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Introduction
Sociology is a relatively young science. As a professional sphere, it took shape only a century and a half ago. But the beginnings of sociological knowledge can be traced back to antiquity. The first philosophers who distinguished society and the relationship between the individual and the state were Plato and Aristotle. Plato's social views are most fully reflected in his works "State", "Laws", "Politics". Plato was the first to lay the foundations for the theory of stratification. According to this theory, any society is divided into three classes: the highest - consisting of sages - philosophers, called to govern the state, the middle one - including warriors, whose duty is to protect the state from external enemies; the lower one - consisting of artisans and peasants who should be engaged in productive labor, ensuring their own existence and the existence of other classes. Aristotle continued his analysis of society. He outlined his views in the treatise "Politics". The main element in his social structure is the middle class, which is the basis of a stable and normally functioning state. Aristotle gave one of the first classifications state structure, dividing state forms into three right and three wrong forms of government.
In the Middle Ages, the theological perception of the world dominated society. Therefore, theologians dealt with complex social problems mainly, based primarily on Christian dogmas. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is a theologian who developed a philosophical concept that is still recognized by the Catholic Church as the only correct one. In his opinion, all knowledge constitutes a hierarchically organized system in which the highest point is theology as a doctrine that is closest to the Divine mind. The power of the sovereign and social inequality Thomas Aquinas deduced from the Divine will: God arranged the world this way, and people just need to obey his will, which means that any attempts of a person to move to a higher estate are sinful. He made a clear distinction between divine and temporal authority. Aquinas best type state government considered the monarchy, because it is a model of the world, which is ruled by God.
In the Renaissance, knowledge about society grew within the framework of other sciences, mainly philosophy. Thus, public self-knowledge for a long time took place in an unscientific form (myth, religion, utopia) or in an inadequate form (within other sciences).
The most significant ideas were voiced by: Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) in the treatise "The Emperor", who continued Platonic reasoning; Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who most fully developed an anthropomorphic model of society based on a comparison of society and man; John Locke (1632-1704) - an English philosopher and politician - in his main work "Two treatises on state government" he argued that state power should be divided into legislative, executive (including judicial) and federal (foreign relations), which in a properly arranged state are in a certain balance. But gradually disparate "sociological" knowledge begins to unite and turn into new science called sociology. Since the Renaissance and especially in the New Age, a predecessor has been formed scientific sociology- "social physics".
Since the beginning of the 19th century, under the influence of the transition of society to a new economic model, the destruction of the old principles of social interaction, there has been scientific stage sociology, its way out of the framework of philosophy, the formation of the subject of science and its methods of study. And Auguste Comte (1798-1857), a French thinker who first proposed the term "sociology", is considered to be the founding father.
With the development of sociology as an independent science, several main schools are gradually taking shape:
* Austro-German School of Sociology;
* french school sociology;
* Italian School of Sociology;
* American school sociology.
* And let's take a look at the Russian school of sociology separately.
1. Austro-German School of Sociology
The Astro-Germanic school focused its attention on the theory of conflict. sociology philosophy school
The German school of sociology was represented by such prominent scientists as L. Gumplovich, G. Ratzenhofer, G. Simmel, F. Tennis, M. Weber, G. Sombart, L. Wiese, 3. Freud.
Ludwig Gumplovich (1838-1900) relied on the theory of social conflict, believing that the object of sociology is social groups, and the subject is the system of movements of these groups, which is subject to the eternal and unchanging laws of coercion and violence.
Being a supporter of social Darwinism, Gumplovich divided social groups into simple human communities with their anthropological and ethnic characteristics (clan, tribe, horde) and complex multidimensional social education(estates, classes, states). The age-old intertribal and interstate conflicts act as a form of social conflict for him. Relationships of all types of social groups are determined by hatred, violence and coercion, causing their constant state of merciless struggle. In short, Gumplovich considers the law of the struggle for existence as a natural law of society. Unwillingly, Gumplovich actually recognized the right to aggression, tyranny, and exploitation.
Gustav Ratzenhofer (1842-1904) explained social life also in terms of the conflicting interests of social groups and individuals. He considered sociology as the basis of all social sciences and practical politics. Ratzenhofer, unlike Gumplovich, thought a lot about the problem of regulating social conflicts, in connection with which he proposed the law of “bringing individual and social interests into mutual conformity” discovered by him as the basic law of sociology. He understood the resulting cooperation of people as the main way to overcome any conflicts.
Ferdinand Tennis (1855-1936) distinguished two parts in sociology:
* general sociology, which studies all forms of human existence;
* special sociology, which studies social life itself and, in turn, is divided into theoretical (pure), applied and empirical.
Tennis considered the community and society to be the basic concepts of sociology. The community is a historically primary formation, which is characterized by harmony, customs and religion, the dominance of traditional relations, the stability of social contacts, and support. The source of the community is a kind of "essential" will - instinctive, inherited from previous generations and manifested in unconscious motives, morals and conscience. Society is a secondary formation, which is characterized by a contract, public opinion, rational goals, conscious contacts, expediency, calculation, politics. The source of the creation of society is the "selective" will - rational, rational. The analysis of the development from communal forms to social ones, with the idealization of the community, a pessimistic assessment of the state of contemporary culture, which Tennis conducted, was the basis for criticism of him.
Tennis had a significant impact on the development of sociology in the 20th century. in Germany. He was the founder and first president (1909-1933) of the German Sociological Society. He also put forward the idea of an analytical - as opposed to historical - construction of sociology, which testified to the further institutionalization of sociology as a science.
Georg Simmel (1858-1918) was the founder of formal sociology. He believed that the subject of sociology is the "psychological individual" and various forms of social interaction between people. Considering the history of society as the history of mental phenomena, Simmel made a number of aspects and aspects of social life the subject of his research, for example, such as domination, subordination, rivalry, division of labor, and the formation of parties. He classified social phenomena into three groups - social processes, social types and models of development. Simmel also expressed many valuable ideas for the sociological analysis of the city, religious consciousness.
Max Weber (1864-1920) entered the history of science as the founder of understanding sociology and the theory of social action. Weber believed that one should not study social life, guided by intuition, since the result obtained will not be generally valid. Considering that the task of sociology is to establish general rules events, regardless of the spatio-temporal definition of these events, he introduced the concept of an ideal type as a method and tool for sociological cognition of reality.
Weber put forward the general concept of sociology as a science of reality. The subject of sociology for him is a social action that has meaning. In this case, the basic concepts are behavior - activity; action - behavior as an action that makes sense; social action, when the meaning of the action is correlated with the behavior of another person; social relation is a stable connection of mutually oriented social actions.
Speaking about the insufficiency of describing and explaining the relationships and relationships inherent in human behavior, Weber put forward the problem of understanding the reality under study, interpreting understanding as the comprehension of motives human activity- internal perception and comprehension of the facts of a person's spiritual life, his experiences.
Since Weber defined sociology as a science that studies mainly social action, he identified the following types of social action:
* goal-oriented, using a variety of means to achieve the goal;
* value-rational - rational in the use of means, but irrational in terms of the goal;
* affective, guided directly by emotional urges;
* traditional, prompted by learned customs and habitual patterns.
As one of the founders political sociology, he developed the doctrine of the types of domination, introduced the concept of legitimate domination, i.e. one that is recognized by controlled individuals. He considered culture, material interests, power and values to be the main parameters of social life.
Weber's "ideal types" of legitimate authority are:
* traditional (patriarchal), based on the interweaving of power aspects of tribal ties with tradition;
* charismatic, based on human greatness, exceptional spiritual talent (reformers, heroes, leaders); this type of power implies unconditional submission and is supported primarily by faith in the chosenness (charisma) of the ruler;
* rational (as a manifestation of reason), based on the legality of the existing order. In a new type of civilization (industrial), power will inevitably pass to technocrats.
We noted earlier that Weber substantiated the concept of "rational bureaucracy", considering its implementation in the 20th century inevitable. According to Weber, the capitalism of that time is a rational bureaucracy, i.e. rationally organized economy, politics, law, science, technology, ethics. He also developed the theory of "plebiscite democracy", in which the people elect a charismatic leader, whose task is to control the activities of the administration in order to prevent bureaucratization of the management process. Using the mechanism of collegiality and separation of powers, it is possible to minimize the domination of man over man through rational representation of interests.
