Main features of traditional culture. Traditional culture

TO traditional cultures include culture primitive society, those archaic peoples who today remain at a low level of development, as well as all the cultures of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Such cultures are focused on preserving traditions as the main regulators of social life, which initially excludes any innovations. For this reason, there is a conservation of sociocultural and economic structures and relations in society, which gives rise to the idea of ​​​​the limited availability of life benefits. As a result, such a characteristic feature of traditional cultures arises as egalitarianism - the idea that each member of the community should receive a part of the means of subsistence necessary for life, regardless of his excellent labor contribution. Therefore, the ruling classes are forced to limit their demands and give up part of their production to the benefit of the lower classes and poor sections of society. As a result, in traditional cultures there is no motivation to increase production, since all surplus will still be distributed in the form of alms or simply destroyed in wars and raids.

Traditional cultures are characterized by isolation and isolation from other cultures, which, due to their alienness, are perceived as hostile, and relations between people within a traditional culture are built on the principles of solidarity - nobility, locality, justice, respect for members of their community. This is especially noticeable among peoples at a low stage of development. Very often their ethnonym (self-name) means “real people.” The principles of solidarity do not apply to strangers, “fake” people - representatives of other ethnic groups and communities, turning into mutual distrust, hatred, and treachery. Thus, many Australian or African tribes, impeccably honest in their relations with each other, do not consider it shameful to deceive representatives of other tribes or a white man or steal something from them on occasion.

In traditional cultures, the interests of the individual are subordinated to the interests of society, which gives rise to a high level of collectivism and a low degree of personal development. Therefore, the most important moral regulator of the behavior of representatives of traditional cultures is a feeling of shame, not guilt. The fact is that the feeling of guilt expresses the individual’s concern about his inner rightness, and shame expresses concern about how a person’s actions will be assessed by other people - members of his community. This gives rise to a specific attitude of traditional societies towards wealth and wealth. Here, specific labor associated with professional skill and considered as a source of acquisition and consumption of material goods has value. Labor for the sake of accumulation and savings is condemned by traditional consciousness. All excess savings must be directly or indirectly redistributed among all members of the team - feasts, gifts, help in extreme cases, religious donations, etc. Therefore, holidays, rituals, joint discussion of affairs, serving to maintain normal interpersonal relationships, “eat up” a significant part of the accumulated wealth. Hence, from our point of view, actions that are unmotivated when a poor family gets into large debts that it will have to pay off for decades in order to celebrate the wedding of its son or daughter.

The most important characteristic and unit of human value in traditional culture are rank, caste, class divisions, the hierarchy of which is clearly fixed in the minds of each representative of a given culture. Such relationships give rise to obedience, admiration, servility towards superiors and rudeness and contempt towards inferiors. A person's hard work and wealth determine little of his position in society. Caste, religion, family size, which determine a person’s place, are factors over which a person has no control. The result is the fatalism of traditional cultures.

Industrial culture

Industrial culture has specific characteristics in the sphere of economics, politics, social and spiritual life, which in almost all respects are opposed to traditional culture. The formation of modernized (industrial) culture began in the 16th century. V Western Europe and reached its apogee in the middle of the 20th century, being a characteristic current state European culture and the foundation of world civilization.

An industrial society will create mass production in which machine production replaces manual labor. Things are no longer a unique product of a master, but are produced in series and must meet certain standards. Machine production requires the use of new energy sources that replace the muscular energy of humans and animals used in traditional societies, as well as the energy of wind and water. The use of the steam engine begins, which became a giant leap in energy and paved the way for later internal combustion engines, electricity and further - right up to atomic energy, which has been used since the middle of the 20th century.

Based on the capitalist mode of production and the use of complex technology, the modernized culture is forced to break with traditions, since it cannot normally exist and develop without constant renewal. We can say that the most important feature of a modernized culture is the rejection of traditions and a focus on innovation.

Human thinking is fundamentally changing: the role of anthropomorphic images is decreasing, man ceases to consider himself a part of nature, beginning to oppose himself to the world around him. Both thinking and language are becoming more and more abstract, complicating the world of human consciousness, thereby moving the real world away from it. This is facilitated by developing science, which considers nature, society and man as objects for its study. It is no coincidence that the worldview of the New Age was dominated by the picture of a world-mechanism, the laws of which can be studied and used for the benefit of man and society. In industrial society and culture, there is widespread belief in progress, especially scientific progress.

New social conditions determine the formation of specific cultural values. This is an orientation towards achieving success, competition between capitals, statuses, etc., which ultimately gives rise to another characteristic feature - an orientation towards individualism, including the recognition of individual rights, its freedom and independence from society and the state.

