The problem of understanding time and space in different cultural traditions. “time is greater than space...” historical and mythological time in the cultural landscape


The first ideas about time arose in the process of differentiation of society from the surrounding world. Becoming more and more autonomous, society acquires its own development time, which arises as a break with the environment. Social time (time of synchronous activity large groups people) at first, as it were, adapts to natural time, and then becomes more and more free from it. The main factor determining the course of social time will be the transformative creative activity of man, through which he changes both himself and environment. Social time can differ significantly from calendar time. So, according to the 19th century calendar. began in 1801 and ended in 1900. But from the perspective of cultural history, but by the standards of social time, it began in 1789 (from French Revolution) and ended in 1914 (with the outbreak of the First World War)

As a result of the interaction of natural rhythms and social time, cultural time gradually emerges, which in many ways is the opposite of natural time (it is reversible, qualitatively heterogeneous, extensible), it represents simultaneously (and entirely) the past, present and future, i.e. it is synchronously visible. These features of cultural time allow us to talk about it as a space of human spirituality.

The first ideas about time were most likely formed in the Paleolithic on the basis of attempts to comprehend the processes of movement and change. The transition from the primitive herd to the first form social community- genus - was a transition from “nature” to “culture”, and therefore required the replacement of natural biological connections that united individuals in the herd with artificial, supra-biological ones; the creation of shared time was extremely important, i.e. life in the same rhythm. Otherwise, joint, i.e., is impossible. coordinated activity. The first rituals created a single rhythm, for which all available means were used - the human voice, clapping, stamping, extracting sound from everything that could sound, as well as joint bodily movements (ritual dances). On this basis, an image of cyclical time was formed, in which there is no clear distinction between past, present and future. Time is considered spiritual, qualitatively heterogeneous (for example, “happy” and “unhappy”), which does not precede relationships, events and things, but is created by them and is not able to exist in isolation from them.

The civilizations that appeared later, in order to overcome the limitations of tribal life, had to find such a standard of rhythm that would make it possible to coordinate the life activities of people over long distances. The first sedentary cultures, for this purpose, established a connection between the flood cycles of the rivers in the valleys of which they settled with the cycles of the heavenly bodies. Therefore, these civilizations are also characterized by a cyclical idea of ​​time. It must be remembered that such representations also remain local.

The idea of ​​a single linear time of culture will only exist in the Christian worldview. It is worth noting that it creates a single cultural time through special mechanisms based on the death of Jesus Christ. It was this event that provided the opportunity to freely move from one rhythm life together to another. In Christianity, time was transformed from an alien force beyond the control of people into a means of educating humanity. Time was supposed to unite people and serve the purposes of creation.

Modern ideas about time could not have appeared without the birth of Protestantism, which for the first time substantiated the need for active human activity here on Earth.
From one point of view, ϶ᴛᴏ contributed to the industrial revolution, which marked the beginning of modern civilization. The new attitude towards time turned out to be economically productive, it forced us to appreciate every moment, not to put off life, hoping for the coming eternity. But on the other hand, the slogan “time is money” leads to a loss of values ​​and a meaninglessness of the world, which has become one of the reasons for the crisis of modern culture.

It was the awareness of these reasons that led to a change in attitude towards time. Today there is a demassification of time (it becomes more individual) and its restructuring. According to E. Toffler, the "third wave" challenged mechanical synchronization, replacing most of our basic social rhythms and freeing us from machine dependence. Back in the 1970s. Flexible time appeared when the employee was allowed to choose his working hours.

Now, as a result of the extreme expansion of cultural space (globalization) and the formation of common time, a new cultural identity. Modern humanity, observing on TV screens and monitors the events taking place in the world, both in real time and in recordings, demonstrates complete independence from natural, calendar, geographical and even social time. At any time of the day or night in any part of the world, a person can view any event, regardless of what real time it occurred. As humanity increasingly realizes that it has a common destiny, time itself as a phenomenon of culture ceases to be “different” (for each culture - ϲʙᴏе), it becomes more and more common, it no longer divides people, but unites them.

E. Hall's cultural grammar

It is worth saying that each culture contains a number of key elements - cultural categories that determine the ways of communication and behavior of individuals. It is important to note that one of the largest specialists in intercultural communication, E. Hall, distinguishes such categories as time, space, context and information flows.

Time as a category in all cultures it serves as an important indicator of the pace of life and the rhythm of activity.
The consequence of this will be time planning, without which the functioning of modern society is unthinkable, as well as the regulation of people's priorities and preferences. The types and forms of communication between people depend on the value of time in a culture. We should not forget that an important indicator of how people treat time in different cultures will be people’s attitude towards punctuality. The material was published on http://site
For example, in Germany, Switzerland and some other European countries, as well as in North America, the early appearance of the interlocutor is usually expected, and there is a certain scale of lateness and for each level of this scale a suitable form of apology is provided. Thus, the unwritten rules of the business culture of European cultures allow you to be no more than 7 minutes late for a meeting. It is important to know that being more late will demonstrate your own frivolity and threaten the loss of the opportunity to gain the trust of your partner. Students waiting in the teacher's classroom can leave after 15 minutes and morals will be restored.

Another very important aspect will be the basic time perspective, which varies significantly between cultures. For example, Iran, India and some countries Far East oriented to the past, the USA - to the present and the near future; Russia is most likely characterized by an orientation towards the past and the future, with maximum attention being paid to the future, and not so much importance being attached to the present.

Time will be an indicator of the pace of life and rhythm of activity accepted in a particular culture. According to the way they use time, cultures are usually divided into two opposite types - monochronic, where time is distributed in such a way that only one type of activity is possible in the same period of time, therefore one follows the other, like links of one value, and polychronic, when In the same period of time, not one type of activity is possible, but several at once.

In monochronic cultures, time is understood as a linear system, like a long straight street, along which people move forward or remain in the past. Here time can be saved, lost, made up, accelerated; With the help of time, order is maintained in the organization of human life. Based on the fact that a “monochronic” person is engaged in only one type of activity in a certain period of time, he, as it were, “closes himself” in it own world, where other people do not have access. People of this type do not like to be interrupted during any activity. The material was published on http://site
It is precisely this system of time use that prevails in many industrialized countries - Germany, the USA, and a number of Northern European countries. Monochronic time will remain only at a high level of development of civilization, and not among all nations.

It is worth saying that polychronic time is the opposite of monochronic time. In cultures of this type, interpersonal, human relationships play a large role and communication with a person is more important than the adopted plan of activity. The material was published on http://site
Typical polychronic cultures include Latin America, the Middle East and the Mediterranean states, as well as Russia. In these cultures, punctuality and daily routine are not given much importance. It is precisely this type of time that is inherent initially in all peoples.

Space. It is worth saying that for a normal existence, every person needs a certain amount of space around him, which he considers his personal space, and intrusion into it is usually considered an attack on a person’s inner world. The dimensions of this space depend on the degree of closeness with certain people, the forms of communication accepted in a given culture, the type of activity, etc.

It is worth saying that each person subconsciously sets and intuitively maintains the boundaries of his personal space, which traditionally do not create problems for communication. These boundaries depend, in particular, on the attitude towards a particular interlocutor.

Yes, friends always stand closer friend to a friend than strangers. Excluding the above, the distance of communication partners depends on factors such as gender, race, belonging to a culture or subculture, specific social circumstances, etc. Hall, based on the results of their observations, identified four zones of communication:

  • intimate - shared by fairly close people who do not want to dedicate third parties to your life. In almost all cultures of the world, it is not customary to invade someone else’s intimate area. Zones of intimate distance depend on a particular cultural environment. Thus, in Western European cultures it is about 60 cm; in the cultures of Eastern European peoples - approximately 45 cm, in the countries of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean - the distance from the tip of the fingers to the elbow. Partners at this distance not only see, but also feel each other well;
  • personal - the distance that an individual maintains between himself and all other people when communicating; ϶ᴛᴏ personal space immediately surrounding the human body and amounting to 45-120 cm. At this distance, physical contact is not necessary. This is the optimal distance for conversation, conversation with friends and good acquaintances;
  • social - the distance between people during formal and secular communication, the distance at which we keep when communicating with strangers or small group of people. The social (public) zone is 120-260 cm. It is worth noting that it is most convenient for formal communication, since it allows all participants not only to hear the partner, but also to see him. It is customary to maintain such a distance during a business meeting, meeting, discussion, press conference, etc.;
  • public - communication distance at public events (meetings, in the classroom, etc.), i.e. distance preferred when communicating with a large group of people, a mass audience. By the way, this zone involves such forms of communication as meetings, presentations, lectures, reports and speeches, etc. The public zone starts from a distance of 3.5 m and can extend to infinity, but within the limits of maintaining communicative contact. That's why the public zone is also called open.

The spatial factor in communication can also serve to express relations of dominance-subordination, and in

Each culture adopts different signals expressing power relations. For example, in Germany and the USA, the upper floors of offices are usually reserved for company executives. At the same time, corner offices with the widest view are traditionally occupied by chief managers or company owners. In Russia and France, managers try to avoid the upper and generally outer floors, preferring to place offices on the middle floors of the building. This is explained by the fact that power and control in these countries usually comes from the center.

