheral research areas. Today support of international standards at culture studies needs in a program of applied culture studies as a basis of the modern education at this sphere.
The educational program at «culture studies» course is starting being realized at Siberian Federal University. It is urgent to adopt the international educational standards at this sphere of human and social studies from the very beginning of training of the future bachelors at culture studies.
It is necessary to master the methods of study worked out at cultural anthropology in 20th - 21st centuries, for we could develop our own methods of culture studies applied in social control; and they are to become the basis of methods of study of cultural space important for the Russian society today. We suppose that the program of development of culture studies formulated by A.R. Radcliff-Braun, one of the founders of British social anthropology (along with B.K. Malinowski), is of special importance. The potency offunctional and comparative method intended for modern culture studies is discussed, and the program of training of experts at applied culture studies is suggested in the article.
Keywords: Culture studies, cultural anthropology, «Culture Studies» course, A.R. Radcliff-Braun, historical and inductive methods of culture studies, functional and comparative method.
Point
There are a lot of different definitions of «social engineering» notion in the contemporary dictionaries. It is a surprise for social scientists that the term has begun to be used in software
* Corresponding author E-mail address: decanka@mail.ru
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engineering, and the meaning is not always positive; it is often used in connection with «cracks» of inside information carried out by so-called «hackers». Yet the original scientific and theoretical meaning of «social engineering»
term is connected with influence of science on real social processes. There can be given two definitions of social engineering. The first one is very general and can be applied to a whole range of other notions apart from social engineering, for example, science as a whole, human activity as a whole, etc. It runs as follows: «Social engineering is a specific branch of applied social science as a group of applied social methods and practice connected with the use of knowledge derived from general sociologic theory, applied research as well as from production practice and other kinds of activity; it is used for attainment of everyday and perspective aims at perfection of control over social objects» [28].
Indeed, is perfection of social control, social progress, and reasonable influence on the world around us and, above all, human world not the global aim of existence and development of the humankind? What is the specific feature of social engineering in that process? This specificity is characterized more precisely by the other definition of social engineering we would like to cite here:
«Social engineering (Ingenieurwesen soziales) is a group of approaches to applied social science oriented to modification of behaviour and views of people, solution of social problems, adaptation of social institutions to changeable conditions, and maintenance of social stability» [28].
The weak point of this definition is that the definition of social engineering is formed through inductive recitation and indication of social situations when «social engineering» term is possible to be used. But its strong point is also that there is a designation of the most important aims of social engineering as the most urgent problem and cardinal aim of the whole science. That is: 1) solution of social problems;
2) modification of people’s behaviour according to the highest humane aims; 3) development of
social stability by means of perfection of the existing social institutions.
It is believed that social engineering appeared together with philosophy and all the other sciences in the very ancient times called the epoch of «axial age» (by K. Jaspers). They came into being in three cultural and geographical areas: Ancient Greek, India, and China. Certainly, we shouldn’t forget about Ancient Egypt, Central America and other cultural regions. But it is not a question about ascertainment of extremely exact list of them but the question is that we should point out co-eternity of philosophical and scientific investigations, on the one hand, and social engineering, on the other hand.
Social engineering is not only a local applied scientific approach being worked out at local scientific sociological schools, but it is also an old dream and necessity to the humankind it could control itself by means of its reason, even if it is localized in activity of one of social classes or strata. Delivering the speech on interrelations between the USA and Russia during the visit to Russian economics school in Moscow, the president of the USA B. Obama meant this necessity when he repeatedly cited the phrase from the paperwork written by one of its graduates: «The world is much less rational in reality than it is in paper».
Social engineering is an ultimate end of science as a whole and it is the results of scientific research used for the control over social processes. As it’s been mentioned above, this scientific aim was set together with appearance of science. We might remember the social projects devised by Confucius, Plato, Augustinus Aurelius, as well as Christian, Islamic, and Buddhistic social theories. However social engineering was accentuated in the research works of many outstanding thinkers including the representatives of English human and social sciences in the beginning of the 20th century.
