A set of traditions, customs, social norms, rules governing the behavior of those who live now and transmitted to those who will live tomorrow.
Continuity of culture is achieved through socialization. And a special mechanism, or, as they used to say in the old days, an institution, oversees whether socialization proceeds correctly or incorrectly. It's called social control. Control permeates the entire society, takes many forms and guises (public opinion, censorship, detectives, etc.), but consists of only two elements - social norms (instructions on what to do) and sanctions (rewards and punishments that encourage compliance with instructions). ). Social control is a mechanism for regulating the behavior of individuals and groups, including norms and sanctions. When there are no laws and norms in a society, disorder or anomie sets in. And when an individual deviates from the norms or violates them, his behavior is called deviant.
When we fill in the empty cells - statuses - with people, in each cell we find a large social group: all pensioners, all Russians, all teachers. Thus, behind the statuses there are social groups. The collection of large social groups (sometimes called statistical or social categories) is called the social composition of the population. Every person has needs. The most important, or fundamental, needs are the same for everyone, and the secondary ones
are different. The first are universal, that is, they are inherent in the entire population, and therefore characterize society as a whole. Institutions designed to satisfy the fundamental needs of society are called social institutions. Family, production, religion, education, the state are the fundamental institutions of human society that arose in ancient times and exist to this day. In its rudimentary form, the family, according to anthropologists, appeared 500 thousand years ago. Since then, it has constantly evolved, taking many forms and varieties: polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, cohabitation, nuclear family, extended family, single-parent family, etc. The state is 5-6 thousand years old, education is the same, and religion is more venerable. A social institution is a very complex institution, and most importantly, it really exists. After all, we get social structure by abstracting from something. Yes, and status can only be imagined mentally. Of course, to unite into a single whole all people, all institutions and organizations that have been associated with one function for centuries - family, religion, education, state and production - and present them as one of the institutions is also not easy. And yet the social institution is real.
Firstly, at any given moment in time, one institution is represented by a collection of people and social organizations. A set of schools, technical schools, universities, various courses, etc. plus the Ministry of Education and its entire apparatus, research institutes, editorial offices of magazines and newspapers, printing houses and much more that is related to pedagogy, constitute the social institution of education. Secondly, the main, or general, institutions, in turn, consist of many non-core, or private institutions. They are called social practices. For example, the institution of the state includes the institution of the presidency, the institution of parliamentarism, the army, the court, the bar, the police, the prosecutor's office, the institution of the jury, etc. The same is true with religion (institutions of monasticism, baptism, confession, etc.), production, family, education.
The set of social institutions is called the social system of society. It is associated not only with institutions, but also with social organizations, social interaction, social roles. In a word, with what moves, works, acts.
So, let's draw a conclusion about sociology: statuses, roles, social groups do not exist on their own. They are formed in the process of satisfying the fundamental needs of society. The mechanisms of such satisfaction are social institutions, divided into basic (there are only five of them: family, production, state, education and religion) and non-basic (there are many more), also called social practices. So we have a holistic picture of society, described using sociological concepts. This picture has two sides - the static one, described by the structure, and
dynamic, described by the system. And the initial building blocks are status and role. They are also dual. To complete the picture, two more important concepts are missing - social stratification and social mobility.
(material according to Kravchenko)
To date, scientists have more than 500 definitions of culture. They divided them into several groups. The first included descriptive definitions. For example, cultures are the sum of all activities, customs, and beliefs. Secondly, those definitions that connect culture with the traditions or social heritage of society. Culture is a socially inherited set of practices and beliefs that defines the foundations of our lives. The third group emphasized the importance for culture of the rules that organize human behavior. In other cases, scientists understood culture as a means of society's adaptation to the natural environment or emphasized that it was a product of human activity. Sometimes it is spoken of as a set of forms of acquired behavior characteristic of a certain group or society and passed on from generation to generation.
In everyday life, the concept of culture is used in at least three meanings:
Firstly, by culture we mean a certain sphere of society that has received institutional consolidation . Not only in our country, but also in other countries there is a Ministry of Culture with an extensive apparatus of officials, secondary specialized and higher educational institutions that train cultural specialists, magazines, societies, clubs, theaters, museums, etc., engaged in production and distribution spiritual values.
