Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of changes in identification strategies, due to the processes of homogenization of culture, the changing relationship between elite and mass culture. Although the division of culture «culture of the masses» and «the culture of the chosen ones» have always existed, but in the modern era of relations between them have lost oppositional character. In post-industrial society is the convergence of elite and mass culture through the «democratization» of elite culture, which now focuses on the wider educated public, generated by scientific and technical revolution. However, popular culture plays in society the role of a mechanism that meets the needs of a large part of society to adapt to new socio-cultural realities. Elite culture comes with it in an active interaction, saturating it with new content and enriching spiritual values. This process of convergence researchers describe as «demassification» culture and «the individualization of the person». The convergence of elite and mass culture, which defines one of the trends of the transformation of the modern socio-cultural space, causes and transformation mechanisms of the cultural identity of a person. In these conditions there is a crisis of the model of identity, which dominated in the past and formed a new identity model, which becomes a fundamental source of social values. This new model provides a higher level of personal expression, generates new cultural priorities. It forms the «identity of resistance» against unificatory trends of globalization and «projective identity» focused on the future «a new civil society». The identity of modern man - man of network - is not stable, it provides the opportunity to «cross borders» between those spheres of cultural life, which according to the traditional terminology is defined as «elitist» or «mass» culture. Mass culture, which now became the dominant form of cultural life, the primary means of identifying individuals, demonstrates the ability to adapt as the values of high culture, and a marginal model for mass distribution, widely using, in particular, the means of art. A complex interaction of elite and mass culture reflect the concept of kitsch-culture, art-culture and middle-culture. «Metaculture individuality» demonstrates beyond the usual vision of the world, the ability to rejection of conventional matrices behavior and perception. Mass culture is not a set of completed artifacts, which are correlated with certain values, and the dynamic process of generation, consolidation and dissemination of the new ideas. Its main task is to interpret the features of «cultural modernity», setting a certain value of the coordinates of identification strategies.