For instance, John Dewey, a great thinker and a founder of pragmatism, wrote that «Philosophy is revived when it ceases being means of solution of philosophers’ problems and becomes a method, of solution of the humankind’s problems». He believed that modern human and social sciences were still in cradle for they had stored enough knowledge but they didn’t use that knowledge; control over people is to be carried out by means of scientific knowledge. This John Dewey’s thesis was taken up by all the outstanding scientists of the 20th century; they created scientific apparatus of study of real social organism and pointed out many ways of influence on it by means of various instruments. Certainly, politicians have the greatest need in those instruments. But civil society is something more than political sphere. Social self-government is always carried out, but the results of chaotic self-government are displayed in many historical tragedies which are «in abundance» in the 20th century. We could recall J. Ortega y Gasset’s famous work «Rebelion de las Massas» where the Spanish philosopher warns that the crowd solves all the problems by means of violence, and it inevitably engenders the chief as its «voice» personifying that violence in its wildest forms. E. Canetti’s research works are analogous to that one of J. Ortega y Gasset; E. Canetti was one of those who first started dealing with the problems of the simplest forms of power of one man over another; and he proved that a man makes himself be «mass» because that conversion allows him to solve many problems extremely important for him. Surely, we shouldn’t forget S. Freud’s and E. Fromm’s hypotheses and those ones of many contemporary philosophers, social and political scientists revealing the problems of social chaos from very different points of view. Michel Foucault carried out serious investigations dissecting the relations based on power and he proved that violence is displayed in the very notion of social norm, which makes the whole
social spaces simultaneously and fatefully be interpreted as pathological. Social norm is the underside of social pathology. This conclusion drawn by Michel Foucault was brilliantly substantiated in his concrete investigations on history of psychiatry, prison, sex, and structure of language.
It seems that cultural anthropology is human and social science that consciously seeks to be one of the instruments of social engineering and develops methods of applied culture studies for optimization of social processes and support of survivability of social organism at the highest level.
Auguste Comte was the first who spoke about the necessity for some concrete science studying society in order it could optimize the processes of social control; Auguste Comte is also the author of «social studies» term. And by that time Herbert Spencer had already worked out such most important notions as «social aggregation» and «social organism». These thinkers’ research works and their active pathos brought about the birth of the British school of social anthropology transformed into cultural anthropology school in the works of Franz Boas and his disciples in the United States of America. For this reason, these two definitions are often joint together in new text-books and articles: they write or say «social (cultural) anthropology» or «cultural (social) anthropology».
It seems that there can be found out some methodological principles or methodical instruments in the research works of the founders of the British school of social (cultural) anthropology used for applied culture studies with social engineering as their aim. This point of view is supported by Aleksey Nickishenkov in his research work «History of British social anthropology» where a whole chapter «Project of «social engineering» is dedicated to the argument that such founders of the British school
of social anthropology as Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski and Alfred Reginald Radcliff-Braun were inspired by the ideas of social engineering in their scientific investigations [19, P. 315-324].
However Aleksey Nickishenkov determines his remarkable investigation with the scope of the British school of social anthropology. The aim of this article is to observe the dynamics of formation of methodological and methodical apparatus of social engineering at cultural anthropology during the 20th century. It will bring to formation of a profound conceptual basis for applied research on culture at modern Russian culture studies.
Example
1. Definition of the method of culture studies. Classification of methods.
A.R. Radcliff-Braun was particularly interested in the problem of method, for specific character and exactitude of methodological modes indicate the birth of a new science able to cope with the aims of social engineering. Therefore he wrote a book titled «Method at social anthropology» published for the first time in Chicago in 1958. Edward Taylor was the great authority for A.R. Radcliff-Braun; he took Taylor’s comprehension of culture, methodology, and, consequently, culture studies for a base. One of the fathers of British social anthropology E. Taylor defines culture studies as «the integral whole including knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, customs and any other abilities and habits acquired by a person as a member of society» [23, P. 8].
Such comprehension brings about certain requirements for the methods of culture studies: the method lies in the study of facts of culture. Consequently, the problem is how we should study facts of culture and explain them and what interesting theoretical and practically effective results we should expect from culture studies.