Context. The nature and results of the communication process are also determined by the level of awareness of its participants. In some cultures, additional detailed and detailed information is necessary for full communication, since there are practically no informal information networks and, as a result, people are insufficiently informed; these cultures are called low-context cultures. In other cultures, people do not need to receive detailed informationɥᴛᴏto have a clear picture of what is happening, since due to the high density of informal information networks they are always well informed; such societies are called high-context cultures.

The high density of information networks implies close contacts between family members, constant contacts with friends, colleagues, clients, thanks to which they are constantly aware of everything that is happening around them. Countries with a high cultural context include France, Spain, Italy, the Middle East, Japan and Russia. The type of low-contextual cultures includes Germany and Switzerland; North American culture combines middle and low contexts.

Information flows. For the communication process, the importance of information flows is determined by the forms and speed of information dissemination. In some cultures, information spreads slowly, purposefully, through specially designated channels and is therefore limited, while in others the information dissemination system operates quickly and widely.

For example, in northern European countries with monochronic cultures and low context, especially in Germany, the information transmitted is more important than what is already in memory, since here people, figuratively speaking, are fenced off from the outside world and they need external information. This is a type of culture with a low rate of information diffusion. In these countries, everything must have the same structure and order, everything is extremely precisely defined by the rules, and there is little room for personal initiative. People are involved in a flow of information, overloaded with the smallest details. It is worth saying that in order to process it, it is necessary to introduce a large number of rules governing its distribution.

In high-context cultures, which include Russia, France and the countries of Southern Europe, everything happens in the opposite way. These are polychronic cultures with a high speed of information dissemination. People of these cultures are included in an effective informal information network and traditionally do not isolate themselves from possible interference from the external environment. Information passes unhindered, and the data that is stored in memory will be more important than the data that is transmitted again. People are perfectly informed about everything, and they do not need to find out the background of each new event. Overload of information channels does not happen often, since people are constantly in contact with each other. In these cultures, it is not customary to plan a daily routine and all kinds of activities to limit one’s time and space, since they can become an obstacle to vital contacts between people.

Mental programs concept

The concept of mental programs was proposed by one of the largest modern scientists, the Dutchman Geert Hofstede (born 1928), who believes that human behavior largely depends on his mental programs. Under mental programs Hofstede understands “patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.” It is worth noting that he distinguishes three levels of such programs. At the lower level there are universal programs that are similar for all individuals; they are inherited genetically and will be an integral part of human nature. The middle level consists of those mental programs that are specific to a specific group of individuals and are formed through social learning through constant interaction within the group; Hofstede calls models at this level culture. The highest level belongs to mental programs specific to a particular individual, which determine his individuality; These programs are partly inherited genetically, partly formed through learning.

The sources of mental programs will be culture and social environment, i.e. those conditions in which socialization and inculturation of a person occur. This means that mental programs are determined by the so-called dimensions of culture, including: power distance, collectivism-individualism, masculinity-femininity, uncertainty avoidance. Later, another indicator was introduced - long-term orientation.

Power distance shows what importance different cultures attach to power relations between people and how cultures vary regarding this attribute.

In cultures with high power distance, a strong dependence is established between superiors and subordinates. In this case, the emotional distance between superiors and subordinates is very great. The latter must either recognize the authority of his boss, or, completely reject it, break off relations; only in rare cases can they ask questions to his boss, not to mention subjecting him to criticism. In family relationships, family members with authority (parents, older brothers and sisters, etc.) also require obedience. Development of independence is not encouraged. The main virtue is respect for parents and older family members.

In cultures with low power distance, values ​​such as equality in relationships and individual freedom are most important. Therefore, communication here is less formal, the equality of the interlocutors is emphasized more strongly, and the communication style is more consultative than in cultures with high power distance. In such cultures, the emotional distance between superiors and subordinates is insignificant and subordinates can always approach their boss with a question or make critical remarks. Open disagreement or active opposition to the boss is also considered the norm. In family relationships, children have been considered as equal members of the family since that time.

when they begin to actively participate in family life. The ideal state in a family is considered to be personal independence, and the need for independence will be perhaps the most important element of people in cultures with low power distance.

Individualism - collectivism- this is an indicator that people prefer to take care only of themselves and their own families, or to unite in certain groups that are responsible for a person in exchange for his loyalty.

The vast majority of people live in collectivist societies, in which the interests of the group prevail over the interests of the individual; A minority of people on the planet live in individualistic societies, where the interests of the individual prevail over the interests of the group.

In a collectivist culture, group goals take precedence over individual goals. Here people are interested in close-knit groups. Loyalty to the group is one of the most important values; direct confrontation is not encouraged, as it violates the overall harmony. In this case, a relationship of dependence initially develops between the individual and the group. The group protects the individual, but in return demands his loyalty to the group. In such societies there is no such thing as “personal opinion.” A person's opinion is determined by the group's opinion. The collectivist type of culture is currently common in countries such as Guatemala, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Pakistan, Korea; Russia is also considered a collectivist type of culture.

The unit of individualistic cultures is the nuclear family, in which children are taught to be independent and rely on their own strength. Children growing up in small families of individualistic cultures quickly learn to perceive the self as separate from other people. The purpose of education is for the child to become independent, i.e. teach him independence, incl. from parents. In such societies, from physically healthy person he is expected not to be dependent on the group in any way. The cultures of the USA, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and other countries are considered individualist cultures.

Masculinity-femininity. Masculinity is an assessment of people’s tendency to be assertive and tough, focusing on material success to the detriment of interest in other people, while femininity is a focus on home, family, social values, as well as softness, emotionality and sensuality.

Biological differences between men and women, which are the same throughout the world, do little to explain them social roles in society. Many types of behavior that are not directly related to procreation are considered typically masculine or typically feminine in society.

In societies with increased masculinity, the social roles of men and women differ sharply. Here, the generally accepted orientation of men towards material success and rigidity in their positions, as opposed to female values, among which modesty and sensitivity occupy the main place. In cultures of this type, competition, competitiveness and the desire to win are encouraged. In work, priority is given to the result, and rewards are based on the principle of real contribution to the cause. Masculine cultures include Japan, Austria, Venezuela, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, Great Britain, Germany, etc.

In feminine cultures, role differences between the male and female parts of the population are not given much importance. Moreover, both demonstrate great similarities in their positions and views. All members of society pay special attention to spiritual values, such as maintaining relationships between people, caring for others, and attention to people. The preferred way to resolve conflicts is to find a compromise, and rewards for work are based on the principle of equality. Hofstede considers Sweden to be a feminine culture. Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Chile, Portugal and other countries. It can be assumed that Russia also belongs to this series.

Uncertainty avoidance -϶ᴛᴏ is an indicator of how tolerant people are of uncertain situations, they try to avoid them by developing clear rules, believing in absolute truth and refusing to tolerate deviant behavior.

In cultures with a high level of this indicator, an individual in a situation of uncertainty experiences stress and a feeling of fear. A high level of uncertainty, according to Hofstede, leads not only to increased stress in individuals, but also to the release of a large amount of energy from them. Therefore, in such cultures there is a high level of aggressiveness, for the exit of which special channels are created. This will result in the existence of numerous formalized rules regulating actions that enable people to avoid uncertainty in behavior as much as possible. These cultures are more resistant to any change and have little risk tolerance. Countries with a high level of uncertainty avoidance include Greece, Portugal, Guatemala, Uruguay, Belgium, Japan, France, Chile, Spain, etc.

In cultures with low levels of uncertainty avoidance, on the contrary, a tolerant attitude towards situations of uncertainty is adopted. People in difficult situations improvise and take initiative, and are characterized by a tendency to take risks. In countries with such a culture there is negative attitude to the introduction of strictly formalized rules, so they are established only when necessary. In general, people here believe that they can solve problems without detailed formal rules. Cultures with a low level of uncertainty avoidance include countries such as Singapore, Jamaica, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Great Britain, India, USA, etc.

Long term orientation, formerly called Confucian dynamism, shows how a society is pragmatic and strategically oriented towards the future, as opposed to traditionalism and short-term (tactical) orientation.

In societies with a long-term orientation, people recognize the importance of values ​​such as persistence, relationship status, frugality and shame in promoting entrepreneurial activity. Thus, perseverance and perseverance are the key to any entrepreneurial activity; a harmonious and stable hierarchy facilitates the fulfillment of role responsibilities; frugality contributes to the accumulation of capital, which can then be reinvested in business, and, finally, a feeling of shame makes people more sensitive to social contacts and strive to fulfill their obligations. A low level of Confucian dynamism, or short-term orientation, on the contrary, inhibits entrepreneurship. The desire for sustainability and stability when exceeding a certain norm prevents initiative, risk-taking and flexibility, which are necessary for an entrepreneur in a constantly changing market. “Saving face”, excessive respect for traditions is directly related to the rejection of all kinds of innovations. And the mutual exchange of gifts and congratulations, patronage are rituals in which more attention is paid to impeccable manners than to solving assigned tasks.

space, time, interaction space-time continuums in culture, spatial forms of culture, time and culture

Annotation:

The spatio-temporal aspects of culture are considered in the article as the peak manifestations of cultural creativity, expressed in the successes of developed science, the latest technologies, achievements of art, and its relict, archaic formations, similar to those that are still found among the aborigines of the Andaman Islands, the wilds of the Amazon or the interior regions New Guinea.

