Culture as national securuty interest

Abstract

Our aim in this paper is to point out that the social role and importance of culture in the modern world are perfectly legitimate in as much as culture is connected with all the aspects of social life and integrated in all social phenomena and processes. Culture can also be linked to security because together they encourage thinking about the ways of responding to threats and vulnerabilities affecting an individual, a social group or society as a whole, and even the state itself. The most general anthropological understanding of culture, commonly accepted by scholars yet criticized at the same time, deÞ nes culture as a “way of life” or as a “socially deÞ ned way of life”. However, this paper will focus on the approaches to interpreting culture that proceed from its fundamental functions, which serve to satisfy man’s needs but also to set normative goals, that is, determine the standards of a tolerant and desirable existence. We have singled out survival, communication, normative, cumulative, and security and protection functions as the most signiÞ cant functions of culture that promote the development and quality of life, at the same time building essentially on the concept of security culture. They will be discussed in this paper.