E. Taylor points out two methods, and A.R. Radcliff-Braun believes that clear distinction of these two methods would give theoretical and practical significance to culture studies.
Historical method is the first one; it explains origin, stages of development and concrete causes of changes of some social institution or a group of social institutions. «This method allows real temporal links between concrete institutions, events or states of a civilization to be displayed» [23, P. 9].
The strong point of this method is that it allows us to trace the line of genesis of one state of a social institution in contrast to the other one or it also allows us to distinct one institution from the other only provided that we should have scientific (historical) methods used for observation of the endless sequence of those inter-originations.
The weak point of this method is that it doesn’t give any knowledge of general laws like the objects of so-called «inductive sciences» do (A.R. Radcliff-Braun). Besides, studying cultures without historical sources, a researcher inevitably turns to hypothetic reconstruction of history of those cultures in the past basing on indirect evidences, i.e. his own suppositions. Some elements of theoretical reconstructions would be based on quite authentic facts but some other elements (perhaps very important for concrete culture) would be only under our suppositions.
We should remark that there is an active separation of this aspect and historical method, which has a specific designation as «method of imagined history» in the world practice of human and social studies. The methodological crisis is connected with the fact that, on the one hand, the vast majority of grand scientists realize the danger of «imagined histories» method (from the point of social engineering), and, on the other hand, they are in active search for methodological positions, which could replace human and social sciences in the bosom of absolutely authentic knowledge.
The other method is an invariant of inductive method characterizing natural sciences. Inductive method is based on the thesis that all phenomena including social ones conform to natural laws. Accordingly, some general laws (statements, formulas), each of them belongs to a certain class of facts and events, can be discovered and proved through some logical procedures. A.R. Radcliff-Braun notes that «the heart of induction is a process of generalization; every particular fact is to be explained as a special case of some general rule» [23, P. 13]. He insists that inductive method is to be most actively applied to phenomena of culture: law, morals, art, language, and all social institutions.
The two methods determine two possible sciences regarding culture studies: historical method determines development of ethnology, and inductive method does development of social anthropology grown as cultural anthropology in the American school.
In reference to advantage of one method over the other, historical method is to be necessarily conformed to inductive method. Historical method describes stages of evolution of one or another social institution. But what does distinction of those stages depend on? What is the end of social evolution? What elements are the conditions of that evolution? What processes and changes of social elements are to be fixed to apprehend the further social changes? Which social elements are possible to be consciously delayed in development and what should be urged?
The essence of social evolution and distinction of its stages are determined through formulation of general laws and formulas of social processes. Hence historical method is complied with inductive method.
The other argument in favor of predominance of inductive method represents the present multiple-path development of culture. The anthropologists of the 19th and 20th centuries
had an illusion that development of culture is unilinear, therefore various national cultures were to be classified according to so-called «level» of development. And different stages were suggested, such as savagery, barbarity, and civilization. Every ethnic culture was proposed to have one or another position, and cultures could be characterized with «more developed» and «less developed» terms. Such position became absolutely unacceptable for A.R. Radcliff-Braun and B.K. Malinowski in the first half of the 20th century: «The vast majority of facts show that
development of culture was not a unilinear process and every society develops ITS OWN SPECIFIC TYPE under the influence of history and ambience» [23, P. 18].
The fundamental methodological crisis of culture studies is displayed in the struggle of two cardinal schools in the first half of the 20th century: diffusionists and evolutionists. The diffusionists considered different cultures from the point of cultural adoptions, and the evolutionists reconstructed unilinear history of evolution of human culture.
However both of the schools had great achievements comprised in ethnology due to concentration on historical methods.