Article text:

World culture is variegated in time and space, inexhaustible in its individual manifestations, amazingly rich in forms, and diverse. In its current state, it is represented by bourgeois and socialist culture, the diverse cultures of developing countries, etc. Along with this, in the modern state of world culture, there are both the peak manifestations of cultural creativity, expressed in the successes of developed science, the latest technologies, achievements of art, and its relict, archaic formations, similar to those that are still found among the aborigines of the Andaman Islands, the wilds of the Amazon or inland areas of New Guinea. The manifestations of culture taken in their past historical existence are even more multifaceted and multicolored. Not to mention the primitive forms of human life at the dawn of history, even starting with the firmly established Sumerian and ancient Egyptian cultures, the gaze of the researcher encounters an innumerable number of sometimes almost incompatible facts of cultural existence, the unique originality of the facets and shades of cultural phenomena.

The American culturologist R. Redfield spoke very expressively about this, describing the impressions of a person who began to study culture. He tells how, while reading Frazer's famous twelve-volume Golden Bough, he experienced great delight. “As if at a parade,” he writes, “gorgeous and exotic mothers, whose bodies were cast in bronze, masked priests dressed in clothes of the opposite sex, passed in front of me; people anointed with incense and sacrificed to the gods; demons driven out of Cambodian palaces; girls from an Indian village who, upon reaching maturity, were forced to sit alone in the dark; kings slain as gods, and gods who rise from the dead when they are killed - a wild, unimaginable array of taboos, magical rituals and customs associated with marriage, harvest, danger and death. These volumes are reminiscent of the Arabian tales of the Arabian Nights, “a flood of strange and wonderful things.”

And isn’t this what we are faced with when we discover the unfading “Primitive Culture” by E. Tylor, which tells not so much about the primitive culture itself, but about the culture of the unliterate peoples of the last century, collected by him bit by bit and amazing

an abundance of expressive facts. Books by journalists and scientists about our contemporaries, such as “With My Own Eyes” by Yu. Ovchinnikov, “Indians without Tomahawks” by M. Stingle, “Culture and the World of Childhood” by M. Mead and many others like them, contain evidence that even today in different parts of the world, original, inimitable, unique cultures live and operate, sometimes so similar friend at a friend that you are amazed. In any case, there is no doubt that culture, from its origins to the present day, has never been pattern-monotonous, faceless monotonous, it does not resemble sadly identical, assembly-line serial products.

At the same time, diverse forms of culture, no matter how strikingly different they may be from each other, are the product of the same root, identical in their essence as methods of a single human activity. This has long been understood by many astute cultural researchers. Even E. Tylor, approaching the comparative study of cultural forms that differ from each other, emphasized that “the character and morals of mankind reveal the uniformity and constancy of phenomena, which forced the Italians to say: “The whole world is one country.” He rightly believed that any ethnographic museum clearly shows the features of unity, coincidence in objects of material culture and methods of activity, regardless of chronological and geographical distance. This makes it possible, in his opinion, to put side by side the inhabitants of the lake dwellings of ancient Switzerland with the Aztecs, the North American Ojibwe with the South African Zulus, and the English farmer with the Central African black. The indivisibility of the world, the unity of world culture, the common cultural wealth of mankind were recognized by all progressive thinkers as a truly humanistic principle for considering culture.

A concrete historical understanding of culture is based on recognition of the unity and diversity of the sociocultural process. Here the fact of cultural relativity is not denied, but cultural relativism is rejected, which excludes any commonality between cultures, asserting their fundamental isolation, non-interference with each other. What makes world culture unified? After all, one of the features of the world sociocultural development process is the multiplicity of existing cultures and the extreme diversity of value scales. Despite the fact that Europeans and Chinese, Africans and Indians use the same machines, despite the fact that they all descended from the same Cro-Magnons and all belong to the same biological species, they have developed completely different traditions and different scales of values. The way of thinking, living standards, norms of behavior, the nature of art, even among peoples living in the same geographical conditions, are never completely the same; a classic example of this is the peoples of Transcaucasia. Despite the same type natural conditions, where Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians and others live Caucasian peoples, despite the fact that they have lived nearby for millennia, the culture of each of them continues to maintain its originality. And such examples can be given as many as you like.

Thus, we can state the existence of a large number of different forms of organization of the spiritual life of people, even with the relative proximity (and sometimes identity) of the material conditions of their life. And, despite the fact that various means of transport and communication have arisen, despite the migration of fashions that even the oceans separating the continents cannot stop, despite the press, radio, television, this diversity does not even think of disappearing. This is a great benefit for humanity.

In fact, the volume of the “genetic bank” of a particular population, primarily the genetic diversity of its individuals, indicates the stability of the population, its ability to withstand changes in external conditions. And something similar happens in human society. But in addition to the action of genetic factors, social factors are also added. Socio-cultural diversity and a multiplicity of civilizations are emerging. All this gives society certain guarantees that in crisis situations it will be able to find necessary solutions, because culture ultimately contains compressed human experience. Of course, in modern conditions There is a certain unification not so much of cultures as of behavior. The development of technology shows a certain standard of communication, but a Japanese remains Japanese, an Uzbek remains an Uzbek, and an Italian remains an Italian. The peculiarities of their cultures lead to very significant differences in the perception of the world around them - the same expressions completely hide different meaning. It is quite possible that the characteristics of ethnic cultures even tend to intensify; it is no coincidence that they are now talking about a kind of renaissance of these cultures.

However, another feature of the global sociocultural process should be taken into account - its integral unity. It turns out that there are truly universal foundations of that whole, which is called world culture. What is fundamentally common, connecting all human history, making world culture truly whole genetically, historically and systemically-structurally is the civilizational activity of people, which can be called the “mother’s womb of history.” It is the substance of labor and communication that acts as the main connection, the main criterion for unity into totality. In general, human activity determines the common genesis, functioning and natural development of the entire world culture. These provisions relate to the fundamental theses of Russian philosophy, substantiated theoretically and factually.

Unity and interpenetration, communication and isolation, interaction and repulsion, connections and oppositions - all this characterizes the contradictory unity of the indicated features of the world socio-cultural process, the contradictory unity of different forms of cultural existence inherent in humanity from the first steps of its development. All subsequent history revealed the strengthening of the global community of culture. As material production grew and developed, with the transition to a class-differentiated society, contacts between groups of people multiplied and expanded. The unity established by the homogeneity of life activity and the material nature of the relationship to nature was complemented and enriched by direct communication. The English archaeologist G. Child in his book “Progress and Archeology” cited a number of data on the progressive increase in economic and cultural exchange between peoples. So, in the Upper Paleolithic it was carried out within a radius of up to 800 km, somewhere around 2 thousand years BC. - already within a radius of up to 8 thousand km, and by the 8th century. AD covered all of Asia, Africa and Europe. From generation to generation, the integrity of world culture grew, the homogeneity of universal history was established, which emerged on the surface and became visible with the victory of Capitalist relations.

The universality of the sociocultural process in its entirety of this concept is achieved only in the era of capitalism. Integrity here takes precedence over discreteness, the temporal unity of culture (diachronic) in its entirety is complemented by the spatial (synchronic) unity of human culture into a whole where the interaction of its components is already systematically revealed. And if at the initial stage of human development the universal nature of history and culture could not be observed or realized by anyone, although it existed objectively, now we are already observing at a higher level

Quantum mechanics categorically states that we cannot say absolutely anything about an unobservable object, about an object without interaction. The further research goes, the clearer it becomes that the laws of quantum mechanics apply not only to elementary particles in the atom, but also to people in society. “In the last decade, anthropologists have begun to understand that such phenomena are due to a factor that could be called the “cultural Heisenberg effect.” If representatives of Western civilization, be they anthropologists or conquistadors, observe the course of events in a certain region, their very presence can influence the behavior of local residents.”

A functioning emerging world culture, it represents a complex, diverse unity, a symphonic integrity of various original cultures, where the main role is played by the principle of the value of a creative personality.

And finally, let us briefly outline the stages of the evolution of world culture - the stages of ascending evolution. The first stage (or era) here is the culture of gathering and hunting (primitive culture) - an extremely long stage in the development of mankind. If we separated from the animal kingdom about a million years ago (these boundaries can be expanded in the future), then almost 99% of the time that has passed since then belongs to the period of gathering and hunting. The biological and cultural heritage of mankind is largely determined by its experience as a gatherer, fisherman, and hunter. The leading factors of primitive culture were food, sex life and self-defense. It was these three main variables of evolutionary history that determined the structure human society right up to the birth of agriculture.

The next stage in the development of world culture is an agricultural culture, the existence of which covers the caveman and Goethe, the collection of wild wheat seeds and the invention of the steam engine. Agrarian culture constitutes an era lasting 10 thousand years, characterized by low rates of development, its basis was agriculture and cattle breeding. Agriculture originated approximately 8 thousand years BC, and the present industrial production began sometime around 1750 AD. Thus, the golden age of European absolutism, one of the symbols of which is the famous Court of Versailles, is part of the agrarian culture. For greater clarity, this era can be divided into four stages: The period of small states (8000 - 3500 BC). The period of ancient empires (3500 - 600 BC). The period of ancient states (600 BC - 500 AD) The period of European hegemony (500 - 1750 AD). The formation of states is one of the most visible and enduring features of the history of human behavior, and along with the advent of writing, it is often called the initial milestone in the development of civilization.

