Uczestnictwo jednostek w kulturze. Uwagi na temat nowej dynamiki kultury na przykładzie melomanów i ewolucji nośników muzyki

The aim of the text is to sketch the dynamics of contemporary culture, focussing on the concept of participation. General remarks are accompanied by illustrations taken from ethnographic study on music lovers faced with evolution of musical media (vinyl records, CDs, files). Following Marek Krajewski, the author rejects the traditional notion of “participation”, and uses his redefinition of the term. He stresses three dimensions of cultural participation: 1. participation as socialization; 2. participation as reshaping the participants themselves, which makes material traces; 3. participation as metaparticipation, ie. the modifying of the conditions of participation. At the same time, three crucial dimensions of the notion of “culture” are taken into consideration, which enables us to analyze the participation understood in the proposed way from a triple perspective: 1. participation takes place within culture, culture enables participation to occur; 2. culture is a resource used in the process of participation; 3. culture as “something beyond interaction” emerges in the course of participation. The author argues that thinking of participation in this way, the contemporary culture is to be viewed as clash between many heterogeneous forces, where constructing and maintaining stable areas is the exception rather than a rule. This is why it is so important to study of how the orders of participation are stabilized. Various forms of institutionalized reflexivity are ubiquitous in contemporary culture. Our culture is tyrannized by information, and the acceleration connected to it.