Theoretical and methodological vector of modern research on the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai

Popov Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor of the Department of Sociology and Conflictology of Altai State University 65649, Russia, Barnaul, Dimitrova str., 66, office 513A popov.eug@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Zabneva El'vira Ivanovna Doctor of Philosophy Rector, State Educational Institution of additional professional education "Institute of Education Development of Kuzbass". 650070, Russia, Kemerovo region, Kemerovo, Zauzelkova str., 3 zabnevailvira@mail.ru

The article was prepared as part of the state assignment of the Altai State University, project No. 850000F.99.1.BN66AA04000 "The Turkic world of the Greater Altai: unity and diversity in history and modernity."

Introduction. The ideas about the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai are mostly fragmented, despite the fact that, in general, the opinion about the value-semantic unity of this cultural space prevails in the research discourse. However, such unity, from the point of view of scientists, is achieved primarily by the cultural and historical community of peoples and their traditions, as well as by a single source of socio-cultural development – the Turkic world. The disparity of approaches and accents occurs for several objective reasons.

(1) The Great Altai in reality is precisely a large conglomerate of original cultural traditions – to establish unity between them, it is not always sufficient to turn only to the richest ethnographic material, which researchers certainly possess and often resort to its comprehensive analysis; here a large cross-section of cultural experience associated with socio-political and socio-economic issues is clearly needed.- economic processes.

(2) The prevailing historical and genetic cross-section of the formation and development of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai makes it possible to assess the processes of assimilation and acculturation, however, their duration and effectiveness, as well as the need to study contradictions and delayed consequences in time, force researchers to return to the conclusions already obtained and repeatedly rethink and overestimate them – undoubtedly we are talking about the accumulation of important for scientific generalizations of the material, but due to its reworking, a single research outline is lost.

(3) The spiritual culture of the Greater Altai provides an opportunity for interdisciplinary reception – independent research directions appear, for example, Altaic discourse, the study of the Turkic world, ethnography and ethnology of the Altai world, etc.; in this case, the horizons of generalizations of mythology, religion, ritual and ritual ethnoregional culture, cultural texts, codes and symbols – for this purpose, scientists Various theoretical and methodological approaches are used with appropriate specific research methods; it is quite difficult to achieve some consistency in the results of such studies, since different goals are set, different approaches and aspects of research are chosen, etc.

These reasons are not exhaustive, and they provide a basis for searching for such a methodological vector of research that would identify the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai as an original value-normative system. At the same time, we rely not only on an interdisciplinary approach, which, undoubtedly, in this case can be considered as the main one, since it covers various nuances in the analysis of rich cultural, historical and ethnographic material, has access to a comparison of epochs, peoples and their spiritual and social practices. For us, the cultural philosophical approach is important, which allows us to comprehend the studied phenomena primarily within the boundaries of value-semantic certainty. From this point of view, the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai is revealed as a cultural space in which values and norms are built in a certain system that gives a fairly complete idea of the essential origins of this ethnoregional culture. Of course, the cultural system appears as its universal property – in other words, any culture is built in its development as an ordered system, including certain properties, forms and elements. In fact, it can be argued that any ethnoregional culture has its own system of values and norms, built as a result of cultural genesis and complex processes of symbolization and sacralization of spiritual heritage.               

         Thus, solving the issue of the methodological perspective of studying a specific ethnoregional culture, in this case the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, we set the goal of substantiating such a research direction that would allow us to identify the origins of the value-normative system of culture and at the same time become, within the framework of the corresponding object-subject field, a key universal perspective of various studies. In the first part of the article, the main approaches to the study of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai will be considered and evaluated, as well as a proprietary approach to the analysis of cultural space will be proposed. In the second part of the work, it is proposed to assess the prospects of this approach as one of the key ones when considering the distinctive spiritual culture of the Greater Altai.

         The main approaches in the study of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai: a literature review.  

