NOTION AND FUNCTIONS OF CULTURE IN YURIJ LEVADA’S SOCIOLOGICAL PROJECT

The article features an analysis of the ideas of Yurij Levada, an eminent Russian academic, sociologist dealing both with theory and with practice of sociology, a founder of a research institution in Moscow known as Levada-Centre. Levada gave a special place to culture within sociology and he himself called his project on theoretical sociology an “attempt at culturally justified sociology” (grounded in a perspective orientated to culture). The project was based on structurally complex, culturally conditioned and symbolically indirect social actions. In his opinion, such knowledge of culture required to be looked at retrospectively, which provides for tackling the issue of social system reproduction while enabling to understand contemporary culture at the same time. This way of thinking was a basis for Levada’s analyses of the surrounding social reality, e.g. his analyses of intelligence or the concept of “simple Soviet man”