Both of the schools attempted to enunciate general laws of dynamics of culture basing on the fact that it was possible to discover general laws in phenomena of culture and such efforts were completely justified. A.R. Radcliff-Braun thinks that those objective laws are to be discovered not from psychological point of view but from the point of social anthropology. The difference between them is that psychology is concentrated upon some concrete (often individual) aspects of something, which is customary to call «social roles», while social (cultural) anthropology considers a concrete cultural situation as an inevitable one engendered as an objective social act by society or state. «The object of study is a
process as a whole while INDIVIDUALS ARE OBJECTS OF INTEREST INSOFAR AS THEY ARE INDISPENSABLY INVOLVED IN THAT PROCESS» [23, P. 29]. Psychology scrutinizes individual behaviour in connection with an individuum, and cultural (social) anthropology explores group behaviour or that one of collectives of individuals in connection with a group. Social psychology being developed in the 21st century is very close to cultural anthropology, although there are also some methodological contrarieties here. Social psychology is based on experiment and explores a group of individual actions of social importance in the aspect of that group. Cultural anthropology analyzes social activities on the whole as necessary results of society and state and as fore-entity of any individual act. Though, certainly, their scientific interests are often intersected and stimulate some supplementary thoughts for one or another science.
The serious problem is that culture studies are frequently given to be completely controlled by social psychology when phenomena of culture are explained by mental processes proceeding inside individuals. There are some special (non-psychological) laws of development of society, which can be expressed in categories of psychology.
One more and the third argument in favour of the necessity for specific cultural and anthropological inductive methods of investigation is impossibility of scientific corroboration or refutation of historical reconstructions of the remote past. Explanation of historic facts significant for culture can be closer to reality or out of it, but we will never prove that those explanations are adequate. Therefore the attempts at historic explanation through the theory of genesis of any social institutions are not fruitful for comprehension of objective laws of social development. Moreover, theories of genesis
are based on public and private admission of objective laws of development of culture. Theories of genesis are in «no man’s land» between appliance of historical methods and induction. Their scientific objectivity will grow up to some adequacy only when the scientists applying one or the other method succeed considerably.
Thus, cultural (social) anthropology is to be based on: 1) facts only; 2) observations of those facts thoroughly checked.
A.R. Radcliff-Braun is quite right in his remark that «any speculative reconstruction may profess to be effective only when it is based on firm knowledge of laws of history. But only social anthropology could give such laws» [23, P. 43].
2. Practical value of the result of culture studies based on appliance of functional inductive method.
Historical evidences, including those ones regarding origin and evolution of social institutions, generally arouse people’s keen interest. But mere knowledge of those evidences doesn’t orient to practice [23, P. 45]. Colligations based on facts give orienting points to practice. Culture studies based on historical method report that some historical events happened or could happen. Culture studies based on inductive method state how and why, i.e. according to which laws, the events happen [23, P. 49]. Discovery of fundamental laws controlling behaviour of human societies and development of such social institutions as law, morals, religion, art, language, and others, has a great and far-reaching effect for the present and future of the humankind. Cognizance of material and mental powers and control over them will bring to practical use of great importance.
It would be desirable that many negative features of the present civilization could be changed or improved. But, like medicine, culture studies highly require some appropriate empirical
knowledge and theoretical learning including experiments. This intensive and laborious work also requires thousands of scientists dealing with knowledge gathering at development of social institutions. The future generations will be able to use that knowledge to give birth to a civilization suiting the best humane ideals.
But such abstracted practical use cannot satisfy a zetetic researcher, a man of deed, who wishes his scientific investigations to do good to concrete people right now. It’s quite clear that culture studies are able to help the solution of the most difficult problem of life today: the necessity for living of different races with very different forms of civilization in the same time and space, as well as intercommunication in political, economical, and moral progress. The recent events taken place in Europe indicate cultural danger to European culture, which takes great risks of loss of its highly valuable achievements by following the ideals of liberalism, democracy, and tolerance. The delicacy of the problem is that it is essential to keep up stability and solidarity in the society consisting of various self-sufficient cultures. The scientists dealing with culture studies don’t have enough knowledge and apprehension they could get through that problem.
Cultural anthropology can stand the humankind in good stead and bring to immediate results here. It is vital to study social institutions of different cultures not only to reconstruct their history, but also to reveal their essence, function, and place they take in mental, moral, and social life [23, P. 52]. That knowledge is necessary for the place-holders dealing with the problems of coexistence of different cultures inside one society. Experiments at sphere of social institutions carried out by an office-holder can be no less than a disaster. And history of origin of those social institutions wouldn’t be able to give him any real help. But knowledge of the general laws of development of those
institutions and their objective importance for society would help him a lot. As A.R. Radcliff-Braun states, a teacher, an enlightener, an administrator, a judge, and a religious man -that is a circle of public officers, who could derive benefit from culture studies based on inductive method.
