Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Every person living in society cannot be completely free from it.

This is a statement of a famous political figure, a revolutionary of the first half of the 20th century once again confirms that it people form society, being not only its integral part, but also acting as its legislators, creators, builders.

But how to get a clear idea of ​​what society is? There is no other way than to study this issue (thoroughly and comprehensively). Well, or for starters, just read this short article.

Definition of society in the broad and narrow senses

So, let's start with a common concept.

Society is a social entity formed as a result of interaction and communication between people with common interests, thoughts and goals. These are peoples, countries, continents, all of humanity.

An important feature is that the relationship fold naturally as a result of some historical process (long or not very long).

Also, a separate small group of people, united by common ideas, aspirations, norms (ethical, moral, moral, behavioral) can also be called a society.

In a broad sense society is any association of people that has developed historically, regardless of their form and type of interaction. If you look very broadly, it will be all of our humanity from its inception to extinction.

In a narrow sense society (social institution) means certain types of social systems, specific forms of relationships with the presence of single (special) features. It's no longer here in question about the totality of all existing types and forms of social relationships, and about the specifics:

1. Humanity today is our current society of people.
2. The population of Russia or any other country is a Russian or some other community.
3. Societies of interest - Spartak fans, gamers, chess players, etc.
4. Common origin - proletarians, workers, residents of our yard, Muscovites, the noble community, etc.
5. Historical milestones - primitive, feudal, post-industrial, modern, community of the future.

Society as a form of human life

In the narrow sense of the definition, society should be understood as a social entity that has arisen and exists on the basis of common geographical boundaries or common political beliefs or common economic indicators (needs) or on the basis of specific historical facts.

Even in the philistine view, it looks like something more global than a narrow circle of people or a group of like-minded people, comrades-in-arms.

Most often, when using the word "society", people mean:

1. a set of communities / groups, the association of which is due, for example, to the same values, activities, norms and way of life, the level of economic development (a colloquial example is “modern developed society”);
2. a community united territorially, that is, by the borders of a certain state (a colloquial example is "the American community");
3. specific type of society that existed at a particular historical period(colloquial example "").

Society is a complex dynamic system

How do you know what society is?

1. The presence of a body that is entrusted with the functions of control over the processes of reproduction and self-regulation (example: leader,).
2. Existence in special matters called social time and social space. It is noteworthy that these matters are in no way connected with the generally accepted concepts of temporal and spatial indicators (example: a secret community, a clan of poker players from different countries).
3. Historical background. The process of forming any public association takes place in the conditions of the initial presence of any community of people connected with each other by something (example: family relations, moral principles, national traditions).

Structure

The structure of society is the totality of certain social groups / communities and the relationships both between them and between their members.

A social community as a structural unit is a formation that includes people united by common aspirations, activities or interests, for example, a community of journalists, an animal lovers club, a community of fans of a particular artist.

Nothing is clear? Well, then we watch the video (everything is on the shelves there):

Functions of society

Any social institution pursues specific goals, which become aspects that determine its functions. For example, the functions of the army are to ensure the security of a certain territorial unit, hospitals - to heal people from and functional disorders of the organs and systems of the body.

Specialists from different fields (sociology, philosophy, social science, history), studying and analyzing the functions of society and trying to classify them, identified 4 main ones:

1. Management/supervisory. It consists in regulating the relationships and relationships between members of social institutions by creating certain rules, norms of behavior, sanctions, duties, taboos;
2. Production/distribution. This function is based on the creation and mass production of goods and products according to the needs of members of society;
3. Social. Distribution and bringing to the consciousness of community members of behavioral norms, ensuring their understanding and observance;
4. reproduction function. Ensuring the emergence of new members.

According to the nature of the activities carried out, the functions of social institutions are divided into 2 types - explicit and hidden.

1. In the first case, it is a formalized activity, fully accepted government bodies and people (example: studying at universities, marriage).
2. In the second case, unintentional or deliberately hidden activity takes place (shadow economy, criminal structures).

