Legal mechanisms for the formation of cultural code

Cultural code is a dynamic system of historical memory, language, values, symbols, traditions, and social practices that ensures the recognizability and continuity of a society. Legal scholarship, however, often reduces the mechanisms of its formation to fragmented rules on cultural heritage protection, while the interaction between rights, procedures, institutions, and digital safeguards remains insufficiently explained. This study aims to develop a legal model for the formation of cultural code based on international standards and legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The research applies formal legal, systemic, comparative, hermeneutic, and risk-based methods. It argues that cultural code is not fixed content created directly by the state. Law establishes the conditions under which cultural meanings are preserved, interpreted, transmitted, and renewed with the participation of their bearers. Five levels of the legal mechanism are identified: constitutional and value-based regulation; institutional and policy regulation; identification, safeguarding, and transmission of heritage; guarantees of participation and cultural rights; and digital and intellectual-property regulation. Alongside the strengths of the Kazakhstani model, the analysis reveals sectoral fragmentation, the predominance of detailed rules on tangible heritage, insufficient specification of the procedural rights of bearer communities, and underdeveloped safeguards for the digital use of cultural data. The study contributes a shift from understanding cultural code as a static object of protection to viewing it as a system of social relations continuously reproduced through legal procedures.

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