Становление современной науки, 27 сен.-05 окт. 2009, Чехия
Olga Vladimirovna Chibisova
Komsomolsk-on-Amur State Technical University
Culturology
Culture Interaction: Dialog and Conflict
As
within the limits of our study we consider culture as a communicative system with
its own channels and communication media, first of all we should consider what
a process of communication is. For this purpose we will refer to the following
definition: «Communication is a specific form of a human dialogue. Representing
itself as the moment of the content of spiritual life sphere, it is at the same
time the expression of system quality of the latter. Thus, the culture is
considered as a dynamic system of information functioning» [8]. Cultural values
play a role of the information signals, spread in sign, symbolical, and
figurative form, and promote life experience transfer inside and between
generations. Communication media, acting as a substantial, material component
of a communicative process, represent a way of manufacture, preservation and
distribution of cultural values in a society.
A.С. Аtchikova marks out two types of communication media [2]: naturally
arisen (language, mimicry, gestures) and artificially created (technical),
subdivided on traditional (press, publishing, writing) and typically modern
(radio, TV, Internet).
She considers
that in the substantial relation communication can be differentiated into four
information directions:
- novative (imparting
to an information consumer a new knowledge about the properties and signs of
the phenomena, objects and processes, about the norms of any activity, behavior
and interaction, about languages, signs and communication media);
- orientational (socializing
and inculturating an individual in their residing community, forming their
existential and valuable orientations, setting criteria of estimated
judgements, choice priorities and so forth);
- stimulating
(influencing the motivational bases of people’s social activity, actualizing an
aspiration to obtain a missing knowledge for the sake of their social claims satisfaction);
- correlating
(specifying or updating separate parameters of the kinds of knowledge listed
above, orientations and stimulus).
This information
has a cultural specificity as it regulates people’s ideas about the level of a
social acceptability of such and such ways of any kind of activity, intellectual
estimations and positions, and this is a functional loading of this knowledge
and ideas as tools of maintenance of social interaction of people.
Communications
process can be described as an operation when a sender codes the message in the
form of a signal set transferred through a multitude of channels, opened and
functioning at the addressee. After the addressee has decoded signals and interpreted
messages, he becomes an encoder, sending back his own message by means of the
same process, thus the one who originally coded the message, becomes decoder. It
is this difficult exchange process with varying roles and message
coding-decoding that form a communication process [12].
Communications
of different cultures put both co-operating agents in a situation which is not a
continuous merge of all its elements, but a communication of separate parts of
constant substances. If we take for a basis the forms of intercultural
communication, singled out by B. Erasov [5] – interpersonal, intragroup and
intergroup – the character of their interactions will be specific in each case.
Interpersonal
intercultural communications is a complex diffuse phenomenon in which both
verbally-visual, and tactile-olfactory aspects of language are included.
Informing in a similar dialogue represents a multistage construction which meaning
constantly varies, expanding or compressing the content. Besides there can be a
displacement of accents in the content as for various individuals some other positions
can become significant. Another important aspect is that in the course of
information interchange people influence each other, especially if a personality
of one interlocutor is peculiar and significant for the other. Moreover, the quality
of interpersonal relations becomes a filter which can annihilate the sense of
the information, lower or raise its urgency, call attention to the objects
which were initially unapparent.
Intragroup
intercultural communication is based on the uniform teamwork which simultaneously
is the field of communication and the possibility of achievement mutual
understanding realized in a new activity. In this case, by means of communication
each member of the group, carrying out his part of the task becomes a member of
collective actions, and a result of joint efforts becomes a cumulative result
of efforts of each concrete person. Besides, people’s interpersonal relations modify
in the course of joint activity, hence, intragroup communication becomes a
condition for creating new value and model of interpersonal dialogue in similar
forms for activity.
Intergroup
intercultural communication is based on activity group indicators where
professionals, representatives of demographic groups or tourists can act as objects.
A platform of similar forms of communication is the patterns of culture similar
for each group, and an intergroup code is the indicator of professionalism and
the status of a person in a professional group. Meanwhile the attitude formed to
another trade or branch is frequently transferred towards a person and former communication
guidelines become perception stereotypes in a different situation. These
positions, on the one hand, facilitate communication because they reaffirm
expectations in standard situations, but on the other hand they extremely distort
the essence as a personal uniqueness can be overlooked. This form of
communication is the most inefficient in an intercultural exchange as each
personality is surrounded by a cover of its own culture and remains its carrier
in an environment of similar people who strengthen a barrier between
co-operating cultures.
In the modern scientific literature intercultural
communication is considered as a dialogue of cultures, and forms of their
interaction – as various kinds of dialogical relations. «Dialogue is a communication
with culture, realization and reproduction of its achievements, thus it is the detection
and understanding of other cultures values, a way of assignment of the latter, the
possibility of removing political tension between states and ethnic groups. It is
a necessary condition of scientific search of the truth and creativity process
in art. Dialogue is an understanding of «I» and dialogue with others. It is
universal and the generality of a dialogue is acknowledged» [15, 9].