Spheres and elements

Community elements are the structural components of various public spheres:

1. Political sphere- the administrative sphere that regulates interethnic relations, the relationship between members of social institutions, government agencies and society. Key elements are courts, army, politics, parliament, etc.;
2. spiritual realm- includes the processes of formation, dissemination, awareness by members of the community of moral norms, as well as the transfer of these norms to representatives of subsequent generations. Key elements - morality, culture, etc.;
3. Economic sphere- responsible for production, exchange and consumption. If we imagine that society is an organism, then the economy will act as physiological processes occurring in it. The favorable course of these processes provides the community with a normal existence. The key elements are commodity, tax and bank, and business, money and trade, market, etc.;
4. Social sphere- covers relationships and their principles in different age and social communities. This area- one of the main indicators of the stability and well-being of social existence. The key elements are family (?), clan, class, estate, nation.

The concept of society in different sciences

Anthropology

It implies the division of human communities based on the methods by which they provide themselves with a livelihood. So, the whole society is divided into 6 main groups:

1. Agricultural. Here, too, there is a division into 2 types - complex and simple. In the first case, people are fully and actively engaged in agriculture, in the second - crop production;
2. pastoral(livestock breeding);
3. (high-performance industry, innovative technologies);
4. Economic and cultural(weak level of economic and social development);
5. Industrial(scientific and technological progress, machine production);
6. nomadic(nomadic type of economy).

Definition of society in sociology

Society in this science is called the social organization of the country, which acts as a guarantor of the joint life of its members.

This is a component of the material world, a certain form of relationships and interconnections, which develops historically in the course of its life. The criteria of society, from the point of view of sociology, are:

1. Complexity. The society maintains and reproduces its own structural units in subsequent generations, and also includes new members;
2. autonomy. It has the ability to function independently, independently providing for its own vital activity;
3. Comprehensive character(universality);
4. The presence of clear boundaries of the territory, which acts as a material stronghold for the relationships that arise within it.

Social science

In this science, there is no specific definition of society, since it is a synthesis of many sciences, for example, sociology, psychology, history. Per basic concept takes the following definition:

a group of people united to achieve some goals or according to common interests (example: a writers' union, a community of collectors, a group on social networks).

Also in social studies widespread and definition, Whereby:

society is a certain period of the historical development of a particular nationality or people living on clearly defined boundaries (state, geographical) territory.

I would like to end the story with an interesting and capacious statement by an outstanding German economist, sociologist and philosopher of the 9th century. It sounds like this:

by it's nature man is a social being, which means that he is able to fully develop his true nature only while in society, being an integral part of it, and the degree of strength of his existing nature must be judged by the strength not of individual individuals, but of the entire community as a whole.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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This concept has two main meanings. In the broadest sense, society can be defined as a system of all existing ways and forms of interaction and unification of people(for example, in the expressions "modern society" or " feudal society"). In a narrower sense, the word "society" is used to refer to any types or kinds of social groups, the number and characteristics of which are determined by the diversity of people's life activities ("Russian society", "scientific community", etc.). Both of these approaches are united by the understanding that a person is a “social being” and can fully live only within a certain team, feeling his unity with other people. These collectives form a hierarchy - from the largest, from humanity as a whole as the largest system of interaction, to professional, family and other small groups.

The development of scientific ideas about society.

The study of society is carried out by a special group of scientific disciplines, which are called the social (humanitarian) sciences. Among the social sciences, the leading one is sociology (literally, “social science”). Only she considers society as a single integral system. Other social sciences (ethics, political science, economics, history, religious studies, etc.) study individual aspects of the life of society without claiming to have a holistic knowledge.

The concept of "society" implies an awareness of the objective laws of the collective life of people. This idea was born almost simultaneously with the birth of scientific thought. Already in antiquity, all the main problems in understanding the essence of society were recognized:

how different society is from nature (some thinkers generally blurred the line between society and nature, while others absolutized the differences between them);

what is the ratio of the collective and individual principles in the life of society (some interpreted society as a sum of individuals, while others, on the contrary, considered society as a self-sufficient integrity);

how conflict and solidarity are combined in the development of society (some consider its internal contradictions to be the engine of the development of society, others - the desire for harmony of interests);

how society changes (is there improvement, progress, or society develops cyclically).

The thinkers of ancient societies usually considered the life of people as part of a general order, "cosmos". In relation to the "arrangement of the world", the word "cosmos" was first used by Heraclitus. The idea of ​​the unity of man with nature was reflected in the universalistic ideas of the ancients about society. This idea has become an integral feature of Eastern religions and teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism), which retain their influence in the East today.