The main result of the development of a modernized culture is the formation of a democratic society that guarantees civil, political and property rights of a person, which is enshrined in the relevant political and legal documents.

Industrial society also has deep contradictions. The most serious problem is the alienation of a person from the means and products of production, which deprives work of its former attractiveness. This process reaches its apogee in assembly line production, where a worker is forced to perform the same operation all day long. From the sphere of production, relations of alienation extend to and are clearly expressed in the dominance of the bureaucratic state apparatus over citizens. The feeling of helplessness and dependence that arises in a person becomes the cause of anomie and. These and many other problems of industrial society and culture have become the subject of analysis and criticism by philosophers and cultural scientists.

Post-industrial culture

Post-industrial culture- the result of the further evolution of industrial society. In a number of the most developed countries, this transition began in the last third of the 20th century, so certain features of the new type of culture already exist.

The concept of a post-industrial society began to spread in the United States in the late 1950s. due to emerging new trends. At first new type cultures were seen as the next step in the development of capitalism, associated with scientific and technological revolution, thanks to which labor productivity increases, working hours are reduced, and human well-being becomes higher. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s. major Western thinkers D. Bell, R. Aron, Z. Brzezinski, E. Toffler began to view post-industrial society as a qualitatively new stage in the development of mankind, marked by transformations not only in the technical sphere, but also in all other spheres of culture. At the same time, along with the improvement of human life, global problems appear, which cannot be solved without changing the moral norms and basic values ​​of world civilization.

In the second half of the 20th century. These changes have occurred, which allows us to identify the main features of post-industrial culture. Firstly, there is a change in priorities, the needs of material production begin to go away, making room for man and his needs. Secondly, a new type of property is emerging - intellectual property; expenses are redistributed in favor of science, education, social security and healthcare. Thirdly, it increases middle class, whose share in developed countries exceeds 50% of the population; In this regard, the previous class structures are being eroded, and educational, professional, ethnic, religious and other identities are becoming more significant. Fourthly, the new culture is based on the principles of pluralism, which is manifested in all spheres - politics, religious life, art, fashion. In this regard, large-scale mass production is becoming a thing of the past, and instead it is being replaced by production in small batches, and the quantity of products becomes less important than its quality. Pluralism is also manifested in the decline of the role of former cultural capitals and centers and the increasing role of the province.

Post-industrial society is a “screen” society. is based on the latest computer technologies, media and communications. Thanks to this, a huge amount of information becomes available, and World culture, globalization processes are developing. But at the same time, the possibility of manipulation increases public consciousness government bureaucratic structures, as well as organizations and people with access to information flows. In addition, the “screen” is increasingly replacing the book, forming a new type of person.

Post-industrial culture continues to change dynamically, but this type of culture covers only a few developed countries, and other countries remain left out of these changes.

Traditional culture and modernity

Introduction

Historically, ethnology began with ethnography - description material culture, way of life, traditions and customs of primitive, or, according to modern classifications, unliterate peoples. Throughout the 19th century, data and factual material about these peoples were accumulated. This was also facilitated by the active colonial policy developed countries, since ethnography has always been a science of applied importance: in order to better manage peoples, it was necessary to know their traditions and customs, to avoid gross mistakes when affecting areas of culture that are significant for these peoples.

After the accumulation of sufficient factual material, the stage of generalizations and synthesis began - the level of ethnology - a science that, without abandoning direct observation, strived for broad generalizations. Their goal was to describe and analyze the life of neighboring peoples, to reconstruct the past of a people or to study certain types material objects, rituals and customs based on the material of several ethnic groups.

Modern ethnology goes even further; it is driven by broader generalizations that are valid for all human communities - from the large modern people to the smallest Melanesian tribe. The new direction of ethnological research became especially relevant after the Second World War, which led to the collapse of the colonial system in the world. Liberated peoples and new ones that appeared on political map world states had to find their place in civilized world, join modern culture, master the values ​​and norms necessary for life today. Therefore, the problem of modernizing traditional societies and cultures and integrating them into the modern world has become very acute. The theories of modernization created at this time required solving not only practical, but also theoretical issues. Among them are the reasons for the differences in the perception and thinking of traditional and modern people, the specifics of traditional culture, the possibility of overcoming these differences and transforming traditional society into a modern, modernized one.

It was also significant and important that in the course of such studies it became possible to identify common features in traditional and modernized societies, to identify the role traditional elements in the culture of modern peoples. The study of traditional and archaic cultures also makes it possible to answer some of the most difficult questions of anthropological science about the peculiarities of perception and thinking of primitive man, about the specifics of his culture.