The questions concerning government of a state and society consisting of representatives of different and inwardly self-sufficient cultures are of special importance. That problem is of highly topicality for Krasnoyarsk city and Krasnoyarsk region, as far as the influxes of the migrants of other religious and cultural institutions are being fixed here. For instance, indignation of some Krasnoyarsk intellectuals has been aroused by the title of «Our Islamic region» newspaper having been issued since 2008 for the Moslems living throughout Krasnoyarsk region. The usual words of the intellectuals started with the phrase: «Certainly, I am not a fascist, but that is too much! Once again, whose region is it?» The point is that dynamic economy in Krasnoyarsk region today is in real need of the inflow of labour power, that’s why the problems of intercultural communication are of political importance here.
It seems that functional method applied to culture studies can be useful at social control over the processes of intercultural communication, which appear to be very complicated in practice and very often take their course in the air of tension and mutual mistrust.
Functional method of interpretation of phenomena of culture is based on the assumption that culture represents an integrated system [23, P. 65]. Each element of culture is of special importance and has its particular function for a concrete cultural community [23, P. 65]. Revelation of that function is an object of cultural anthropology called «social physiology» by A.R. Radcliff-Braun. There are some functional laws real for all cultures. And it is essential to discover
those laws and apply them for explanation of each element of one or another culture.
Thus, the general objective law of all culture is a need of rituals and ceremonies supporting sense of social unity and solidarity. Every concrete ceremony and rite can be explained from the point of the senses conveyed and the way those senses are connected with social unity. The objective laws discovered by cultural anthropology are deduced with the help of logical laws of cross-disciplinary character and common for nature sciences, mathematics, human and social sciences. «Knowledge is to be generalized it could be used in practice» [23, P. 66].
Thus, it is necessary to have knowledge of the laws of every group of phenomena kept under control. For this reason, culture studies based on inductive and functional method are going to provide precognition of the results having intended or unintended influence on culture. Hence there are two most important spheres where culture studies, based on inductive and functional method, are to be applied - administration and education. A.R. Radcliff-Braun writes: «So if anthropology intends to render essential help to solution of practical problems of administration and education, it is to desist from speculative attempts, discover unknown past, and commit itself to culture studies based on functional method» [23, P. 66].
Functional culture studies generally require comparative method of investigation. Comparison is a foundation of all basic procedures of inductive method. According to A.R. Radcliff-Braun’s methodological conception, a scientist, carrying out his research by comparative method, doesn’t try to explain one or another feature of one or another society but first he tries to understand it by consideration it as a particular case of a common kind or a class of social phenomena and then he connects it with some general universal tendency common to all human communities [26, P. 652].
Comparative method is a basic method of investigation on social statistics (study of conditions of existence of social systems) and social dynamics (study of stable distinctive features observed in the processes of social changes).
The combination of historical and comparative and functional (inductive) methods of investigation supplies thorough knowledge of social reality required for social engineering. The task has a long run, and we are just at the beginning of its solution.
One can note that A.R. Radcliff-Braun’s program propositions were implemented in scientific activities of the second generation of the British anthropologists and in research work of the American anthropologists, the representatives of the American cultural and anthropological movement «Culture and person». British cultural anthropologists’ applied research was carried out in Africa, colonial domains of the British Empire, where so-called «indirect rule» theory was of great importance as a basis of the official line of the British colonial policy.
But, certainly, the results of cultural and anthropological investigations cannot be restricted only with the sphere of colonial government, for the objective laws discovered in that research space are really of universal character. On the contrary, the results, derived from cultural investigations carried out in the British African colonies, stimulated discoveries of new research areas and revelation of various special cultural and anthropological realias in modern urban civilizations.