In parallel with the development of naturalistic concepts, anthropological concepts began to develop, emphasizing not the unity of man with nature, but the fundamental differences between them.

For a long time in social thought, society was considered from a political science point of view, i.e. identified with the state. So, Plato characterized, first of all, through the political functions of the state (protecting the population from external enemies, maintaining order within the country). State-political ideas about society, interpreted as relations of domination and subordination, were developed after Plato by Aristotle. However, he singled out purely social (not political) ties between people, considering, for example, friendship and mutual support of free, equal individuals. Aristotle emphasized the priority of individual interests and believed that “what should require the relative, and not the absolute unity of both the family and the state”, that “every person is his own friend and should love himself most of all” (“Ethics”). If from Plato there is a tendency to consider society as an integral organism, then from Aristotle - as a set of relatively independent individuals.

The social thought of the new time in the interpretation of society proceeded from the concept of the "state of nature" and the social contract (T. Hobbes, J. Locke, J.-J. Rousseau). Referring to "natural laws", the thinkers of modern times gave them, however, a completely social character. For example, the statement about the initial "war of all against all", which is being replaced by a social contract, absolutizes the spirit of individualism of the new time. According to the point of view of these thinkers, society is based on rational contractual principles, formal legal concepts, and mutual utility. Thus, the anthropological interpretation of society won over the naturalistic one, and the individualistic one over the collectivist (organistic) one.

This meta-paradigm (general picture) of understanding the life of society formed the basis of Western European civilization and, as it expanded, began to be perceived as the most “correct”. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries many attempts have been made to create an alternative meta-paradigm. Socialist and nationalist ideologies tried to establish the primacy of collectivist principles over individualistic ones. Many philosophers (including Russians - N.F. Fedorov, K.E. Tsiolkovsky, A.L. Chizhevsky and others) proved the unity of the cosmos, the biosphere and human society. However, today these approaches remain on the periphery of public life, although their influence is growing.

From the undivided unity of scientific knowledge about society and nature characteristic of ancient and medieval societies, European thinkers of the modern era moved on to a differentiated system of independent sciences. The social sciences have become rigidly separated from the sciences of nature, and the humanities themselves have broken up into several independent sciences that have been weakly interacting with each other for a long time. The earliest, back in the 16th century, was political science (thanks to the works of N. Machiavelli), then, in the late 18th - early 19th centuries, criminology (starting with C. Beccaria), economic theory (with A. Smith) and ethics (with I. .Bentham). This fragmentation continued in the 19th and 20th centuries (the formation of cultural studies, linguistics, religious studies, psychology, ethnology, ethology, etc. as independent sciences).

The desire for a holistic knowledge of the life of society, however, has not disappeared. It led to the formation of a special "science of society", sociology, which took shape in the 1830s and 1840s thanks primarily to the works of O. Comte. The idea he developed of society as a progressively developing organism became the foundation of all subsequent development not only of sociology, but also of other social sciences.

Within the framework of the social sciences of the 19th century, two main approaches to the study of the mechanisms of development of society were clearly identified, emphasizing its opposite aspects - conflict and solidarity (consensus). Supporters of the first approach believed that society is best described in terms of a conflict of interests, supporters of the second approach preferred the terminology of shared values. Created in the 1840s–1860s, the Marxist theory of social development, which explains all the phenomena of society "in the long run" by economic processes and the internal contradictions of the life of society, served as the foundation for the development of conflict (radical) theories and still remains one of the most influential areas of social thought. The consensus view of the life of society is more typical of liberal thinkers.

In the second half of the 20th century, there was a tendency to converge with each other not only different social sciences, but all of them with the natural and exact sciences. This trend was reflected, first of all, in the formation and growth of popularity of synergetics founded by I.Prigozhin - the science of the most general patterns of development and self-organization of complex systems (including society). Thus, at a new stage in the development of science, there is, as it were, a return to the ideas of the ancients about a single "cosmos".

Properties of society as a system.

Although the methodological approaches of representatives of various modern scientific schools of social science are largely different, there is still some unity of views on society.