Before moving on to the analysis of the questions we have posed, it is necessary to clarify the terms “traditional culture” and “archaic culture”. The result of a long process of comprehensive transformation of an animal into a human, or the result of anthroposociocultural genesis, was the formation of the immediate ancestors of man, as well as the transition from a pre-cultural state to primitive culture and primitive society. Then, as the methods of transforming nature improve, primitive society and culture change more and more, all cultural and social processes accelerate, which provides a way out of the primitive state. In this case, the homogeneity of primitive society and culture is violated, different types of cultures are formed with their own ways of mastering and transforming the world and nature.

Contrary to traditional ideas, according to which the Ancient East and then antiquity are recognized as the next step after leaving primitiveness, we believe that these types of cultures are not related linear dependence. These types of civilizations had their own sociocultural foundations. Thus, the Ancient East developed on the basis of an agricultural type of activity and created an agricultural civilization with the Asian mode of production as its economic basis and Eastern despotism as a form of statehood. The ancient world, creating its own civilization, focused on the development of crafts and trade, which required slavery and city-states as its economic basis, which gradually came to democracy as a form of government. But in addition to these two well-known paths of human development, many peoples continued to lead a nomadic lifestyle, engaging in cattle breeding, as well as hunting and gathering.

Thus, when humanity emerged from the primitive state, three directions of possible further development were revealed to it. And at each of them, the original forms of primitive thinking, mythology, rituals, moral, aesthetic and artistic consciousness were transformed in a special way, generating Various types culture. Each of them had their own fate. But the culture of nomadic pastoralists (and even more so of hunters and gatherers, which survived in some places) turned out to be a dead-end form in the general perspective of human history. After all, the primitiveness of their life dooms them to an existence close to the life of animals. Due to the fact that the life and consciousness of these people were closest to the primitive state and most stably retained archaic features, historians often do not distinguish this type of culture from the primitive one at all, although this is incorrect. In fact, these are traditional cultures, certainly different from the cultures of agricultural peoples, but possessing the most important property of such cultures - an extremely stable character, denial of any innovations, and very slow change. Such were the civilizations of Egypt, Babylon, India, and China. In many respects they were similar to archaic cultures.

The foundations of a modern, modernized culture, focused on innovation and rapid change, were laid only by ancient civilization, concentrated in city-states, focused on progress and unlimited transformation of the surrounding world. The real development of modernized culture began in modern times, around the 16th century, in Western Europe.

Thus, by archaic cultures we will understand the cultures of hunters and gatherers that have survived to this day in the remote corners of our planet. Traditional cultures are associated with a higher level of economic development - agriculture and nomadic cattle breeding, as well as with an orientation towards stability and sustainability, but in many respects they are similar to archaic ones, and therefore these concepts can sometimes be used as synonyms. The modernized culture that arose in Europe and was oriented towards innovation and progress has today become the basis of world culture, the bearers of which today are becoming the bearers of an increasing number of peoples.

European ethnologists have always been concerned about the differences between archaic peoples and Europeans, about the possibility of their having a special type of thinking, the study of which could not only solve practical issues of relations with these peoples, but also answer the question about the specifics of primitive thinking and culture. Therefore, many major researchers set themselves such tasks.

On this occasion: “God forbid you live in an era of change,” which, in fact, is what is happening today. Returning to the topic of traditional culture in modern society, it is important to note that it is in a kind of “reservation”; national and cultural identity is interpreted in the world as an attempt to protect itself from globalization and a desire for the periphery, since in the center there are common “faceless” cultural...

In the 16th century many Orthodox customs were more developed among the upper classes of society. It was for the boyars that the “Domostroy”, originally created by Ivan the Terrible’s confessor Sylvester, was intended - a charter for exemplary behavior of a subject of the Moscow state. The boyars were the first, following the tsar and the clergy, to begin and end the day with prayer, to pray before meals, to be baptized in the church and at the entrance to the house - on...

Measures to protect and transfer to new generations the spiritual wealth accumulated by folk culture. It should be noted that the question of the program for including folk traditional culture in educational process Primary and basic education has still not been set at the conceptual level that would facilitate the adoption of a number of government decisions and practical steps in the implementation of this...

Obviously, all the peoples of Siberia have the same attitude towards women, their specific role and location in the living space of the house. This is the projection of the social sphere onto the housing plan in traditional culture. The Khanty and Mansi were very sensitive to the world around them. They did not consider themselves smarter than animals; the only difference between man and beast was the unequal physical capabilities of that...

