On the Concept of “The Ecology of Culture”: History and Current State

Abstract

This article examines the history of the concept of “the ecology of culture”, which was introduced in 1979 by Dmitry Likhachev (19061999). He interpreted it as a synonym for “moral ecology”. The article unfolds the history of the concepts in three aspects: genealogical, institutional, and epistemological. In the Russian history of this concept, the author sees a break at the turn of the 1990–2000s. In the 1990s, Oleg Genisaretsky played a significant role in the development of the idea of ecology of culture to form and promote a cultural-ecological approach in project design activities. From the mid-2000s, despite significant support for the “ecology of culture” project at the Likhachev Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, this concept has increasingly acquired the features of a memorial—the appeal to Likhachev is mainly timed to coincide with his anniversary. The appearance in the 2010s and 2020s, in connection with the “ecology of culture” in the Russian humanitarian space, of such vague and undeveloped concepts such as “linguistic ecology” or “ecology of education” discredit the epistemological and practical content of the term “the ecology of culture” rather than meaningfully developing it. The prospects for the concept proposed by Likhachev are seen not in highlighting the ecology of culture as another field of extensive near-humanitarian research, and not in “moral ecology,” but in the inclusion of this concept in the practice of modern environmental and ecocritical research.