PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE MAIN HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PRACTICES OF THE ARMENIAN DIASPORA IN UKRAINE

Abstract

It is revealed, that in the diaspora Armenians met with the material world of «Other / Alien» things, therefore, their entrance to another's cultural landscape occurs also through «appropriation» of the world of «Other» artifacts.

The phenomenological description of the main cultural practices of the Armenian diaspora in the context of adaptation to the new socio-cultural landscape is fulfilled. The expediency of considering the cultural practices of the Armenians in view of the nature of the socio-cultural structuring of the topos of the Armenian diaspora is substantiated. They can be divided into economic/housewifely/craft cultural practices – traditional types of artistic and craft activities, in the process of which artifacts with utilitarian and artistic value were created (jewelry, arms business, weaving, construction, etc.); mediative cultural practices (trade, diplomacy and translation); figurative-symbolic / artistic and scientific-educational cultural practices.

Artifacts that appear as a result of economic and craft cultural practices formed a material topos that performs not only the function of creating a zone of functional and living comfort, but also provides knowledge/recognition of «their» and at the same time representation of themselves as «Strangers», especially in the early stages of formation of diaspora culture.

From the point of view cultural-pragmatic and/or communicative cultural practices played the role of frames (I. Hoffman), which, by their nature, provided a background understanding of the events in which Armenians participated, gave them confidence in the correctness of their image of the world, supported the reproduction of social experience and a consistent picture of the world. It is determined that historically traditional cultural practices for Armenian diaspora in the lands of Ukraine became a kind of constituent patterns, thanks to which a network of new social ties was built and a new topos of diaspora culture was formed.

It was found that the qualitative depository of artifacts in Ukrainian museums, which representing Armenian cultural heritage, demonstrates the appearance of specific features that show changes in the mentality, artistic tastes, values of Armenians in the Diaspora, which indicates the formation of a separate autonomous original sphere of Armenian Diaspora culture in Ukraine.