Download full text
(294.0Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-396956
Exports for your reference manager
The Continuous Model of Culture: Modernity Decline - a Eurocentric Bias? An Attempt to Introduce an Absolute value into a Model of Culture
[journal article]
Abstract This paper means to demonstrate the theoretical-and-methodological potential of a particular pattern of thought about culture. Employing an end-means and absolute value plus concept of reality approach, the continuous model of culture aims to embrace from one holistic standpoint various concepts and... view more
This paper means to demonstrate the theoretical-and-methodological potential of a particular pattern of thought about culture. Employing an end-means and absolute value plus concept of reality approach, the continuous model of culture aims to embrace from one holistic standpoint various concepts and debates of the modern human, social, and political sciences. The paper revisits the debates of fact versus value, nature versus culture, culture versus structure, agency versus structure, and economics versus politics and offers the concepts of the rule of law, state capitalism, a dialectical model of progress, and interpretative qualitative research, as well as of cultural diffusion, autonomy, alienation, and individuality. This model distinguishes between the ideal-symbolical and the instrumental functions of culture, sees culture as being sewn from universal binaries, and provides a certain understanding of the cognitive function of a value judgment, with positivism so far vague about the topic. It, too, suggests an extra method for investigating culture(s): the comparative literature study of culture(s) enables social science to view literature as its potential in-depth interviewee - a case for arguing for a certain conception of interdisciplinarity as well. In addition, it predicts that cultural particularism or individuality remains an essential factor of human existence. Analyzing the issue of Eurocentrism in social science, the model finds modernity's concept of reality to be involved in "methodological" intellectualistic reductionism, characterizing it since the empiricism/ rationalism origination. Systematically confusing the universal oppositions in a Eurocentric manner, intellectualism becomes a contributing factor in unfolding post-modernity.... view less
Keywords
social science; structuralism; value; society; Eurocentrism; culture; theory; postmodernism; modernity
Classification
General Problems, History of the Social Sciences
Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Art, Sociology of Literature
Document language
English
Publication Year
2013
Page/Pages
p. 411-433
Journal
Human studies : a journal for philosophy and the social sciences, 36 (2013) 3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-013-9274-0
ISSN
1572-851X
Status
Postprint; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works