Developing ideas about the creation of sociology as a positive empirical science of society, Weber focused on the sociology of religion. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as well as in a series of articles on the sociology of world religions, Weber explores the connection between religious-ethnic principles and forms of economic activity on a huge material of highly developed forms of religious life. Protestant ethics, with its cult of entrepreneurship, frugality, economy, was, according to Weber, the basis for the origin and functioning of capitalism.
Werner Sombart (1863-1941), one of the founders of the theory of "organized capitalism". According to Sombart, the development scheme
* early (until the middle of the 13th century) with a predominance of handicraft forms of labor and the traditional (patriarchal) system of values;
* complete (until 1941), where economic rationalism and the competing principle of profit prevail;
* late - monopoly capitalism with the concentration of industry and the growth of government regulation of economic life.
Sombart singled out two disciplines in sociology - philosophical and experimental sociology, interpreting the latter as the science of human coexistence.
Leopold von Wiese (1876-1969) had a significant impact on the development of sociology, primarily as an organizer and systematizer of science. He interpreted sociology as an empirical-analytical discipline, which is very distant from the economic and historical sciences and interacts mainly with the psychobiological sciences. The subject of sociology for him is something social (interhuman), consisting of a "tangled network" of relations between people within the framework of various forms of relations such as I - You and I - We. Wiese singled out such types of social relations as associations - unifying relations (adaptation, correspondence, mixing) and dissociations - separating, i.e. disruptive, competitive.
The scientist was a supporter of the formal school in sociology and developed a position on the primary social group as a system of interrelated status-roles. His classification social structures is based on the sign of the duration of existence and the degree of generality:
* specific crowds - visible and short-lived;
* abstract crowds - invisible and indefinite duration;
* groups characterized by the personal participation of individuals and organizations;
* abstract collectivity, in which the minimum influence is given to individuality (state, church, etc.).
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), an Austrian psychologist and philosopher, believed that interpersonal interaction was influenced by strong influence experience acquired in early childhood, as well as conflicts experienced during this period. Not without his influence from the second half of XIX V. a new psychological direction is being formed in sociology, which is characterized by the desire to seek the key to explaining all social phenomena in mental processes and phenomena of the individual and society, in other words, to reduce the social to the psychological. At the same time, there is a gradual transition from the search for a “single factor” to a multifactor model. social behavior. (The International Sociological Congress in 1897 finally abandoned the theory of "one-factor" development of social processes.)
From now on, the following influences are accepted as the main prerequisites for the study of social phenomena:
* individual mental factors, when social processes are explained on the basis of an analysis of the psyche of an individual;
* group mental factors, when social phenomena are analyzed from the perspective of groups (clan, tribe, collective);
* social, when social actions are interpreted as a product of society itself, i.e. taking into account social psychology.
The desire to draw attention to the problem of social consciousness, the attempt to consider social processes as processes of socio-psychological, individual-group interaction are an undoubted merit of psychoanalysis. At the same time, the interpretation of the development and functioning of society solely from the standpoint of the psychological direction led to a narrowing of the subject of sociology: the social was most often interpreted as a form of behavior, interaction and relations between people.
2. French School of Sociology
The French school of sociology focused its attention on the study of group, mass behavior, where a significant role is played by psychological and social mechanisms. Interest in the psychology of the masses especially intensified after the French revolutions of 1789 and 1848.
The beginning of this school was laid by O. Comte, but the real foundation was created by Emile Durkheim.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) is a recognized classic of sociology of the 20th century, his concepts formed the basis for the formation of the theoretical foundation of Western sociology, in particular structural functionalism: he founded the so-called French sociological school. The ideas of the Enlightenment, in particular the concepts of Sh.L. Montesquieu, J.J. Rousseau, K. Saint-Simon and O. Comte, as well as the ethics of the philosopher I. Kant. Durkheim's main works are "On the division of social labor" (1893), "Method of sociology" (1895), "Suicide" (1897), "Elementary forms of religious life" (1912), most of them translated into Russian.
Durkheim, developing Comte's positivist traditions in sociology, was guided by the methods of the natural sciences, arguing that they provide empirical validity, accuracy and evidence of theoretical positions. In order for sociology to become an independent science, it must first of all clarify its special subject and its method of research. This subject, Durkheim believed, is a special reality, the basis of which is social facts that are not reducible to either economic, psychological, or physical facts of reality and have a number of independent features - an objective existence independent of the individual and the ability to exert pressure on the individual. , i.e. acting as coercive force. This is how the behavior of an individual in society is regulated, which is mainly determined not by individual causes and factors, but by a combination of social facts that push the individual to certain actions. Social facts are "things" that exist outside the individual consciousness - patterns of thoughts, actions and feelings that are capable of exerting an external influence on people. Each such social fact is propagated by imitation. At the same time, it can become general (ie acquire a normative character) only through coercion. Hence the social is obligatory, general, not reducible to the individual. Durkheim singled out the following social facts:
* morphological, constituting the "material substrate" of society - population density (physical and moral), by which Durkheim meant the frequency of contacts or the intensity of communication of individuals, the availability of communication routes, the nature of settlements, etc.;
* spiritual, non-material facts - "collective representations" that together make up the collective consciousness.
Durkheim emphasized the special status of sociology in the system of human and social disciplines. Sociology must be neither individualist nor communist nor socialist, for these doctrines seek not so much to express facts as to transform them.
The central problem of Durkheim's work is the formation of social solidarity. According to Durkheim, the main force that creates a social whole and contributes to its preservation is the division of labor - a sign of a highly developed society in which solidarity is a natural consequence of the division of production roles, the professional specialization of people. Considering that the degree of social solidarity is the main criterion for historical progress, Durkheim distinguishes the following types of social solidarity:
* mechanical (lower type), prevailing in hierarchical societies with relative equality, limited freedom and almost complete lack of opportunities for the development of individual abilities;
* organic (highest type), developing in the process of evolutionary improvement of the system of division of labor.
The transition from a lower type of solidarity to a higher one occurs under the influence of the struggle for existence, which promotes the division of labor, social differentiation and individualization of people.
In the theory of normative and pathological social facts characterizing the state of society, Durkheim attributed everything that does not go beyond the rules established by society to normative (normal) social facts, and everything that goes beyond their boundaries (for example, the class struggle) to pathological social facts, social pathology. He singled out the following "diseases" of society: anomie, social inequality and inadequate public organization division of labor.
Durkheim's anomie is a special condition in a society (group) associated with the relative elimination of moral norms, customs, traditions and is characterized by people's loss of goals and meaning of life, moral nihilism and cynicism, oppressive feelings of spiritual anxiety and hopelessness, moral emptiness and weakening of social ties. Anomie is accompanied by unbridled desires and passions, which are embodied in behavior that deviates from existing values and norms. The work "Suicide", considered a classic work of Western sociology, is an example of empirical research, where Durkheim combined quantitative methods for collecting and analyzing social facts with appropriate methods and procedures. He proved that suicide is caused primarily by certain economic and social reasons, and not by fatal decisions of individuals under the influence of some individual psychological motives. Suicide is a clear example of the destruction of social ties, this is the state of anomie. The change in the number of suicides is a sociological and statistical fact that can only be explained by action. social forces, little dependent on the mental state of the individual. Durkheim identifies the following types of suicide:
* selfish - the result of the alienation of the individual from society, the rupture of social ties and a feeling of loneliness;
* altruistic - the result of excessive absorption of a person's personal interests by public ones, when he loses the independence of personal existence;
* anemic - the result of social cataclysms that destroy the adaptive capacity of the individual;
* fatalistic, predetermined by excessive regulation and excessive control of the society or group over the individual.
The provisions developed by Durkheim about society as a self-regulating system, about the social order as a normal state of society, the significance of the institutions of education and control, the principles of a functional approach to the analysis of social phenomena from the point of view of their role performed in the system, constituted the main theoretical baggage of modern structural functionalism.
Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) - one of the founders of social psychology - considered society to be a product of the direct interaction of individuals. He rejected the idea of the existence of independent spiritual entities such as "group consciousness" or "the soul of the crowd", thereby contributing to the formulation and study of many real problems. Pushed to the center scientific research the problem of interpersonal interaction and its socio-psychological mechanisms, he created the concept of imitation as the main socio-psychological phenomenon.