During the era of agrarian culture, the nature of the state structure changed depending on the conditions that developed within the framework of the above stages. After all, the state is, on the one hand, a manifestation and result social behavior of a person in an agrarian culture, and on the other hand, a consequence of the struggle for the right to dispose of surplus. In general, the development of a new way of life, which presupposed the presence of a state, powerful rulers, temples, a plow, a wheel, metals, money and writing, was accompanied by a change in human behavior and an increase in the pace of cultural evolution.

Ultimately, the acceleration of cultural evolution led to the emergence scientific and technical culture, which originated in the industrial era (the beginning dates back to 1750) and began its victorious march in the world, starting with late XIX V. and to this day. The importance of considering human behavior in its entirety should be emphasized here. Scientific and technological development within the framework of cultural evolution cannot be understood by studying only the achievements of science and technology; cultural evolution is always a question of changing human behavior. Therefore, the true evolutionary significance of even the most theoretical science and the most advanced technology can be proven by their influence on changes in human behavior and can only be understood starting from behavior associated with the provision of food, reproduction, security and information. It is likely that as a result of the coming millennia of accelerating cultural evolution, man will be able to become a conqueror of outer space, the creator of fully automated production, etc.

Now let's look at the basic concepts of culture that enjoy significant fame. First of all, let's pay attention to the book by N.Ya. Danilevsky (1822-1885) “Russia and Europe”, which substantiates the concept of multilinear and closed development of cultures. Using rich empirical material, he put forward a theory of cultural-historical types, which had a great influence on modern Western philosophy of culture. This theory is a theory of the plurality and diversity of human cultures (or civilizations), which contradicts the Eurocentric and linear concept of world culture. Our scientist is characterized in the West as the founder of the now popular approach there to the spatio-temporal localization of cultural phenomena. N.Ya. Danilevsky divided all original civilizations into three classes: positive, negative figures and civilizations serving other people's goals. The first includes: Egyptian, Chinese, Assyrian, Indian, Iranian, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Arabian, German-Roman (European) and Buryat. To these should also be added the Mexican and Peruvian civilizations that did not have time to complete their development. These cultural-historical types represent positive figures in the history of mankind; they contributed to the progress of the human spirit. The second class is formed by negative cultural and historical types (Huns, Mongols, Turks) that help “to give up the spirit of civilizations struggling with death.” The third class includes those civilizations that are beginning to develop (the Finns, etc.), which are not destined to play either a creative or destructive role in the history of mankind, because they became part of other civilizations “as ethnographic material.”

According to the theory of N.Ya. Danilevsky, humanity is by no means something unified, a “living whole”; it is rather a living element, cast into forms similar to organisms. The largest of these forms are “cultural-historical types”, which have their own lines of development. There are common features and connections between them that express a universal humanity that exists only among the people. The originality of the main idea of ​​N.Ya. Danilevsky is that a single thread in the development of mankind is rejected, the idea of ​​history as the progress of a certain common, or “world” mind, a certain common civilization, which is identified with European, is rejected. There is simply no such civilization; there are many developing individual civilizations, each of which makes its own contribution to the common treasury of humanity. And although these civilizations come and go, humanity lives on, constantly using this common treasure and becoming more and more rich.

But why do cultures (or civilizations) change?

According to P. Sorokin, the movement of cultures is immanent, it does not depend on the action of extraneous factors, as evolutionists assumed. Cultures change due to their nature - the carriers of culture strive to exhaust the forces inherent in it and bring them to the limit; then we have to turn to other principles and move towards a different type of culture (the influence of space will be shown later).

In general, it turns out that in P. Sorokin’s theory of supersystems there are only two morphological principles - ideal and sensual (material) - that determine the type of culture and the corresponding type of worldview. Each specific form of a cultural supersystem (language, morality, art, philosophy, religion) is determined by a morphological principle and is closed in itself. However, P. Sorokin not only does not accept the concept of local cultures, but also rejects it as “unscientific.” This is the fundamental difference between P. Sorokin’s theory of supersystems and O. Spengler’s “morphology of cultures.” The Sorokin supersystem has no restrictions in space and time. The culture of one people cannot be isolated from the culture of another people or civilization. Contacts between cultures have always been and are becoming increasingly intense; The development of science, art, morality is also always connected with time, i.e. with cultural achievements in the past.

For example, an important place in Aztec culture belonged to the calendar, expressing the Aztec vision of the cosmos. The concepts of time and space inherent in the era of that time were associated with it; ideas about the gods and the spheres of their activity, as well as obligatory rituals, were reflected in it. According to this calendar (there was another, solar, calendar, consisting of 18 twenty-day months and 5 additional days), the year was equal to 260 days, it was divided into 20 periods of 13 days each, designated by certain signs and numbers. They were ruled by certain gods or goddesses. The number of days in a YEAR was also divided into 4 large ensembles, each of which numbered 65 days and was associated with one of the cardinal directions. In a similar way, gods and people were connected with the cardinal points.

This concept of the division of time and space is an extremely important component of the Aztec cultural worldview, affecting both the life of the individual and the destinies of the entire community. The newborn was given the name of the day when he was born, and this day was subordinate to a certain deity, for it was part of one of four 65-day ensembles, which in turn was associated with a certain side of the world and the deity ruling over it. All these circumstances determined the future of the new person, “programming” exactly this and not another course of life.

The approach to the interaction of space-time and culture in Eurasian communities is different from that discussed above.

We see a slightly different approach to the relationship between space-time and culture in Eurasian cultures. Recently, the cultural and historical concepts of Eurasianism, an original movement of Russian thought, whose heyday occurred in the first third of the 20th century, have come to life. After 1917, a group of Russian emigrant intellectuals (N.S. Trubetskoy, P.N. Sabitsky, V.N. Ilyin, M.M. Shakhmatov, G.V. Vernadsky, L.P. Karsavin, etc.) became call themselves “Eurasians” and declared themselves with the program collection “Exodus to the East. Premonitions and accomplishments. Statements of the Eurasians." The new ideology they formulated was particularly suited to the problems of culture, history and ethnology.

Eurasians coined a geopolitical doctrine that claims to be the only correct interpretation of ethnic tradition. The main thesis of Eurasianism is as follows: “Eurasianism is a specific form, type of culture, thinking and state policy, which have been rooted since ancient times in the space of the huge Eurasian state - Russia.” This thesis was substantiated with the help of many unconventional arguments taken from the history of Eurasia.

All the arguments of Eurasianists are based on the idea that Russia-Eurasia represents a unique geographical and cultural world. “The whole meaning and pathos of our statements,” wrote N. Alekseev and P. Savitsky, “come down to the fact that we recognize and proclaim the existence of a special Eurasian-Russian culture and its special subject, as a symphonic personality. The vague cultural self-awareness that the Slavophiles had is no longer enough for us, although we honor them as those closest to us in spirit. But we resolutely reject the essence of Westernism, i.e. denial of the identity and... the very existence of our culture.”

The core of the cultural and historical concepts of the Eurasians is the idea of ​​Eurasia, which outlines the boundaries of thinking in its social, economic and political aspects and focuses on the originality and self-sufficiency of national culture. According to Eurasian thinking, culture is an organic whole that has all the features of a mythologeme. This means that culture is very unusual - its geographical character is determined by: firstly, a subtle awareness of the organic connection between social life and nature; secondly, the continental scope (“Russian latitude”) in relations with the world; thirdly, any historically established forms political life are seen as something relative. The Eurasian appreciates tradition, but feels its relative nature and does not put up with its rigid limits. The Eurasian type of thinking is not tied (like the Western one) to any state or political framework; it allows for unpredictable social experiments and explosions of the people's element. Eurasian cultural consciousness did not accept such characteristics of Western civilization as “German pedantry”, “Polish arrogance”, rationalism, crowded cities and environmental costs.

The Eurasian way of thinking and action is based not on the rationalization of experience, but on faith in the Absolute, tradition, leader, etc.; they are always based on some unifying idea. Russian culture has absorbed Orthodox faith from Byzantium (it represents a specific synthesis of religious dogmas and rituals with Orthodox culture) and Turanian (or Turkic) ethics, perception of statehood and human rights) based on unquestioning obedience. It was this alloy that gave the social whole the form of conciliarity, spiritual unity, and not a mechanical totality. It is this synthesis that underlies cultural and historical continuity and allows us to preserve the national potential that is necessary for the functioning of our society.

The central point of Eurasian cultural and historical concepts is the idea of ​​“place development”, according to which the socio-historical environment and geographical environment merge into one. From this point of view, world history appears as a system of places of development; Moreover, individual “places of development” have their own specific forms of culture, regardless of national composition and the racial origin of the peoples who lived there. In other words, individual “places of development” become “culturally permanent”, become carriers of a special type of culture inherent only to them. According to Eurasians, all the great powers that existed on the Eurasian plains were characterized by the same type of military empire. These were the states of the Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Tatars, the Muscovite Kingdom and the Russian Empire. They considered the origins of Russian statehood and culture Golden Horde and Byzantium.

