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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- Transition as a transfer of culture from Polis to Megalopolis
- In this text the difference between two cultural matrixes is being examined: the culture of Polis and the culture of Megalopolis. Taking for example Dučić and his glorification of social life in big cities, dating from 1902, the roots of the culture of polis in Serbian culture are being shown. It stands against the dominant romantic matrix but not in a way that denies national identity deriving from that matrix, but in a way that recognizes a set of civil and modern values within the national culture and identity. As opposed to this, the culture of Megalopolis turns a citizen into a consumer, characterized by feeling of radical emptiness. By using brands, it turns him or her into a virtual citizen of Megalopolis who has negative sentiments towards its own cultural tradition because he/she experiences it as something that prevents his/her connection with the Megalopolis. Thus this cultural matrix acts as an instrument of separation of an individual and his or her cultural tradition, by which he or she is turned into a virtual resident of Megalopolis. Therefore it supports the turnover of a national state into suburbia which is entirely at the disposal of Megalopolis.
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- Transition of culture
- The text points at the complex inadequacy of the meaning of the concept of 'culture'. However, the dependency of this concept on the context does not diminish an important role of culture in influencing worldviews. Cumbersome economic and political conditions reflect on the state of culture, while the awareness of the state of culture allows deeper consideration of possibilities for social change. The principle of modern capitalist production stands in opposition to this, as it has its origins in trading books, as a production of culture. Since the production of culture is mainly profit oriented, it is an obstacle to the creative shaping of culture. This is even more a problem in marginalized cultures, such as the culture in Serbia, which is constantly exposed to the tides of transition- from the pre-modern age, into the tradition of Christianity, than across the atheistic modernization of communism to the globalization era. Hence, the actual transition of culture in Serbia has become a part of the global cultural transition. It is at the crossroads between the production of culture, with profit standing as central value, and the creation of culture that supports sustainable and humane life on Earth.
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- Transition of pop culture from consumer to hyper-consumer society
- The author of this paper deals with the turbulence of pop culture in a transition from the industrial-mass production to the postindustrial post-cultural hyper-consumer society. The first section identifies the consumer mentality of a consumer, preoccupied by the consumption of material and symbolic goods, and of a turbo or hyper-consumer, who has raised consumption to the level of fetish. In both cases consumption could not function without marketing, advertising and creation of brands. Following a comprehensive analysis of the general characteristics of consumption (in the industrial stage of society) and hyper-consumption (in the postindustrial stage), the author uses sociological instruments to observe the consumption of popular cultural contents - film, television and various genres of popular music in particular. The section titled 'Rock - from the music of rebellion to a market item' examines the transformation of rock music and different manners of its perception, from its first notes to this date. The author analyses the postwar youth market, including the industry of records, cassette tapes, CDs, music videos and other media. The economy of rock-n-roll and the commercial basis of this music have subjected rock to great temptations, leading to its double life, which on the one hand, serves the purpose to meet the tastes and expectations of a large and demanding audience, and on the other, to make profit so as to satisfy the insatiable appetites of various business people, music producers, organizers and managers.
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- Translating the term real and its use in rap music
- The primary goal of this paper is the solution of the problem of translating the term real from English to Serbian when it is used in Hip Hop culture. The paper describes the roadmap of the process of finding the adequate word in Serbian for the term "real" - the term "pravi". The secondary goal of this paper is the improvement of the communication among members of the Hip-Hop community by offering an argumented recommendation for the use of the term "real"/"pravi" in Rap music. The conditions for the usage of this term are given from both theoretical and historical perspectives, as well as the argument for the advantages of interpreting the term "real"/"pravi" as synonymous to the term "hardcore" when used in reference to Rap music, lyrics and artists.
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- Translation work of Romanians from the territory of present day Vojvodina in the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century
- The paper presents different aspects of the translation work of Romanians from the territory of the present day Vojvodina (Banat) during the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, up until the Second World War. The translation work in administration, education, religious institutions, and primarily in journalism and literature, has played an important role in the multicultural society of Banat. Various languages, cultures, traditions and religions interacted and intertwined there, and the society functioned on principles which enabled mutual understanding and cooperative work of all those who lived in Banat, regardless of the differences. The first translations in the Romanian language, primarily from German and Serbian, appeared in the 18th century, for the needs of state administration, education or religious work. The translations became more diverse and of a higher quality thanks to the work of the first elite Romanian intellectuals from the period of the late Enlightenment, the representatives of whom were Paul Iorgovici, Constantin Diaconovici Loga, and Sofronie Ivacicovici. In the 19th century, the translations got new content in the form of publication of multilingual posters, invitations, association rules, monetary instructions, newspaper articles, religious books, but also literary works, among which the most prominent were the translations of Hungarian literary works to the Romanian language, done by the writer and publicist Alexandra Tintariu. In the period between the two World Wars, translation work also gained new content because translations from German and Hungarian to Romanian stopped as the focus was placed on translations from Serbian to Romanian and vice versa.
