Metaculturology: Converging the Science of Culture and Museology

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to verify conceptual approaches to interpreting the potential of interdisciplinary convergence between science of culture and museology within the context of socio-humanitarian scientific knowledge. The research methodology employs a situational analysis to clarify the circumstances of disciplinary discourse formation, a logical-deductive method for verifying arguments regarding the prospects for the development of domains in scientific, academic, and practical professional knowledge, sceptical empiricism for delineating disciplinary ‘guild’ boundaries, and modelling potential directions for the convergence of culturology and museology. The scientific novelty. Within a metaculturological framework, the interaction between the science of culture and museology can take various forms. This interaction may encompass both convergence and divergence, emerging from the clash of the conceptual frameworks of culturology and museology. Their interpenetration can have diverse consequences for both domains. Bistability (Homeostasis): state of equilibrium where each discipline maintains its niche (e.g., in a theory-practice disposition). However, deep interpenetration will not characterise them. Reduction (Dominance): as a result of competition, one discipline ultimately assimilates the another. Bricolage (Symbiosis): heterarchical combination of elements from both disciplines aimed at resolving specific problems, such as the formation of cultural identities. In this case, bricolage is viewed as an open system that can integrate elements from other disciplines. It does not represent the realisation of a clearly defined project for the synthesis of culturology and museology at the tactical level. It operates only at the strategic level, utilising the epistemological capabilities of every discipline necessary to solve problems of the cultural process. Bricolage is the more relevant way of developing metaculturology. Conclusions. The study revealed that expectations regarding the epistemological potential of culturology and museology, when considered separately, are inflated, as both sciences are in the early stages of their formation. Concurrently, both culturology and museology have accumulated a significant number of dead-end deviations that can no longer be fixed. This also applies to fields of knowledge that traditionally address cultural issues. The convergence of the science of culture and museology, already outlined within interdisciplinary studies of cultural and sociocultural institutions, will facilitate an exit from the stagnation of these disciplines. Primarily, this involves the creation of a field of metaculturology that will consider the negative experience of the habitual development of the science of culture and museology and outline new directions for their advancement.