What is Really Going on in the Field of Culture?

Reflections reveal the significance, theoretical and ideological relevance of the monograph in the current conditions of civilizational development and Russia's geopolitical choice. The analysis proposed by the authors of the state and trends in the development of culture as a social phenomenon and as a sociological category is evaluated. The attention of readers is drawn to a brief but detailed analysis of the development of Russian sociology of culture since the 19th century, to the efforts of the authors to define the conceptual apparatus of this field of knowledge in comparison with the opinions and suggestions of fellow researchers. The author's interpretation of cultural transformations of the late 20th - early 21st centuries is considered, based on a generalization of data from many years of sociological research by the country's leading research centers, which are important both for enriching theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of culture and for use in the cultural policy of the state. This book displays debatable interpretations of culture, among which assessments of the ways and methods of modernizing domestic culture are of particular importance. On the basis of representative empirical studies, the authors identify general cultural trends, cultural preferences, and problems of artistic creativity. At the same time, the authors assess the negative processes that lead to the deformation of the cultural space: the influence of liberal ideology, postmodernism, commercialization, westernization, primitivization and pseudo-creativity.