Reproduction or change? Toward a new problematization of cultural phenomena and processes Cover Image

Odtwarzanie czy zmiana? Zarys nowej problematyzacji zjawisk i procesów kulturowych
Reproduction or change? Toward a new problematization of cultural phenomena and processes

Author(s): Marcin Lubaś
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Uniwersytet Łódzki - Wydział Ekonomiczno-Socjologiczny
Keywords: problematisation; anthropological concept of culture; cultural changes; creativity; cultural creolisation; cultural variation; social distribution of cultural information

Summary/Abstract: The text presents an outline of new problematisation of cultural phenomena and transformations. This new problematisation has emerged as a result of the critical debate on the classical anthropological concept of culture which took place in anthropology in the last decades. New problematisation repudiates an idea that cultures form discernible, bounded and complex objects. It focuses on cultural change as a new object of reflection and study. We can find three clusters of problems at the heart of new problematisation, the questions related to the problems of creativity, cultural variation and cultural integration and disintegration. I put forward my own type of questions in order to address these large problems. I draw attention to the conditions of cultural changes, or more specifically to the conditions constraining the scope, tempo, and depth of cultural transformations. I bring these questions to the level of ethnographic analysis. Drawing on my own ethnographic data collected during the fieldwork in Western Macedonia, I attempt to highlight the problem of conditions that constrain the processes of cultural transformations.

  • Issue Year: IX/2013
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 60-88
  • Page Count: 29
  • Language: Polish