Social and cultural processes and their determinants as the subject of cultural discourse

Abstract

The subject of the research is social and cultural processes and their determinants in various conceptual interpretations, that is, the set of reasons, conditions, and driving forces that determine the emergence, development, and transformation of cultural phenomena. The object of the study is social and cultural processes, understood as dynamic changes in the culture system of society, affecting values, activities, and needs of society. The author starts from the acknowledgment of a fundamental methodological problem: culture simultaneously acts as a consequence of adaptive, economic, technological, and institutional conditions, and as a cause that sets the regulators of behavior, meanings, and goals of activities. The way to resolve this duality defines the divergence of major research schools. The comparison of approaches makes it possible to identify four persistent disagreements that form the framework of the discussion: material vs. symbolic; nomothetic vs. ideographic; equilibrium vs. conflict; singular modernity vs. multiple modernities. The main theoretical and methodological analysis was used in the article: comparison of concepts by explanatory capabilities, typologization, historical-theoretical reconstruction of the polemic, critical examination with a focus on the strengths and methodological value of each position. The working framework is a systemic-synergistic approach, supplemented by activity-based, semiotic, and practical dimensions. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the considered concepts are organized not by schools but by the way of resolving the duality of culture. Four disagreements are identified: material/symbolic, nomothetic/ideographic, equilibrium/conflict, singular/multiple modernities. A systemic-synergistic model is justified, where the activity-regulatory interpretation serves as an intermediary link. A distinction of temporal scales of determination is introduced: technologies – decades, values – generations, deep differences – centuries. The media factor is added to the list of determinants. The most promising is justified as a poly-deterministic model of systemic-synergistic type, supplemented by semiotic and practical dimensions. This model is based on the empirical refutation of monocausality, the explanatory potential of bifurcation schemes, the activity-regulatory intermediary link between the material and the symbolic, as well as the consideration of the media factor and cross-border cultural flows. The main conclusion: the productivity of cultural analysis is ensured not by the unification of paradigms but by constructing a multi-level model with the differentiation of dominant determinants on a specific time horizon.