Научный потенциал мира, 17-25 сент. 2009, Болгария

Olga Vladimirovna Chibisova

Komsomolsk-on-Amur State Technical University

Culturology

Culture-Subculture Correlation

As well as the majority of other most used scientific terms the concept "subculture" has received an ambiguous estimation. The fact that it has a set of regularly challenged definitions since there is no uniform standpoint on the given phenomenon among researchers can serve as an acknowledgement of the given statement. Nevertheless, it is possible to ascertain that in scientific circles there was a certain opinion about the leading sense of this concept.

The author of the term "subculture" is Teodor Rozzak who used it in the mid-thirties of the XX^th century in a cultural differentiation problem research for revealing the correlation of general and private in culture of this or that society at a certain stage of its historical development. Since then researchers of many countries of the world treat the given term as a culture of a group or class (obvious minority of people), which stands out against a dominating culture (a society as a whole): «Subculture is an independent complete formation in the dominating culture, determinative for a style of life and thinking of its carriers and notable for its customs, norms, value complexes and even institutes» [8]. That is a subculture is a culture in culture, and the culture-subculture correlation has been identified as the relation of submission and relative powerlessness. Hence, the process of the concept "subculture" explication is impossible without a focus on a wider concept "culture".

In any interpretation of culture there is an inherent research interest directed on a certain area of culture and determined by the tendencies of science development. For better understanding a set of mutually complementary and sometimes contradictory definitions, Albert C. Cafagna in the work «The Formal Analysis of Definitions of Culture» has made an attempt to classify the existing definitions of culture by dividing them into seven basic groups [14, 11-132].

1. The definitions based on the concept of a social heritage.

2. The definitions based on the concept of taught forms of behavior.

3. The definitions based on the concept of ideas.

4. The definitions based on the concept of behavior general for all members of a society (or standardized).

5. The definitions based on the concept of abstraction of behavior.

6. The definitions based on the concept of superorganic.

7. The definitions based on the idea of naming a class of subjects/phenomena.

Attempts to define the specificity of culture by enumerating its separate structural components, levels and elements seem inefficient to us at least because they cannot be complete and finished. It is enough to add one more component to the description — and the existing definition loses its meaning. Logically more well-founded is the definition interpreting culture as «a set of artificial orders and objects created by people in addition to natural ones, of learnt forms of human behavior and activity, acquired information, images of self-knowledge and symbolical designations of visual environment» [12]. That is we can say that the given definition reflects such approaches to culture as anthropological (a way of human activity in transforming nature, society and man, expressed in products of material and spiritual creativity); axiological (a set of outstanding products of human activity which make his life most comfortable and explainable) and information-semiotic (socially significant information passed on from one generation to another and expressed through values, norms, senses and signs).

Further it is necessary to underline that for the culture to become "dominating", it should prevail in a society, that is it should be a collection of «values, beliefs, traditions and customs by which the majority of members of the given society is guided» [4]. In this meaning it can be opposed to subculture as a culture of minority of the members of the same society, hence, the presence or absence of subcultures is directly connected with the presence or absence of the structured dominating culture, which alternative subculture is. This proposition is extremely important for consideration in our research as on-going global process of transition from monostylous to polystylous cultures makes a culture-subculture correlation problem even more difficult.

The deep analysis of distinctions between monostylous to polystylous cultures is given by L.G. Ionin. He attributes to monostylous cultures the following basic characteristics:

1. The hierarchy of representation ways of dominating outlook and creators of culture or cultural experts.

2. The canonization of forms of cultural representation.

3. The orderliness of cultural activity in space and time.

4. The totalization of culture, which tends to become a universal interpretative scheme exhaustively explaining and interpreting human culture in general.

5. The exception of "alien" cultural elements.

6. The simplification of complex sociocultural whole by means of its own terms, its reduction to a simple and well familiar material.

7. The official consensus proclaiming in a pointed manner the unity of perception and ways of interpretation of cultural phenomena.

8. The positivity meaning orientation to the status quo and legitimizing orientation of culture.

9. The teleology postulating the pre-established public purposes which makes possible their "translation" in private vital aspirations of each concrete person [3, 43].