Secondly, by culture is meant a set of spiritual values and norms inherent in a large social group, community, people or nation.
We are talking about elite culture, Russian culture, Russian foreign culture, youth culture, working class culture, etc.
Third, culture expresses high level of qualitative development of spiritual achievements.
In ancient Rome, where this word came from, culture (cultura) was understood primarily as the cultivation of the land. Cultivation of the soil, agricultural crops - concepts associated with the work of the peasant. Only in the 18th-19th centuries did culture acquire a spiritual connotation for Europeans. It began to mean the improvement of human qualities. A person who was well-read and refined in his behavior was called cultured. To this day, we associate the word “culture” with fine literature, an art gallery, an opera house and good education.
In modern language, the term culture is used very often, mainly in two meanings - “broad” and “narrow”. In a broad sense, culture includes all generally accepted, established forms of life in society - customs, norms, institutions, including the state and the economy. In the “narrow sense,” the boundaries of culture coincide with the boundaries of the sphere of spiritual creativity, with art, morality, and intellectual activity.
Adherents of a narrower approach to understanding culture consider it wrong to extend it to the entire totality of social phenomena. There is a lot of ugly and disgusting things in society that cannot be called culture. Drug addiction, crime, fascism, prostitution, wars, alcoholism - all this is artificially created by man, they all belong to the sphere of social phenomena. But do we have the right to classify them as cultural?
If culture, by definition, consists of values, and not just norms and customs (they can be anything), then fascism or crime cannot be included in the culture, since they do not have a positive value for society. They are aimed at the destruction of man, therefore, they do not represent humanistic values. But if something is aimed at destroying the positive values created by man, then this something must be called not culture, but anticulture. The criterion here is the person, the measure of his development. And then culture is only what contributes to the development, and not the degradation, of man.
It seems that both meanings, broad and narrow, have equal rights, and they should be used depending on the situation and context. The difference between them is this. In the first case, culture includes social problems, in particular, social institutions (religion, science, family, economics, law). In the second, it is limited to the history and theory of artistic culture and art. In the first case, greater emphasis is placed on sociological, anthropological, ethnographic methods and data, in the second - on art criticism, philosophical and literary techniques and data.
Both approaches - broad and narrow - are fruitful in their own way. The first approach is adopted by the majority of anthropologists and sociologists, as well as some cultural scientists. The second is part of cultural scientists and practitioners working in the field of culture: art historians, architects, philologists, urban planners, employees of the Ministry of Culture, etc.
The second, narrow approach assumes that culture is a) a sphere of society, b) an aspect of society or types of social activity. These are different things. With the “spheral” interpretation, the entire society is divided into several spheres - social, economic, political and cultural. The cultural sphere represents one of the segments of society. With the “aspect” approach, society is also divided into spheres. For example, Nizhny Novgorod culturologists distinguish 8 spheres: economic, environmental, pedagogical, managerial, scientific, artistic, medical, physical education. But there may be the same four main areas mentioned above. Their quantity is not as important here as quality.
The definition of culture proposed in 1871 is considered classic. Edward Taylor(1832-1917) - an outstanding English ethnographer, one of the founders of anthropology:
Culture- a complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws, customs, as well as other abilities and skills acquired by a person as a member of society.
This definition organically combines both meanings of culture - broad and narrow.
Culture- a set of symbols, beliefs, values, norms and artifacts. It expresses the characteristic features of a given society, nation, group. Thanks to this, societies, nations and groups differ precisely in their culture. The culture of a people is its way of life, its clothing, housing, cuisine, folklore, spiritual ideas, beliefs, language and much more.
Culture also includes social and everyday attitudes, socially accepted gestures of politeness and greetings, gait, etiquette, and hygiene habits. Household utensils, clothing, ornaments, folklore - all of this has an ethnic tone and is passed down from generation to generation, forming an ethnic style. Inscriptions in the entrance and on fences, which do not always correspond to the norms of the literary language, also express a certain culture, or more precisely, a youth subculture.
