Kultura
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The Kultura Journal is an international scientific journal for the theory and sociology of culture and cultural policy, which follows culture in the widest sense of the word where science, education and all human activities are taken as its integral part.
It was started in 1968 courtesy to the efforts of Stevan Majstorović, founder of the Centre for Studies in Cultural Development, with the objective to encourage integrative, analytical and critical interpretations of the modern cultural phenomena.
At the time of its establishment, the Kultura Journal was unique in the domain of intellectual thought both in terms of its concept and its design. Since the first issue, i.e. over the fifty years of its existence, Kultura has been and has remained open to creative ideas from the country and the world, as seen from the texts of important foreign authors and contributions from professionals coming from the cultural centres of former Yugoslavia, as well as domestic authors who offered new ideas and approaches to culture. The recognizable design solution of the logo of the journal and its cover page were created by the artist and calligraphist Božidar Bole Miloradović, for the very first number.
As of 1971, the issues were edited thematically, which has been dominant practice to this date, with the aim of enriching certain thematic fields in our cultural and scientific community.
The first Editorial Board of the Kultura Journal consisted of eleven members, led by the Editor-in Chief Stevan Majstorović and Trivo Inđić, as conceptual instigators of the journal which heralded a new orientation in the intellectual field. Members of the Editorial Board were: Slobodan Canić, Dragutin Gostuški, Vujadin Jokić, Danica Mojsin, Mirjana Nikolić, Nebojša Popov, Bogdan Tirnanić, Milan Vojnović and Tihomir Vučković. Over the five decades of the Kultura Journal, editorial boards changed several times.
Kultura is issued every three months (four times a year) and its printing has been financed by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia since 2001. With support of the competent ministry, all numbers of this journal, from the first to the last issue, were digitalized in 2009. As a result, a DVD containing digital form of the journal, was available with the issue No. 129, titled "Electronic libraries". A few years later, in 2013, Kultura switched to the Cyrillic script, with an important note that it still published in Latin script those authors from the region who originally use Latin script(Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia). With the issue No. 140, on the occasion of marking the 45th anniversary of the Kultura Journal, a special USB was made available, with all the texts from the numbers 1-137. The web page of the Centre for Studies in Cultural Development contains all the texts ever published in any issue of the Kultura Journal over half a century of its existence.
The Department for Registration of Journals of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, the Kultura Journal was registered in 2005 (when categorisation of scientific journals started) marked as category P53. In 2010,it was registered as category M52 in the group of journals for history, art,history, ethnology and archaeology. At the beginning of July 2012, the journal advanced to the category of national interest, by Decision of the Ministry of education, science and technological development of the Republic of Serbia (M51).
Kultura is regularly deposited with the Repository of the National Library of Serbia, and since 2010, it has been included in the Serbian Quotation Index, where the texts published in Kultura can be found in full digital form. As of 2011, the texts i.e. scientific articles, apart from the regular UDK (universal decimal classification) also carry specific DOI (Digital Object Identifier) codes, that allow for their greater visibility and international indexing under international standards. In the meantime,electronic version of the journal was started i.e. the first steps were made towards electronic edition by CEON (Service for monitoring, measuring and valorisation of scientific journals) through Aseestant electronic editing programme. This has contributed to the quality of published articles, as the editorial board now have at their disposal adequate programmes for text checking in terms of correct citation sand listings of references as well as prevention of plagiarism.
Kultura is regularly delivered to the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade, Belgrade City Library,University Library "Svetozar Marković" in Belgrade, Library of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, Library of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, Library of the Rectorate of the University of Arts in Belgrade, University Library in Niš and University Library in Kragujevac. The Kultura Journalis regularly received by numerous interested institutions of culture (libraries, theatres, museums, culture centres) as well as individuals. The Journal nurtures professional exchanges with many similar institutions and magazines in the country, region and in Europe (Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia,Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland and other countries).
In addition to respecting scientific rules and standards for publishing scientific papers, Kultura has not lost the curiosity or the freshness of an avant-garde magazine dealing with both eternal and very actual topics.
Pages
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- Spiral as a perpetual winding and unwinding of the same
- Spiral cosmic energy is an umbilical cord that connects the man with the Earth and the Heavens. The classic Book of Change and the DNA use this basic cosmic pattern or a 'universal code' to develop their forms and functions. DNA contains genetic material and processes for creation of biological, physical bodies. The classic Book of Change contains principles of philosophical and psychological processes based on which changes and transitional states of mind and spirit occur, in accordance with the principle that the 'Heavens/Cosmos and Man are intertwined as One'.
