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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- The conflict between the utilitarian and anti-utilitarian in European philosophy and culture
- It has already been recognized that the philosophy of Francis Bacon, with utilitarian theory of knowledge and his view that man has rights over nature and should become her 'servant and master' is the philosophical foundation for technological civilization. This paper sheds some light on the process of spreading of utilitarian values from the gnoseology to the moral and aesthetic field. This process is key of spring of the British philosophy. Another key of spring of the British philosophy is aesthetic reaction to the utilitarianism. Together, the two trends represent crucial philosophical events to have occurred on European soil, from the time of the renaissance to this day.
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- The construction of knowledge about/of art in the age of digital media
- The digitization rush has left the hypertext as a computer-generated text in its wake. The broadening of the hypertext concept brings us to the possibility of a new interpretation not only of artistic practice, but of the theory and politics of that practice, correspondingly. When the sign (iconic, indexical, symbolic) became 'fundamental' for thinking, the status of knowledge changed. With artistic practice as an example, that can be seen in the reconstruction/destruction/deconstruction of a work into a text and of the text into a hypertext. The rhetorical figures of the hypertext bring about a new hermeneutics of the code. The code, as a mode of linking lexias (units of reading), past traces of the archive or the database, translates the entire Gutenberg Galaxy into a Hypertextual Galaxy. The event of remedialisation or the digital McLuhan, reminds us that an artistic practice has always been an emphasized (hyper) process of virtualization and of creating the artistic as a media/ discursive construct. The hypertext thus becomes a broad platform for reading/writing both in science and education on the one hand, and in literature, film, visual arts, theatre, fashion, nutrition and photography on the other hand. The work of art/text/hypertext can also be viewed as a paradigm in the construction of knowledge.
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- The context of media spectacle under the circumstances of social crisis
- From the perspective of a predominantly hegemonic discourse, the paper addresses the issue of what happens to the meaning of media contents when the ideological aspect of message coding is unclear. The paper analyses the processes caused by the media context in contact with active audience under the circumstances of social crisis, on the example of the media spectacle of the state ideological apparatus of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1987 - the Youth Day.
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- The creative cities concept from economic perspective
- The concentration of economic activity in space, especially in cities, is specifically expressed in the process of globalization. Although there were expectations that the process of liberalization and the lowering costs of trade will contribute to a greater dispersion of production and people, in practice the opposite have happened. The number of large, populous, urban centers is increasing and the number of people in them, too. A possible reason why the production, wealth and people concentrate in cities is the evolution of business philosophy that occurred parallel to the process of globalization. The economy of knowledge and ideas replaced the traditional concepts. So-called creative era in which we live today has been created. Cities are becoming creative centers and places in which economic growth is created, mostly due to a number of creative people (members of the creative class) who have chosen to live and work in the modern urban environment. Creative cities are those that manage to attract and retain talent. A key factor in the above process is the (non)existence of tolerance. Creative people (talent) are a highly mobile factor, meaning they are very 'sensitive' to attractive terms and incentives of living and work provided by the environment. Creative cities are those that manage to secure all three growth assumptions ('3T' - technology, tolerance and talent). Successful cities differ from unsuccessful ones in that they are able to create adequate conditions for living and work for those who belong to the creative class. How cities can attract members of the creative class? Why some cities are more successful in that than the others? What members of the creative class are 'looking for' in the cities (places) in which they live and work? Those are some of the questions that we will try to answer in this paper.
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- The crime and ethos of African American gangs in the urban Los Angeles area
- Ever since the Chicago School and the rise of ecological theory, gangs have drawn attention of researchers as a unique phenomenon caused by a high level of urbanization and social disorganization. In their works, correlations were first established between the level of poverty, urban environment and the crime rates. In this paper, criminality is defined as a totality of criminal phenomena caused by various criminogenic factors, while ethos is regarded as a manifestation of basic values inherent in a particular person or group - in this case a criminal gang. Primary goal is to determine how criminogenic factors lead to specific forms of crime. Assumption is that factors such as unemployment, economic and systemic deprivation, racism and suburbanization affect young Afro-Americans in a manner that is reflected by a specific criminal subculture. Los Angeles has for decades been considered as the world capital of gangs, which is also confirmed by the city police reports that show there are about 450 active gangs in Los Angeles area. This topic is relevant both in the field of criminology and in the field of urban sociology because gangs have become a unique expression of coping with deprivation and difficult existential conditions in urban environments.
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- The critical reference to distinction between knowledge and faith
- In connection with the polemics between Mihailo Marković and Aleksandar Prnjat the author puts into question the usual distinction between knowledge and faith. He adduces the phenomenon of mystical knowledge as an agument that religion cannot be reduced to faith. Although the suprarational knowledge is very hard to attain because it implies the overcoming of ego, its possibility refutes narrowing of knowledge to mere understanding.