Here is an example of a contemplative (not tied to geographic location) interaction between space-time and culture. The ancient culture of Hellas is permeated with art, as Winckelmann pointed out. Greek philosophy is very closely connected with aesthetics, even without it, as the prominent Soviet scientist A.F. convincingly showed. Losev, cannot be understood. Greek mathematics, philosophy, physics, astronomy, religion are “sculptural and tangible,” Greek poetry is “plastic.” Plasticity and contemplation are the basis of the Greek worldview. After all, plastic art was created for contemplation, and it is primarily bodily. Vision is the basis of ancient Greek knowledge. Therefore, vision plays an important role in ancient Greek epistemology: “idea” and “eidos” (picture) come from the verb “to see” in Greek. Hence the love of the Hellenes, first of all, for plastic, static forms of art - architecture and sculpture. Their works can be viewed calmly. They are unchanging, spatial and do not depend, at least throughout human life, on the passage of time. These are equal members of the cosmos, although not equal to nature. Hence the ontology of the main categories of Greek aesthetics: good plastic beautiful. Beauty is associated with the motionless, the unchanging. The structural principles of beauty are harmony, measure, proportionality. These principles are most fully embodied in the ensemble of the Athenian Acropolis with its famous temples of the Parthenon, Erechtheion, and Propylaea, this crystal of Greek classical art. The Acropolis was also populated with many sculptures (a wonderful sculptural group depicting the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, a beautiful group of Moira, etc.), resembling the marble Olympus.

In conclusion, I would like to say about the relationship between space-time and cultural processes in Russia in the 19th - 20th centuries. They have their own characteristics. There is a noticeable acceleration in the pace of cultural development, due to differentiation (or specialization) various fields cultural activity (especially in science), and on the other hand, the complication of the cultural process itself, i.e. greater “contact” and mutual influence of different areas of culture: philosophy and literature, literature, painting and music, etc. It is also necessary to note the strengthening of the processes of diffuse interaction between the components of Russian national culture - the official (“high”, professional) culture, sponsored by the state (the church is losing spiritual power), and the culture of the masses (“folklore” layer), which originates in the depths of the East Slavic tribal unions, formed in Ancient Rus' and continues its full-blooded existence throughout national history. In the depths of the official state culture there is a noticeable layer of “elite” culture, serving the ruling class (the aristocracy and the royal court) and having a special receptivity to foreign innovations.

Born as a result of the collision of traditional culture with the Western world, when, according to the well-known formula of A. Herzen, “Russia responded to Peter’s call to be civilized with the phenomenon of Pushkin,” Russian culture, having absorbed and in its own way melted the fruits of secularized European civilization, entered its classic "golden age". Then, in response to the new, nihilistic spirit of the times, relying on the spiritual strength of “holy Russian literature” (T. Mann), a philosophy rises at the end of the century, which sums up the development of the spirit of the “golden age” of the classics.

LITERATURE

  1. Herder I.G. "Ideas for the philosophy of human history." M„ 1977.
  2. Davidovich V.E., Zhdanov 0.A. "The essence of culture." Rostov n/a 1979. Kuusi P. “This human world. M„ 1988.
  3. Mead M. “Culture and the world of childhood.” M., 1988.
  4. “The structure of culture and man in modern society” E.A. Orlova, A.I. Arnoldov. M., 1998.

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Culture can be studied based on the dynamics of socio-historical development, when a change of generations occurs. Each generation masters what it has inherited and continues the inherited activities; at the same time, it changes this activity due to new conditions. In this regard, the concept of “culture” captures the human content aspect of social relations; it can be defined through the objects involved in the process of social production (objects, knowledge, symbolic systems, etc.), ways of activity and interaction of people, mechanisms for organizing and regulating their connections with the environment, criteria for assessing the environment and connections with it. Here culture is understood as a process, result and field for the implementation of human potential at a given time.

Culture acquires social influence, first of all, as a necessary aspect of the activity of a social person, which, by its nature, involves the organization of joint activities of people, and, consequently, its regulation by certain rules accumulated in sign and symbolic systems, traditions, etc. The development of the spiritual treasures of the peoples of the world, the careful and, at the same time, appropriate to modern tasks handling of the cultural wealth of previous generations makes it possible to comprehend the meaning of the forgotten lessons of history, makes it possible to identify living, developing cultural values, without which neither social progress nor personal improvement itself is possible.

The history of world culture is based on the concept of the interconnection of the cultures of the world, their interaction. Associated with this concept is the cultural diffusion model, i.e. intercultural borrowings are carried out using the following mechanisms: conquest, when essential elements of a more developed culture are introduced into a less developed culture (weapons technology, elements of strategy, elements of the power structure, certain ways political integration), peaceful borrowing and voluntary imitation of examples of another culture (art, urbanization, professional specialization, organizational differentiation).

Culture is distinguished by the everyday layer and its specialized spheres - art, religion, philosophy, science, as well as political, economic and legal areas, which are focused both on maintaining social order and ensuring the social significance of people's knowledge and behavior.

World culture is variegated in time and space, inexhaustible in its individual manifestations, amazingly rich in forms, and diverse. In its current state, it is represented by bourgeois and socialist culture, the diverse cultures of developing countries, etc. Along with this, in the modern state of world culture, there are both the peak manifestations of cultural creativity, expressed in the successes of developed science, the latest technologies, achievements of art, and its relict, archaic formations, similar to those that are still found among the aborigines of the Andaman Islands, the wilds of the Amazon or inland areas of New Guinea. The manifestations of culture taken in their past historical existence are even more multifaceted and multicolored. Not to mention the primitive forms of human life at the dawn of history, even starting with the firmly established Sumerian and ancient Egyptian cultures, the gaze of the researcher encounters an innumerable number of sometimes almost incompatible facts of cultural existence, the unique originality of the facets and shades of cultural phenomena.

Today, in different parts of the world, original, inimitable, unique cultures live and operate, sometimes so different from each other that you are amazed. In any case, there is no doubt that culture, from its origins to the present day, has never been pattern-monotonous, faceless monotonous, it does not resemble sadly identical, assembly-line serial products.

RUSSIAN STATE HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY

“Time in Culture”

First year student

Faculty of Art History

Gurova O . N .

Scientific director

Asoyan Yu.A.

Moscow 2004

The question of time currently occupies the most important areas of modern knowledge, starting with philosophy and ending with applied mathematics, however, not limited to them. Apparently, such interest is, first of all, due to a person’s passionate desire to reduce time - that is, a category that is very difficult to comprehend, and even more difficult to subordinate, to real facts, that is, to replace the problem of time itself with a question about the relationship of things. V.N. Muravyov gives the following definition to the concept of “Time” - if we consider it as reality, then it is nothing more than change and movement. Mastery of time is one of the main reasonable goals of a person. Man creates certain phenomena and, thus, is the ruler of their time. All types of human activity can be combined into complex concept creative work.

Based on the above, we can pose the question: what general concept can express the results of the transformation of the world by man? Such a concept exists, but apparently its definition is not yet sufficiently formulated. The concept is culture. A world without culture is a world in which there are no results of human activity. A world with culture included in it, or even a world transformed into a certain culture, is a world with the imprint of human creative efforts on it. Thus, cultural transformation is a form of mastery of time.

Culture is the result of the creation of time, since every act that changes the world is such a creation. The formation of time is accomplished through the affirmation of the duration of any values ​​that resist the “corrosive” power of time. Interestingly, we can often see how a disappeared culture reappears in the same or new forms (for example, the Renaissance).

Thus, separate cultural achievements are islands of land in the changing ocean of time, and the increasing frequency of their appearance triumphs over this element and replaces it with organized time, consciously created by man. Of course, it should be taken into account that, probably, 99.99% of the values ​​created by people either perish or their impact is negated by the destructive force of the blind stream. However, firstly, since something took place, it means that the mathematical possibility of it exists in nature in the form of a certain combination of elements. Secondly, the fragility and insignificance (in a real, practical sense - this does not mean that the achievement had an objective low value, we mean the impact on a universal human scale) of real changes must be attributed to the specific nature of the cultures that have hitherto existed in humanity, including modern. For the most part, these cultures belong to the so-called “symbolic” - that is, they consist almost exclusively of creativity and the transmission of certain records and formulas. Accordingly, these cultures care little about putting the learned laws into practice. This concept of symbolic culture should be contrasted with the concept of real culture, in which the center of gravity lies in the work on implementing existing cultural patterns in life.

The distinction between the symbolic and real aspects of culture is important for the question of whether culture fulfills its main function of forming time. Part of culture, undoubtedly, must consist of symbols, and their specific role as stimulants and guides of action finds a place in culture and has a certain value. This is the role of thought, expressed in philosophy and science, in knowledge in general. In every culture, philosophy and science serve as tools for overcoming time rather than overcoming time itself. Likewise, the intuitive knowledge provided by artistic perception creates projects and symbols in the field of artistic creativity, and art, from this point of view, is a condition or tool for overcoming time.

As for the real types of human activity, they change the world in three main areas: in the area of ​​creating life, creating new living ones or resurrecting the dead - let's call this area genetics; in the field of changing relationships between people and personality changes - the field of politics and ethics; and, finally, changes in the world in the form of transformation of material things - the field of production.

The first type of real and cultural “doing” includes, first of all, activities that create new life through semi-conscious processes. This refers to the generation of new living beings through sexual intercourse. Here the creative act cannot always be called conscious. Consciousness has been brought into it recently by the development of science, actively working on artificial insemination and cloning. But, in any case, research on this topic has not only not been completed, but has not yet received ethical and political approval throughout the world, so for now we cannot talk about it as a system.

The second real science, politics, contains a field of action aimed directly at changing human personality and relationships between people. Another part of politics is public activity, where changes in public institutions are carried out. The sphere of influence of politics is extremely limited - it stops where the irrational physical nature of man begins. However, this area also creates conditions for time management - there is an opportunity for improvement of the person himself, as well as human relationships and institutions.