According to Tarde, the law of imitation is fundamental driving force a society of different progress. It is based on an irresistible psychic drive that precedes all social relations, to acquire new knowledge that arises as a result of the initiative and originality of individuals ( creative people). At the same time, Tarde noted three types of imitation: mutual imitation, imitation of customs and patterns, deliberate imitation.
The task of sociology, according to Tarde, is to study the subjective mechanism of this law. In particular, he noticed that the opposition (opposition), related to the main social processes, is carried out in the form of a social conflict, during which there is an interaction between supporters of opposing social inventions, acting as competing imitators. Overcoming such situations occurs under the influence of adaptation (adaptation), which acts as the dominant moment of social interaction, leading to cooperation, mutual adaptation.
Tarde, developing general laws sociology, at the same time gave great importance empirical methods research. Methods such as the analysis of statistics on suicides, crimes, rail transport, trade, etc., allow, according to Tarde, to find a quantitative expression of the power of innovation, to find out the favorable and unfavorable consequences of its spread, and ultimately to control spontaneous social (imitative) processes . In the broad application of "number and measure" to the study of society, Tarde saw the main path for the development of sociology.
The most important area to the study of which Tarde applied his theoretical positions was public opinion, in which the "psychology of the crowd" plays an important role. Tarde did not agree with the statement that the XX century. is the "age of the crowd". According to Tarde, it is rather the age of the public. Proving this, Tarde believed that there were two germs of society - the family (rural society) and the crowd (urban society) - a physical collection (association) of heterogeneous, unfamiliar to each other "elements. characteristic features crowds are faith, passion, selfishness, collective self-esteem, one-sided irrational imitation. Tarde, analyzing them, identified the following types of crowds: waiting, listening, declaring themselves, acting.
Unlike the ordinary crowd, whose psychic unity is created primarily through physical contact)", the public is a "purely spiritual community", in which individuals are physically dispersed and at the same time spiritually connected with each other. Society faces the task of gradually " replacement of the crowd by the public.
Gustave Lebon (1841-1931) was very popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. thanks to his books The Psychology of Crowds and The Psychology of Peoples and Masses. According to Lebon, in the XX century. European society entered a new period of its development - the "era of the crowd", when a reasonable critical principle, embodied in the individual, began to be suppressed by an irrational consciousness.
A "crowd" or "mass" is a group of people gathered in one place, overwhelmed by excessive feelings, moods, aspirations, ready to follow their leader. Rational force cannot cope with the raging elements of mass consciousness. Lebon believed that there are two types of crowds - heterogeneous (street groups, parliamentary meetings, etc.); homogeneous (sects, castes, classes, etc.).
The characteristic features of the crowd are: infection with a common idea, consciousness of the invincibility of their strength, loss of a sense of responsibility, intolerance, susceptibility to suggestion, readiness to thoughtlessly follow the leader, dogmatism. Depersonalization and deindividualization of a person in a crowd are a form of turning him into an irrational being. In his Psychology of Socialism, Le Bon, proceeding from the thesis that the crowd is an irrational, destructive force, called socialism a society consisting of crowds of people who have not adapted to life.
Le Bon expressed the idea of an inevitable increase in inequality between people in the process of the development of civilization, since all the achievements of civilization are the result of the activities of the elite of society. Therefore, he is considered the author of one of the first concepts mass society where high art is incomprehensible to the masses, it only descends to them (kitsch).
3. Italian School of Sociology
The Italian school of sociology focused on the principles of the formation of sociological knowledge.
Sociological thought in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. was represented by such scientists as C. Lombroso, E. Ferri, V. Pareto and others.
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) sought to develop principles for constructing sociological knowledge that would ensure its reliability, reliability and validity. Pareto believed that sociology is a synthesis of such special social disciplines as law, political economy, political history, history of religions, "the purpose of which is to study human society as a whole."
Sociology is a science based on empirically based knowledge about society (description of facts and formulation of laws expressing functional dependencies between facts). The idea of mathematization of sociology is connected with the name of Pareto. With the help of his logical-experimental method, he wanted to discover the general principles of the structure, functioning and change of societies, believing that sociology should be the same exact science like physics, chemistry and astronomy. In his opinion, it is necessary to use only empirically substantiated descriptive judgments, strictly observing the logical rules in the transition from observations to generalizations.
Ethical and generally valuable elements in the theory, according to Pareto, always lead to distortion, falsification of facts and therefore must be eliminated. All previous social theories, Pareto argued, are equally false, limited, deformed, since not a single sociologist before him was guided by the logical-experimental method. Like most positivists, Parsto is required to exclude the concepts of "absolute", "necessary", since they are metaphysical. The concept of "essence" seemed to him archaic. He interpreted the scientific law as "uniformity", the repetition of events, which has a probabilistic nature, does not contain a moment of necessity and usually depends on the point of view of the researcher.
One of the central ideas of Pareto was the consideration of society as a system that is in a state of disturbed and restored equilibrium. Pareto divided social actions into "logical" and "non-logical", and saw the criterion for their distinction in the mental state actor, the irrational nature of man. In his sociological system, the emotional sphere of human activity was the main link.
Emphasizing the role of unconscious elements in the human psyche, Pareto was one of the first to begin a sociological analysis of the mechanism for manipulating mass consciousness. Developing the idea of controlling the masses through ideas that subordinate the masses to the interests of the ruling classes (elites), Pareto put forward a sociological theory of elites, which later served as the starting point for numerous studies of the mechanisms of power from the point of view of the influence of high-status groups.
4. American School of Sociology
The American school of sociology was formed somewhat later than the European one, so its founders initially followed the European scientists, transferring to their national soil those ideas that were most in line with the spirit of a developing country. Followed at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. the transition from theoretical to empirical sociology in the United States was due to the need to solve specific problems associated with industrialization, urbanization, the emergence of megacities, which led to the emergence of theories of destructive behavior (deviation), "human ecology", etc. At that time, a mass of emigrants arrived from Europe to the USA, which gave rise to the need for them to adapt to the new socio-cultural environment. This is partly why at that time American sociology was guided by narrow practicality - a detailed study, for example, of problem areas of the family, crime. As a result, American sociology has acquired its own distinctive style. The titles of sociological works of that time are characteristic: "Gang", "Ghetto", "Restless Girl", etc.
William Sumner (1840-1910) is one of the major figures in American sociology. A professor at Yale University, he was one of the first to present a systematic course of lectures on sociology to students.
According to Sumner, society is a group of people living with the desire to win in the struggle for self-preservation and survival. At the same time, the customs and traditions of society are the primary factors of development. The “sociality” and “civilization” of the group is given by the system of social institutions that regulate the life and activities of the community to realize their interests. Institutions perform many functions in the social system, and the main one is the consolidation of social experience, its transmission from generation to generation and thereby maintaining social balance. Sumner identified the following social institutions:
* self-sustaining society ( industrial organization, property, war for the distribution of wealth, satisfaction of hunger and sexual desire);
* marriage and family (self-preservation through reproduction);
* self-assertion (fashion, etiquette, games);
* religions (associated with the instinct of fear).
Lester Frank Ward (1841 -1913) - one of the founders of American sociology, the first president of the American Sociological Society. He owns authoritative works in the field of sociology. He extended the term "reclamation" (improvement of the technical and social conditions of agriculture) to society, introducing the term "social meliorism" (the science of improving and improving the social system), thereby emphasizing the primacy of the natural principle in social life and the ability of the human community to improve it. . Social meliorism, Ward believed, is a kind of improvement in social conditions, when a person not only alleviates existing suffering, but seeks to create conditions under which suffering would be impossible.
In The Mental Factors of Civilization, Ward, on the basis of an analysis of the facts that prompt action, tried to present the specific features of this activity that make it the most effective, and created the ideal of a society in which reason and happiness will reign. Ward was convinced that the motivating beginning of human activity is the desire to achieve it, i.e. proceeded from the determining role of psychological factors.
Franklin Henry Giddings (1855-1931) attempted to outline the fundamental problems of sociology in his seminal work The Foundations of Sociology. He believed that sociology interprets social phenomena through mental activity, organic adaptation, natural selection, and the conservation of energy; in other words, Giddings understood sociology as the science of mental phenomena.
