Kaj je kultura?

Under the pressure of applicability of research and a problem-solving approach, contemporary scientific practices often fail to define their “object of knowledge” and to reflect upon their own work. It may therefore be good to ask a naïve question: What is culture? In the art world, the arts often function as the last ideological fortress. In scientific research, an analogous role is played by the notion of culture as a gradual “process of civilisation” that moves people by the means of self-restraint and refinement towards civilisation and away from barbarism. The historical and contemporary cases examined in the article show that there is no transtemporal culture with an a priori positive and “progressive” social role. The concept of culture cannot be separated from: (1) the establishment of financial institutions in the Renaissance, when patronage of the arts helped to “legalise” the most profitable and then-forbidden practice of usury; (2) the transformation of class war into cultural difference via the refinement of the Renaissance carnival; (3) the establishment of general access to education in the 20th century, which, in itself, could not abolish social inequalities, but to the contrary integrated educated people into the reproduction of social inequalities; (4) the establishment of the world art system in the 21st century, when the “capitalist welfare state” replaced the “social welfare state.” From these examples we can draw the conclusion that culture is rather a “Trojan Horse” that can at times work as a destructive social force