The third type of real cultural activity is production. Production is divided into activities that create tools of production, and activities that directly create new cultural objects. In both cases, but especially in the second, the ability of production to overcome time is manifested, since each created thing, while it exists, stops the time defeated by its creation.

Thus, the result of human time-shaping activity in history is the creation of culture. I would like to note once again that the main condition for mastering time through cultural activity is the combination of its two types: symbolic and real. The departure of art into the realm of pure aestheticism is just as detrimental to real culture as the departure of philosophy and science into pure theory. Just as production is blind without art, so art is powerless without production that changes the world.

It should be noted that the above was not always so relevant for a person, and perhaps it was not an axiom. Throughout history, the sense of time has been different in different periods of social development. There is no doubt that the man of Antiquity felt time differently than the man of the Middle Ages, who also saw it differently than our contemporary.

Now time is perceived as pure duration, an irreversible sequence of events from the past to the future. Time is objective, its quality is independent of the matter filling it. Our time is chronological. According to A.Ya. Gurevich, a person is not born with a “sense of time”; his time concepts are always determined by the culture to which he belongs. The industrial and, especially, information society is characterized by a conscious attitude to time.

In ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, there were people who thought about the problem of the irrevocability of fast-flowing time, but by and large, never in previous eras was time valued as highly as it is now, and did not occupy such a place in the human consciousness.

In mythological consciousness, this category does not exist as a pure abstraction, since the very thinking of people at the archaic stages of development was predominantly concrete, objective-sensual. Their consciousness embraces the world simultaneously in its synchronic wholeness, and therefore it is timeless. With the myth of time regeneration, archaic culture gave man the opportunity to overcome the transience and one-time nature of his life. Without separating himself from the generic social body, man cheated death.

It is interesting that a similar place in society is given to a person under totalitarianism - a person is a “cog” in a machine, there is no provision for an afterlife - but a person is not immortal - he is part of an eternal and nameless system. However, based on historical experience, one can be convinced that the totalitarian system is not stable and viable.

Returning to primitive thinking, in its system the past, present and future are located, as it were, on the same plane; in a certain sense, they exist simultaneously. Ancient man saw both past and present tense extending around him, mutually penetrating and explaining one another. Time orientation in primitive society extends only to the near future, the recent past and current activities, and everything lies beyond these limits, is perceived vaguely and poorly coordinated.

It is very important that for primitive consciousness time is not a neutral and objective category, as for modern man, but powerful mysterious forces that control all things, the lives of people and even Gods. Therefore, primitive time is emotionally and value-rich - it can be good and evil, favorable for some types of activity and dangerous for others, there is sacred time, a time of celebration, sacrifice. At this stage, linear time does not predominate in human consciousness, it is subordinated to the cyclical perception of life phenomena, because it is repeating time that underlies the mythological ideas that embody the worldview of primitive man.

Many of the great civilizations of antiquity were characterized by the fundamental idea that the ever-lasting present is inextricably linked with the past. The ancient Chinese perception of time is a cyclical sequence of eras, dynasties and reigns. In India, the symbol of time is the wheel, a constantly rotating cycle of birth and death. The ancient Egyptian pyramids can serve as a monument to stopped time. The world, in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, came ready-made from the hands of the creator, the past and the future are present in the present.

As for the temporal perception of the ancient Greeks, they too remained under the strong influence of the mythological understanding of reality. The world is perceived and experienced not in terms of change and development, but as being at rest or rotating in a great circle. The events taking place in the world are not unique, successive eras are repeated, and once existing people and phenomena will return again after the “great year” - the Pythagorean era.

The plastic arts of Greece embodied precisely this attitude towards time - the interpretation of the body indicates that the ancients saw in the present moment the fullness of being, complete in itself and not subject to development. Hellenic consciousness is turned to the past, the world is ruled by fate, which is subject not only to people, but also to the Gods, and, therefore, there is no room left for historical development. The Greeks seem to be people who move backwards towards the future. This worldview, which can be called static-cyclical, undergoes a certain transformation among the Romans.

Roman historians are much more susceptible to the linear flow of time, and the course of history is interpreted based on certain moments of actual history - the founding of Rome, etc. however, their worldview was not ready to perceive history as the unfolding of human free will.

In ancient times, people were unable to break out of the circle of natural existence and oppose themselves to nature. Their dependence on nature and the inability to recognize it as an “object of influence” finds its clear expression in the field of culture in the idea of ​​the internal analogy of the “microcosm” man and the “megacosm” world, having a single structure and consisting of the same elements. Only during the Renaissance did a transition to a different worldview and a new awareness of man himself begin.

Thus, the inevitability of time, which seems natural to our consciousness, moreover, without it it is generally impossible to think about time, is not such at all if we go beyond the views (historically conditioned and inevitably limited - as in any other era) inherent in people of modern times. us civilization. “Our” linear time triumphed as a unified frame of reference in Europe as a result of a very long and complex historical development.

The historical milestone that marked the beginning of a new awareness of time can probably be considered the late Middle Ages, when there was a rise in the urban population, with economic practices and a style and rhythm of life that differed from agriculture. As Le Goff puts it, there is a transition from “biblical time” to “merchant time.” However, this did not mean the end or withering of the Middle Ages, but entailed differentiation of the traditional picture of the world, previously uniform for the entire society.

Speaking about the time of the Middle Ages, it should be noted that people recognized time not visually, but by sound. The entire life of the population was regulated by the ringing of bells, in keeping with the rhythm of church time.

Since the pace of life and activities depended on the natural rhythm, the constant need to know exactly what time it was could not arise, and the usual division into parts of the day was enough. A minute was not perceived as a segment of time and an integral part of an hour. For a very long time after the invention of watches, they did not have a minute hand installed on them.

The division of nature into parts of the day was perceived accordingly - the night was a time of dangers and fears, demons, and other dark forces. The opposition of day and night was perceived as symbols of life and death. Winter-summer received the same rating. These oppositions had ethical and sacred overtones.

In addition, the birth time also retained its meaning. Feudal lords took care of their genealogies, tracing the family back to distant, often glorious, legendary ancestors. An influential medieval person is a person in whom time has condensed in the form of many generations.

However, this only applied to the nobility. As for the common people, history was almost absent from the consciousness of the peasants. Folk ideas about the past are most likely mythopoetic utopias.

In general, earthly time was not perceived either as the only time or as a true time. Along with it, sacred time also existed, and only it had true reality. In the Christian worldview, the concept of time was separated from the concept of eternity, which in other worldview systems absorbed earthly time. Eternity is immeasurable by time periods. Eternity is an attribute of God, but time is created and has a beginning and an end. In addition, historical time acquires a certain structure, dividing into two eras - before the birth of Christ and after it. History moves from the act of divine creation to the Last Judgment.

Thus, the new awareness of time is based on 3 defining moments - the beginning, culmination and end of the life of the human race. Time becomes linear and irreversible. Historical time in Christianity is dramatic, and the drama consists of a dualistic attitude towards the world and its history. Earthly life and all history is an arena of struggle between good and evil. And these forces are rooted in man himself, and the free will of man is necessary for the triumph of good. Earthly life acquires its meaning only by being included in the sacramental history of the salvation of the human race.

The ideas of historical time were perceived in anthropomorphic categories common to medieval man. Popular in medieval philosophy was the concept of world-historical eras, understood as the ages of humanity - from the creation of Adam to the flood (childhood), to Abraham (childhood), to David (adolescence), to the Babylonian captivity (youth), to the Nativity of Christ (maturity) and until the end of the world as old age. This carried a tinge of historical pessimism - the last, sixth age of history, the age of decrepitude, had arrived.

The idea of ​​an aging world and an approaching catastrophe was the basis of the thinking of medieval people. But it was precisely for this reason that knowledge of history was considered necessary. History performed an educational function, giving people examples that had lasting meaning. But historical logic was very different from modern one. Its integral feature was anachronism - the past was depicted in the same categories as the present. Biblical and ancient characters appear in medieval costumes and in settings familiar to a European, and the Master does not care that in other eras and in different places, morals, nature, clothing, and knowledge were not the same as in his homeland. By the way, there is another confirmation of anachronism in creativity - in the paintings of medieval painters, successive events are often depicted together: the picture combines several scenes separated by time.

The very idea of ​​human nature is also anachronistic: people in all generations are responsible for original sin, committed by Adam and Eve, and all Jews are guilty of the crucifixion of Christ. The crusaders were convinced that they were punishing not the descendants of the Savior’s executioners, but these executioners themselves. The passing centuries meant nothing to them.

This feature of the perception of time - the merging of biblical time with the time of one's own life, creates conditions for a person to recognize himself in two ways at once. historical eras- in the present of our local, transient life, and, in terms of general historical events that decide the fate of the world, next to the creation of the world, Christmas and the Passion of Christ. This dual perception of time is an integral quality of a medieval person, and this gives him the opportunity to feel involved in world history, to feel like a personal participant in the struggle between good and evil.

In general, we can agree with the idea that in the Middle Ages there was no unified idea of ​​time and the multiplicity of times as a reality. There were different “social times” in society in different socio-cultural systems, that is, there was a whole range of social rhythms characteristic of individual groups. However, it can be said that time was under the control of an institution such as the church. It was the clergy who established and regulated all its rhythms, starting with the prohibition of labor on holidays, and ending with establishing the time when sexual intercourse is permissible and when not. An individual's time was not his individual time, it did not belong to him, but to a higher power standing above him. That is why resistance to the ruling class was often expressed in the form of protest to the existing times - in the form of anticipation of the end of the world.