Throughout human history and in the modern era, a huge variety of types of cultures have existed and continues to exist in the world as local historical forms of human communities. Each culture is the result of the activity of its creator - an ethnic group or ethnic community. The development and functioning of culture is a special way of life of an ethnic group. Therefore, each culture expresses the specifics of the way of life of its creator, his behavior, his special way of perceiving the world in myths, legends, religious beliefs and value orientations that give meaning to human existence.

Among the diversity of ethnic cultures, scientists distinguish a type of traditional (archaic) culture, which is common in societies where changes are imperceptible over the life of one generation. This type of culture is dominated by customs and traditions passed on from generation to generation. Traditional culture organically combines its constituent elements; within it, a person does not feel discord with society. Such a culture organically interacts with nature, is united with it, it is focused on preserving its originality, its cultural identity. Traditional culture, as a rule, is pre-industrial, unwritten, and its main occupation is agriculture. There are also traditional cultures in the world that are

are still in the hunting and gathering stage. Currently, the Areal Card Index of Human Relations records more than 600 traditional (archaic) cultures.

For ethnology, the question of the relationship between traditional cultures and modern historical reality is quite natural. Studying this issue, in turn, requires research into the main features of traditional culture.

The most important property of traditional culture is its syncretism, expressed primarily in the integrity and indivisibility of three forms of existence: culture, society and man. Each member of the tribal group is equal to the whole - everyone has the same name, the same body coloring, the same jewelry, the same myths, rituals, and songs. In other words, “I” is completely dissolved in “we”. Man does not separate himself from nature, considering himself the same part of it, endowed with a soul, like plants, animals, mountains, rivers, etc. Syncretism also manifests itself in the structure of culture itself, which has not yet been divided into separate spheres with developed independent functions.

The embodiment of this syncretism is myth - a syncretic formation that perceives the world as a whole and contains in embryo all the spheres of culture that emerged later. In myth there is a coincidence of a sensory image received from certain elements of the external world and a general idea. He does not exist in general concepts, but in concrete sensory images, which leads to the identity of the material world and its picture, the spiritual image created by man. This is not faith or knowledge, but a sensory experience of reality. But most importantly, this way of perceiving and explaining the world determines a person’s place in the world around him and creates a sense of confidence for existence and activity in it. The indivisible holistic thinking that is formed connects, and does not separate, identifies, and does not oppose, various aspects of human life. Therefore, at this stage of the development of consciousness, myth turns out to be many times stronger than analytical thinking.

The second essential feature of non-literate cultures is traditionalism. All the features of the structure of life and everyday life, myths and rituals, norms and values ​​of such a society were stable, rigid, inviolable and passed on from generation to generation as an unwritten law. The power of tradition - this cultural substitute for the genetic method of transmitting behavioral programs lost by humanity - was absolute, consecrated by mythological ideas. After all, myth by its nature claims to be the absoluteness of everything affirmed.

them, requires from each individual the unconditional acceptance of his system of ideas and feelings and their transmission intact from generation to generation.

But no matter how great the power of traditions was, they could not be preserved forever. Slowly and gradually, innovations penetrated the culture; in a single syncretic culture, its separate independent spheres began to stand out; people began to isolate themselves from the world, to realize their “I”, which was different from “we”. This is how traditional cultures arose.

The power of tradition is very great here too. And although human behavior is much more diverse than in archaic culture, it still obeys the norms developed in society. In reality, these norms are presented in the form of a set of special standard programs - behavioral stereotypes. They usually provide in advance most situations that may arise in front of a person in his daily practice. The justification for this kind of stereotypes is a reference to the law of ancestors - the main way of motivating actions in traditional culture. Question: “Why is this and not otherwise?” - simply has no meaning in it, since the whole point of tradition is to do it the way it was done the first time. Thus, it is the past (in the form of ancestral law, myth) that acts in traditional culture as an explanation of the present and future.

These behavioral stereotypes are based not on rules, as in modern society, but on images, models (originally recorded in myths), and following them becomes a prerequisite social life team. Such samples have a syncretic, undifferentiated character. Later, legal, ethical, religious and other norms will emerge from them, which are still contained in them in the form of embryos.

An important property of traditional behavioral stereotypes is their automation. They are committed unconsciously, since in traditional culture a person’s entire life is predetermined in the only possible way, he does not have the right to choose, as in modern society, which is aware that life can follow different, often alternative, paths of development, and the decision is made by the person himself.