First, society has consistency- it is considered not as a mechanical collection of individuals, but as united by stable interactions or relationships (social structures). Each person is a member of various social groups, performs prescribed social roles, performs social actions. Falling out of the familiar social system the individual is under severe stress. (One can recall at least the literary Robinson Crusoe, who suffered from desert island not so much from a lack of means of life, but from the inability to communicate with other people.) Being an integral system, society has stability, a certain conservatism.

Second, society has versatility- creates the necessary conditions to meet the most diverse needs of individuals. Only in a society based on the division of labor can a person engage in narrow professional activities, knowing that he can always satisfy his needs for food and clothing. Only in society can he acquire the necessary labor skills, get acquainted with the achievements of culture and science. Society provides him with the opportunity to make a career and climb the social hierarchy. In other words, society has the universality that gives people forms of life organization that facilitate the achievement of their personal goals. The progress of society is seen precisely in increasing its universality - in providing the individual with an ever greater range of opportunities. From this point of view, modern society is much more progressive, for example, primitive. But the primitive society also possessed universality, since it allowed people to satisfy their elementary needs not only in food, clothing and housing, but also in explaining the world around them, in creative self-expression, etc.

Thirdly, society has a high level internal self-regulation, ensuring the constant reproduction of the entire complex system social relations. This is reflected in the creation of special institutions (such as morality, ideology, law, religion, state) that ensure compliance with generally accepted "rules of the game". There are different opinions about which institutions play a more important role in the processes of self-regulation. Some social scientists consider formal institutions (for example, “general power”, like E. Shils) to be the basis for the stability of society, while others consider informal institutions (for example, “fundamental values” dominant in society, like R. Merton). Apparently, at the initial stages of the development of society, its self-regulation is based mainly on informal institutions (taboos in primitive society, the code of honor of medieval knights), but then formal institutions begin to play a greater role (the norms of written law, state institutions, social organizations).

Fourth, society has internal self-renewal mechanisms– inclusion of new social formations into the existing system of interconnections. It seeks to subordinate newly emerging institutions and social groups to its logic, forcing them to act in accordance with previously established social norms and rules (this happens during the evolution of society). But new norms and rules, gradually accumulating, can lead to qualitative changes in the entire system of social relations (this is what happens during a social revolution). Deviations from the rules and norms accepted in society encourage the system to find new means to maintain balance and stability. The driving forces can be not only the contradictions of internal development, but also “the drawing of non-systemic elements into the orbit of systemicity” (Yu. Lotman) - this was the case, for example, with the capitalism of the 1930s, which actively used some of the principles of socialism. At the same time, the degree of openness of social systems is very important - the desire to actively learn from the experience of other systems (open society) or, on the contrary, the desire to close oneself, fencing off from external influences(closed society).

Thus, society is a universal way of organizing the social interaction of people, ensuring the satisfaction of their basic needs, self-regulating, self-reproducing and self-renewing.

The structure of society.

Society has a certain structure. What are the criteria for identifying structural parts - subsystems of society? There are several of these criteria: some of them are based on the allocation of social groups, others - spheres of society's life, and others - ways of interconnecting people (Table 1).

1) Typology of social groups.

The primary grounds for distinguishing social groups that differ from each other lie, first of all, in the natural (natural) factors that divided people according to gender, age, and racial characteristics. It is possible to single out socio-territorial communities (residents of the city and villagers, citizens of the United States and citizens of Russia), gender (men, women), age (children, youth, etc.), socio-ethnic (clan, tribe, nationality, nation , ethnos).

Any society is also structured according to purely social parameters associated with vertical stratification. For K. Marx, the main criterion was the attitude to the means of production, to property (the classes of the haves and the have-nots). M. Weber included in the main criteria for the typology of social groups, in addition to attitudes towards property and income levels, also attitudes towards power (singling out groups of managers and ruled) and social prestige.

As society develops, the importance of typology of social groups according to natural factors decreases and the importance of social criteria grows. Moreover, the old natural factors are being transformed, being filled with social content. For example, racial conflict remains a burning problem in modern America, not so much because a few racists continue to view African Americans as “inferior people,” but because of the poverty culture typical of black neighborhoods, which is why the typical black is perceived as a dangerous marginal.

2) Typology of spheres of life of society.

The decisive moments that determine the structure of society are the factors that made possible the very birth of human society - work, communication and knowledge. They underlie the allocation of three main spheres of the life of society - respectively, material production, regulatory activity, spiritual production.