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- The cult of Saint Archangel Michael among Benedictans in the area of Bar mitropoly and Kotor episcopacy
- In the middle of the 9th century, the Benedictan order was on the rise in South Italy. Since the end of the 8th century, Montecasino has been the champion of cultural revival, and a network of abbeys has been established across the regions of Benevento, Puglia, Campania, Calabria and other regions. Members of this order, within European borders, were reputed missionairies who contributed greatly to the christianisation of many Germanic and Slavic peoples. However, the Benedictans from South Italy had suffered attacks by the Saracenes and other invadors who raided and plundered their monasteries, which culminated with their conquer of Montecasino in 883AD. Because of the strengthening of the Byzantine rule, the conditions on the east Adriatic coast seemed far more suitable and stable for life of monastery communities. Also, Slavic population settled back to Byzantine cities, and slowly, they moved towards the coastline zones, building good relations with the urban Roman population. The Slavs had still worshiped old gods or were only partly christianized. In addition to being respected as successful missionaries, the Benedicants raised their monasteries in rural communities close to main roads and city centers, while their way of life fitted in the mentality and habits of an aggrarian society. Christianisation of the Slavic population enabled spreading of cultural models from the city centres under the Byzantine rule, which lead to strenghtening of ideological positions and fortification of their factual rule. On the other side, the Holy See looked benevolently on these efforts, since the Benedictans almost unnoticably contributed to strenghtening of the Roman Church positions in Dalmatia. The Benedictans took their missonary endevours seriously, as we can see from a very smart selection of the cults of saints - primarily patrons of big abbeys.
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- The cultural policy of gender equality the role of women in global business
- Our time, no matter how modern and liberal it seems, still raises the question: Does cultural policy of gender equality in the 21st century really exists or gender discrimination still prevails, both in some cultures and in business? Women advance slowly in the business world, they are paid less than their male counterparts and they need more time and effort to reach the desired positions. In business, especially a global one, women in high positions are very rare. The prejudice is that women are not 'cast' for leadership, that they are too emotional, and that they lack the power... Is this really the case? Why don't more women reach top management positions? The aim of this paper is to answer such questions, to indicate the position of women in global businesses, the opportunities, challenges and obstacles that women face in business, their ability to balance work and family and finally, to give directions how to use cultural policy in removing barriers for advancement of women.
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- The culture of fear
- This paper shows that fears of the modern age have built up so intensively that we can now talk about the catastrophe culture. At the moment when it seems impossible to ensure means for risk reduction and the behavior of both nature and the society appears unpredictable, a universal feeling of fear of the coming catastrophe is born. We can say that catastrophism is becoming the ethos of the global world order. The feeling of powerlessness lies in the gap between our fears and our replies to fears. The exits which are offered us follow along the traced paths of development embedded in the hegemonic model of neo-liberalism and globalization, which smothers all alternatives and expects help to arrive from the directions that caused the problem in the first place. The future is a problem that needs to be solved using all means available, as it is hard to believe that history has left only a few doors open.
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- The culture of modern spectacle
- Media culture of today is defined by the logic of victorious spectacle expanding to all areas of life. Post-modern capitalism has turned everyday life and culture into entertainment with the help of spectacle. In fact, such entertainment is a fake sense of happiness, pop mainstream, swallowing up alternatives and therefore a passive consumption society. The media today have a unique power of bringing information and overwhelm a person with various data. They enable a modern person to know much, but understand little. The discussion has cast some light on presently very popular reality shows, body and sports. It concludes with the reflection on modern media, which leave a person of this age with a patchwork identity.
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- The culture of virtual (un)reality
- The Internet could be defined as a semantically floating environment whose codes mirror everyday acts of a subject or social group; such environment is a novelty per se (in the sense of the medium itself), but also concerns the way in which the communication process is being reconstituted. A medium (channel, means) of communication, as far as the Internet is concerned, connects textual audio and visual elements adding interactivity to them - the possibility of influencing the form and content of requested information. The paradox of a subject and an identity lies in the fact that the subject is simultaneously free to set coordinates of his/her presence on the Web by creating his/her personal profile, but at the same time is imprisoned within cyber space of the screen entirely occupying the visual field. So, we have to ask if the 'reality' and 'copy of reality' are the issue here or are we at the beginning of a new, different reality within which 'real' and 'virtual' are being increasingly intertwined?.
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- The cyborg continuum
- The paper makes use of Judith Butler's poststructuralist approach to gender and Donna Haraway's theorization of the posthuman figure of cyborg to explore the subversion of the heteronormative apparatus in Larissa Lai's novel Salt Fish Girl. This work of the early 21st century Canadian speculative fiction weaves a narrative continuity between a mythical serpent goddess, her reincarnation as a natural woman and her final embodiment as a cyborg in a late-capitalist technocracy. The queer poetics of the novel intersects with the exploration of the boundaries between the human, animal and the machine in a multilayered narrative that imagines a technologically-mediated reproduction of the two lesbian protagonists, thus transcending the heteronormative institution by means of a posthuman subjectivity. Ultimately, Salt Fish Girl may be said to take issue with coextensive ideologies of sexism, racism, scientism and speciesism by imagining a radical agency of a self reproducing female subject that combines different natural species and a machine, challenging the humanist assumptions about the privileged position of man (or, the male, to be more precise) in a chain of beings in which the exploitation of women, nature and animals has been rooted.