Book
История гуманитарных наук
The article considers four approaches to the interpretation of images and mythologems from the sphere of Western esotericism in mass culture. The first approach is based on the depth psychology of C. G. Jung and aims to identify archetypes common to the whole culture. The second is based on the reductionist theories of Marx and Freud, its main task is to reduce religious imagery to social and psychological realities. The third approach is represented by C. Partridge theory of occulture, in which the emphasis is made on tracing the historical genesis of esoteric imagery in modern culture. The fourth approach is expressed in the writings of J. Kripal, it synthesizes the historicism of the theory of occulture with the understanding of mass culture as a way of self-knowledge, revealing the deep spiritual essence of man
Mayakovsky’s words ‘It’s Time, Forward!’ better than any political slogans, reflect the atmosphere in which Soviet cultural policy emerged. This book aims to declare a special preserve and methodological perspective for the study of Soviet cultural history. In it Soviet society is considered as a space of radical projecting and experimentation in cultural policy, which was far from homogeneous, often multidirectional, and sometimes chaotic and contradictory. It was a unique historic example of government intervention in the cultural sphere. The authors attempt to evaluate the social viability of institutions which formed in Russian society, both thanks to and in spite of Soviet cultural policy, and to assess the consequences of the decline and fall of some of those same institutions.
The book targets a wide audience, including culture researchers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anyone interested in Soviet history and culture.
The Varangian contribution to the formation of the ancient Russian state is highly evaluated in the national scholarly tradition, more specifically, there are practically no doubts about the Scandinavian origin of the Rurik dynasty. However, there is a certain contradiction in the so-called Varangian problem: given a huge body of archaeological data unambiguously confirming the active Varangian presence in Rus in the 10th–11th centuries, we can only have at our disposal a very limited amount of the linguistic traces of ethnic and cultural connections between Russians and Scandinavians at that time.
This book presents an attempt at the historical and philological study in the field of the cultural contacts between Scandinavia and Rus before the very end of the Viking age. The image of the ideal ruler, the practice of gift exchange, the concepts of the status and inheritance rights of illegitimate children, a narrative about ancestors as a way of characterizing descendants, and similarities between personal names, nicknames and solemn eulogies — these are, to name just a few, the intense points of this interaction which became the focus of our study.
The article is devoted to the problem of or- ganization of a productive dialogue between represent- atives of different sciences during the comprehensive interdisciplinary research of man in the context of tra- ditional culture. The prerequisites to the given prob- lem statement have been formed during a long-term experience of joint field studies made by the authors in Russia (Adygea, Russian North, Bashkiria, Buryat- ia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Khakassia, Ya- kutia and other regions) and Mexico, as well as through the analysis of relevant results of academic and re- search work. As a solution of the given task, the authors develop the methodological construction “metaposi- tion” that allows to approach to complexity and inter- disciplinarity of research through the principle of dia- logue in the common sociocultural field. Metaposition as a technology of organization of polyprofessional co- operation of different experts in a common research space is aimed at development of scientists’ skills of fix- ation, systematization and representation of the re- sults of their work taking into account positions of their colleagues from other subject areas. Realization of this technology leads to creation of a metalanguage and to widening of researcher’s scientific culture (theoreti- cal frames of each expert, style of their scientific reason- ing and personal qualities). The development of meta- position as a stable system of cooperation between different positions of researchers suggests three inter- related stages: defining the research’s common field; re- vealing the borders of scientific positions; constructing the interpositional dialogue. Opportunities of applica- tion of the methodological construction “metaposition” at different stages of field research (before the field, at the field, after the field, during analysis of the field data) are concretized through a relevant algorithm and sup- ported by examples from the field practice.
This article examines the role of archivists in shaping the capacity and the structure of a university’s memory. Drawing on sources such as laws and ministerial instructions, the authors analyze the government’s archive policy with regard to universities and how professors and archivists were taking part in its implementation. Their participation included sorting documents and attributing them to individual ‘cases’, destroying some of the ‘unnecessary’ documents and preserving others that were designated for destruction. Based on information from service records and university reports, the article tracks changes in the corporate status of university archivists in nineteenth-century Russia.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.