“Social Frames of Culture” Forty Years Later. Five Models of Cultural Frames of Communication

Abstract

Forty years ago Antonina Kłoskowska built up a universal paradigm of three social frames of culture. They included: frame one, i.e. local production of symbolic processes, close to folk culture; frame two — understood as a network of local institutions of culture; frame three — involving a radiation of pan-local centers, in particular a reception of contents transmitted by mass media. A basic sociological criterion of differentiating between these categories includes a type of contact, and adjacency of sender and recipient of symbolic communication. Currently, following years of development of digital means of communication, computer networks and fiber optic technologies, audio-visual systems, mobile telephones, etc. a proposal of frames of culture must be examined again. New media shape new vehicles of expression (e.g. hypertext), but most importantly they inspire specific social relations. Discussion over cultural framework is also triggered by accelerated processes of economic and social transformation, advanced globalization, increase of living standards and dissemination of consumption attitudes, changes in leisure activities of the middle class. In more narrowly understood domain of institutional and professional culture one witnessed the processes of European deregulation and release of culture from state, which in Eastern Europe was accompanied by abolition of censorship and a different model of culture distribution, which is controlled by market and cultural (creative) industry rather than by central government. As a result, the nature of direct communication among people is subject to ongoing transformation. We witness more and more indirect cultural communication (off-line and on-line). Modified and broadened proposal of social frames of culture includes five rather than three paradigms, namely: the culture of indirect communication, the culture of associations and volunteers; the culture of local institutions (public and private), mass culture versus pop culture, cyber-culture, culture of network community. One has to underline that in the new reality of our civilization we can still use analytic principles of Kłoskowska’s typology. First, we can treat spiritual culture as a phenomenon of autotelic semiosis with pragmatic definition of sign; second, while describing social functioning of culture we can use a sociological criterion of contact and adjacency.