A Method of Cultural Transformations Mapping

Abstract

The article is devoted to a method of cultural transformations mapping, which may be used in studying the zones of cultural exclusion and the processes arising on the “edges” of cultural paradigms (actualization — deactualization — reactualization). The article reveals the meaning of the terms “actual”, “deactualization”, “reactualization”, used for description of cultural phenomena within the mapping method. This method gives an opportunity to work with specific factual data, creating a “cultural transformations map”. Due to this mapping, looking similar to tabulation, it is possible to visualize the criteria of the transformations during cultural paradigms changes.

The article provides a brief description of using the mapping method by the example of the study called “The transformation of advertising poster in the first thirty years of the twentieth century”, where the formation and development of Russian advertising poster was presented as changes in cultural paradigms fitting into the scheme of “actualization — deactualization — reactualization”. The article describes a number of procedures used in the mapping method: definition of the periods in research (“pre-avant-garde”, “avant-garde”, “post-avant-garde”), selection of the material and its analysis, introduction of certain criteria for the paradigms comparison, and tabulation of the results. The article also emphasizes the problematic points that need to be considered while using the cultural transformations mapping method.