The main sphere of life of society is most often recognized as material production. Its influence on other spheres can be traced in three directions.

First, without products of material production, neither science, nor politics, nor medicine, nor education are possible, which require means of labor in the form of laboratory equipment, military equipment, medical instruments, school buildings, etc. It is material production that creates the necessary means of life for people in the sphere of everyday life - food, clothing, furniture, etc.

Secondly, the mode of material production (“productive forces”) largely determines the methods of other types of activity. People, producing the things they need, create, unwittingly, a certain system of social relations (“relations of production”). Everyone knows, for example, the economic consequences of the use of machines in modern Europe. The result of the industrial revolution was the emergence and establishment of capitalist relations, which were created not by politicians, but by workers in material production as a “by-product” of their labor activity. The dependence of "relations of production" on "productive forces" is the main idea of ​​the social teachings of K. Marx, which has become more or less generally accepted.

Thirdly, in the process of material production, people create and consolidate a certain type of mentality, arising from the very nature of labor operations. Thus, material production ("basis") solves the main tasks that determine the development of spiritual production ("superstructure"). For example, the work of a writer as a producer of spiritual goods is ineffective without printing.

Public life involves a complex system of social ties that connect people and things together. In some cases, such connections may develop spontaneously, as a by-product of activities pursuing very different goals. However, most of them are created consciously and purposefully. This is precisely what regulatory activity.

The regulatory type of activity covers many specific types of labor, which can be divided into two subtypes. One of them is communicative activity- establishing links between various elements society (market exchange, transport, communications). Another subtype of regulatory activity is social management, the purpose of which is to regulate the joint behavior of subjects (politics, religion, law).

The third area of ​​public life is spiritual production. Its main product is not objects in which information is embodied (books, film), but the information itself, addressed to the human mind - ideas, images, feelings. If before the scientific and technological revolution the production of information was considered as relatively secondary, secondary to the production of things, then in the modern era it is the production of ideas that becomes the most important. Due to the high importance of spiritual production, modern society is increasingly called the "information society".

To understand the correlation of various spheres of society in modern social science, they continue to use the logical scheme “base - superstructure” proposed by K. Marx (Fig. 1). However, scientists emphasize that this scheme cannot be absolutized, since there are no rigid boundaries between its various components. For example, management (management of people) is both the most important factor material production, and regulatory activities, and the production of values ​​(for example, corporate culture).

Rice. one. The structure of the life of society, according to the theory of K. Marx.

3) Typology of ways of interrelation of people.

The main concepts with which to explain the ways of interconnection of people in society are social roles, social institutions and social communities.

social role defined as expected behavior in a typical situation. It is social roles that make interactions of people in society stable, standardizing their behavior. It is the roles that are the primary elements into which the fabric can be decomposed. social interactions in society. Social roles are diverse, and the larger their set, the more complex the society. In modern society, one and the same person can alternate in a dozen social roles throughout one day (husband, father, son, brother, passer-by, friend, boss, subordinate, colleague, buyer, scientist, citizen ...).

Different social roles are interconnected by countless threads. There are two main levels of organization and orderliness of social roles: social institutions and communities. Social institutions- these are the "rules of the game" in society (the rule of shaking hands at a meeting, the election of political leaders, contract work for a predetermined salary ...). Social communities are the organized groups that make these rules and enforce them (government, academia, family...). Thanks to them, roles are interconnected, their reproduction is ensured, guarantees of their stability are created, sanctions are developed for violation of norms, and complex systems of social control arise.

The diversity of institutions and communities requires the development of two special mechanisms for organizing social life that complement each other - culture and political power.

culture accumulates the experience of previous generations (traditions, knowledge, values). Thanks to it, in the minds and behavior of people united by historical fate and the territory of residence, patterns of behavior that are valuable for society (“patterns,” as T. Parsons called them) are constantly reproduced. Culture, thus, as it were, sets the general tone for the development of society (). However, its ability to reproduce stable social ties is limited. Innovative processes in society often become so intense that as a result, social formations appear that oppose the previously established value-normative order (as happened, for example, in our country on the eve of the revolutionary 1917). Purposeful efforts are required to restrain disintegration processes, and institutions take on this function. political power.