In traditional culture, the idea of ​​the existence of a center and periphery is structuring. In the center are sacred elements that define norms, values, ideas about good and evil in a given culture, as well as knowledge about the necessary actions to maintain the harmony of the world. On the cultural periphery - ordinary, everyday life of people. The legacy left from archaic cultures and their syncretism is the principle of unity

the world, the inseparability of its individual constituent elements. There are no objects or phenomena in the world that are absolutely isolated from others. Each of them is connected with other objects and phenomena by many threads and contains their particles. Everything is in everything. In particular, this means that everyday life, the sphere of the profane (ordinary) turns out to be saturated with symbolism, the true meaning of which lies in the area of ​​the sacred. This is how the mythological model of the world is formed, and in traditional culture it continues to play a vital role. Only later stages of cultural development led to the polarization of these two spheres.

The integrity of this culture, combined with the absence of special means of information circulation, leads to the fact that each element of culture is used much more fully than in modern society.

The fact is that for modern man the entire world around him is divided into two parts: the world of signs and the world of things. There is a specialization of sign systems, according to which all phenomena of the world can be used both as things and as signs. Depending on which of their properties are actualized, thinginess or signification, they take on one or another status. A person is constantly engaged in determining the semiotic status of the things around him. This process is automated and occurs on a subconscious level. Three groups of things can be distinguished: with a constantly high semiotic status - things-signs (amulets, masks, flags, coats of arms), they are important not for their material value, but for their symbolic meaning; things with a constantly low semiotic status - material objects that are used in modern culture and can only satisfy specific practical needs; the main group consists of things that can be both things and signs, have material value, satisfying some practical needs, and carry a certain symbolic load. In fact, only last group constitute complete things. The problem is that there are not too many such things in our world, and the extreme rationalism of the modern scientific worldview has taught us not only to the firm belief that sign activity is secondary, but also to the fact that a clear separation of the utilitarian and sign aspects has always existed. And we do not see that this statement is incorrect not only for traditional culture, but also for modern one. Indeed, in our culture, many things for utilitarian purposes have an additional aesthetic meaning or indicate a certain social status their owner. For example, a Rollex watch, a Parker fountain watch, are not just watches and hand-made

coy, but also symbols of belonging to a certain social group, symbols of wealth and respectability.

Therefore, it is impossible to clearly separate the rational and the irrational, including in things. Everything that is capable of influencing the mind, feeling and will asserts its undoubted reality. And in this sense, the symbolic meaning of things is no less real than their utilitarian value. It is also impossible to raise the question of what comes first: thinghood or signification. An object becomes a fact of culture if it meets both practical and symbolic requirements.

All these properties of things are much more clearly visible in traditional culture.

Since in traditional culture the world is perceived as a whole, all things and phenomena of the world simply cannot perform any one function - they are necessarily multifunctional. There are no things-signs, no things-material objects. Any thing can serve both utilitarian and symbolic purposes at the same time. Therefore, traditional culture uses not only language, myth, ritual, but also utensils, economic and social institutions, kinship systems, housing, food, clothing, weapons. For example, even in adulthood Chinese culture bronze vessels were used not only for their intended purpose: their decorations and reliefs carried a large amount of information about the structure of the world, its value orientations, etc. At the same time, we can rightfully say that the main purpose of these vessels is to serve as a source of information about the world, and the possibility of their utilitarian use is a consequence of their main function. Thus, in traditional society things are always signs, but signs are always things.

Therefore, if in modern society we can talk about the existence of material and spiritual culture, then in traditional society such a division will give a deliberately distorted picture.

The fundamental features of the functioning of things in a traditional society appear already in the process of their manufacture. A master in archaic and traditional culture, when creating a thing, realizes that he is repeating the operations that the Creator of the Universe performed at the Beginning of the World. Thus, there arises a fairly clear awareness of the fact that man continues the work of the demiurges, not only making up for natural losses, but also further filling the world. Therefore, the technology of making things has always belonged to the sphere of the sacred. Even in “very distant times”, artisans were separated into separate castes, and their strength and power in the eyes of

" A. P. Sadokhii

tal society went far beyond the scope of crafts, making them mediators between the human world and nature. Even in the last century, Europe maintained a special attitude towards blacksmiths and millers - as sorcerers who knew the devil.

A person of traditional culture maintains a constant dialogue with the natural environment. It is aimed not at conquering nature (as is typical of modern European culture), but at collaborating with it. Therefore, when collecting material to make something, the master had to not just take any suitable material (wood, clay, ore, etc.), but also ask nature for consent. This was necessary so that it satisfied not only physical, but also symbolic requirements, and correlated with such concepts as life, happiness, purity, etc. The materials that were used to make things had a special status - they were the raw materials for the creation of the world and man himself. Therefore, the techniques that, according to myths, were used by the gods in this case, formed the basis of traditional technology. Usually this meant a strict space-time framework for the entire process (to make a thing there and then or to throw away the unfinished), a strictly limited choice of material, a fixed transformation of the material for each specific case with the help of fire, water, air, and, finally, “revival” of the created - because a dead object cannot exist in the living world.