The polystylous culture has a set of the same categories, but with inverted significations. The destruction of cultural hierarchy leads to the creation of new cultural instances (funds, unions, organizations), which operate irrespective of cultural bureaucracy and do not recognize the uniform rules of cultural interpretations. By-turn the relaxation of genre and stylistic norms promotes the mixture of genres and styles, and the infringement of an existential order of cultural phenomena realization contributes to the organizations of performances at an "inopportune" time, to the relocation of a theatrical scene to auditorium etc.

Culture loses any visible, perceived unity, various systems of signs and symbols, traditions, cultural styles, ways of life begins to co-operate in it. They are often irrelevant to each other internally or even incompatible which makes the orientation to stable cultural samples essentially impossible. In a polystylous culture there appear esoteric groups with own sacral doctrine and consciousness, with own symbols and internal hierarchy, which deny the existing welfare order and any purpose of development of culture, society, the purpose of life, human existence in general [3, 43-44].

Hence, because of the above-stated characteristics a polystylous culture can hardly be considered an accurately expressed dominating culture. Then we will put two natural questions: can subcultures exist without a dominating culture and how in that case they constitute themselves? As to the answer to the first question there are two opposite points of view on this problem in scientific circles.

On the one hand, E.L.Omelchenko prejudices the adequacy of using the term "subculture" in modern trends researches, giving two reasons: firstly that the fragmentation of a modern society makes it almost impossible to single out a dominating culture, secondly that the classical meaning of the term is distorted. Subcultures are stable and exclusive phenomena which develop their own system of symbols, norms, values, language, behavior forms, integral way of life, and a person belonging to a similar group, constantly reproduces this way of life. But the majority of modern communities are mobile and temporary (that is especially characteristic of club cultures and virtual communities), and a modern person has an opportunity to form any set of infinitely various self-representations. «Subcultures in such interpretation are «discursive groups» which concentrate around «their own» signs, symbolical practices and values. They incorporate only for a short time, transforming after that into something new» [9, 118].

On the other hand, indeed the split of Russian modern cultural space which used to possess national and structurally-functional monocentric integrity during the Soviet epoch has segregated the uniform Soviet culture into a multitude of subcultures. Then it is possible to confirm, that they are subcultures which constitute components of polystylous cultures. Then the concept "subculture" matters as it fixes the presence of different cultures within the limits of one society. The acknowledgement to the given assumption is T.B. Shchepanskaya’s words that the concept "subculture" was generated as a result of comprehension of cultural space heterogeneity which has become especially obvious in the urbanized society.

"Culture" used to denote a dominating ethical, aesthetic, world outlook system — professional, supported by elite and proceeding from elite, which received a sacral reinforcement. Everything behind its limits, — secular everyday area — was deprived of "culture" status (compare: ordinary representations about "cultural" and "uncivilized" — behavior, tastes, speech stereotypes etc.). Hence it is obvious that the concept "subculture" originally designated the phenomena perceived as not - or extra-cultural. Now it is read as a designation of "subsystem" of culture, specifying a multicultural character of a modern society» [13].

According to N.N.Sljusarevsky who understands culture as a program of human activity concept, behavior and communication, «a subculture can act not only as an implementer of a big program, but also as a certain alternative or antithesis of a big program, a complete and quite self-sufficient program which can exist both within a program and on its own, as an original spare variant of a sociocultural system development» [10, 121].

In fact, a subculture-dominating culture relation can be correlated with a subsystem-system or a subroutine-program relation, and then it will allow characterizing the variety and heterogeneity of the available whole and possible dynamics in it. But it should be kept in mind that subsystems and subroutines show a real structure of a system or program — their more general level; there should be no opposition in meaning between them. But subcultures to a certain extent carry out a function of opposition to a dominating culture — at least, a function of protection against its excessive claims on cultural uniformity.

From this point of view more logical appears the position of M.J. Matveeva who believes that each culture has a so-called kernel which encloses subcultures that form "an individuality" and image of the given culture, i.e. a culture is a sum of several subcultures. Similar subcultures can be named basic, and they have various propotions of tradition and innovation [7, 19].

Besides, in some cases subcultures can develop regardless of prototype culture, though in simplified forms which replace normal, natural forms of culture if groups are put in an unfavorable, unequal position in a society or are temporarily deprived of an open access to a cultural heritage and possibilities for self-development. In addition, once marginal subcultures can move to the forefront, creating a paradoxical situation - minority (national, sexual, religious etc.) becomes majority in the aggregate [5, 53].