George Mead (1863-1931) became the founder of the direction, called "symbolic interactionism". However, during the life of Mead, society itself did not yet have a need for a systematic study of the influence inner peace personality on the course of the social process. At that time, sociologists were mainly engaged in studying the mechanism of adaptation of an individual to the requirements, norms of the social system, so the methodology proposed by Mead seemed “premature”. Mead's ideas became sufficiently known only at the end of the 20th century, when sociology developed an understanding of the important fact that social interaction- not a process of one-sided adaptation, but precisely the interaction of two relatively autonomous systems - the individual and society. Since then, Mead's work has been the subject of study by psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers.
Mead argued that the theory of symbolic interactionism can be revealed primarily through the category of "communication". Turning to the origin of the term, the scientist found that it has two meanings: “community”, “commune” and “transfer”, “report”. Therefore, Mead interprets communication, on the one hand, as the communality of the life of an individual, and on the other, as a means by which it is achieved, i.e. as a transmission of messages that allows a collection of individuals to become a commune, a community. In his reasoning, Mead relied on Charles Darwin's idea of adaptability as a universal mechanism of organic life. Communication, according to Mead, is a means of mutual adaptation of individuals, constituting a mechanism for self-maintenance and self-development of society. Mead saw the specificity of communication primarily in the use of symbols - a quality inherent only in human communication.
According to Mead, each of the participants in the act of interaction seeks to predict alternative behavioral reactions of his communication partner and model his own behavior. In this case, the symbol (gesture and language) acts as a means of communication. The act of symbolic interaction itself involves objects that have already acquired social experience in the process of socialization. The use of the symbolism of gesture and language allows society to exist in its qualitative integrity and a person in his specific social nature. Of particular importance in the system of symbols belongs to the language (verbal communication). Self-control, which is inherent in the personality, most clearly declares itself precisely in language, "voice gesture".
The idea of the symbolism of communication radically changed the prevailing ideas about the mechanism of social behavior. Refuting the simplified "stimulus-response" formula of social behavior, which was fixed thanks to the experiments of biopsychologists, Mead considered symbolic communication as a mediating link between the stimulus and the behavioral response of the individual. In communication, a stimulus is encoded, receiving a cultural interpretation and eliciting an appropriate response. In the act of communication, the meaning of the stimulus is directly determined, i.e. the content of the very process of symbolic communication, the parties to which are the stimulus and reaction, and the participants are either directly present individuals, or "generalized others" imagined by the individual. The latter depend on the level of development that the individual actually achieved during the period of socialization. "Generalized others" in early childhood are parents, later - peers, classmates, fellow students and other bearers of various social roles.
The central concept of Mead's symbolic interactionism, the self, is not an innate quality, but acquired and enriched by social experience. The self is a derivative of the history of society and the biography of a particular individual. Since social activity requires an individual to combine the qualities of a subject and an object, then, as an object, a person carries information about the past and correlates his future actions with it. Any behavioral act of a person presupposes a kind of reflection - an anticipatory reflection of the consequences of an act and the influence that it can have on the opinions of "generalized others". Therefore, a person acts as an object for himself and for the group of his environment. At the same time, activity presupposes the qualities of the subject. The duality of behavior forms the essence and structure of the phenomenon of the self. The Self really acts simultaneously on two planes (I and Me). Acting in the role of I, a person is free from reflection, but this freedom is relative, it is limited by the time limits of action. Beyond it, reflection dominates, and the self appears in its second face (Me). First of all, a person is forced to pre-think, to predict the reactions of "generalized others" to his action. With the help of the self, he retains his individuality and at the same time draws closer to "generalized others."
5. Russian school of sociology
The formation of the Russian tradition of analyzing social life in form went through the same stages as in the West, but had a significant originality in content, since it was focused around the key to existence. Russian society problems - problems of the integrity of a huge country, the creation of a single society from people of different tribes dispersed over an immense territory, folding the structure of communication as a condition for self-preservation and development of Russians. V. N. Tatishchev, M. V. Lomonosov, A. N. Radishchev, A. I. Herzen studied the social structure. The formation of the Russian sociological school took place in the second half of the 19th century. The Russian public got acquainted with the main ideas of O. Konta through the publications of V. A. Milyutin, P. L. Lavrov, D. I. Pisarev, E. V. De Roberti almost simultaneously with the European one. The authors of these articles were very critical of the concept of the founder of sociology and gave her own assessment.
N. K. Mikhailovsky (1842-1904) was one of the first to generalize the phenomena of the mental interaction of people in a crowd, studied the socio-psychological patterns of the relationship between leaders and the masses (the theory of the “hero and the crowd”), was one of the creators of subjective sociology, the author of the “subjective method in sociology. This method excludes impartiality, the detachment of the researcher from the object of sociological analysis, the separation of sociology from ethics, the sociologist-observer cannot, according to Mikhailovsky, put himself in the position of the observed. Mikhailovsky's social ideal is the development of a comprehensive, "heterogeneous" personality, which is feasible only when the "heterogeneity" of society is overcome.
N. Ya. Danilevsky (1822-1885), a representative of the religious-conservative pan-Slavist current in Russian sociology, who put forward in the work “Russia and Europe” the theory of separate cultural and historical types (civilizations) that develop like biological organisms. The most promising cultural and historical type in history Danilevsky considered "Slavic", the most pronounced in the Russian people. This concept has been severely criticized by Russian sociologists.
At the initial stage of the formation of sociology in Russia (60-80s of the 19th century), two directions developed simultaneously - the objective and subjective schools, the fundamental disagreements and struggle between which persisted until the beginning of the 20th century. The school of Russian objectivism is framed in the works of M.M. Kovalevsky, E.V. De Roberti, P.F. Lilienfeld, A. I. Stronin and others.
Kovalevsky M.M. (1851-1916) promoted the concept of the doctrine of solidarity as the basis of the social process. He was one of the first to apply the comparative historical method in sociology, approaching social processes from the point of view of analyzing the uniqueness of each civilizational order. In the 80s of the XIX century. Neo-Kantian, anti-positivist ideas were most actively developed in Russian sociology in the works of B. A. Kistyakovsky, V. M. Khvostov, L. I. Petrazhitsky, P. I. Novgorodtsev, and P. B. Struve.
Early 20th century associated in Russian sociology with the assertion of neo-positivism (A. S. Zvonitskaya, K. M. Takhtarev, P. A. Sorokin). In contrast to the positivism of the 60s of the 19th century, which considered “fact” as the starting point of sociological analysis, the neopositivism of the early 20th century. focuses on the laws of functioning of social structures, institutions, phenomena. Such an analysis, on the one hand, requires empirical research, and on the other hand, theoretical substantiation, since the very isolation of a particular social process or social institution must be theoretically substantiated.
P. A. Sorokin (1889-1968) had a strong influence on the development of the entire sociology of the 20th century. Even before 1922, Sorokin had fully formed his sociological position, reflected in the two-volume System of Sociology. This work was the basis for his further development of the theory of social mobility. Until the end of his life, Sorokin worked in the United States, where he acquired the authority of one of the leading sociologists, became the first dean of the sociological faculty of Harvard University; the creators of the main schools of modern sociology, T. Parsons, R. Merton and others, experienced his influence. Here he analyzes sociocultural dynamics, trying to trace the world-historical development of mankind and the emergence of a sociocultural "supersystem". Sorokin identifies three stages - "sensual", "speculative" and "idealistic" - acting as models of socio-cultural existence, reproduced in the cyclical evolution of the supersystem. In the later works of Sorokin, the ideas of altruistic love, moral rebirth, ethical responsibility and solidarity are revived at a new level in the sociological context, i.e. those ideas that determine the ethical direction of all Russian sociology.
Conclusion
Thus, the classical period of development of sociology was completed on turn of XIX-XX centuries The new stage marked the formation of applied sociology, the study of social facts at the empirical level. In the West, national schools are being formed, the most influential of which are the Austro-German, French, Italian and American schools. The most significant figures in the sociology of this period are M. Weber, E. Durkheim, V. Pareto, W. Sumner.
The formation of sociological thought in Russia took place in an atmosphere of sharp confrontation between non-Marxist and Marxist sociology. It covered both ideological, theoretical and political problems, since the majority of Russian sociologists were actively engaged in political activities or were associated with it (the populists P. L. Lavrov and N. K. Mikhailovsky, the “legal Marxist” P. B. Struve, the Socialist-Revolutionary P. A. Sorokin, and others). Marxist sociology was represented by prominent scientists and politicians. Among them are G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Lenin, A. A. Bogdanova.