(material not based on Kravchenko)
The peculiarity of the sociological approach to understanding culture is that culture is considered as a mechanism for regulating human behavior, social groups, and the functioning and development of society as a whole.
With the most general sociological approach to understanding culture, three of its characteristics are usually noted:
1) culture is a generally shared system of values, symbols and meanings;
2) culture is what a person comprehends in the process of his life;
3) culture is everything that is transmitted from generation to generation.
Thus, we can give the following definition: culture is a system of socially acquired and transmitted from generation to generation significant symbols, ideas, values, beliefs, traditions, norms and rules of behavior through which people organize their life activities.
Page 5
The set of values, beliefs, traditions and customs that guide the majority of members of a society is called the dominant culture. Since society breaks up into many groups - national, demographic, social, professional - gradually each of them forms its own culture, that is, a system of values and rules of behavior. Small cultural worlds are called subcultures.
Subculture is a part of the general culture, a system of values, traditions, and customs inherent in a large social group. A subculture differs from the dominant culture in language, outlook on life, behavior patterns, habits, clothing, and customs. The differences may be very strong, but the subculture is not opposed to the dominant culture. Each generation and each social group has its own cultural world. Counterculture refers to a subculture that not only differs from the dominant culture, but also opposes it and is in conflict with dominant values. The terrorist subculture is opposed to human culture, and the hippie youth movement in the 60s rejected mainstream American values; hard work, material success and gain, conformism, sexual restraint, political loyalty, rationalism.
Along with the concepts of subculture and counterculture, the term “superculture” is gradually being introduced into sociology. The theory of superculture was put forward by the American economist and sociologist K. Baldwing. Superculture is the culture of airports, highways, skyscrapers, hybrid grains and artificial fertilizers, universities and birth control. Superculture is characterized by global scope. Its world language is English, and its world ideology is science. Folk culture preserves the sacred, while superculture promotes the secular. It is spread by formal education and formal organizations.
The life of people in a society without language is practically impossible. It arose at the dawn of human history simultaneously with tools. Language is a prerequisite for culture, not its result. Spoken language is universal because it is used by all people and not by specific groups. Language is a set of culturally transmitted patterns of behavior common to the largest group of individuals, i.e. society. He is the primordial matter of culture. Culture consists not only of layers, it includes customs, traditions, norms, and symbols. But the language stands apart. He is the foundation, the prerequisite of all prerequisites. With the help of language we fix symbols, norms, customs. Through language, we transmit information and scientific knowledge, and more importantly, patterns of behavior from peer to peer, from older to younger, from parents to children. This is how socialization occurs, and it, as it turned out, includes the assimilation of cultural norms and the development of social roles, i.e. just patterns of behavior. Sociology is interested in language as a set of behavior patterns and symbols. This is a social construct that appeared at the dawn of human history. Each social group, according to sociolinguistics, has its own language. She studies the social differentiation of language depending on its speakers (workers, youth, intelligentsia, etc.), the relationship between the structure of language and social structure, problems of linguistic and social behavior. Each person has not only a social, but also a cultural and speech status. Cultural-speech status denotes belonging to a specific type of linguistic culture - a high literary language, vernacular, dialect. Two or three phrases containing elements of vernacular, thieves' jargon or high literary style unmistakably indicate not only the cultural and speech status of the speaker, but also his lifestyle, conditions of upbringing, and social origin. An uneducated person does not notice his illiteracy. He uses the means available to him, chooses words spontaneously. On the contrary, a cultured person consciously decides how best to express himself. By the words and expressions used, one can judge that; what social stratum does the speaker come from, where exactly did he live (city, village, region), under what conditions did socialization take place, what books did he read, with whom was he friends, etc. Thus, in one sociocultural space, on the territory of one country, there exists many language systems. One person can be a member of several language systems and belong to different speech communities, just as one individual has several social statuses and belongs to different large groups. One of these groups is a speech community (language collective). It consists of speakers and translators of this form of language. Cultural-speech status is another and very important characteristic of social status, carrying enormous cognitive information about a person. The bearers of this status are speech communities - large social groups of people. The cultural-speech environment is understood as a speech