Political Culture as Symbolic “Rebuilding” of the Political

Abstract

The article discusses the significance of the epistemology of the study of political culture. The author believes that the dominance of positivist research strategies in the studies of the political and cultural dynamics of society only partially reflect the qualitative changes in modern political communications. The disintegration of the contemporary political orders into a varied range of national communities, political ideologies, and structures of governance has highlighted a necessity to properly theorize anthropological dimensions of political culture. According to the author, the research strategies of cultural sociology, which interpret political culture from the standpoint of the dynamics of symbolization of meaning structures, are more promising. In this case, political culture appears as a semantic programming of the collective political experience through the symbolic classification of political events through space and time. If the concept of political culture in the traditional discourse of political science made possible to observe the dynamics of the ideal in political communications from the standpoint of a rational citizen, then an analysis of the ideal in politics through the concept of political memory allows answering questions how and why “the ideal” is important for political pragmatism. The study of the specifics of basic culture-anthropological forms of political solidarity is relevant for this strategy of studying political culture. The study of the symbolization of space-time dimensions of political memory allows us to more adequately reflect the dynamics of modern political communications. An important avenue for the study of the political memory of modern societies is the study of the practices of symbolizing the political everyday life, in which the political myth and political branding play a decisive role. The author emphasizes the importance of the description and theoretical analysis of the role of symbolic figures of political memory and symbolic practices of their symbolization. Using the theory and methodology of cultural sociological analysis of political culture as an epistemological basis, the author proposes a new theoretical approach to the study of political culture.