The dominance of church time lasted as long as it corresponded to the slow, measured rhythm of life of feudal society. In the Middle Ages there was no need to value and protect time, to measure it accurately and to know small fractions. This slowness corresponded to the agrarian nature of medieval society. But another center of social life began to develop in it, which had a more pronounced rhythm and needed a more strict measurement of time - the city. In the city, a person begins to abstract from nature and becomes subordinate to the order created by himself.

The city also becomes the bearer of a new attitude towards time. Mechanical clocks are installed on city towers, which satisfy a previously unheard of need - to know the exact time of day. It is no longer the chiming of church bells calling for prayer, but the chiming of the tower clock that regulates the life of the townspeople. Time acquires greater value, turning into an essential factor of production.

The creation of a mechanism for measuring time finally gave rise to the conditions for developing a new attitude towards it - as a monotonous flow that can be divided into identical, quality-free quantities. In a European city, for the first time in history, the alienation of time as a pure form from life, the phenomena of which are subject to measurement, begins. Society gradually moved from contemplating the world in the aspect of eternity to active attitude to it in the aspect of time.

Time has stretched out into a straight line, going from the past to the future through a point called the present. The present has become fleeting, irrevocable and elusive. For the first time, man encountered the fact that time, the passage of which he noticed only when any events occurred, does not stop even in the absence of events. Therefore, time must be saved and strive to use it profitably.

The transition to mechanical timing has led to the fact that man ceases to be the master of time, since, having gained the opportunity to flow regardless of people and events, time establishes its tyranny, which people are forced to obey. Time imposes its own rhythm, forcing you to hurry, act faster, and not miss the moment.

Many centuries distance us from the Late Middle Ages, when such an attitude towards time began to take shape. During this time, much has become not only irrelevant, but even completely wild for modern man. One of the few things that has survived is reverence for time. Now, even more than before, time remains a worshiped Deity. Moreover, the name of our era - the Age of Information - can be given a synonymous name - the Age of Time.

Literature:

  1. A.Ya.Gurevich. Categories of medieval culture. Moscow-St. Petersburg, 1999.
  2. V.N. Muravyov. Mastering time. Moscow, 1998.
  3. Jacques Le Goff. Another Middle Ages. Ekaterinburg, 2002.

AND I. Flier

Culture as space and time of social existence

Annotation. The article examines the space of culture as a territory of dominance of local normative and most frequent social interactions and communications of people and the time of culture as the dynamics of competition between tendencies of its stability and variability. At the same time, tradition determines the limits of cultural space, and innovation determines the dynamics of cultural time.

Keywords. Culture, generalizing definitions, space and time, normative interactions and communications, stability and variability of culture, tradition, innovation.

The number of generalizing definitions of culture has been growing like a snowball in recent decades. If in the early 1950s. There were 164 of them, but now several thousand definitions appear in the scientific literature, which is due to the extraordinary relevance of the concept of culture in modern social sciences. At the same time, despite such a multitude and great diversity, these definitions should not be considered incorrect. For the most part, they are quite correct, but they are insufficient and reflect only part of the properties of a culture that is relevant for a particular researcher. I think that culture as a phenomenon of collective life activity of people in all the diversity of its manifestations and images of symbolization is practically inexhaustible in the list of its parameters. Therefore, it is impossible to give it a definition that reflects even its most important properties, not to mention all the social, psychological, anthropological and other characteristics. Any definitions will inevitably be only partial, fragmentary, highlighting only some parameters of culture that correspond to specific cognitive tasks solved by each scientist in each case.

I myself am the author of a large number of similar definitions of culture, scattered throughout my articles, which does not reflect my scientific lack of principles, but a sober understanding of the limitations of any of them, which plays only a service, instrumental role within the framework of the cognitive tasks of a particular study. When studying culture, as a rule, it is necessary to rely on some kind of hypothetical idea that defines its essence within the boundaries of the analyzed function. But such a hypothetical idea does not at all cover all conceivable properties of culture.

Culture is inexhaustible like life itself. Actually, culture is human life; Of course, not all, but at least the most important part of it. Human life can be analytically divided into two main components: individual biological and collective social. Moreover, a person’s social life is embodied both in the forms of group interaction and communication, and in the parameters of his personal consciousness (often called “spirituality”), formed mainly by the social environment of his life. So culture is a program for ensuring the sociality of human life. If people lived alone, meeting only to reproduce, then no culture would arise, since the scope of their interactions and communication would be extremely limited. But precisely because people carry out almost all their life activities in a group, they need social technologies that regulate their everyday behavior, a language for exchanging information, methods of mutual learning, common ideals and ideas about good and evil, truth, etc., which in the totality is human culture. This is not a definition of culture, but only an indication of its most general function - information and psychological support for the group nature of human life activity . The rest - customs and mores, rituals and holidays, religion and art, language and behavior, ethnic identity and political patriotism, social solidarity, etc. - are only specific forms of maintaining such collectivity.

Among the generalizing characteristics of culture, I am especially close to the judgment, the authorship of which is attributed to M.M. Bakhtin, who says that culture is what spreads between people and connects them . Indeed, culture, like a cement mortar that binds stones into a single monolith of a wall, binds people into a monolith of society. And just as in a wall it can be easier to break the stones themselves than the mortar that binds them, in society it is easier to exterminate people than to destroy the culture that unites them.

In this regard, I have an analogy with Einstein’s idea of ​​nature space And time . Unlike Newtonian physics, where space and time appear as independent substances, Albert Einstein, within the framework of his theory of relativity (both special and general), defines space and time as the result of the interaction of objects in the Universe. In the existing configuration of these objects, space and time have observable parameters, and if for some reason this configuration changes, then the parameters of space and time will change accordingly.

In the same way, culture, in my opinion, is not an independent substance, but the result of social interactions and communications of people . Objectively, there is not culture, but group human activity, the most stable forms of which we call culture. In certain territorial loci and in certain historical periods, local normative systems of such interactions and communications are formed, which are called local cultural complexes (national cultures) and are distinguished by the originality of specific forms associated with the peculiarities of the place and time of their formation. Those. culture in a certain sense is space and time of the social world (social Universe), formed by the interaction of its subjects - people.

Space of culture I have already had to explore both the cultural environment in its structural and functional understanding. But structural-functional analysis is not related to the task of measurement, and space, by definition, must be measurable. Therefore, cultural space, of course, represents a specific territory that has clear boundaries, in which normative behavioral and communicative attitudes dominate, which can be described in terms of their regulatory functions. The key word here is “normative”. There are different norms: ideal, official, statistical, etc. In relation to culture, I believe the most important are statistical norms, i.e. those that develop spontaneously and are the most frequent and widespread. In most cases, statistical norms are also official, but not always. For example, such facts as obscene language, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. are socially condemned, but widespread; those. undoubted cultural phenomena. For culture is not the best, but the most widespread (frequency) content of social life. A territory in which certain norms of social interaction (behavior) and communication (language) prevail, differing from what prevails in other territories, can be called the space of some local culture.

It is clear that in relation to culture the word “space” has two meanings - space as measured area the spread of some culture and space as not measurable, but described sphere , formed by a complex combination of regulatory norms of social interaction, which must be taken into account in any study.

Speaking about cultural space, it is necessary to remember that any post-primitive society socially heterogeneous , and class differences in culture can be very significant. For example, if we consider Russian society in the 18th-19th centuries, we will see that the peasants and aristocracy were united by a common religion, a common national language (mostly) and a common national-political identity, but their lifestyles and material cultures were completely different. However, Orthodox religion set general behavioral stereotypes that compensated for many differences. During the twentieth century. and especially towards its end these differences were partly smoothed out; Many villages now have electricity and modern electrical appliances, including radios and televisions. A major role in smoothing out class cultural differences in the twentieth century. played by mass education and the media. But even in ancient times the territories of distribution specific language and a certain religion were more or less stable, which gives grounds to distinguish them as national (ethnic) cultural spaces.

One way or another, taking into account all the local and historical features, the territory of distribution of certain normative stereotypes of behavior and language can be defined as the local cultural space of a particular people. All specific historical cultures are local , which is determined by the fact that humanity does not constitute a single society, but is divided into many peoples with their own national (ethnic) cultures. This multiplicity of social formations of humanity has special reasons, in my opinion, mainly related to the fact that the food resources of many territories were very limited and, under the dominance of extensive forms of management, could not feed many people; it was necessary to expand the space of their settlement. But in ancient times it was impossible to use a single communication tool (language) over large territories (especially before the advent of writing). The way out of the situation was the fragmentation of humanity into many autonomous cultural and linguistic groups, settled at a great distance from each other. Processes of such fragmentation cover almost the entire history, but they were especially active in the early stages of sociogenesis.

Another feature of the formation of cultural spaces is associated with the fact that in the course of history, within the framework of each local culture, the activity specialization of people increased, their division into professional constellations, and hence their estate-class disunity , which, naturally, was reflected in the culture, especially in the way of life. In the process of historical development of communities, their professional fragmentation gradually increased. Nevertheless, elements of cultural community within the boundaries of national (ethnic) cultures turned out to be a powerful integrating factor, and the territorial unity of such cultures was preserved and is now observed empirically.

