Research area

In her dissertation project with the working title “Cultural Practices and the Constitution of Cultural Goods”, the author examines the question of the nature and conditions of existence of cultural goods based on a practice-theoretical approach.

The classification of an artifact as a cultural good is not primarily based on its intrinsic properties, but is rather the result of human value attribution practices. The questions of what they are and why they are valuable to us must therefore be preceded by the question of what we do with them and what they do with us. Intangible cultural goods are often practices, i.e., actions that are performed according to socially predetermined and meaningful patterns. Tangible cultural goods, on the other hand, are always both the result of and a point of reference for cultural practices. They have symbolic character and serve to constitute and further develop collective identities and worldviews. Our value attribution practices are therefore subordinate to other practices: practices of access, practices of reference and semanticization, practices of inclusion and exclusion, as well as practices of communication and negotiation.

On the way to a praxeologically informed ontology of cultural goods, a detailed explanation of the differences and connections between the concepts of actions, practices, and techniques is necessary. This explanation should be combined with suitable theories of the creation of social meaning and symbolic power, which already exist in particular in the philosophy of language, ritual, and theater studies, in order to form an illuminating theoretical framework for cultural goods research.