Culture and Mentality: Illusion of Elites?

Abstract

Research into the connection, the correlation and the process of development of cultural and mental components of past societies offers an important contribution to a better understanding of the historical process. lt shows that nothing in history talks by itself. Even something apparently evident like culture is determined by a mental horizon which has to be analysed, if we intend to grasp the cultural process. On the other hand, mentality is only perceptible by the mediation of cultural categories, which, themselves, are again tied to a social, economic and political reality. Every analysis must be aware of such networks. Each reification of a singular of those dimensions can only lead to an illusion of knowledge. And often it seems to be the illusion of elites determining such reifications. The author lays particular emphasis on the discussion of ,popular culture’, being more or less a product of the culture of elites. He postulates an open working modell of historical reality, being aware of historicity and dealing with the dimensions of society as components and parts of a whole, but never as independent fields.