kulturwissenschaftliche

Kulturwissenschaft, literally “cultural science” or “cultural studies” in the German-speaking world, is an interdisciplinary field that investigates culture as a set of meanings, practices, and symbols embedded in social life. It seeks to understand how cultures are produced, reproduced, and transformed across time and space, through analysis of artifacts, institutions, media, language, ritual, and everyday behavior.

Roots trace to the late 19th and early 20th centuries within German humanities and social thought, drawing on hermeneutics, anthropology, and historicism; the term gained prominence as scholars advocated crossing disciplinary boundaries to study culture itself rather than isolated domains like literature or art. Since the mid-20th century it has developed in various directions, including elements of critical theory, post-structuralism, and globalization studies.

Methodologically, kulturwissenschaften employ comparative, historical, and ethnographic approaches, as well as discourse analysis, semiotics, and theoretical frameworks from sociology and philosophy. Topics include the production and reception of cultural artifacts, media and communication, gender, race, class, nationalism, heritage, everyday life, consumption, and transnational flows.

Today, kulturwissenschaft is used both as a broad umbrella in German-speaking academia and as a label for specific programs in cultural studies, media studies, and related fields. It intersects with anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, and communication studies, and it emphasizes interpretation, context, and power relations in cultural processes.