Bibliography
1. Adamyants T.Z. Social communications: Tutorial for universities / "Higher education" (vulture). - M.: Bustard. 2009. - 204 p.
2. Batygin G.S., Podvoisky D.G. History of sociology. Textbook. - M.: Higher Education and Science, 2007. - 448 p.
3. Volkov Yu.G. Sociology / Yu.G. Volkov. - Rostov n / D: Phoenix, 2008. - 536 p.
4. Volkov Yu.G., Mostovaya I.V. Sociology: Textbook for universities / Ed. prof. IN AND. Dobrenkov. - M.: Gardariki, - 432 p.
5. Gorshkov M.K., Sheregi F.E. Applied sociology. Textbook for universities - M., 2003. -312 p.
6. Kravchenko A.I. Sociology: Textbook for universities. - M.: Academic project, 2003. -508 p.
7. Shalenko V.N. Sociology. Textbook for universities. - M., 2003.
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sociological school (T. Eliot, P. Sorokin, A. Weber, T. Parsons)
It unites those scientists who are looking for the origins and explanation of culture not in history and the spontaneous, "divine" development of the human spirit, not in the psyche and not in the biological prehistory of mankind, but in its social nature and organization. In the center of their culturological attention is society itself, its structure and social institutions. This school N.A. Berdyaev described it as follows: “Sociology claims that a person is an animal that has undergone drill, discipline and development on the part of society. Everything valuable in a person is not inherent in him, but received from society, which he is forced to revere as a deity. Naturally, the sociological school is not fenced off by the Chinese wall from other areas we are considering, and the concepts of its individual representatives often intersect and complement each other, as we have already shown with the example of B.K. Malinovsky, as part of a common effort to create a unified theory of culture.
One of the prominent representatives of the sociological school was Thomas Stearns Eliot(1888-1965) - Anglo-American poet and modernist critic, author of Notes on the Definition of Culture (1948). “By culture,” he wrote, “I mean, first of all, what anthropologists mean: the way of life of a given people living in one place. We see manifestations of this culture in its arts, its social system, its habits and customs, its religion. But all these things taken together do not constitute a culture, although we often, for the sake of convenience, express ourselves as if this were the case. These things are only parts into which a culture can be dissected - like the human body in an anatomical theater. But just as man is more than a collection of the various constituent parts of his body, so culture is more than a collection of arts, customs, and religious beliefs. Thomas Stearns Eliot, laureate Nobel Prize 1948, is a rather rare example of an organic fusion of artistic, mainly poetic, creativity and theoretical research in search of an answer to the question: what is culture and how is the essence of poetry connected with this concept? From the conventional liberal-democratic point of view, Eliot should be considered a deeply conservative, even "reactionary" master of words, just as these definitions were applied to our Russian writer and culturologist K.N. Leontiev, which will be discussed below. Both of them defended the principles of elitism in society and art, both at the end of their lives came to a deeply religious worldview, and both sharply criticized their (and us) modern “leveling” civilization, because, in their opinion, it turned out to be fruitless and reached a dead end. In addition to the well-known poetic legacy of Eliot, he wrote the following books: The Purpose of Poetry and the Purpose of Criticism (1931), On Poets and Poetry (1957) and the programmatic work that we mentioned, Notes on the Definition of Culture.
Recognizing the general decline European culture by the middle of the 20th century, the loss of its former moral and intellectual wealth as a result of universal standardization and a narrowly utilitarian approach to life - features characteristic of modern mass culture - Eliot comes to the conclusion that this leads to suppression in a person creativity. So, despite the fact that over the past four centuries the population of England has increased 12 times, such a quantitative growth has by no means led to the appearance of 12 Shakespeares today, rather, they have long disappeared altogether. In the same way, the peasant plowman of former centuries, in his moral and spiritual culture, was much higher than the present mercenary tractor driver. Eliot believes that humanity can preserve the creative energy only by overcoming "massification" and supporting the cultural elite. In general, the theory of the elite (primarily political) as the leading force in the historical process goes back to the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC). It was subsequently developed by such thinkers as the Italian N. Machiavelli, the Englishman T. Carlyle, the German F. Nietzsche, whom we will talk about later. In the 20th century, its most prominent apologist was an Italian Vilfredo Pareto(1848-1923), who viewed history as an arena for the constant struggle of elites for power. Eliot, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of the elitist approach not only in the sphere of politics, but also in the sphere of culture. Like his contemporary and compatriot Toynbee, Eliot divided society into a spiritual elite and an unenlightened mass, and only the first is capable of cultural creation. The creative elite, according to Eliot, does not belong to any particular class. It must be constantly replenished from the social "bottom". However, for its emergence and formation, wealth and belonging to a certain privileged stratum are necessary. The most intelligent and talented representatives of other strata are constantly pouring new creative energy into it, thus moving the cultural process forward.
A vivid example of such an enrichment of the world spiritual elite was the activity of an outstanding representative of the sociological school, our former compatriot, Russian-American sociologist and cultural historian Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin(1889-1968). Coming from the poorest sections of the Komi-Zyryan people, he only learned to read and write at the age of 14 and soon became a peasant revolutionary, joining the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Having gained notoriety before February Revolution 1917, he was persecuted by tsarism, soon became one of the leaders of his party. Actively collaborated in State Duma, was at one time the secretary of the head of government - A.F. Kerensky, later - a professor at Petrograd University. After the October Revolution, which Sorokin met with hostility, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks on charges of attempting to assassinate Lenin, he hid in the forests of the Russian North, but then came to terms with the victory of the new government and wrote a sensational open letter, announcing his break with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. This letter was the reason for writing Lenin's famous article "The Valuable Confessions of Pitirim Sorokin", which made him famous throughout Russia at that time. Returning to Petrograd in 1919, he organized the first sociological faculty in the country and became its dean, nevertheless remaining in opposition to Bolshevism. All this was one of the clearest manifestations of the ideological opposition of the Russian intelligentsia of that time to the Bolshevik "lawlessness". In 1922, again at the initiative of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, Sorokin, along with a large group of scientists and writers representing the flower of Russian social thought, was expelled from the country. After a short stay in Berlin and a year of work in Czechoslovakia, at the invitation of its President T. Masaryk, the scientist moved to the United States in 1923, where he quickly mastered the English language and became one of the leading sociologists and culturologists. At Harvard University, Sorokin creates and heads the department of sociology and by the end of his life becomes one of the world's recognized authorities in this field. Being a true encyclopedist who mastered all the achievements of contemporary humanitarian knowledge, supporting the theory of the spiritual elite as the leading force in society, Sorokin emphasized the inextricable link between social processes and the development of culture. At the same time, following the ancient Greeks, he considered the innate desire of people for Truth, Goodness and Beauty, combined with a socially significant criterion of Benefit, to be the springs of cultural development.
In his numerous works (for example, "The Dynamics of Society and Culture" (1937-1941), "Society, Culture and Personality" (1947), "Power and Morality" (1959), etc.), he considered the history of mankind as a successive change of certain sociocultural supersystems cemented by a periodically changing unity of values, norms and meanings. Unlike Hegel, who considered the historical process as a direct progressive movement, he interpreted it as a "cyclic fluctuation", i.e. going in complete cycles, the change of types of cultural communities flowing into each other, each of which is based on its own attitude to reality and methods of its cognition. Based on the dual psychobiological nature of man - a feeling and thinking being, Sorokin distinguished three types of culture:
a) sensual (sensate), in which empirical-sensory perception and evaluation of reality predominate, mainly from a utilitarian and hedonistic point of view, i.e. the "truth of the senses" and the truth of pleasure prevail;
b) ideational type (ideational), where supersensible, spiritual values predominate, worship of some Absolute, God or Idea, i.e. the "truth of faith" and the truth of self-denial;
c) the idealistic type (idealistic), which represents a kind of synthesis of sensual and ideational types, where feeling is balanced by intellect, faith - by science, empirical perception - by intuition, i.e., according to Sorokin, "human minds will be guided by the truth of reason."