community of people speaking a certain language, and the set of cultural elements used by this community (customs, traditions, symbols, values, norms). A family, gender and age group, social stratum or class are types of cultural and speech environment. The cultural and speech environment acts as a medium of socialization and at the same time – a medium of consolidation of people. These are its most important functions. The content and organization of people's cultural and speech behavior is controlled by habits, manners, etiquette and code. Habits are firmly learned patterns of behavior; arising as a result of long repetition and performed automatically, unconsciously. The habit of sleeping lying down, eating while sitting, carefully placing breakable objects, and closing the door behind you are collective or group habits that we have learned through socialization. Habit is a rigid pattern (stereotype) of behavior in certain situations. Manners are stylized patterns (stereotypes) of habitual behavior. Closing the door behind you is a habit. But this can be done in different ways; holding it with your hand, slamming it with all your might. Calling by name is a speech habit. But the way this is done (rudely or politely, by last name or first name and patronymic, etc.) already refers to manners. Manners can be rude and well-mannered, secular and casual. They are based on habits, but express external forms of behavior. A characteristic detail of manner is stylization of behavior, i.e. transformation of a habitual action into a figurative system of actions emphasizing something (intention, goal). Etiquette is a system of rules of stylized behavior accepted in special social and cultural circles, in other words, a set of manners. Special etiquette, including speech, existed at royal courts, in diplomatic circles, and social salons. Etiquette contains specific manners, norms, ceremonies and rituals. In the past, it characterized the upper strata of society and belonged to elite culture. Kissing a lady's hand, certainly telling her exquisite compliments, and greeting her by raising her hat are obligatory manners of social etiquette. Etiquette prescribed rules of proper behavior for the highest circles of society. Today, etiquette has ceased to serve as an exclusive form of behavior; it characterizes the behavior of a representative of any segment of society. Its function has changed; it distinguishes a well-mannered person from an ill-mannered one. Code is a set of laws, i.e. a systematized single legislative act regulating a homogeneous area of social relations (civil and criminal codes). Code means a set of rules, beliefs that regulate the behavior and speech vocabulary of an individual. Among the rules governing people's behavior, there are special ones that are based on the concept of honor. They have ethical content and mean how a person should behave so as not to tarnish his reputation, dignity or good name. All of them are not of biological, but of social origin. Honor can be ancestral, family, class and individual. Family honor acts as a moral symbol that complements social symbols, in particular, the rank of nobility, formal attributes of power - coat of arms, title, position. Language is not only differentiated (varied among social groups), but also stratified by levels into higher and lower forms. The following main forms of language are distinguished; literary, colloquial language, vernacular, territorial dialects, social dialects. Forms of language are hierarchically related to each other as more perfect and less perfect. Literary language is the main form of existence of the national language, embodying all the spiritual achievements of the people, surpassing others in richness, sophistication and rigor. It is owned by the highly educated part of society. The vernacular language is a stylistically more reduced, less standardized form of the language. It has the widest language community and is accessible to individuals with any level of education. Vernacular is a non-literary style of everyday colloquial speech. In terms of the composition of its speakers, it is the language of the un- or poorly educated strata of the city, and mainly a form of speech of the older generation. Vernacular speech is a set of speech features of persons who do not fully master the norms of the literary language. Territorial dialect (TD) is an unwritten form of language limited to everyday communication, one geographical area and social class, namely the peasantry. Dialects are historically the earliest form of language, which developed during the tribal system and is now preserved mainly in rural areas. Social dialects, or sociolects, are conventional languages (argot) and jargons. SD carriers are urban social groups. Scientists distinguish between class, professional, gender, age and other sociolects.
Its result is a socially mature personality. What is a personality without culture?
culture is a set of traditions, customs, social norms, rules governing the behavior of those who live now and transmitted to those who will live tomorrow.
Continuity of culture is achieved through socialization. And a special mechanism, or, as they used to say in the old days, an institution, oversees whether socialization proceeds correctly or incorrectly. It's called social control.He permeates the entire society, takes many forms and guises (public opinion, censorship, detective, etc.), but consists of only two elements - social norms (instructions on what should be done) and sanctions (rewards and punishments that encourage compliance with instructions) .
social control is a mechanism for regulating the behavior of individuals and groups, including norms and sanctions.
