Bidochko L. Cultural materialism as a methodology for politics research (the case of Ukrainian left parties).

The thesis deals with the basic preconditions and peculiarities of the formation of cultural materialism as an anthropological research paradigm, theoretical premises, methodology, and improvement of the protective belt of this malleable theory and the evolution of the basic principles of this direction. Cultural materialism is examined as an attempt to remove the contradictions between the idealistic and materialistic schools of cultural anthropology, overcome the epistemological crisis, and become part of normal science in terms of T. Kuhn. An attempt to adapt cultural materialism to the research area of political science and to use its heuristic potential to study the issues of Ukraine’s left parliamentary parties (the case of KPU, SPU, PSPU, and SelPU) is presented. The conceptual and methodological armory of cultural materialism is enhanced with some elements of the world-system theory and Gramscianism, which makes it possible to apply the chosen approach to studying the contemporary politics issues.