The originality of each of the proposed types of culture is embodied in law, art, philosophy, science, religion, the structure of social relations and a certain type of personality. Their radical transformation and change are usually accompanied by crises, wars and revolutions. Analyzing in detail the history of European culture, including statistical methods, P. Sorokin attributed to the heyday of "sensual" culture the Greco-Roman civilization of the III-IV centuries. AD, i.e. period of its decay and decline, and Western culture of the last five centuries, from the Renaissance to our time. To the ideational type of culture, in addition to the Russian type well known to Sorokin, he attributed the early medieval culture of the Christian West (from the 6th to the 13th centuries), and to the idealistic type - the great culture of the Renaissance. The crisis of modern culture, devoid of absolute ideals, i.e. faith in God, and striving for sensual pleasure and consumerism, P. Sorokin associated with the development of materialistic ideology and experimental science to the detriment of spiritual values, which is quite clearly felt by many people in today's "disenchanted" world. Being a believer, Sorokin saw the way out of the current crisis in the inevitable restoration of the "ideational" culture with its absolute religious ideals. P. Sorokin formulated his main prophecy regarding the future of mankind as follows: “We live, think, act at the end of a shining sensual day that lasted six centuries. The rays of the setting sun still illuminate the grandeur of the passing era. But the light is slowly fading, and in the growing darkness it is increasingly difficult for us to distinguish this greatness and look for reliable landmarks in the twilight that has come. The night of this transitional age is beginning to descend on us, with its nightmares, frightening shadows, heartbreaking horrors. Beyond its borders, however, we can discern the flourishing of a new great ideational culture that welcomes a new generation - the people of the future.
As a sociologist who sought explanations for many cultural phenomena in the facts of social life, Sorokin was one of the creators of the theories of "social mobility" and "social stratification". According to the first, in a highly developed society there is a constant movement of individuals and groups from one layer to another, from the lowest social level to the highest, and vice versa. In this case, one speaks of upward or downward vertical mobility, but there is also horizontal mobility, i.e. the movement of individuals at the same social level, for example, when changing their place of residence or the nature of work. There are also intergenerational (between generations) and intragenerational (within a generation) mobility. The concept of social mobility characterizes the degree of civilization, openness or closedness, freedom and democracy of a particular society and is an important indicator of the level of its culture. As for the theory of social stratification, it considers society not as a rigid and antagonistic class structure, as Marxists do, but as a living system of numerous interpenetrating social strata, distinguished by the signs of education, wealth, psychology, living conditions, age, gender and being in a state not of struggle, but of balance and cooperation. It is easy to guess that both the theory of social stratification and the theory of social mobility, in essence, oppose the Marxist understanding of the processes taking place in modern society, and therefore vehemently rejected by dogmatized historical materialism. Until recently, its adherents have no less fiercely rejected the one formulated by P. Sorokin in the 60s. the well-known theory of convergence between capitalism and socialism, as a result of which a new, more perfect society should appear. P.A. Sorokin belonged to that rather rare breed of thinkers and scientists of our century who objectively, without political, ideological and national preferences, relying on specific sociological and cultural criteria, comprehended the path of mankind to a better future.
Alfred Weber(1868-1958) - German economist and sociologist, author of the work "Principles of Sociology, History and Culture" (1951) put forward an original theory of dividing history into three interrelated, but proceeding according to different laws of processes: social (formation of social institutions), civilizational (progressive development of science and technology, leading to the unification of civilization) and cultural (creativity, art, religion and philosophy). It is possible to correctly determine the general level of a particular national culture only when considering it in these individual branches. The people of a country that has a well-established system of state-legal relations and is economically prosperous often finds itself at a relatively low level in terms of culture, especially spiritual and aesthetic. So, if we adhere to the concept of A. Weber, over the past two centuries in the United States, for example, social and civilizational processes have prevailed to the detriment of the cultural, and in Russia XIX the century, on the contrary, was the "golden age" of Russian culture against the backdrop of social conservatism and scientific and technological backwardness. Another example that is very often cited by culturologists: in the 18th-19th centuries, in the conditions of feudal fragmentation and economic poverty, the German lands gave the world the greatest classical philosophy and unsurpassed examples artistic creativity. In most European countries, a certain balance was maintained between the three processes, while in Japan and other economically developed states of Southeast Asia, the civilizational process received an unheard-of rapid development only after the Second World War. A. Weber associated the specific appearance of a particular country or era primarily with cultural factors, and not with social or civilizational ones, which, in essence, are international. The movement of culture, according to Weber, is irrational, and its creator is the spiritual and intellectual elite.
Talcott Parsons(1902-1979) - American sociologist, one of the founders of the so-called structural-functional trend in sociology. Simplistically, his theory of culture boils down to the following: all spiritual and material people's achievements, which we unite with the concept of "culture", are the result of socially determined actions at the level of two systems: social and proper cultural.
The basis of the first and "lower" of them - social - is the joint actions of people driven not least by the goals of their biological self-preservation in a certain social environment. Here, each individual seeks:
a) to adapt (adapt) to it;
b) achieve the tasks set for him;
c) integrate, i.e. to unite with other individuals;
d) reproduce already found social structures;
e) relieve constantly arising nervous and physical tension. According to Parsons, each of these goals in society corresponds to historically established social institutions: adaptation - economic, achievement of goals - political, integration - legal institutions and customs, reproduction of the structure - belief system, morality and socialization organs, stress relief - the recreation industry.
For the second, higher - cultural - system, which is already devoid of biological conditioning and in relation to the social one is guiding and regulating, its functioning is characterized by symbolism (the presence of mechanisms such as language and systems of other symbols), normativity (dependence of a person on generally accepted values and norms) and, finally, voluntarism, or the well-known irrationality and independence of human actions from dictate environment. Culture thus appears to us as a complex system of symbols and norms that are constantly being improved. Even from this very schematic and incomplete presentation of Parsons' views, it is clear that he claimed to create some kind of comprehensive theory of society, the most important regulator of which is culture with its normativity and symbolism.
The sociological school unites those scientists who seek the origins and explanation of culture not in the historical or "natural" development of the human spirit. Not in the psyche and not in the biological prehistory of mankind, but in its social nature and organization. The focus of this direction is the society itself, its structure and social institutions. One of the representatives of the sociological school is T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965), Anglo-American poet and critic of modernism, author of Notes on the Definition of Culture (1948).
What did Eliot mean by culture? First of all, what anthropologists understand is the way of life of a given people living in one place, that is, settled. Manifestations of this culture appear before us in its national art, the features of its social system, its habits, customs and, of course, religion. But all these manifestations of culture taken together do not yet constitute the whole culture, for they are only parts of a large whole of which culture consists (like the human body in an anatomical theater). But since a person is something more than a collection of various constituent parts of his body, then culture is something more than a collection of arts, customs and religious beliefs, Eliot believed.
Noting the crisis of the traditional values of Western society in the middle of the 20th century, the loss of its moral and intellectual wealth as a result of universal standardization and a narrowly utilitarian approach to life, the spread of "mass culture", Eliot believed that only cultural "elites" could support the creative energy of mankind.
However, the theory of the "elite" (primarily political) as the leading force in the historical process is not completely new and goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (472 - 347 BC). Subsequently, it was developed by such thinkers as N. Machiavelli, F. Nietzsche and other philosophers. In the XX century. its most striking apologist was the Italian V. Pareto (1848 - 1923), who viewed history as an arena for the constant struggle of the elite for power. Eliot, on the other hand, is credited for emphasizing the importance of the elitist approach not only in the sphere of politics, but also in culture. Like his contemporary and compatriot Toynbee, Eliot divided society into a spiritual elite and an unenlightened mass. Moreover, only the first of them is capable of cultural creation. The creative elite, according to Eliot, does not belong to any particular class and must be constantly replenished from the social "bottom". However, for its emergence and formation, wealth and belonging to a certain privileged stratum are necessary. The most intelligent and talented representatives of other strata constantly "pour" new creative energy into it, thus moving the cultural process forward.
Our former compatriot, Russian-American sociologist and historian Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1889 - 1968) also belongs to the representatives of the sociological school. Having gained fame even before the revolution, during it he became one of the leaders of the Right Social Revolutionaries, was the secretary of Kerensky, later a professor at Petrograd University, and in 1922, at the initiative of Lenin, together with a large group of scientists and writers representing the flower of the Russian intelligentsia, he left the country . At Harvard University, P. Sorokin headed one of the first departments of sociology in the United States and became an internationally recognized authority in this field.