All these steps took quite a lot of time and, from the point of view of modern researchers, included many unnecessary operations (rituals, dances, spells) that were not required in the technological chain. This is the so-called redundancy of technological processes. But it exists only from the point of view of modern man, who does not pay attention to the symbolic world. In fact, it was ritual that gave birth to technology, and not technology that was accompanied by ritual actions. The master performed a ritual, and the fact that it resulted in a useful object was understood as a natural consequence of the correct initial scheme.

Based on this, the forms of all things were strictly fixed, the design of things did not allow any imagination. Here magic came into play, since things were given the shape of some object from the human environment (animal, plant, etc.), and the things were endowed with their characteristics. IN in this case we are faced with phenomena of the same order as hunting magic (before the start of the hunt, a special ritual was carried out - in a magical dance, the hunters had to kill the beast - a shaman in disguise, this was supposed to ensure

success in real hunting). If for our rational mind there is only the function of a thing inherent in the process of its production, then for a mythologically thinking person it is a manifestation of its own, only its inherent features.

It was not enough just to make a thing. New things were always treated with caution. Therefore, before they began to be used, a check was carried out to ensure their compliance with the original samples. Usually these were some symbolic procedures. If a thing did not pass the test, this meant that the ritual of its creation had been violated - usually in some symbolic operations. Such things were rejected and were considered the focus of forces hostile to man, for example, axes that could injure their owner, or houses that brought misfortune to their owners. A satisfactory outcome of the tests meant that a new thing had appeared, which, along with the possibility of its practical use, represented a model of the world and was perceived as a living being with its own characteristics, which was reflected in the name given to this thing. This attitude persisted for the longest time in relation to weapons, especially swords. It is not without reason that not only the names of heroes are known in history, but also their weapons (Excalibur - the sword of King Arthur, Durandal - the sword of Roland).

The full value of things in traditional cultures, their belonging simultaneously to two worlds - the profane (ordinary, material) and the sacred (sign, symbolic) - makes it possible to use them in rites and rituals, which are the most important regulators of behavior in traditional societies.

Throughout human history and in the modern era, a huge variety of types of cultures have existed and continues to exist in the world as local historical forms of human communities. Each culture is the result of the activity of its creator - an ethnos or ethnic community. The development and functioning of culture is a special way of life of an ethnic group. Therefore, each culture expresses the specifics of the way of life of its creator, his behavior, his special way of perceiving the world in myths, legends, religious beliefs and value orientations that give meaning to human existence.

Among the diversity of ethnic cultures, scientists distinguish a type of traditional (archaic) culture, which is common in societies where changes are imperceptible over the life of one generation. This type of culture is dominated by customs and traditions passed on from generation to generation. Traditional culture organically combines its constituent elements; within it, a person does not feel discord with society. Such a culture organically interacts with nature, is united with it, it is focused on preserving its originality, its cultural identity. Traditional culture, as a rule, is pre-industrial, unwritten, and its main occupation is agriculture. There are also traditional cultures in the world that are still in the hunting and gathering stage. Currently, the Areal Card Index of Human Relations records more than 600 traditional (archaic) cultures.

For ethnology, the question of the relationship between traditional cultures and modern historical reality is quite natural. Studying this issue, in turn, requires research into the main features of traditional culture.

The most important property of traditional culture is its syncretism, expressed primarily in the integrity and indivisibility of three forms of existence: culture, society and man. Each member of the tribal group is equal to the whole - everyone has the same name, the same body coloring, the same jewelry, the same myths, rituals, and songs. In other words, “I” is completely dissolved in “we”. Man does not separate himself from nature, considering himself the same part of it, endowed with a soul, like plants, animals, mountains, rivers, etc. Syncretism also manifests itself in the structure of culture itself, which has not yet been divided into separate spheres with developed independent functions.

The embodiment of this syncretism is myth - a syncretic formation that perceives the world as a whole and contains in embryo all the spheres of culture that emerged later. In myth there is a coincidence of a sensory image received from certain elements of the external world and a general idea. It exists not in general concepts, but in concrete sensory images, which leads to the identity of the material world and its picture, the spiritual image created by man. This is not faith or knowledge, but a sensory experience of reality. But most importantly, this way of perceiving and explaining the world determines a person’s place in the world around him and creates a sense of confidence for existence and activity in it. The indivisible holistic thinking that is formed connects, and does not separate, identifies, and does not oppose, various aspects of human life. Therefore, at this stage of the development of consciousness, myth turns out to be many times stronger than analytical thinking.