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- Transmedia literacy in the service of cultural development
- This paper considers changes caused by new technologies that enable an increasing participation of average Internet users in the field of cultural production. From the perspective of pyramidal participation, different forms of achieving user participation in culture are presented, according to the level of freedom they achieve, that is the structure of the relationships in participation. The main argument of the paper is that development of culture can be accelerated by increasing participation in cultural production. Accordingly, a link between participation pyramid and the competencies related to transmedia literacy is made, in order to point out the potential that transmedia literacy can have for enriching global culture.
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- True lies of Mario Vargas Llosa
- Throughout his literary career, the Peruvian Nobel laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, has almost constantly dealt with the problem of lies, in different ways. In his eighteen novels, numerous essays and several theatre plays, we can recognize the motif of various forms of lies - mainly expressed through the hypocrisy of the society, military and the clergy - so we can safely say that lies are one of the key themes of narrative and essayistic works of Mario Vargas Llosa. From his point of view, lies are not only part of everyday life, vessels of every society and every subject of fiction, but they are also an integral part of each individual, as well as of life itself. In this paper we have tried to research all the aspects of his interest in the topic - from his childhood to the electoral period in Peru (1990), described in Fish in Water (Elpez en el agua, 1993) and his latest novel Five corners (Cinco esquinas, 2016). We have paid special attention to Mario Vargas Llosa's theoretical views regarding literature and lies, expressed in his various essays: True Lies (Las mentiras verdaderas, 1980), The Art of Lying (El arte de mentir, 1984), The Truth About Lies (La verdad de las mentiras, 1990), The Temptation of the Impossible (La tentación de lo imposible, 2004), as well as his lectures after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature (2010).
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- Truth from the machine
- The world of multiplying products which machinery from the Industrial Revolution brought about among other things, a machine whose main task in the future will be - to work with our shadows. Writing with light (photographs) in fact cannot exist without the sun/light and shadows. Hence, photography deals with researching shadows that the technical aid has left to us. At the entrance to the modern European game of shadows, concepts such as heliography, daguerreotypes, talbotization are properly elevated... They testify to the desire of the creators of individual techniques to attain eternity by means of technical devices that they invented. People came to see Daguerre's dioramas, Don Slater says, 'to see the re-creation of the real, and not merely an image of reality'. It's as if God has once again found a way to show himself from the machine. The human need for meaning has gained a new partner. No illusion is more convincing than the one that is the result of precise, predictable, scientifically substantiated - machine steps. The text is intended to reflect on the following: What happened to the Truth after the appearance of photography?.
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- Truths and trivialities of literature
- The central claim in this paper is that literature is cognitively valuable as it offers specific cognitive benefits to the readers. This claim - which I call the intuitive attitude regarding cognitive dimension of literature - is defended against one very specific objection according to which literature offers knowledge already familiar to the reader, which makes it cognitively trivial. This objection - which I call argument from cognitive familiarity - is analyzed from the epistemic point of view, and not, as usually in literary aesthetics, from the aesthetic one. The analysis shows that there are significant cognitive benefits which are available even in those cases where we are already familiar with the knowledge that the work imparts.
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- Turbo-folk
- This paper analyses the turbo folk music genre as one of the important elements of modern pop culture in Serbia as a significant representative of the Serbian cultural identity and politics, together with its many clashes and contradictions. By using a research of Edward Said and his basic assumptions of Orientalism as a dominant view of the West's Others, we continue with regional applications of this theory by Marija Todorova, Milica Bakić-Hayden and others to question the development of internal identities developed in former Yugoslavia within these discourses and to attempt to provide an explanation for the contested values and positions of the turbo- folk phenomena to this day.
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- Two or three things on Godard
- The paper studies the connection between social theory i.e. critical sociology and philosophy and the committed films of the French director and famous representative of the Nouvelle Vague - Jean Luc Godard. With a short review of his movies Two or Three Things I Know About Her, The Week End and La Chinoise - all three were made in 1967 - attention was drawn to the possibility of a 'joint act' of sociology, social philosophy and film art.