Sharing the theory of the spiritual elite as the leading force in society, Sorokin emphasized the inseparable connection between the processes taking place in society and the general development of culture. In his work "The dynamics of society and culture" (1937 - 1941) and others, he considered the history of mankind as a change in varying degrees of integral socio-cultural supersystems, united by a certain unity of values and meanings. He saw the historical process not as a direct progressive movement, but as a “cyclical fluctuation”, i.e., a change in complete cycles of culture types flowing into each other, each of which has its own relation to reality and methods of its cognition. P. Sorokin identified three types of culture:
1) Sensual, in which the empirical-sensual perception and evaluation of reality predominate, mainly from a utilitarian and hedonistic point of view, i.e., “truth of feelings” and “truth of pleasures” prevail;
2) Ideational, where supersensible values predominate, worship of a certain Absolute - God (or Idea), i.e. the "truth of faith" and the truth of self-denial;
3) Idealistic, representing a kind of synthesis of "sensual" and "ideational" types, where feeling is balanced by intellect, faith by science, empirical perception by intuition. According to Sorokin, "human minds will be guided by the truth of reason."
The peculiarity of each of the proposed types of culture is embodied in law, art, philosophy, science, religion, the structure of social relations, the radical transformation and change of which is accompanied by crises, wars and revolutions. Analyzing the history of European culture and art by statistical methods, P. Sorokin attributed Greco-Roman civilization from the 3rd century BC to the heyday of “sensual” culture. BC e. according to the IV century. AD, i.e. the period of its decay and decline, as well as the entire Western culture of the last five centuries - from the Renaissance to our time. The "ideational" type included the early medieval culture of the Christian West (from the 6th to the 13th centuries), and the "idealistic" type included the culture of the Renaissance.
The crisis of modern culture, devoid of absolute ideals, faith in God, and generally striving for sensual enjoyment and consumption, P. Sorokin associated with the development of materialistic ideology and experimental science to the detriment of spiritual values, which is quite clearly felt by many people in today's world. As a believer, P. Sorokin saw a way out of the current crisis and the inevitable restoration of the "ideational" culture with its religious ideals.
A. Weber (1868 - 1958) - German economist and sociologist, author of the book "Sociology of History and Culture" (1927) put forward the theory of dividing history into three interrelated, but proceeding according to different laws of processes: social (formation of social institutions), civilizational (progressive development of science and technology, leading to the unification of civilization), cultural (creativity, art, religion and philosophy). So, if we adhere to the concept of A. Weber, then over the past two centuries in the United States, for example, social and civilizational processes have prevailed to the detriment of cultural ones, and in Russia in the 19th century. on the contrary, the "golden age" of Russian culture appeared against the background of social conservatism and scientific and technological backwardness. The majority of European countries maintained a certain “balance” between the three processes, while in Japan and other economically developed “dragons” of Southeast Asia, the civilizational process gained rapid development only after the Second World War. A. Weber associated the specific appearance of a particular country or era, first of all, with cultural factors, and not with social or civilizational ones, which are essentially international. The movement of culture, according to Weber, is irrational, and its creator is the spiritual and intellectual elite.
Culturology
sociological school
Sorokin Weber's sociological school
Introduction
1. The founders of the sociological school, its essence
1.1. Thomas Stearns Eliot concept
1.2. Concept by Max and Alfred Weber
1.3. Talcott Parsons concept
1.4. The concept of Pitirim Sorokin
Bibliography
Introduction
Culturology (lat. cultura - cultivation, farming, education, veneration; other Greek λόγος - thought, reason) is a science that studies culture, the most general patterns of its development. The tasks of cultural studies include understanding culture as an integral phenomenon, determining the most general laws of its functioning, as well as analyzing the phenomenon of culture as a system. Cultural studies took shape as an independent discipline in the 20th century.
The term "culturology" was proposed in 1949 by the famous American anthropologist Leslie White (1900-1975) to designate a new scientific discipline as an independent science in the complex of social sciences. Culturology is an integrative field of knowledge born at the intersection of philosophy, history, psychology, linguistics, ethnography, religion, sociology, culture and art history. However, in the foreign scientific classification, cultural studies are not distinguished as a separate science. The phenomenon of culture in Europe and America is understood mainly in the socio-ethnographic sense, therefore, cultural anthropology is considered the main science.
The subject of cultural studies is the study of the phenomenon of culture as a historical and social experience of people, which is embodied in specific norms, laws and features of their activities, is transmitted from generation to generation in the form of value orientations and ideals, is interpreted in the "cultural texts" of philosophy, religion, art, law . The meaning of cultural studies today is to teach a person at the level of culture, as its creator. Depending on the goals and subject areas, the level of knowledge and generalization, fundamental and applied cultural studies are distinguished. Fundamental studies culture with the aim of theoretical and historical knowledge of this phenomenon, develops a categorical apparatus and research methods; at this level one can single out the philosophy of culture. Applied, relying on fundamental knowledge about culture, studies its individual subsystems - economic, political, religious, artistic - in order to predict, design and regulate actual cultural processes.
The main directions and schools in cultural studies of the XX century. formed on the basis of all previous knowledge, enriched by the achievements of new sciences. In an effort to discover the most secret sources of culture, to determine its essence, to reveal the most general laws of development, many prominent representatives of new branches of knowledge began to claim to create general theory culture, their own culturologists. Thus, various schools appeared with a certain scientific "dominant", reflecting a specific research interest.
The diversity of points of view on culture reflects the multidimensionality and complexity of this concept, which includes all the material and spiritual wealth of the world created by man. Culturology, along with other sciences, seeks to create a kind of unified theory of culture that would contain integrative knowledge based on the achievements of various sciences of the 20th century, which in one way or another explore culture from their specific sides.
Of course, it should be borne in mind that the division into schools is very arbitrary and the boundaries between them are often blurred, since each school often uses the views and achievements of its predecessors. Nevertheless, the main directions in cultural studies can be distinguished:
1. Socio-historical;
2. Naturalistic;
3. Sociological;
4. Structural and functional;
5. Symbolic.
Consider the sociological school.
1. The founders of the sociological school, its essence
The sociological school unites those scientists who seek the origins and explanation of culture not in the historical or "natural" development of the human spirit. Not in the psyche and not in the biological prehistory of mankind, but in its social nature and organization. The focus of this trend is society itself, its structure and social institutions (Eliot, P. Sorokin, Weber, Parsons). A feature of the worldview of P. Sorokin, T. Eliot, A. Weber and others is the belief that all ways of human existence are imposed on the individual by society - therefore, the options for explaining the activities of a “reasonable person” simply must lie in the plane of studying the mechanisms of the hostel of large groups of people. Questions of the development of the human spirit or divine intervention in the course of history only hinder a clear understanding of the nature of culture. The specific appearance of a country, Weber, for example, associated with cultural factors, and not with civilizational ones, which are of a universal nature. Parsons believes that all spiritual and material achievements, united by the concept of "culture", are the result of socially determined actions at the level of two systems - social and cultural. This school N.A. Berdyaev described it as follows: “Sociology claims that a person is an animal that has undergone drill, discipline and development on the part of society. Everything valuable in a person is not inherent in him, but received from society, which he is forced to revere as a deity. Naturally, the sociological school is not fenced off by the Chinese wall from the other directions we are considering, and the concepts of its individual representatives often intersect and complement each other, as part of a common effort to create a unified theory of culture.
One of the representatives of the sociological school is T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965), Anglo-American poet and critic of modernism, author of Notes on the Definition of Culture (1948).
1.1 Thomas Stearns Eliot concept
“By culture,” Eliot wrote in Notes on the Definition of Culture, “I mean, first of all, what anthropologists mean: the way of life of a given people living in one place. We see manifestations of this culture in its arts, its social system, its habits and customs, its religion. But all these things taken together do not constitute a culture, although we often, for the sake of convenience, express ourselves as if this were the case. These things are only parts into which a culture can be dissected - like the human body in an anatomical theater. But just as man is more than a collection of the various constituent parts of his body, so culture is more than a collection of arts, customs, and religious beliefs.
Noting the crisis of the traditional values of Western society in the middle of the 20th century, the loss of its moral and intellectual wealth as a result of universal standardization and a narrowly utilitarian approach to life - features characteristic of modern mass culture - Eliot comes to the conclusion that this leads to suppression in a person creative start. Eliot believed that mankind could preserve the creative energy only by overcoming "massification" and supporting the cultural "elite".