          In the research of any ethnoregional culture, the richest ethnographic material is taken as a basis, testifying to the diversity of traditions and attributes of human individual and collective life activity. At the same time, traditionally, the emphasis is on mythology and religion, because these forms of culture go back centuries, but they can also be modernized, and many myths and religious cults persist for a long time, acquiring the properties of stable archetypes. All these circumstances are characteristic of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai. Her research will also focus on mythology and religion.

         The spiritual culture of the Greater Altai is identified by researchers in two main directions – from the point of view of the philosophy of place and in terms of the dominant type of religious and mythological worldview.

         Indeed, the Great Altai is one of the "territories of centuries–old peaceful integration of various peoples and cultures into each other," in the words of A.V. Ivanov and M.Y. Shishin ^{[1, p. 8]}. There are other characteristics, but they are also somehow connected with the identification of the cultural space of the Greater Altai in territorial and semantic terms: "the reserved land" ^{[2, p. 110]}, "the center of the universe" ^{[3, p. 46]}, "the community of the Altai Mountains, which pulled together cultural threads in the foreseeable historical past The Great Belt of the Eurasian Steppes" ^{[4, p. 200]}, etc. At the same time, geographically, "Greater Altai is understood as a cross–border territory, including: on the Russian side – the Altai Territory and the Altai Republic, on the Kazakh side - the East Kazakhstan Region, on the Mongolian side – Bayan-Ulagey and Kobdos aimags, on the Chinese side – the Altai District of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region" ^{[5, p. 29]}. From this point of view, understanding the essence of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai is most likely impossible to imagine without the context of the philosophy of the place. It is in this direction that the idea of a sacred center of spirituality of the Turkic peoples, united by one place – the Great Altai, is developing. From this point of view, the conceptualization of the philosophy of place in characterizing the properties of the ethnoregional culture of the Greater Altai, in our opinion, has quite a heuristic potential.

         The concept of planetary culture is also applicable to the culture of the Greater Altai, as L.P. Gokman wrote about it ^{[6, p. 289]}, and the "true earth" ^{[7, p. 46]}. P. Smith expressed the idea that in comparing cultures one should always pay attention to "the place to which these cultures are attached". In his opinion, the binding of culture to a specific place is not just a geographical fact, but also an ontological one, associated with the acquisition of culture's integrity not only in the territorial sense, but also in the value sense ^{[8, p. 10]}. Naturally, the concept of the philosophy of place is relevant to the culture of the Greater Altai, since the sacred landscape and the sacred center generate their own cultural features that make it distinctive. A number of researchers emphasize that through the philosophy of place, the value structures that underlie culture are refracted, but they also form the worldview of the people and influence the civilizational world order ^[9]. Of course, this approach has a pronounced heuristic value, but at the same time it is not without some drawbacks. For example, researchers emphasize the localization of cultural space through the philosophy of place, partly its closeness ^{[10, p. 280]}. Indeed, the conceptualization of the philosophy of a place is an approach that defines the local specifics of culture, but at the same time it gives an idea of how this place is "saturated" with sacred meanings that historically consolidate peoples, influence the processes of broadcasting socio-cultural experience, etc. But still, the weak point may be the overlap of the philosophy of the place with the concept of Eurasianism: as noted by the researchers, "the idea of a new model of civilizational existence and the idea of Eurasianism turn out to be tied in one tight knot: spiritual and ecological historiosophical perspectives inevitably leave their mark on the priorities of Eurasian geopolitics of the 21st century; and the transition to a noospheric civilization and salvation from an imminent technogenic-consumer catastrophe depend on the reasonable implementation of the latter, in turn ^{[11, p. 50]}. Eurasianism is focused on geopolitical and ideological slices of reality, the philosophy of place unfolds in a different way: in a substantial way, if we proceed from the binding of sacred symbols of existence, traditions, a special type of perception of reality, etc. We do not dwell here in detail on the aspect of the conjugation of the philosophy of place with the ideas of Eurasianism, however, in general it seems to be a significant area of research in from this angle.