The concept of dialogue in a cultural process has a
wide meaning which includes a dialogue of a cultural values originator and their
consumer, a dialogue of generations, and a dialogue of cultures as a form of
interaction and mutual understanding of peoples. The essence of a dialogue is in
productive interaction of the sovereign positions which compose uniform and diverse
semantic space and general culture. The main difference of dialogue from a
monologue consists in aspiration to understand mutual relations of different
views, ideas, phenomena, social forces; therefore it is possible only at
certain rapprochement of cultural codes of its participants, presence or initiation
of the mutual mentality.
Complexity
and multidimensionality of a dialogue gives inexhaustible possibilities for its
research, and its problems are often formulated depending on this or that
understanding of culture. So, V. Bibler understands culture as a microsociety
of people demonstrated in prepotent "product" of the epoch (for
example, tragedy in antiquity) which gives a complete idea about the logic of the
culture. In this context a dialogue of cultures appears as a dialogue of logics
of various cultures, their potential possibilities, aspiring to find out
reserves of own existence in a dialogue with other cultures. It is characterized
through a simultaneous event and communication of cultures irrespective of the historical
frameworks of their existence and occurs, if there is a fundamental doubt in
the true sense in a culture, that is it promotes a logic generation of new
senses of a culture.
In
our opinion, the connection of the historical past of a culture with its
current state cannot be absolutely truly considered as interaction, because there
is only unilateral link as the present does not influence the past. It is
possible to consider the category "interaction" on a vertical
wrongful, and to name this phenomenon succession. However it does not mean that
the cultural heritage does not participate in an interaction process, on the
contrary, the variety of forms of activity, thinking and world vision developed
during the historical and cultural development, increasingly
joins in the general development of world culture. At the same
time distinctions of cultures have deep roots, and the originality of each
culture puts it on the level commensurable with others. The history of the
human society practically does not know any examples of absolutely isolated
cultural development without a direct or more distant interaction and
interference between some spheres.
In
a context of these reasoning, we consider important M.M. Bakhtin's thought that
each culture lives only in asking another culture, that the great phenomena in
culture are born only in a point of intersection of various cultures. The
ability of one culture to master achievements of another culture is one of
sources of its vital functions. «One culture exposes itself uttermost only in
the opinion of other culture.... One sense opens its depths by meeting and contacting
another, foreign sense..., they begin some kind of a dialogue which overcomes the
isolation and limitation of these senses, these cultures... At such dialogical
meeting two cultures do not merge and do not mix up, but they are mutually
enriched» [3, 135]. «We ask a foreign culture new questions which it did not
ask itself, we seek for an answer to our questions; and a foreign culture
answers us, opening its new aspects, new semantic depths to us» [3, 335].
Representatives
of the activity approach consider culture as non-biologically developed and
transferred way of human activity. S.A.Arutyunov singles out two models of
intercultural interaction: interaction of local cultures with universal industrially-city
culture and interaction of local cultures with each other, when one culture
acts as a donor, and another – as a recipient [1, 157]. S.G. Larchenko and S.N.
Eremin subdivide all interactions into three types: direct intercultural
interactions; interactions of intermediary and interaction of the social
organisms which are at different stages of formation development. A shortcoming
of the given approach is that the researchers speak only about intercultural
interactions as a transmission of accumulated cultural values from an advanced
culture to poorly developed [9, 161-163].
Another
concept of a cultural dialogue is formed within the limits of a semiotic direction
of culture understanding. J.M. Lotman considers that «the culture development,
as well as the act of creative consciousness, is the act of an exchange and constantly
means "another"– a partner in realization of this act», and the sense
of cultural contact consists in «filling a missing link and accelerating cultural
evolution» [11, 98]. This process is dialectically inconsistent, being
simultaneously «the search of one’s own» and «the search of another’s». On the
one hand, requiring a partner, a culture constantly creates this "another’s",
exteriorizing it outside and projects it on the cultural worlds lying out of it.
On the other hand, to communicate with external culture, a culture should interiorize
its image inside its own world, and this image should be translated into the internal
language of the culture (i.e. it were not "another’s") and was "another’s"
(i.e. it were not translated into the internal language of the culture). An essential
part of a cultural contact is played by the name of a partner which is
equivalent to its inclusion in "my" cultural world, coding by
"my" code and defining its place in "my" picture of the
world or by renaming "myself" in concordance with the name which external
partner gives to "me".
Globalisation
has considerably simplified these searches «of one’s own» and "of another's"
, by making real self-realization of all and each culture through interaction
of all with everyone and everyone with all others in space and in time. For example,
A.A. Gordienko considers that «the globalization of intercultural interactions
is believed to have such completeness of the semantic world of the individuals
involved in it which arises only in a point of intersection of all cultural
images. The individual leaves specific,
private limits for a cultural space, for fundamental infinite dialogue and,
hence, for infinite reconsideration of what he is himself» [4, 78].