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- Spiral creation and destruction
- Starting from the point that the spiral is a natural shape, the author studies its expressions in culture. Determined by a circular line which progressively moves away from the centre, the spiral becomes a symbol of human detachment from nature in the process of self-creation. Symbolizing the process of individualization, the spiral denotes a circular determination of initial elements and a linear determination of new creation. Its metaphor also denotes a progressive increase of emotional and aggressive negativity as a challenge to human survival. Spiral spread of hatred and destruction is, however, limited by an opposite growing force. This can in fact justify why in the history, in spite of its forcefulness, the evil has never won and why it can prevail only temporarily in the future.
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- Sports in public spaces
- As the first sports premises built in Belgrade, the Sokol gym halls have a significant place in the urbanistic development of the city in between the two world wars. The question of building a Sokol gym hall was not only relevant to the Sokol gym society, but also to the population at large. Thanks to available archive documents and periodical magazines, we now know that the people of Belgrade took active part in building the Sokol gym society halls and stadiums. This makes research of the Sokol gym halls architecture important not only for the social history of architectural and urbanistic development of Belgrade, but also for the society history in general. In addition to the Sokol gym halls, a significant role in transformation of the public Belgrade spaces belongs to their stadiums i.e. exercising fields. Through an analysis of architectural projects realized under the auspices of Belgrade Sokol gym societies and clubs, we will try to determine their role and significance for the architecture and urban planning of the city, and also determine the manners in which these public spaces contributed to the spread of Yugoslav ideology, as part of a compulsory gymnastic culture and mission aiming at emancipation and modernization of society.
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- Spreading of the democratic culture as an industry of the new colonial consciousness or
- This piece analyzes the ways of imposing ideology of exported democracy into Serbian political culture: the superficiality and hybridity of the process, the incompatibility of the imposing techniques and methods with the local specifics, as well as domestic and foreign missionaries at work. It is about the reasons, the price and the meaning of the results achieved in the process, about the reach of the colonial democracy and the implementation of the democratic culture into the Serbian society. The roots of the reasons for which no one insisted on seeing whether the democratic culture has been 'instituted from inside or imposed from outside' is being determined, as well as the repetition of the old pattern which imposes that 'liberal democracies in the Firstworld- countries always demand that the other nations pay - politically, socially and economically - for what their countries are enjoying'.
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- Stanley Kubrick's cynical dialectics of enlightenment
- This paper analyses deceiving and self deceiving aspects of society in Stanley Kubrick's films, which illustrate the problems of enlightenment from the perspective of critical theory and poststructuralism. A Space Odyssey registers the source of Nietzschean power relations in human nature. A violent humanity is the foundation of the one-dimensional Cold War society and welfare state, where misinforming the communists or its own population is justified by a 'higher cause'. Political interests deliver their own version of the truth. Pseudo-individuality and conformity are present not just on this very planet, but also among astronauts in space. The film also shows a countercultural opposition, and the critique of it is further developed in A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick does not accept a classic Marcusean view of the second dimension. The Nietzschean nature forms both language and action of youth subcultures, and the difference between the good and the evil is rhetorically blurred. Aggressive hero becomes the victim of Foucauldian prison discipline, and for Kubrick its consequence is the loss of free will to make moral decisions. By prohibiting lying and violence, i.e. by 'normalizing', good behaviour stops being an action of free will. Also, cruelty of the main character becomes a public virtue (Horkheimer and Adorno's totalitarianism), and becomes useful to the social elites. Calculative and sadistic aspects of enlightenment are brought in collision, with no clear resolutions, forming life in the risky and reflexive modernity. Kubrick's dialectics of enlightenment caries a cynical implication that lies and violence are both enemies and constituents of enlightenment.
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- Status - it's complicated
- The paper researches romance between humans and artificial intelligence, in terms of gender, in science fiction film narratives of the 21st century and examines the extent of the dominant matrix in which the man is human and the woman is artificial intelligence, subordinated to the male consumer/creator. Also, the paper explores what constitutes the gender identity of a woman as an Other in virtual and cybernetic environments, starting from the framework of the phenomenon of post human, as understood by Katerine Hayles and referred to by Slavoj Žižek, inspired by the cult essay A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Harraway, as well as the gender determination as researched by Judith Butler in her dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir. In the film narratives like Her by Spike Jonze (2013), Ex Machina by Alex Garland, Zoe by Drake Doremus (2018) and the debut film Ederlezi Rising by Lazar Bodroža (2018), a man creates and/or communicates with an android, building an emotional connection. On the other hand, in an episode of the BBC series Black Mirror titled Be Right Back (2013) directed by Owen Harris, there is a singular example of a woman re/creating the beloved man in the form of a silicone android. These examples destabilize rigid binary gender model, introducing new values to the concept of gender.