The question arises about what forms a cultural space and outlines its boundaries. Almost all peoples that have gone beyond primitiveness are distinguished by more or less pronounced social heterogeneity, i.e. different ways of life of different classes, but this does not interfere with their cultural unity. There are examples of peoples who, for various historical reasons, did not have united or at least dominant religions (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese), but this did not become an obstacle to their cultural integration. However, we do not know of a single people whose different parts spoke different languages. Unity of language , communicative accessibility and permeability, free opportunity to understand each other, coordinate their intentions with each other, etc. - this is what seems to be the main factor of cultural integration, delineating the boundaries of the spread of a particular culture and forming a certain cultural space. I would venture to say that culture is first and foremost product of social communication processes , and only on this basis are all other elements of unity formed.

At the same time, the clarity of cultural boundaries should not be exaggerated. Lines of contact between different cultures, as a rule, represent zones of mixing of elements of these cultures, the width of which can be different, and the population of which speaks several languages, but usually considers itself to be one of the neighboring peoples. Historical inertia plays a very important role in this matter.

The typological homogeneity of the cultural space of any local culture should not be exaggerated. This space is as hilly as the surface of the Earth. Class differences in lifestyles have already been discussed, but any small social group, more or less autonomous in its life activities from the environment, whose members know each other and are in stable regular communication, is a microscopic subculture that has a certain originality in comparison with others in groups. These are, for example, large families(clans), friendly close neighbors, residents of small settlements, small production teams, etc. However, characteristics common to the environment - language, stereotypes of self-awareness and behavior, value orientations, etc., allow us to consider these subcultures as parts of a common local culture.

The problem of the relationship between cultural spaces and political spaces is also important, i.e. correspondence of state borders to the territories of actual settlement of peoples. In cases where an ethnic group is entirely within the boundaries of one state and, moreover, is state-forming (as is now commonly said), this contributes to its speedy transformation into a nation - an ethnopolitical formation in which, among other things, all processes of cultural alignment and standardization take place faster. At the same time, most historically established state borders ignore the problem of compliance with the limits of practical settlement of peoples and divide ethnic territories between several countries. And although in the twentieth century. Special attention began to be paid to the integrity of ethnic territories; not many successful solutions to this problem that did not involve violence were found. It should be said that in the era of feudalism such a division of peoples state borders didn't matter much; foreign enclaves were not distinguished in the general list of feudal possessions and, as a rule, they were not touched (unless there were special religious reasons for this). The situation changed radically in the 19th-20th centuries. with the formation of national cultures supported nation states. Compulsory school education, the development of print and then electronic media, literature and cinema, state cultural policy, etc., wittingly or unwittingly, contributed to the assimilation of the population of foreign enclaves into the dominant national culture. It is too early to talk about the social consequences of this artificial reshaping of cultural spaces (not enough time has passed yet), but The general trend such assimilation seems very alarming.

Cultural space as a social phenomenon is formed by a complex interweaving of the most diverse components of the social consciousness of people - national-ethnic, state-political, social-class, material-economic, intellectual-worldview, professional, historical-memorial, religious, artistic, etc. Argue about that which one is more important is meaningless; in the course of history, first one or the other becomes more important situationally. At the same time, when state cultural policy begins to artificially stimulate one of the components of cultural consciousness, this results in the degeneration of the political regime into a totalitarian or authoritarian one. It is known that the Nazis exploit the national-ethnic consciousness of the population, the communists - the social-class consciousness, the fundamentalists - the religious, the statists - the state-political, etc. In all of these cases, there is a play on the imbalance of various components of public consciousness and cultural space.

Problem cultural time , in my opinion, is embodied in the eternal rivalry of trends cultural sustainability And cultural variability . Several years ago, I proposed to consider dynamic cultural processes in four groups: a) reproduction of tradition, b) degradation of tradition, c) transformation (modernization) of tradition and e) overcoming tradition (novation). If the first of these groups - a) reproduction of tradition - most embodies the tendency of cultural stability, then the last - e) overcoming tradition (innovation) - is the embodiment of the tendency of cultural variability. Group b) degradation of tradition indicates negative dynamics of development, and group c) transformation (modernization) of tradition is an attempt at partial variability that does not break with the dominant tradition. We can find many examples of each of these trends in both domestic and world history.

However, cultural time is fixed and measured precisely by dynamics of variability . While stability (tradition) dominates in a culture, in the opinion of an outside observer (scientist, researcher), nothing changes in it, and it is almost impossible to measure its dynamics. This opportunity arises only with the advent of innovations that overcome traditions. The more often innovations appear, the higher the dynamics of variability and the faster cultural time passes. As an example, it is enough to compare the culture of the Upper Paleolithic, when thousands of years passed from one innovation to the next, with modernity, when many cultural innovations in different areas of life appear every day.

The history of culture is first and foremost history of the variability of its forms , development of some, degradation of others. Of course, traditions also participate in the history of culture. We should not forget that we do not know the historical depth of most traditions, and the immutability of the forms of those whose antiquity seems significant is also not obvious. Most likely, some adaptive transformations are also taking place in traditions (E.S. Markaryan also assumed this), only very slowly, not comparable to the dynamics of renewal associated with cultural innovations.

Here it is necessary to take into account that the renewal of cultural forms and technologies is in no way connected with changes in cultural content. On the contrary, in culture, the renewal of forms and technologies, as a rule, consciously pursues the goal of maintaining unchanged cultural contents. For this purpose, outdated forms and technologies for their implementation are replaced by more modern and effective, but the preservation of cultural content is an ideological constant . In this way, cultural variability is fundamentally different from progress in the technology of material production, where the replacement of outdated forms and technologies is often associated with updating the content and goals of activity.

I am not specifically considering changes in artistic styles here. Firstly, this is a problem area for art historians and aestheticians, and let them talk about it. Secondly, art began to play a prominent role in European culture only in modern times. Before that, in Europe, as in non-European cultures, stylistic changes in art were internal professional problems of artists, architects and other creators and had little bearing on the culture of society as a whole, even its most educated part. And thirdly, stylistic changes in art are not fundamentally different from the introduction of innovations in any other sphere of culture, and there is no reason to single them out as something special.

To summarize, we can say that cultural tradition (sustainability) essentially embodies cultural space . It is by the area of ​​dominance of any tradition that the boundaries of the spread of a particular local culture are determined. This criterion for determining the limits of cultural loci is accepted by archaeologists and ethnographers, and it is difficult to imagine that cultural scientists can offer something different.

And according to the dynamics of the emergence of cultural innovations is measured by cultural time , the pace of its occurrence and the intensity of renewal processes. Innovations represent the tendency of cultural variability. The history of culture consists mainly in the sequence and intensity of the generation and implementation of cultural innovations. This, among other things, illustrates the difference between historical science, which studies the “history of events,” and anthropology, which focuses on “eventless history.”

So, cultural space is the territory and social sphere of dominance of certain normative technologies of interaction and communication of people, and cultural time is the dynamics of change in these technologies. Of course, cultural space and time are radically different in nature from physical space and time. But they are united by the fact that physical space-time is the result of the interaction of cosmic objects, and human culture is the result of the social interaction of people. As a product of this interaction, field (gravitational or informational), possessing properties that can be systematically describe And measure . And this makes it an object of scientific study.

NOTES

The article was prepared with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation grant 15-03-00031 “Cultural regulation of social dynamics.”

See: Kroeber, Alfred Louis, Kluckhohn, Clyde. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions // Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology. Harvard University, 1952. Vol. 47.
See about this: Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His Life and Universe. N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2007 (Isaacson, W. Einstein. His life and his Universe. M.: Corpus, 2015).
See: Flier A.Ya. Cultural environment and its social features [Electronic resource] // Information humanitarian portal “Knowledge. Understanding. Skill". 2013. No. 2. URL: http://www.zpu-journal.ru/e-zpu/2013/Flier_Cultural-Milieu/. Access date: 12/12/2015.
Flier A.Ya. Essays on the theory of historical dynamics of culture. M.: Consent, 2012.
See about this: Durkheim, Emile. De la division du travail social. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1893 (E. Durkheim. On the division of social labor. Method of sociology. M.: Nauka, 1991).
Flier A.Ya. Cultural industries in history and modernity: types and technologies [Electronic resource] // Information humanitarian portal “Knowledge. Understanding. Skill". 2012. No. 3. URL: http://www.zpu-journal.ru/e-zpu/2012/3/Flier Cultural-Industries/. Access date: 12/13/2015.
See about this: Markaryan E.S. Key problems of the theory of cultural tradition // Soviet ethnography. 1982. No. 2.
See, for example: Klein L.S. Archaeological typology. L.: USSR Academy of Sciences, LF TsENDISI, Leningrad Archaeological Research Association, 1991; Arutyunov S.A. Peoples and cultures: Development and interaction. M.: Nauka, 1989, etc.
See more about this: Le Goff, Jacques. L"historien et l"homme quotidien // Le Goff, Jacques. Pour un autre Moyen Âge. Temps, travail et culture en Occident. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. R. 335-348 (Le Goff J. Historian and everyday man // Le Goff J. Another Middle Ages. Time, labor and culture of the West. Ekaterinburg: Ural University Publishing House, 2002. P. 200- 210).

Flier A.Ya., 2016

Flier Andrey Yakovlevich,
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor,
Chief Researcher
Russian Research Institute of Cultural
And natural heritage named after D.S. Likhacheva.

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