The second essential feature of non-literate cultures is traditionalism. All the features of the structure of life and everyday life, myths and rituals, norms and values ​​of such a society were stable, rigid, inviolable and passed on from generation to generation as an unwritten law. The power of tradition - this cultural substitute for the genetic method of transmitting behavioral programs lost by humanity - was absolute, consecrated by mythological ideas. After all, myth, by its nature, claims to be the absoluteness of everything it affirms, and requires from each individual the unconditional acceptance of his system of ideas and feelings and their transmission intact from generation to generation.

But no matter how great the power of traditions was, they could not be preserved forever. Slowly and gradually, innovations penetrated the culture; in a single syncretic culture, its separate independent spheres began to stand out; people began to isolate themselves from the world, to realize their “I”, different from “we”. This is how traditional cultures arose.

The power of tradition is very great here too. And although human behavior is much more diverse than in archaic culture, it still obeys the norms developed in society. In reality, these norms are presented in the form of a set of special standard programs - behavioral stereotypes. They usually foresee in advance most of the situations that may arise in front of a person in his daily practice. The justification for this kind of stereotypes is a reference to the law of ancestors - the main way of motivating actions in traditional culture. Question: “Why is this and not otherwise?” - simply has no meaning in it, since the whole point of tradition is to do it the way it was done the first time. Thus, it is the past (in the form of ancestral law, myth) that acts in traditional culture as an explanation of the present and future.

These behavioral stereotypes are based not on rules, as in modern society, but on images, models (originally recorded in myths), and following them becomes a prerequisite for the social life of the team. Such samples have a syncretic, undifferentiated character. Later, legal, ethical, religious and other norms will emerge from them, which are still contained in them in the form of embryos.

An important property of traditional behavioral stereotypes is their automation. They are committed unconsciously, since in traditional culture a person’s entire life is predetermined in the only possible way, he does not have the right to choose, as in modern society, which is aware that life can follow different, often alternative, paths of development, and the decision is made by the person himself.

In traditional culture, the idea of ​​the existence of a center and periphery is structuring. In the center are sacred elements that define norms, values, ideas about good and evil in a given culture, as well as knowledge about the necessary actions to maintain the harmony of the world. On the cultural periphery is the ordinary, everyday life of people. The legacy left from archaic cultures and their syncretism is the principle of the unity of the world, the inseparability of its individual constituent elements. There are no objects or phenomena in the world that are absolutely isolated from others. Each of them is connected with other objects and phenomena by many threads and contains their particles. Everything is in everything. In particular, this means that everyday life, the sphere of the profane (ordinary) turns out to be saturated with symbolism, the true meaning of which lies in the area of ​​the sacred. This is how the mythological model of the world is formed, and in traditional culture it continues to play a vital role. Only later stages of cultural development led to the polarization of these two spheres.

The integrity of this culture, combined with the absence of special means of information circulation, leads to the fact that each element of culture is used much more fully than in modern society.

The fact is that for modern man the entire world around him is divided into two parts: the world of signs and the world of things. There is a specialization of sign systems, according to which all phenomena of the world can be used both as things and as signs. Depending on which of their properties are actualized, thinginess or signification, they take on one or another status. A person is constantly engaged in determining the semiotic status of the things around him. This process is automated and occurs on a subconscious level. Three groups of things can be distinguished: with a constantly high semiotic status - things-signs (amulets, masks, flags, coats of arms), they are important not for their material value, but for their symbolic meaning; things with a constantly low semiotic status - material objects that are used in modern culture and can only satisfy specific practical needs; the main group consists of things that can be both things and signs, have material value, satisfying some practical needs, and carry a certain symbolic load. In fact, only the last group consists of full-fledged things. The problem is that there are not too many such things in our world, and the extreme rationalism of the modern scientific worldview has taught us not only to the firm belief that sign activity is secondary, but also to the fact that a clear separation of the utilitarian and sign aspects has always existed. And we do not see that this statement is incorrect not only for traditional culture, but also for modern one. Indeed, in our culture, many things for utilitarian purposes have an additional aesthetic meaning or indicate a certain social status of their owner. For example, a Rollex watch or a Parker fountain pen are not just a watch and a pen, but also symbols of belonging to a certain social group, symbols of wealth and respectability.

Therefore, it is impossible to clearly separate the rational and the irrational, including in things. Everything that is capable of influencing the mind, feeling and will asserts its undoubted reality. And in this sense, the symbolic meaning of things is no less real than their utilitarian value. It is also impossible to raise the question of what comes first: thinghood or signification. An object becomes a fact of culture if it meets both practical and symbolic requirements.