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- Stefan Nemanja and the national Serbian awakening
- During the creation of the first Serbian kingdom, the role of Stefan Nemanja as a great prefect was reflected in the balance between the two great powers, i.e. the East and the West, where Serbia was trying to develop and maintain a national identity. Preserved hagiographic works, although schematized and written to celebrate Nemanja and his descendants, however, express a historical and cultural context of the early Serbia, especially that preceding the time of the kingdom. In the earliest surviving works related to the life and the cult of Stefan Nemanja, we can most clearly see the role of preserving Serbian identity and tradition. The main features of the Serbian culture, among others, related to the concepts of language and image.
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- Stereotypes in Serbian TV commercials
- The article is conceived as a metatext that identifies stereotypes in the local commercials industry and interprets them as a possible reflection of the late capitalism ideology. The chosen commercial stereotypes I consider here as a symbolic representations, based on 'active process of selection, presentation, structuring and shaping'. Understood as idea and value, ideology supports basic elements of one's identity operating with stereotypes, which for their part 'narrow, condense, simplify' these elements. The aim was to map concrete individual stereotypes, and in the same time investigate whether stereotypes in commercials are also collective themes, i.e. social processes. I tried to establish a theoretical platform for understanding intentions underlying potential creation of a social tissue, which will eventually suggest a more consistent and ethically more desirable representation.
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- Stojanović's interpretation of Richard Hare
- In this paper the author critically examines one aspect of Stojanović's reception of Richard Hare's metaethics, claiming that the reception represents an unused or overlooked 'epistemological chance'.
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- Strategic cultural development planning at local level in Serbia
- The text is devoted to strategic planning as an instrument of cultural policy, and its implementation at the self-government level in Serbia, 2000-2010. The examples and ways local self-governments use in making their own development plans under provisions of the Self-Government Act are presented. Such initiatives are the more important because the state itself has not resorted to the instrument of strategic planning in the observed period. It follows that the bottom-up principle shaped the definition of cultural policy in Serbia since 2000. Only at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and ten years after Serbia entered the transition, with a new Law on Culture, the implementation of instruments of strategic planning at all levels is stimulated. As the strategic planning turns obligatory, a methodology of its elaboration in the sphere of culture is suggested.
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- Strategic dilemmas of contemporary cultural policy in Serbia
- This paper deals with strategic dilemmas of social development that have a great potential to affect the quality of civil life as well as the conceptualization of Serbian cultural policies, but have remained out of public space and public debates during the transition period: interior-exterior culture, endogenous-exogenous resources, rural-urban communities and many more. The aim of this research is to look at the complexities of contemporary cultural policy and analyze its capacities for the democratization of the cultural system and the inclusion of rural population into cultural life. The empirical research has been based on a case study of the villages Starčevo and Omoljica, located on the territory of the administrative, industrial and cultural centre of South Banat - the City of Pančevo. It can be perceived as a representative example of a balancing action of the economic, educational and cultural policies that have crucial influence on the quality of life of its citizens. The study of theoretical and empirical sources demonstrates results of public policies led since the early phase of industrialization at the beginning of the 18th century up to this date, and by analyzing its strengths and weaknesses, it intends to indicate the course of action of cultural policy in the future. The crisis of our contemporary urban-industrial civilization provides an opportunity for better understanding of repressed concepts on the other pole of the dichotomy (interior culture, endogenous development, rural communities). This involves discovering values with the concepts that are worth reviving and incorporating them into contemporary development strategies. Village schools and libraries have a particularly significant role in this area and so far they have not showed awareness of the value of rural cultural heritage, or its role in its protection, preservation, conveyance and usage. In the communities in which those two types of institutions of culture and education are organizationally separate, schools and libraries represent a complementary institutional framework of potential partnership for sustainable development.
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- Strategic political communication in Serbian daily press
- It was said for traditional journalism that it opened 'windows into the world' to the citizens. After introduction of the Internet and a vast number of convergent platforms one could argue that the gaze through these media windows is becoming more and more blurred, due to a continually increasing number and size of such windows, which gives raise to suspicion as to the depicted reality. Analyzing contents of the most investigated daily newspapers in Serbia, the author has investigated the realm of epistemic communication with special attention paid to its role in the process of forming political culture. In contemporary practice, the creators of public opinion are political figures (ranging from political parties to civil society organizations), those in power (members of Government and state administration), the media (from mass media to the social networks) and citizens (from individuals to the political public). Serbian press allow themselves to be gold dusted by PR agencies, presenting reality as patterns of success promoted by political establishment and spinned by manifestations of significance and power. In the aftermaths of the authoritarian pseudo-democratic regime, it is considered normal for political establishment members to use communication intermediaries to serve their interests, thus forcing the contents suitable for aggressive promotion of political clientelism. Unstable nature of the truth provided in various interpretations of recipients, among ideologically and culturally different readers, leads to abandoning of professional principles in journalism and their substitution with informative & entertaining contents. Within this context, news are losing their character as a public value and are becoming merchandise instead, possessed by the richest and most powerfull individuals.