3. Current state of discussion of methods applied at culture studies in Russian science.
Russian culture studies are going through very interesting period characterized by some contradictions. Thus, we should point out the contradiction connected with the fact that «culture studies» term existing as a description - 29 -
of some «special» science, discipline, course and speciality of professional educational programs, scientific speciality and academy degree, doesn’t have any analogues in European science except for Leslie White’s investigations [30]. Leslie White is mentioned as a founder of culturology in Russian dictionaries. European science applies another term - «culture studies» where a large number of specific investigations are united in the common subject, i.e. cultural phenomena as display of «humanness» and «social nature». Firstly, it brought about certain processes at provincial universities where those kinds of «research» were collected under the aegis of «culture studies», which can be defined neither as socio-psychological, philosophical nor as art critical or historical. Many scientific papers and theses deal with study of «culture of the region», «professional culture», and «folk culture» when culture is understood as a sum of different phenomena: works of art, organizations and institutions, folklore, social roles, models of behaviour, etc. Those studies are based mostly on application of historical method as a reconstruction of some cultural events out of the search for objective laws of the social organism and out of formulation of laws of social statics and dynamics.
Simultaneously Russian culture studies are being accelerated in development and coordinated with international standards, and culture studies are being turned into applied science necessary for social control and education at all levels.
Now there is an interesting and intensive discussion on identification of the status of culture studies as science with the backstage struggle for the future of Russian culture studies: whether they should plunge into scholastic jungle of new and needless terms and put forward themselves as a false substitution of classical human and social sciences (philosophy, history, social science, art history, and psychology) or they should find their
own worthy subject to discovery of objective laws of development of social institutions where «culture» notion accentuates specific «human» mode of existence.
The author of the Russian version of the notion «culturology» («culture studies») is Edward Markaryan [12], who borrowed the term from Leslie White.
WHAT DOES THIS TERM MEAN?
1. Some special science with its special subject;
2. A complex of different sciences concerning culture (history, philosophy, social science, philology, anthropology, and psychology);
3. Something else.
We can point out the first view on scientific status of culture studies which states that an expert in culture is like an expert in nature «in general». Culture studies appeared as an effort to set free a number of disciplines (ethics, aesthetics, and religion science) from Marxist-Leninism ideology in Russian universities in 1990s. Professor Ikonnikova Svetlana Nickolaevna was an initiator of that highly positive process at that time. According to this point of view, a culture scientist is someone who writes about culture; he can be an art historian, a philosopher, a social scientist, etc. Still culture studies are not a special science with their subject, method, and purpose, but they are a summarized representation of very different fields of scientific knowledge about culture. There are a lot of conceptions and theories of culture at different sciences, but the general theory of culture hasn’t been formed yet. The British Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1961) says that «culture studies» term means one of the branches of anthropological (ethnological) knowledge, a part of cultural anthropology, and point of view according to which not a man creates culture, but culture engenders a man.
However all the deep modern investigations on culture start with refutation of the following definition of culture: «Culture is everything produced by human hands and mind for the whole history of the mankind». The origin of modern culture studies is discovery of humanism in Renaissance, which could be entirely attributed neither to nature nor to God, but only to a man - THE ABILITY NOT ONLY TO MAKE THINGS, BUT ALSO TO CREATE HIMSELF AND BE A MASTER OF HIS OWN DESTINY, KINGDOM OF HUMAN FREEDOM. That is the point of view of an outstanding Russian philosopher V.M. Mezhuev. He thinks that the precondition of culture studies was the discovery of co-existence of several different autonomous and rich cultures. Anthropologists (ethnologists) study preliterate cultures. Scriptory cultures are studied by philologists, historians, and art critics first of all. Sociologists study audiovisual masscult. Philosophy represents culture as idea and entirety.
The second point of view is characteristic of A.L. Dobrohotov, who justly supposes that a person producing professional knowledge organized at University can name them whatever he likes. The point is that there is to be a subject matter of research and people competent enough. In this sense, culture studies are a science studying history of cultural systems.
The third point of view (V.A. Podoroga) is connected with the following suggestion: when culture becomes the major factor of social stability, not economy or state power, but only culture studies will be the key branch of scientific knowledge as far as today many social scientists remark that in modern society the fundamental changes take place in the domain of culture, not in engineering or economy.
