VARIABILITY, CULTURAL INVARIANTS AND BASIC UNIVERSALS OF CULTURE

Abstract

The article updates the issue of universals, invariants and variability as conventional «resources» of culture. On the basis of systemic, complex and interdisciplinary approaches, stable elements, that is, cultural universals and variable elements that can appear and disappear in specific historical conditions, have been investigated. It was established that cultural universals reflect the characteristics of cultural experience and are distinguished by the comparative uniformity of features in the most diverse manifestations and have an abstract, symbolic character. It is emphasized that cultural universals are mostly related to values. It was found that cultural invariants are a property or a constant that remains unchanged in various transformations and appear in culture as a unity of the variable and the unchanging. It has been studied that cultural invariants are one of the ways of maintaining and transmitting symbols, myths and archetypes. It was concluded that the cultural invariant is opposed by a variant. The cultural invariant determines the «quality» of a given culture, establishes the boundaries of variability and its semantic manifestations. Accordingly, variability is the mode of existence of culture in time and space and all existing and possible sign and symbolic manifestations of culture, variants of its forms and contents. If invariance is characterized by stability and stereotypy, independence from external influences, preservation of traditions, insufficient flexibility, and orientation towards order, then variability is characterized by flexibility, innovative orientation, openness to everything new, dependence on influences. Variability exists at the same time in the variety of concrete expressions – options.