Cultural turn

The Cultural turn ( German: cultural turn ) describes developments in the humanities and social science that deals with the advent of cultural studies ( cultural studies ) and related to the growing influence of cultural sociology in the second half of the 20th century. It is about the turn to an expanded understanding of culture that provides hergebrachte values ​​in question. The Cultural turn essentially involves a move away from "culture" as high culture of the elites and the precious moments towards a popular culture and everyday life of the average. His output took the Cultural turn by British and U.S. scientists. Beginnings are seen in the early 20th century, a highlight was the establishment of cultural studies by about 1960.

History

The early 20th century underwent a linguistic turn ( linguistic turn ), mainly caused by the studies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ferdinand de Saussure. They made aware of the largely man is defined by his language. The cultural turn can be understood as an extension of this development, because it shifts the interest of the language to any kind of communication.

In the social sciences purported identity were asked by the social constructivism of the 1960s in question. Thus, the focus of political and economic issues shifted to seemingly trivial everyday phenomena that mediate cultural "sense". In the humanities, a turning away from exhibitable or performable work of art to cultural everyday practices happened. In contrast to a concept of culture that is fixated on things based cultural understanding of cultural studies to actions or processes. The distinction between high culture and mass culture (or pop culture ) lost it in importance.

Cultural turns

Under the slogan "cultural turn" very different and contradictory phenomena are sometimes grouped together, which unites that they have all the creation of new knowledge methods in cultural studies to the target. From them is therefore also spoken in the majority of " cultural turns ". These are counted among others:

  • Interpretive turn
  • Performative turn
  • Reflexive ( rhetorical, literary ) turn
  • Postcolonial turn
  • Translational turn
  • Spatial turn
  • Graphic turn
  • Iconic turn, also pictorial turn
Geisteswissenschaft
209300
de