Culture and society

Community creating communication situations are partly shaped by naturally given circumstances and they are partly “produced”, that is, they are circumstances revaluated and transformed by communities. Thus, communication situations are simultaneously a product and a producer of communities. But can communities be a product and the creator of a product at the same time? Can we avoid this dilemma, and do we have to avoid it at all? (Before we answer, we would like to remind that we raised a similar problem in section 3.1.2. while discussing the relationship between language and community. Our solution will be the same here.) On the one hand, we can dissolve the di-lemma easily if we regard the activities of revaluating and transforming as done by individuals and not by com-munities. Interpreting Lotman’s concept of auto-communication with this goal in mind can provide an opportunity for this. In this case, communication situations can be shaped by individuals and the situations can create communities as a result of the appropriate combination of the I – I and the I – he communication types. But we can choose a different solution, namely the continuouscoexistenceof communication situations and communities. As a result of their interaction, the coexisting situations and communities can both go through a process of development. In each phase of the changes, the cause-effect relations can be complex, they can be intertwined; as a result of their complexity, the concrete relations of determination often seem to be obscure. Such interaction between coexisting entities makes them multiply interconnected, it makes their organization complex and it turns the system into a complex system. Nevertheless, the complexity of the relationships by no means implies that the various relationships are equal and indistinguishable. For example, in the concrete case we have just examined, it is easy to differentiate between the community which shapes the communication situation and the community which can be regarded as the product of the communication situation. It is notable that the recognition, interpretation and analysis of the complex relationships can go together with the development of an ontology and epistemology of coexistence. In one version of this worldview, we can replace the objects separated from each other with a system of necessarily interconnected objects, that is, withnetworks.Network science deals with the regularities and laws effective in networks, the characteristics of networks, and the analysis of the functioning of networks. Its separation from philosophy and becoming an independent discipline has accelerated in the recent decades. Differently from tradi-tional logic, in the logic of network science, the above mentioned circularity of determination seems to be solvable

“scientifically”. Without this, we can stick to the solutions available in philosophy and we can discuss the problem by applying a version of dialectics.

The transformation of culture in late modernity

In this way, if we regard the coexistent entities which are in the relationship of mutual interrelatedness as having achanging nature, the situation in which the relationship between the determining and the determined is between the sameentities becomes conceivable. This is the situation ofself-organizationwhich we characterize by saying that the interactions between the coexisting elements are just like this, that is, all elements are determining and determined at the same time. This possibility does not violate the principle of determinism at all, insofar as we assume the time dependence of the processes of the interactions and the changing nature of the coexisting entities participating in the interactions.

Thus, insofar as we regard communication situations on the one hand as community creating and on the other as shaped by communities, we also declare their coexistence and shared development. Communication situations and communities “exist together” in a social system, and their coexistence of this kind involves their interaction with further elements of the system. The coexisting entities brought together in a social system can occasionally be de-scribed as subsystems which are more or less separated from each other. However, while describing subsystems, it is suitable to preserve the possibility of interpreting their relationship with the whole system, that is, it is suitable to treat subsystems as open systems. The interpretation of the whole social system and its subsystems can be quite different in various social theories. To discuss our current problem further, we would like to utilize ideas from Marx’s, Luhmann’s and Habemas’s social theory.

Using the Marxist system of thought, we could perhaps say that the development of communication situations obviously has economical-social and historical conditions. It is a crucial assumption that “points of contact” of relations of production necessarily influence the developing communication situation, and as a result, the develop-ment of communities. A more detailed observation reveals that the technological situation of the production process (in fact, the sum of forces of production and relations of production) is a communication situation at the same time, and simultaneously with the production of the product, it also creates several types of communities. This is precisely why the alienating/alienation which appears in production processes is a so serous factor, namely because it “abol-ishes”the community of the producer and the productand it recognizes the producer only as a producer. (Of course, at the same time it also constructs hiscommunity with other producers.) To put it simply, the production process always results in the creation of communities.There is also a community in the product, albeit only in a material-istic form which can unfold in its usage. In other words, the product is the participant of a communication situation which constructs a community. The community of the producer and the consumer is manifested in consumption.

It is consumption which produces this community. Let us say that this is similar to books which are produced (written, printed, published, sold) by some people and read by others. Books mediate and products do the same.

Marx analyzes these problems in connection with the dialectics of production (Marx 1975): he points out that production is consumption at the same time. It is simultaneously both. This is precisely what the expression “pro-ducing consumption” means, namely that it belongs to a community, it is the community of production and con-sumption; it is simultaneously both. But this does not mean that the two factors are of equal value, the “compre-hensive” moment is the production of the community. Product and community are “identical expressions” since the technological and communication situation overlap in production. But they do not necessarily overlap. All technological situations are communicative at the same time but not all communication situations are technological at the same time, at most they are only technological in the sense that communities created through communication technologies are also products. More precisely: the products of technology always have a communicative content since they are interpreted as products, as things which can be consumed; products call us to consume them. It is the advertisement which makes the product to speak. The advertisement is the loud reading of the product. The speaker, that is, the communicating product is the commodity. At the same time, this communication always creates something: a community. But neither production, nor communication is identical with what it creates since it contains other things.