In
cultural science interaction of cultures is defined as «a special kind of
direct relations and communications which develop between, at least, two
cultures in the course of interchange of cultural ideas, norms and values and
those influences, mutual changes which appear during these relations. Of
crucial importance in culture interaction is the alteration of conditions, qualities, spheres of
activity, values of that and other culture, generation of new forms of cultural
activity, spiritual guidelines and signs of people’s way of life under the
influence of the impulses coming from the outside» [16]. The interaction can be
both intracultural, and intercultural, that is the cultural samples inherent in
one social class extend on other layers and groups in one culture, or on other
cultures.
There
are certain, scientifically revealed mechanisms of interaction of cultures no
matter at what level it is carried out (civilization, interstate or national).
According to J.G. Volkov the relation between cultures are [17, 383]:
-
«neutral when they co-exist, do not disturb each other and do not mix up;
-
alternative, or countercultural when cultures actively restrict each other as
each of them aspires to occupy a leading position and to spread its values and
standards in the society;
- competitive when in the course of
self-development and struggle for proselytes cultures can shift into the area
of alternativeness and contentious relations».
I.D.
Kolesin compares biological and sociocultural classification of types of
cultural interaction. For this purpose he addresses to the following types of
interaction, designating negative influence through "minus", and a
positive one – through "plus" and considering each time a pair of
cultures [7, 131]:
-
(–/–) mutual suppression of cultures;
-
(– / +) assimilation (absorption) of the first;
-
(+/–) assimilation of the second;
-
(+ / +) mutual contribution to development.
He
explains that the given classification has come from the theory of biological
populations in which only a population size dynamics is described, while a
sociocultural dynamics is not only a population size dynamics, but also a cultural
wealth dynamics (consciousness evolution). Interaction of cultures begins with appearance
among adherents of valuable system A representatives of other system B:
socially-psychological factors immediately come into effect. According to I.D. Kolesin
the display of cultural groups’ interaction without a socially-psychological
factor will be no more, than carrying over the ecological principles into the display
of purely population part of a culturological process. [7, 132].
Considering
and accepting a dialogue as a form of interaction of cultures, it is necessary
to focus attention on its results as well. In M. Bakhtin’s opinion a dialogue,
can have the following consequences:
1.
Synthesis, merge of the different points of view or positions in one general.
2.
«At a dialogical meeting of two cultures they do not merge and do not mix up, each
one preserves its unity and open integrity, but they are mutually enriched.
3.
The dialogue leads to understanding the basic distinctions between participants
of this process, when the more delimitation, the better, but benevolent delimitation,
without fights on a boundary path» [3, 183].
V.
Sagatovsky marks out the fourth possible consequence of an abortive dialogue:
«it was impossible to agree, the positions proved incompatible, basic interests
are infringed, and a non-dialogical collision of the parties is better (sometimes
necessary) [14, 22].
In
historical practice they know not only a dialogue of cultures (peaceful, voluntary
ways of interaction), but also their monologue (forms of influence for receiving
a unilateral benefit which are compulsory or realized as a result of a
colonial, military conquest). Interpenetration of cultural values has its borders,
its limit of permeability behind which a violent intrusion into its fabric
begins conducting to a closed or open conflict.
Though
culture by its nature cannot bear violence, the history is so saturated with it
that it has brought the moment of confrontation, animosities, alienation and
aversion in mutual relations of cultures. So, L.G. Ionin gives the following
typology of intercultural conflicts [6, 17-18]:
1.
Ghettoization is inherently a full refusal of one culture to interact with
other cultures, a rejection of another culture’s influence owing to those or
other internal or external reasons.
2.
Assimilation is opposite to ghettoization and means full dissolution of one
culture in another, that is a weaker cultural group is absorbed by a dominating
culture. There is also a voluntary assimilation which takes place when a person
realizes the features of his culture as unsuitable in a new cultural situation
and prefers the forms of another culture.
3.
Colonization is a violent implanting of elements of one culture (cultural values,
norms, language) in another culture consequently the substance of the invaded
culture is transformed.
An obvious expression of the cultural conflict
in one society is a counterculture, which represents a radical negation of
an official culture, a destructive agency of its substance and forms. «A
counterculture ... very often has a claim for universalism, leaving its frameworks
and violently spreading its values and norms. It is aggressive enough and
brightly nihilistic», — marks G.M. Ponomareva [13, 317]. It is possible to add
S.I. Levikova's words to the given definition, «a counterculture is
characterized by its destructive activity directed on a victory over the enemy,
its struggle for a victory, an openness of opposition and war, a constant
search of meetings with an enemy, an aggressive offensive position» [10, 152]. Similar
mutual relations are often peculiar to different subcultures belonging to one
general culture and residing in common region.
Thus, the attraction-repulsion pulsation in the sphere
of cultural interaction proceeds against a background of multiple tendencies,
among which the integration is defining. The integration is a principle of
compatibility when different groups keep the cultural features initially
inherent in them and unite in a uniform society, co-operating thus as the
partners equal in rights and recognizing each other’s right for cultural peculiarities
without special preferences. There are some striking illustrations of
harmonization of various cultures: an intensive cultural exchange, the development
of institutes of education, culture and public health services, the distribution
of the high technologies providing people with necessary material benefits, the
protection of human rights.
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