         Tradition is important for the philosophy of the place. It is associated with the preservation of values and norms that have historically developed in the cultural space of ethnoregional culture and have always had a cultural-creative function, in fact, being its primary source. The researchers draw attention to a number of points related to traditionalism in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai. In particular, there is an opinion that the cultural concept of the sacred landscapes of Altai is refracted through the mythologeme of the world mountain ^[12], and one of the key elements of traditionalism is the cultural and natural potential of the sacred place - mountains, rivers, lakes ^[13]. It is in attributing sacred meanings to certain natural spaces that the philosophy of the place manifests itself: "Around the image of the Beluga there are a huge number of legends, mythological sketches, creative works in various forms of art. Speaking about the ancient belief in the existence of a certain central peak of the world, it should be noted that Altai has long been perceived by many peoples as a special mountainous country abounding in natural resources, and as the spiritual center of the world, one of the sacred centers of the planet" ^{[14, p. 97]}. In addition, the authors emphasize the need to consider sacred territories as guardians of traditional values ^[2].

Meanwhile, an important aspect of the study of traditionalism in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai is the value-normative aspect. It is noteworthy that the authors make attempts to build a certain value system, but for the most part this research direction does not aim to find the grounds for such systematization and therefore it is natural that the authors state the existence of such a cultural system as a given [15-17; et al.]. Indeed, for any culture, its expressed property is the presence of a system of values and norms, for which traditionalism (traditional values and norms) is also almost always established as the basis. However, as V. Asakavichute believes, traditionalism in the cultural space has a pronounced universal character – "the development of cultures in their ethnogenesis was based on stable universals or even stereotypes that do not have a pronounced ethnic coloring, but affect the integration of culture with its bearers" ^{[18, p. 80]}. The systematization of values according to the principle of traditionalism is a given of socio–cultural development, however, traditions have their own connotations and pronounced ethnoregional specifics, which, of course, cannot be ignored. Therefore, the search for the foundations of a system of values and norms is conducted in this direction. Thus, in relation to the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, the system of values and norms is associated with the dominant type of religious and mythological worldview.

The authors, who drew attention to the religious and mythological features of the culture of the Greater Altai, repeatedly emphasized the determinism of the processes taking place in culture by the sacred meanings of human existence and sacredness as such ^{[3; 5; 19; etc.]}. Meanwhile, the experimental principle in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai was also discussed - experienced from the point of view of "agnosis", but in line with the desacralization of values, as A.V. Ter-Arakelyants writes about it ^{[20, p. 192]}. But it is still more important to have a different perspective of the experienced as a line of "spiritual history" ^{[1, p. 10]}. The first, sacred– reflected the preservation of sacred symbols, traditions and images, the second, experimental, linked together the multidirectional human searches aimed at maintaining codes and signs of sociocultural unity. For obvious reasons, researchers have mainly focused on the first subject to study for obvious reasons – understanding the specifics of any culture, especially one that has a pronounced ethnoregional coloring, cannot be carried out outside of sacredness. At the same time, we emphasize that for the purpose of this article, this perspective is quite an important point, since our proposed approach to the analysis of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai "at the intersection of traditions and values" will be based on experience. At the same time, of course, with regard to the characteristic of the originality of ethnoregional culture, this particular angle of research does not look advantageous, but it nevertheless allows us to identify the integrity of this culture, to show the foundations of its unity.

It should also be noted that researchers, while actively studying sacred attributes and traditions, have not taken steps to systematize sacred values, therefore, in the local areola, the research results look convincing, but the unity of the line of "spiritual history" in the sacred has not yet been presented. We do not set a task to fill this gap, however, our proposed approach, so far only as the first attempt to systematize the multifaceted spiritual experience of the Greater Altai, may well claim a holistic view of the development of a specific ethnoregional culture. We call this approach an interiorization approach.                             