When there are no laws and norms in a society, disorder sets in, or anomie. And when an individual deviates from norms or violates them, his behavior is called deviant.
So, let's do it third conclusion: The solution that holds society together is strong because it is mobile. This quality is given to it by the social interaction of huge masses of people. In order for it to be an orderly process, society has developed a special mechanism for regulating behavior - social control. It consists of sanctions and cultural norms that people learn through the process of socialization.
When we fill in empty cells - statuses with people, then in each cell we find large social group: all pensioners, all Russians, all teachers, etc. Thus, behind the statuses there are social groups.
The collection of large social groups (sometimes called statistical or social categories) is called the social composition of the population.
It is dealt with not only by sociologists, but also by statisticians.
Every person has needs, which he is obliged to satisfy: physiological, social, spiritual. The most important, or fundamental, needs are the same for everyone, but the secondary ones are different. The first ones are universal, i.e. inherent in the entire population, and therefore characterize society as a whole.
Institutions designed to satisfy the fundamental needs of society are called social institutions.
Family, production, religion, education, state - Fundamental institutions human society, which arose in ancient times and exist to this day. In its rudimentary form, the family, according to anthropologists, appeared 500 thousand years ago. Since then, it has constantly evolved, taking many forms and varieties: polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, cohabiting nuclear family, extended family, single-parent family, etc. To the State 5-6 thousands of years old, the same age for education, and religion has a more respectable age. A social institution is a very complex institution, and most importantly, it really exists. After all, we get social structure by abstracting from something. Yes, and status can only be imagined mentally. Of course, to unite into a single whole all people, all institutions and organizations that have been associated with one function for centuries - family, religion, education, state and production - and present them as one of the institutions is also not easy. And yet the social institution is real.
Firstly, at any given moment in time, one institution is represented by a collection of people and social organizations. A set of schools, technical schools, universities, various courses, etc. plus the Ministry of Education and its entire apparatus, research institutes, editorial offices of magazines and newspapers, printing houses and much more that is related to pedagogy, constitute the social institution of education. Secondly, basic, or general institutions in turn consist of many not the main ones, or private institutions. They are called social practices. For example, the institution of the state includes the institution of the presidency, the institution of parliamentarism, the army, the court, the bar, the police, the prosecutor's office, the institution of the jury, etc. The same is true with religion (institutions of monasticism, baptism, confession, etc.), production, family, education.
The set of social institutions is called social system society.
It is associated not only with institutions, but also with social organizations, social interaction, social roles. In a word, with what moves, works, acts.
So, let's make the fourth conclusion: statuses, roles, social control do not exist by themselves. They are formed in the process of satisfying the fundamental needs of society. The mechanisms of such satisfaction are social institutions, divided into basic (there are only five of them: family, production, state, education and religion) and non-basic (there are many more), also called social practices. So we have a holistic picture of society, described using sociological concepts. This picture has two sides - static, described by the structure, and dynamic, described by the system. And the initial building blocks are status and role. They are also dual. To complete the picture, perhaps two more important concepts are missing - social stratification and social mobility.
social stratification is a set of large social groups located hierarchically according to the criterion of social inequality and called strata.
This is a different version of social structure. Statuses are located not horizontally, but vertically. Only on the vertical axis can they be combined into new groups - strata, layers, classes, estates, which differ from each other according to inequalities. Poor, wealthy, rich - the general model of stratification. In order to move from the general to the specific, we will divide the vertical space into four “rulers”: the income scale (in rubles, dollars), the education scale (years of education), the power scale (number of subordinates), the professional prestige scale (in expert scores). The place of any status is easy to find on these scales and thereby determine the overall place in the stratification system.
The transition from one stratum to another, unequal (say, from poor to rich), or to equal (say, from drivers to tractor drivers) is described by the concept of social mobility, which can be vertical and horizontal, upward and downward.
That's all that can be said about the subject of sociology. Essentially, we talked about all of sociology, but in the most general terms. The book as a whole is dedicated to covering in more detail what is briefly outlined in this paragraph.
Let us highlight the key concepts that make up the subject of sociology.