It is impossible to ignore the fact that formation and development of some subcultures is based on borrowing the elements of alien cultures which under the influence of sociocultural features of this or that society assume specific national traits. In particular, a rapid development of youth subculture in West European countries in 60 - 70^th of XX century was characterized by borrowing the elements of North American culture, and the development of youth subculture in Russia was accompanied by borrowing the elements of both North American and West European culture.

The answer to the second formulated question can be found in D.V. Beloborodov’s article «Situation of Russian Cultural Space Split in Modern Sociohistorical Conditions»: «Finding itself in a conglomerate of subcultures, a separate subculture cannot detect its place in the national cultural whole for there is no such a whole for it anymore because the mechanism of identification of this whole is lost and uncertain. Consequently it detects its place among other isolated subcultures, relating itself not as a subsystem to system, but as a subsystem to a subsystem. In this connection, as the unity of a national cultural space is lost, a separate subculture slips through this system level and reach another, world scale, perceiving itself as its direct part. In that case the national cultural context simply loses its necessity» [1].

Actually, thanks to the advent of electronic environment (radio, TV and Internet) the representatives of this or that cultural generality have received a real possibility to find each other wherever they are. The openness of a global information space creates ample opportunities for various groups of people to form their own subcultures, for example subcultures of hackers, crackers, carders, spamers. Intercultural borrowings come to the foreground: less time, than it was just 40 years ago, passes from the occurrence of an innovation till its distribution not only within the limits of the "native" cultural environment, but also in other cultures.

Interaction and interference of subcultures washes away their borders, therefore some subcultures start to integrate, generating thereby forms which are impossible to be opposed according to the presence or absence of any sign. In the conditions of all-round international integration the possibility for fusion, that is formation of a subculture from two, and even three different ones, became almost boundless.

But then it is natural to return to a problem of adequacy of using the term "subculture" for the description of similar cultural communities — both territorially defined, and geographically scattered — after all as a matter of fact they are equivalent participants of the general process of a diversification of modern culture which is considered as a set of various layers of culture. Would be more correct to name them not subcultures, but cultures as such precedents already exist: in the modern scientific literature the terms "youth subculture" and "youth culture" are quite often used as synonyms?

S.I. Levikova in her dissertational research resolutely opposes it, considering that in this case «substitution of concepts takes place: "youth culture" is understood as "culture for young", which is actually an institutional form of a mass culture of the industrially-developed and postindustrial societies focused on specifically consumer market» [6, 108]. She sees the main distinction between the concepts "youth subculture" and "youth culture" in the fact that youth subculture is an urbanistic phenomenon, characteristic for big cities and it has an internal source (young for itself); while youth culture (culture for young) is meant for young men irrespective of the place of their residence and it has an external source (seniors for young) [6, 18].

Agreeing with this point of view, we will try to find out, in relation to what these subcultures are subcultures, not cultures. It is conventional that the reference point in the modern world has changed, as integrating tendencies have led to the formation of a global mass culture meant for all the population of globe, irrespective of a sex, age, creed and other factors. Then all other cultural generalities can be considered as subcultures with their limited circle of adherents, their values and ideas which have difficult and inconsistent interactions with a mass culture.

On the one hand, a mass culture scoops in subcultures new, often incompatible elements: the Algerian erotic chastooshkas, Latin American lambada, national kitchens, etc. All these obvious components of different subcultures become a general property at a certain stage.

On the other hand, subcultures are inclined to shut themselves off from a mass culture, to establish strict borders within which there work concepts distinct from standard ones. As a rule, the bearers of subculture are of a low opinion of their products as soon as the latter get involved in the mass culture sphere of influence. In an inner circle they consider the most prestigious "antimass" works regardless of their own art advantages if they don’t enjoy wide popularity [11, 297].

Hence, subcultures are not a certain homogeneous formation, they are deeply implanted in the general welfare context. Even if they appear on a superficial glance to be switched off of it, subcultures express to a greater or lesser extent a set of values and interpretations which belong to a dominating system of values, broadcast by communication media.

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