The production processalways recreates its own self as well. Production is self-reproduction. This is somewhat reminiscent to Luhmann’s standpoint. Can we claim that Marxist theory is autopoiesis related to production? Perhaps yes, but it is hardly suitable since it is not the reproduction of the production system which is important for Marx;

however, in Luhmann’s theory, concentrating on the concept of communication, we only grasp the creation of communities and not the concrete historical social system.

As regards needs and values, man can be described as having two different natures: he can both be characterized as havinga need for a community(dependence on a community) and as havinga need for self-preservation(the reproduction of the given circumstances). Since communities are always a part of human life circumstances, we necessarily talk aboutexistence in a community. This need is the basis of the overlapping of the technological and the communication situation; this is what already was present in the primordial form of the “control over the

situ-The transformation of culture in late modernity

ation”. Thus, the relationship between technology and communication is primordial by origin. It is an original connection, which means that since the aim has been the preservation of the community, it has to function accord-ingly.

Communication is the basic element in Luhmann’s understanding of society. He can interpret the creation of the social system (in fact, only that of communities) but if he assumes the communication situation as basic but does not analyze the circumstances which make communication possible, he cannot explain what characteristics com-munities will have, only in very sketchy and abstract way. The problem is the same withautopoiesis, the model of organization which he adopts: it involves the possibility of the creation of identity, but as a result of its abstract nature, it cannot describe the nature of identity. Habermas’s communicative action theory is much richer in this respect, too: it is equally based on agency (let it be technological) and on communication, that is, it both preserves and creates communities. This great insight of Habermas connects again the technological and communication situations traditionally coexisting in social systems and in this way, he reaches a greatly effective social theory (Habermas 1985; 152-178).

So far, we have been trying to show that we can find the problem area of creating communities in the various de-scriptions of society, at the same time, each social theory approaches the question according to its preferences.

The creation of communities is closely connected to communities in each mentioned theory (though not completely explicitly). With this, perhaps we have satisfyingly characterized the factors determining the formal side of the social system, and in what follows, we will briefly examine how culture or cultures, which provide the content of the social system are connected to the other elements of the social system and we will look at which phase of the functioning of the social system revaluations and ideologies are connected to. Of course, we cannot venture on giving a summary of cultural sociology, rather we will only raise a few problems which were mentioned earlier and which will be important later.

One of the basic problem areas is giving an explanation ofthe origin of values and interestsin cultures on the social level. If we understand culture as a system of further values “deposited on” the communities created through communication, we need to explain what the source of these values is in society. On the one hand, we can say that communication (and technology) is “value laden”, thus it expresses values which transcend the values that are necessarily presented in its existence, that is, success and efficiency. In this case we have to analyze communication itself and technology further; we have to reveal the fine structure of the communication and technological situations, their context, their social relationships, etc. Thesubstantivistandcriticalversions of the philosophy of technology and communication represent ambitions of this kind. Through varied analyses of this kind, we can identify persons, social groups or even the interpretative ambitions of whole ages as the source of the values. On the other hand, perhaps it is suitable to search for further social needs (that is, needs transcending community, preservation, success and efficiency). In this sense, the ultimate source of needs, and as a result, interests and values is theprevailing social system, which they want to reproduce in its given form. We can probably talk about the self-reproduction of the content of the social system, that is, culture(s) or a certain culturalautopoiesis. Of course, it is questionable to what extent the separation of the content and form of the social system is justified. Probably it is not. In this case we can ask Habermas’s help hoping that content and form are only differences in the way we look at the social system: what is culture “from inside”, is community “from the outside” or even the other way round, that is, we talk about different descriptions of the same system.

Countless analyses of cultural sociology are focused on the comparison of the direct value and interest system of the prevailing social system and its forms represented and mediated by culture as well as on the evaluation of the comparison and its consequences (Wessely 1998; Kellner 1999; Wolf 1999; Alan Liu’s Voice of the Shuttle). The so-calledcultural studiesis very popular, in which they analyze the phenomena of the social determination of culture mostly following Marxist social theory and the understanding of society of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Furthermore, Bourdieu’s idea according to which besides economical capital,cultural capital is also accumulated and functions in modern societies is also very significant. The area of its functioning is the educational and cultural institutional system. Economical and cultural capital can be converted into each other and though economical capital is more agile, class rule is also manifested in the cultural sphere, and it efficiently repro-duces the class structure and domination of the prevailing system (Bourdieu 1997; Lawley 1994).

Similarly to the social system,culture is a complex, multilevel system with multiple participants. A given social system is made up of the large number of communities of various levels and complexity and the cultures connected to them. The description of the social system as the sum of communities and culture(s) is more popular in anthro-pology, while cultural sociology favors the concepts of social and cultural levels, layers, subsystems, subcultures,

The transformation of culture in late modernity

which can be identified in the complex structure of society, but in the end they talk about the same complex system.

The long-lasting and fixed separation of particular cultural spheres is an obvious expression of the complexity of culture. Perhaps the separation of the so-calledhigh cultureandpopular culture(popcultures.com) are the most significant in this respect. The separation of theoretical and practical values represents a further differentiation and so does the separation of arts, sciences, philosophy and religion. Instead of differentiation, thetwo culturesapproach declares that culture is torn into “human” and “real” culture, though we can meet this view in the “unhappy”

Hegelian form, that is, in a rejected form. The followers of the “third culture” approach (Edge) which teaches that the separation of the “two cultures” is unacceptable, and they are striving for unifying the torn spheres again, bearing in mind that culture is significant for communities.²