Eliot emphasized the importance of the elitist approach not only in the sphere of politics, but also in the sphere of culture. Like his contemporary and compatriot Toynbee, Eliot divided society into a spiritual elite and an unenlightened mass, and only the first is capable of cultural creation. The creative elite, according to Eliot, does not belong to any particular class and must be constantly replenished from the social "bottom". However, for its emergence and formation, wealth and belonging to a certain privileged stratum are necessary.
1.2 Concept by Max and Alfred Weber
Among the representatives of the sociological school, the names of the German sociologists Max Weber (1864-1920) and his brother Alfred Weber (1868-1958) should also be mentioned. Max Weber called the direction he developed "understanding sociology", its essence is to establish the cultural meanings of people's social activities. The most valuable work for the development of cultural thought is "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", in which M. Weber gives an example of the analysis of the influence of cultural values and norms formed within a certain religious system on economic culture, on the choice of certain areas of social economic development.
Another valuable aspect of Weber's legacy was the concept of the ideal type. And although the German jurist G. Jellinek was the first to introduce this concept, this idea received a holistic embodiment precisely from M. Weber (for the first time in the work "Objectivity" of socio-scientific and socio-political knowledge). Researchers still use this methodology to analyze the phenomena of socio-cultural life, as it allows developing conceptual constructions that contribute to the ordering, typology of the huge historical, cultural and any other material that every scientist deals with.
Alfred Weber - the author of the work "Principles of sociology, history and culture" (1951) put forward an original theory of dividing history into three interrelated, but proceeding according to different laws of processes: social (formation of social institutions), civilizational (progressive development of science and technology, leading to unification civilization) and cultural (creativity, art, religion and philosophy). It is possible to correctly determine the general level of a particular national culture only when considering it in these individual branches. The people of a country that has a well-established system of state-legal relations and is economically prosperous often find themselves at a relatively low level in terms of culture, especially spiritual and aesthetic. So, if we adhere to the concept of A. Weber, then over the past two centuries in the United States, for example, social and civilizational processes have prevailed to the detriment of cultural ones, and in Russia in the 19th century. on the contrary, the "golden age" of Russian culture appeared against the background of social conservatism and scientific and technological backwardness. The majority of European countries maintained a certain “balance” between the three processes, while in Japan and other economically developed “dragons” of Southeast Asia, the civilizational process gained rapid development only after the Second World War. Weber associated the specific appearance of a particular country or era primarily with cultural factors, and not with social or civilizational ones. The movement of culture, according to Weber, is irrational, and its creator is the spiritual and intellectual elite.
Almost simultaneously with diffusionism, a sociological school was formed in European ethnology, which turned out to be creatively more fruitful. If the founders of evolutionism saw the main subject of ethnology in man, and diffusionists - in culture, then the representatives of the sociological school turned primarily to human society. They proceeded from the fact that human society cannot be reduced to a simple sum of individuals. They considered society as a system of moral (moral) ties between people, which, as it were, were imposed on them and had coercive power.
The birthplace of the sociological school in ethnology is France, and its largest representative and founder is Emile Durkgsim (1858-1917).
In contrast to the evolutionists, Durksheim understood human societies not as successive stages of adaptation of people to environmental conditions, but as closed static systems, the study of which should be carried out using the method of studying social facts. The latter are methods of action, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which also have coercive power and are imposed on him by the external environment. At the same time, he especially insists that the social facts themselves should be studied as "things" 3
not our understanding of these facts. Otherwise, Durksheim notes, this is not a science, but an ideology, fraught with all sorts of prejudices and subjectivism.
The stability of society, in his opinion, is ensured by the social solidarity of its members. All elements of the social system are in a state of stable balance, otherwise such a system is pathological, doomed to inevitable decay. Classifying societies according to the level of development, Durksheim introduces the concept of “ social type' or 'social kind'. He takes the simplest society as the basis of his classification: the primitive "horde", which has outlived its usefulness. Developing into a more complex social structure, the "horde" becomes a clan (i.e. clan). In turn, various associations and combinations of clans form a tribe, curia, phratry, from which complex social organisms are already arising up to the empire. Thus, according to Durkheim, any society is only a complication of the same primitive society.
Another important component ethno-sociological theory of Durksheim - the doctrine of collective ideas. Human consciousness, in his opinion, is heterogeneous, since it exists in two different forms: as an individual and as a collective. The first is specific to each specific person and is entirely determined by the characteristics of his psyche: the second is the same for the whole group and not only does not depend on individual people, but, on the contrary, itself has a coercive force in relation to them. Collective consciousness finds expression in collective ideas - religious beliefs, myths, morality and law. They are rooted in social life and are developed throughout social group as a whole, representing, in essence, various aspects of its self. acceptance.
Developing his doctrine of collective ideas, Durksheim naturally comes to the question of the essence of religion and its role in society. Rejecting the usual definition of religion as belief in supernatural beings, he believes that its main feature is the sharp division of the whole world into two halves - the sacred (sacred) world and the ordinary (profane) world. The peculiarity of this division is that these two halves are considered as absolutely heterogeneous, i.e. in no way reducible to one another. The difference between them is not in hierarchy, but simply in the fact that these worlds are usually separated by an impenetrable border. Crossing this border is possible only in religious rituals, thanks to which the gap between the sacred and the profane is overcome. Religion, in his opinion, is purely functional, as it is designed to strengthen the social solidarity of the group. And since any religion corresponds to the social conditions that gave rise to it, it cannot be considered a false reproduction of reality.] The content of religion, in the final analysis, is society itself, its structure.
Durkheim's ideas were developed to varying degrees by his students and followers, among whom should be mentioned M. Most, K. Levy -5
Strauss, M. Granet, L. Levy-Bruhl.
Of particular interest are the ideas of Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857-1939). The starting point of all Levy-Bruhl's research is his commitment to the doctrine of collective ideas, by which he also understood those ideas that are not formed in a person on the basis of his own life experience, but are introduced into his consciousness through the social environment - education,! public opinion and customs. Developing these ideas, Levy-Bruhl became interested in the question of the laws governing these collective representations. Starting from the views of Durkheim, he developed his theory of the prelogical thinking of primitive peoples, which he outlined in the book "Primitive Thinking"] (1930).
According to Levy-Bruhl, prelogical thinking fundamentally distinguishes a person of a primitive era from a modern one, since there are no distinctions between cause and effect, subject and object. Pre-logical thinking is not non-logical thinking, it does not seek, like ours, to avoid contradictions. We are talking about a special type of thinking that obeys its own sie- i cific laws. These laws governing the collective ideas of backward peoples are not at all like our logical laws of thought. They are not separated from emotions and are not aimed at explaining the phenomena of reality. When performing religious rites, they act on nervous system) sharply, excitingly, infecting a person with the emotions of fear, religious horror, passionate desire, hope, etc. At the same time, primitive man does not seek an explanation for the phenomena of the surrounding reality, because he perceives these phenomena not in their pure form, but in combination with a whole complex of emotions , ideas about secret forces, about magical properties items.
In connection with this, the perception of the world by primitive man is oriented in a completely different way than ours: we strive for the objectivity of knowledge, while subjectivism prevails in it. Therefore, primitive people confuse real objects with ideas about them, do not distinguish between dreams and reality, a person and his image, a person and his name, etc. For the same reason, primitive thinking is irrelevant to experience. Experienced knowledge does not dissuade primitive man from believing in witchcraft, in mysterious powers, in fetishes. His thinking is "impenetrable" to experience: instead of the basic logical laws, the "law of participation" becomes decisive, in the words of Levy-Bruhl. According to this law, an object can be itself and at the same time something else, it can be here and at the same time in another place. This type of thinking Levy-Bruhl and designated as pre-logical.
According to Levy-Bruhl, collective ideas are also present in the thinking of a modern European. This is caused by the natural human need for direct communication with the outside world, which is not provided scientific knowledge. Science objectifies the world and thereby distances it from humanity. 1
[Therefore, a person strives for living communication with nature through religion, morality, customs, where collective ideas are fundamental. Levy-Bruhl believes that pre-logical thinking exists and will exist along with logical thinking, that the “law of participation” and mystical disposition are a natural property of the thinking of modern man.
The main ideas of the sociological school are as follows.
Every society has a set of "collective beliefs" that ensure its sustainability.
The function of culture is to solidify society, to bring people together.
R> each society has its own morality, it is dynamic and changeable.
The transition from one society to another is a difficult process and is not carried out smoothly, but in jerks.