Thanks to culture and political power, society manages to maintain a single normative order, which, providing the interconnection of institutions and communities, organizes them into a systemic integrity, “creates society”. Only culture supports and reproduces mainly established norms tested by the experience of many generations, and politics constantly initiates the creation new laws and legal acts, strives for a rational search for optimal ways for the development of society (but, unfortunately, is often mistaken in his choice).

Rice. 2. INTERCONNECTIVITY SYSTEM people in society.

Thus, society can be represented as a multi-level system. The first level is social roles. Social roles are organized into various institutions and communities that make up the second level of society. Differences in the functions performed, discrepancies, and sometimes opposition of the goals of institutions and communities require a third level of organization of society. It is a subsystem of mechanisms that maintain a single order in society - the culture of society and state regulation.

The functioning of society.

The functioning of society is its constant self-reproduction.

prevailing in modern science the point of view that reveals the mechanism of functioning of society is the concept of T. Parsons. In his opinion, the main element of society is a person with his needs, aspirations, knowledge, skills and preferences. It is the source of the strength of society as a system, it depends on it whether it will exist at all. That is why the most complex set of mechanisms for the functioning of society is focused primarily on controlling a person. The basis of this complex is socialization("introduction" of a person into society). In the course of socialization, individuals learn to fulfill the roles prescribed by society and are formed as full-fledged individuals ( cm. PERSONALITY), which ensures the constant reproduction of established social ties. The more developed a society, the more difficult the processes of socialization proceed in it. Previously, the family played a decisive role in the socialization of new generations; now this function has largely passed to the system.

But not all individuals fit into the established system of status-role relations. Individual properties of individuals, as a rule, turn out to be wider and more diverse than the socializing force of society. These properties constantly generate people's desire to change the existing order, provoke the appearance of deviations from the norm (deviation), the critical level of which can unbalance the system. In this case, the "insurance mechanism" is activated - the state, which assumes the task of curbing deviant behavior, using the means in its arsenal for this, including the use of direct violence.

The mechanism of socialization, even multiplied by the power of state coercion, cannot for a long time restrain innovation processes. Therefore, in the context of the growth of such processes, the fate of society begins to depend on the work of another important mechanism - institutionalization, the birth of new institutions. Thanks to it, new structural formations are created, new status-role relations are formed, which did not find a place for themselves in pre-existing institutions and communities.

Institutionalization can be natural in the form of a gradual standardization of the emerging types of interaction, the normative formalization of the corresponding roles (an example can be the formation of serfdom in medieval Russia - from the gradual restriction of the right of peasant transitions to the complete abolition of St. George's Day). It can also be artificial, as if inverted, when norms and rules are first created, and then real participants in the interaction appear. A typical example of artificial institutionalization is structural reforms (such as the radical economic reforms in Russia in the early 1990s). Artificial institutionalization is, as it were, proactive, channeling possible, but not yet fully manifested types of interaction. Because of this, it is possible only thanks to state support, since it requires elements of coercion, without which the development of new roles by individuals can be too long or even fail. Therefore, the main conductor of structural reforms in society is the state, which has the necessary resources for this.

However, state intervention in the processes of institutionalization has its limits. Society cannot allow, for example, the ruling elite, relying on violence, at its own discretion, based only on its own ideas and interests, to reshape the fabric of social interactions. Therefore, there is a third mechanism for the functioning of society - legitimation. Thanks to him, there is a constant comparison of the results of socialization and institutionalization with the generally accepted value models of the culture of a given society. As a result, there is a kind of "culling" of those neoplasms that do not correspond to the established system of values. Thus, the integrity of society is maintained while developing its internal diversity. For example, Protestantism played in the era of modern times the role of a mechanism for legitimizing the desire for enrichment, encouraging an honest desire for wealth and "rejecting" the desire for "profit at any cost."

Development of society: formational approach.

AT modern world There are different types of societies that differ sharply from each other in many ways. A study of the history of society shows that this diversity existed before, and many years ago such types of society prevailed (slave-owning society, polygamous families, community, caste ...), which are extremely rare today. In explaining the diversity of types of society and the reasons for the transition from one type to another, two conceptual approaches collide - formational and civilizational (Table 2). Adherents formational approach see in the development of society progress (qualitative improvement), the transition from lower to higher types of society. On the contrary, supporters civilizational approach emphasize the cyclicity and equivalence of different social systems in the development of society.