All these properties of things are much more clearly visible in traditional culture.

Since in traditional culture the world is perceived as a whole, all things and phenomena of the world simply cannot perform any one function - they are necessarily multifunctional. There are no things-signs, no things-material objects. Any thing can serve both utilitarian and symbolic purposes at the same time. Therefore, traditional culture uses not only language, myth, ritual, but also utensils, economic and social institutions, kinship systems, housing, food, clothing, and weapons as semiotic (sign) objects. For example, even in mature Chinese culture, bronze vessels were used not only for their intended purpose: their decorations and reliefs carried a large amount of information about the structure of the world, its value orientations, etc. At the same time, we can rightfully say that the main purpose of these vessels is to serve as a source of information about the world, and the possibility of their utilitarian use is a consequence of their main function. Thus, in traditional society, things are always signs, but signs are always things.

Therefore, if in modern society we can talk about the existence of material and spiritual culture, then in traditional society such a division will give a deliberately distorted picture.

The fundamental features of the functioning of things in a traditional society appear already in the process of their manufacture. A master in archaic and traditional culture, when creating a thing, realizes that he is repeating the operations that the Creator of the Universe performed at the Beginning of the World. Thus, there arises a fairly clear awareness of the fact that man continues the work of the demiurges, not only making up for natural losses, but also further filling the world. Therefore, the technology of making things has always belonged to the sphere of the sacred. Even in very distant times, artisans were separated into separate castes, and their strength and power in the eyes of the rest of society went far beyond the scope of craft, making them mediators between the human world and nature. Even in the last century, Europe maintained a special attitude towards blacksmiths and millers - as sorcerers who knew the devil.

A person of traditional culture maintains a constant dialogue with the natural environment. It is aimed not at conquering nature (as is typical of modern European culture), but at collaborating with it. Therefore, when collecting material to make something, the master had to not just take any suitable material (wood, clay, ore, etc.), but also ask nature for consent. This was necessary so that it satisfied not only physical, but also symbolic requirements, and correlated with such concepts as life, happiness, purity, etc. The materials that were used to make things had a special status - they were the raw materials for the creation of the world and man himself. Therefore, the techniques that, according to myths, were used by the gods in this case, formed the basis of traditional technology. Usually this meant a strict space-time framework for the entire process (to make a thing there and then or to throw away the unfinished), a strictly limited choice of material, a fixed transformation of the material for each specific case with the help of fire, water, air, and, finally, “revival” of the created - because a dead object cannot exist in the living world.

All these steps took quite a lot of time and, from the point of view of modern researchers, included many unnecessary operations (rituals, dances, spells) that were not required in the technological chain. This is the so-called redundancy of technological processes. But it exists only from the point of view of modern man, who does not pay attention to the symbolic world. In fact, it was ritual that gave birth to technology, and not technology that was accompanied by ritual actions. The master performed a ritual, and the fact that it resulted in a useful object was understood as a natural consequence of the correct initial scheme.

Based on this, the forms of all things were strictly fixed, the design of things did not allow any imagination. Here magic came into play, since things were given the shape of some object from the human environment (animal, plant, etc.), and the things were endowed with their characteristics. In this case, we are faced with phenomena of the same order as hunting magic (before the start of the hunt, a special ritual was carried out - in a magical dance, the hunters had to kill an animal - a shaman in disguise, this was supposed to ensure success in a real hunt). If for our rational mind there is only the function of a thing inherent in the process of its production, then for a mythologically thinking person it is a manifestation of its own, only its inherent features.

It was not enough just to make a thing. New things were always treated with caution. Therefore, before they began to be used, a check was carried out to ensure their compliance with the original samples. Usually these were some symbolic procedures. If a thing did not pass the test, this meant that the ritual of its creation had been violated - usually in some symbolic operations. Such things were rejected and were considered the focus of forces hostile to man, for example, axes that could injure their owner, or houses that brought misfortune to their owners. A satisfactory outcome of the tests meant that a new thing had appeared, which, along with the possibility of its practical use, represented a model of the world and was perceived as a living being with its own characteristics, which was reflected in the name given to this thing. This attitude persisted for the longest time in relation to weapons, especially swords. It is not without reason that not only the names of heroes are known in history, but also their weapons (Excalibur - the sword of King Arthur, Durandal - the sword of Roland).

The full value of things in traditional cultures, their belonging simultaneously to two worlds - the profane (ordinary, material) and the sacred (sign, symbolic) - makes it possible to use them in rites and rituals, which are the most important regulators of behavior in traditional societies.