          The interiorization approach as one of the research perspectives. This approach does not compete with approaches that have already been tested and have pronounced heuristic significance, for example, axiological or semiotic, its main goal is to identify key value-normative complexes (or complexes) that would indicate the semantic unity or integrity of the cultural system under study. At the same time, the proposed approach does not compete with the leading systemic approach. The difference between them lies primarily in the fact that the interiorization approach is aimed at studying the interconnectedness of existential and social human experience, which is realized, among other things, in various cultural forms, and the systematic approach forms ideas about culture as a self-sufficient and self-regulating system due to endogenous processes. However, the problem lies in the fact that socio-cultural processes are so diverse that it is almost impossible or difficult to establish a single indicator of "equilibrium" for all of them. In this case, the effect of value-normative uncertainty arises, when, for example, the values and norms of one of the spheres of human existence – political, legal, economic or another – are considered in isolation and without connection with cultural ones. As V. Asakavichute emphasizes, the systematic approach allows for "deviations" of values in their hierarchies – for him, "the fact that values are built into certain systems is important, but what they actually look like is most often not discussed" ^{[18, p. 81]}.

         The interiorization approach, as is known, is widely represented in social psychology and personality psychology, but its heuristic potential may well be used in the study of cultural phenomena, and in particular, the ethnoregional culture of the Greater Altai. In this article, we do not dwell in detail on the approbation of the interiorization approach, but only declare the expediency of its application and accumulation of information about it for further use in the process of socio-cultural research. A number of foreign authors have already considered this possibility, however, with some reservations: for example, it was noted: the interiorization approach is inextricably linked with the subjectivity of an individual, and therefore any phenomenon of a social or cultural order can be identified mainly through the opinions and representations of a particular subject ^{[21, p. 270]}. On the other hand, there was also a pronounced advantage of this research direction: the achievement of value-normative certainty, when "phenomena of a social and cultural order are built in accordance with those value-normative structures that seem to be tied to human experience" ^{[21, p. 271]}. For the interiorization approach, it is important to identify opportunities for the accumulation of cultural experience and its transmission to subsequent generations of cultural speakers. Thus, applying this research perspective, we can count on establishing the foundations of value-normative processes occurring in culture. R. Fischer argued about this possibility, comparing the heuristic potential of cross-cultural research and the actual interiorization approach, the purpose of which, from his point of view, is to identify specific value structures that influence the formation of social or existential experience of individuals ^{[22, p. 31]}.

         The systemic basis of any ethnically colored culture is the symbolization and sacralization of reality. These two main processes refract all the key processes of cultural development. In the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, they also form its foundation and can be studied from the perspective of various theoretical and methodological approaches. If we apply the interiorization approach, then we can use it to establish at least two points: (1) how the experience of the bearers of this particular culture is refracted through the processes of symbolization and sacralization; (2) how value transformations take place on the basis of these processes and whether they affect the maintenance (preservation) of the identity of an ethnoregional culture.

It should be emphasized that "the sacralization of values in this work is understood as a mechanism for designating sacred meanings of being in the phenomena of everyday life of cultural bearers and their generations, as well as endowing attributes of everyday life, states of nature, cosmos, world order with divine properties, symbols and codes" ^{[23, p. 183]}. At the same time, symbolization is the transfer of socio-cultural patterns that have an attributive connection with objects of the surrounding reality, but do not name them directly, but encode information about them in symbols, signs, cultural texts ^{[21, p. 271]}. With regard to the culture of the Greater Altai, we can establish that the social and existential experience of the bearers of this ethnoregional culture is formed at the level of identification of the God–World–Man trinity. At the same time, such a trinity is sacralized through a number of traditions and rituals, for example, the path to Ulgen and Erlik necessarily lies through many obstacles not only of a natural nature, but also of a social nature ^{[24, p. 14-15]} – a person walking on the path to the gods overcomes the resistance of his enemies, fights with them, but not for the sake of conquests, but in order to pass the tests on the way to God, to show that a person is worthy to be in front of him. On the other hand, the Altai epic "Maadai-Kara" contains a description of the tradition when a horse is tied to a hitching post, the pillar of which goes into the bowels of the lower (underground) world with its base, and the upper part extends into the sky, to the upper deities ^{[24, p. 12]} – a person receives a sign from the gods that he can tie your horse to such a hitching post, etc. Comprehension of the God–World–Man trinity is possible only at the level of accumulation of experience, which cultural bearers acquire as a result of cultural genesis, but also through the sacralization and symbolization of cultural space. In fact, the processes of sacralization and symbolization, permeating all spheres of human individual and collective existence, contribute to the formation of socio-cultural experience, which reflects the fate of the people, their traditions, values and norms. Usually, in socio-cultural studies, the emphasis is on the expression of the sacred or divine in each of the three elements of the trinity separately, but such an angle does not give a complete picture of the specifics of ethnoregional culture. Therefore, it is necessary to first actualize the generalized model of the unity of the three key elements of existence – God, the World, Man, and then consider its semantic fullness.

