Suchergebnisse

The authors discuss the significance of anthropological concepts in the analysis of political culture as carried out in both applied and theoretical studies of current political communications in transitional political processes. Drawing on a history of methodological and theoretical debates in political science and anthropology, the authors examine methodological issues of studying discourses of political memory as a symbolic representation of socio-cultural specifics of temporal dimensions of a given political culture. They emphasize the importance of describing and theoretically analyzing the role of political myths and symbols present in political memory in transition societies and point out that analysis of political myths as a symbiotic mechanism (or as a source of reproducing and delineating 'political passions') closely connected with symbolic practices of coercion highlights the role of culture in variability of political transition processes. They argue that a focus on political culture as a historically specific form of social memory allows one to examine differences in models of political culture within structures and practices of everyday life. Using an anthropologically oriented political analysis as a theoretical basis, the authors suggest a new theoretical approach to the study of contemporary political communications and argue for a need to develop new strategies of research of political culture in sociology and political science.

The article examines the place and the role of political narratives of national memory in the processes of political identification of modern political communities. The authors prioritize contemporary socio-cultural research strategies of political phenomena, which interpret political identification processes in the methodological context of the dynamics of national memory's symbolic structures. The proliferation of such communicative practices as storytelling, political performance, post-factual politics and political imaginary complicates the problem of political identification and its narrative design in modern society and gives rise to multiple nationalist, populist, and ethno-political discourses. In this context, the significance of the theoretical understanding of national codes of communal political identification and an ability to forecast the symbolic contours of a new, more stable narrative of national identity based on codes of solidarity and civic patriotism increases. The study of the impact of symbolic configurations of legitimating profiles of national memory on specifics of everyday political narratives and the discourses of civic patriotism as the semantic core of national identity is particularly important in the study of contemporary political identification. The description of the profiles of the national memory legitimation necessitates a study of the conflict dynamics of the symbolic contours of the national memory, which includes competing semantic components (images of the past, political characteristics of elites, typology of the heroic, priority strategies and practices of fighting "enemies"). In turn, these processes determine the nature of the emergence and multiplication of identity conflicts. Using methodological premises of the cultural and sociological analysis of the dynamics of modern political cultures as symbolic forms of national memory, the authors propose new theoretical approaches to the study of the political identification processes and conflicts among basic political narratives in the realities of contemporary political communicative practices.