The fourth point of view (A.A. Husseynov) makes us turn to two methods of culture studies: historical and comparative-and-functional. The
headship of historical method is established here. Culture is defined as an object of history, and they assert that culture studies will never be a universal science; culture studies will always deal with local and historical problems. Philosophy gives an integral idea. Culture studies are to research on mechanisms and generations of senses of social interactions and their immanent influence on each other.
It seems that today pathos of maintenance of applied specificity of culture studies is to predominate. We should firmly keep to the necessity for culture studies lest we should sink into the morass of scholasticism and fall behind with science for 200 years in comparison with the rest civilized world.
Living culture studies cannot be theoretical science only. Their conclusions have inductive character in relation to the results of applied research.
The scope of cultural knowledge, especially that one of culture studies course practically taught, remains rather fuzzy both in objective and methodological respects, as well as from the point of inner structure.
Thus, culture can be the subject matter of various sciences and philosophy.
Resume
1. The research into capacities of cultural anthropology as methodology of practical social engineering allows us to draw a conclusion concerning the prospects of this subject matter of scientific investigations for social control and education.
2. However there has appeared deficiency of practice-oriented specialists in culture studies in Russian scientific and educational sphere. There is a great danger that basic research into culture studies will bring about the most undesirable scholastic level rather than formation of «culture studies» as specific nationally limited science.
3. A special structure of education at culture 4) the study of European philosophy of
studies based on the best achievements in the culture, first of all, Neo-Kantianism and Ernst
world and Russian science is proposed to the Cassirer, in particular.
students of Siberian Federal University: The accomplishment of these aims in
1) the study of applied research methods of practice will require efforts and labour of many
concrete sciences with culture as their subject; scientists and educators, who firstly are to master
2) the study of the existent interpretations methods of applied culture studies and secondly
of data of applied sciences characterized by to teach students the application of those methods
theoretical generalization; for solution of vital social problems including
3) application of inductive methodology and those ones characteristic of Krasnoyarsk region
current problematics in the sphere of culture; and Siberian territory in the Russian Federation.
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Культурно-антропологический проект социальной инженерии (проблема методологии современных прикладных культурных исследований)
Н.П. Копцева
Сибирский федеральный университет Россия 660041, г. Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Современный уровень культурных исследований в российской науке заставляет решать проблему прикладной полезности данных исследований. Цель всех гуманитарных и социальных наук, цель культурной антропологии - это социальная инженерия, стремление управлять социальными процессами разумно, на научной основе предвидеть возможные преднамеренные
и непреднамеренные изменения социальных институтов. Культурная антропология с первого момента своего основания позиционировала себя как наука, способная создать научный инструментарий для позитивного социального управления.
Научное управление социальными процессами - это задача на многие века. Но современная российская культурология рискует превратиться в один из вариантов старой схоластической идеологии, собрав в себя периферийные исследовательские пространства. Для поддержания международных стандартов в области культурных исследований в настоящее время требуется программа прикладных культурных исследований, на базе которой и должно осуществляться современное культурологическое образование.
В Сибирском федеральном университете начинается реализация образовательной программы по направлению «культурология». С самых первых шагов подготовки будущих бакалавров культурологии необходимо внедрить стандарты международного образования в этой сфере гуманитарных и социальных наук.
Для разработки собственных методик культурных исследований, имеющих прикладное значение для социального управления, необходимо освоить те методы исследования, которые были разработаны в культурной антропологии в XX-XXI вв., и на их основе создать методики изучения культурного пространства, важного для современного российского общества. Представляется, что особую ценность имеет программа развития культурных исследований, сформулированная А.Р. Рэдклиффом-Брауном, одним из основателей британской социальной антропологии (наряду с Б.К. Малиновским). В статье обсуждаются возможности функционально-сравнительного метода для современных культурных исследований, предлагается программа подготовки специалистов в области прикладных культурных исследований.
Ключевые слова: культурные исследования, культурная антропология, направление
«культурология», А.Р. Рэдклифф-Браун, исторический и индуктивный методы культурных исследований, сравнительно-функциональный метод.