         The proposed interiorization approach is also important for establishing value transformations taking place on the basis of sacralization and symbolization, and determining the boundaries of their influence on maintaining (preserving) the identity of ethnoregional culture. In the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, such value transformations occur in the space of the God–World–Man trinity: the sacralization and symbolization of the divine occurs on the principle of worship of a higher power – God, however, the accumulated experience of worship is extrapolated to the worship of nature. As noted in this regard, "nature worship is a way of life that the Altaians inherited from their ancestors. In an industrial society, the attitude towards nature is, in general, utilitarian – they keep it for themselves: to drink clean water, breathe fresh air and use environmentally friendly products. And for the Altaians, nature is first of all a Temple of God, a source of knowledge to wisdom" ^{[5, p. 30]}. Value transformation is observed in the "transition" from the divine to the natural and back again: if earlier the divine was recognized as the value structure of "achievement", now it becomes the value of "connection with man and the world". Changes also occur during the sacralization and symbolization of another important element of the trinity under study – the World. On the one hand, the World opens up to generations as a value structure – the result of sacralization and symbolization aimed at "everyday life, ideology, religion and artistic culture" ^{[5, p. 29]}, on the other hand, the conceptualization of the World in the social and existential experience of cultural bearers occurs through the reflection of the uniqueness of the landscape of the region: "Representations of peoples living in on the territory of the Greater Altai, the world and the universe directly reflect the uniqueness of the landscape of the region. The Russian Altai, mostly forested and crossed by high ridges, acquires a mountain-steppe appearance in the area of the Chui steppe. Mongolia is a vast rocky high–altitude steppe with a small layer of fertile land. Therefore, each of the peoples values its own in nature. Russians – forest, steppe, river; Altaians – mountains, forest, river; Mongols – steppes, mountains. The forest plays an important role in the history of these peoples" ^{[5, p. 31]}. In this case, the originality of the culture of the Greater Altai is emphasized precisely by the transformation of the value structure of the concept of Peace. If in traditional cultures the World dominates as a survival environment for cultural carriers, then the substantial meaning of this concept is also characteristic for the Greater Altai ^{[6; 24; 25; etc.]}.

         Conclusion. When analyzing the theoretical and methodological possibilities of studying spiritual culture, which has an ethnoregional character, in particular the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, it is important to establish the basis of unity and integrity of cultural space. The variety of traditions, rituals, cultural and art monuments reflecting the ethnoregional specifics of culture are not always systematized, and the attempts made to build a system of values and norms of culture are often unproductive due to the fact that no clear basis for systematization is offered, and thus it acquires a formal character: once there is a "certain" culture, there is and the system of its values and norms. But how these values and norms are systematized and how their transformations take place, affecting the preservation of cultural identity, researchers cannot always determine. Because of this, an appropriate research perspective is needed, which would provide answers to a number of questions related to the system of values and norms of ethno-regional spiritual culture. Apparently, an interiorization approach may become one of these perspectives. It allows us to take into account the peculiarities of the sacralization and symbolization of the attributes of human existence in spiritual culture, but the emphasis is placed on the core basis of such processes – on the social and existential experience of cultural bearers, which "binds" values and norms together, ensures their transfer from one generation to another. The application of this approach opens up prospects in substantiating the unity and integrity of spiritual culture in value and semantic expression.