A qualitative study of the prevalence of the notion of cultural collapse among the elites: myth or reality?

Culture, as one of the main components of any social system, has always been exposed to all kinds of reflexivity, and one such case of ideation is related to the promotion of the notion of collapse by the elites. The purpose of this article is to examine what cultural collapse is, and to identify the root cause of it related to the elite community. To achieve this goal, a qualitative study with inductive content analysis was conducted with the participation of 12 academic elites who were experts and had published books on the subject under study. To analyze the data, a thematic analysis was adopted and the data were coded in Atlas.ti8. The findings showed that the use of the idea of cultural collapse has caused conceptual confusion among the elites, and while culture does not disappear but can be accompanied by metamorphosis and change. The roots of this go back to the forms of cultural change, analytical deception, the role of educational centers, the body of power, and the media; and the nature of the idea of collapse is related to the political system and has nothing to do with culture.