The idea that society in its progressive development goes through some universal stages was first expressed by A. Saint-Simon. However, the formational approach received a relatively complete form only in the middle of the 19th century. in the social doctrine of K. Marx, explaining the process of human development as a progressive ascent from one form of society (formation) to another. In the 20th century The Marxist approach was dogmatized by Soviet social science, which entrenched the idea of ​​the concept of five modes of production as the only correct interpretation of Marx's theory of formations.

The concept of "socio-economic formation" in the teachings of Marx occupies a key place in explaining driving forces historical process and periodization of the history of society. Marx proceeded from the following premise: if humanity progressively develops as a single whole, then all of it must go through certain stages in its development. He called these stages socio-economic formations". According to Marx's definition, a socio-economic formation is "a society that is at a certain stage of historical development, a society with peculiar distinctive characteristics" (Marx K., Engels F. Soch. Vol. 6. P. 442).

The basis of the socio-economic formation, according to Marx, is one or another mode of production, which is characterized by a certain level and nature of the development of productive forces and corresponding to this level and nature of production relations. The totality of production relations forms its basis, over which political, legal and other relations and institutions are built, which in turn correspond to certain forms of social consciousness (morality, religion, art, philosophy, science, etc.). Thus, a specific socio-economic formation is the whole diversity of the life of a society at a historically certain stage of its development.

Within the framework of “Soviet Marxism”, the opinion was entrenched that from the point of view of the formational approach, humanity in its historical development necessarily goes through five main formations: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and coming communist (“real socialism” was considered as the first phase of the communist formation). It was this scheme, which took hold in the 1930s, that later received the name among critics. concepts - "five-membered"(Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. DOGMATIZED MARXIST SCHEME OF PUBLIC FORMATIONS

The transition from one social formation to another is carried out by social revolution. The economic basis of the social revolution is the deepening conflict between, on the one hand, the productive forces of society that have reached a new level and acquired a new character, and, on the other hand, the outdated, conservative system of production relations. This conflict in the political sphere is manifested in the intensification of antagonistic contradictions and the intensification of the class struggle between the ruling class, which is interested in preserving the existing system, and the oppressed classes, who demand an improvement in their position.

The revolution leads to a change in the ruling class. The victorious class carries out transformations in all spheres of social life. This creates the prerequisites for the formation new system socio-economic, legal and other social relations, new consciousness, etc. This is how a new formation is formed. In this regard, in the Marxist social concept, a significant role was given to the class struggle and revolutions. The class struggle was declared the most important driving force development of society, and political revolutions - "locomotives of history".

The main long-term trend in the development of society in Marx's theory is considered to be a "return" to a classless and non-exploitative society, but not a primitive one, but a highly developed one - a society "beyond material production". Between primitiveness and communism are social systems based on private property exploitation (slavery, feudalism, capitalism). After the achievement of communism, the further development of society will not stop, but the economic factor will cease to play the role of the main "motor" of this development.

Marx's concept of the formational development of society, as recognized by most modern social scientists, has undeniable strengths: it clearly names the main criterion of periodization (development of the economy) and offers an explanatory model of all historical development, which makes it possible to compare different social systems with each other according to their degree of progressiveness. But she also has weaknesses.

Firstly, the formational approach of the “five-term” concept assumes a unilinear nature of historical development. The theory of formations was formulated by Marx as a generalization of the historical path of Europe. Marx himself saw that some countries do not fit into this pattern of alternating five formations. These countries he attributed to the so-called "Asiatic mode of production." He expressed the idea that a special formation is formed on the basis of this mode of production, but he did not conduct a detailed analysis of this issue. Meanwhile, most of the pre-capitalist societies developed precisely in the countries of the East, and neither slaves nor feudal lords were typical for them (at least in the Western European understanding of these classes). Later, historical research showed that in Europe, the development of some countries (for example, Russia) is quite difficult to "adjust" to the pattern of changing the five formations. Thus, the formational approach in its traditional form creates great difficulties for understanding the diversity, multivariate development of society.

Secondly, the formational approach is characterized by a rigid binding of any historical phenomena to the mode of production, the system of economic relations. The historical process is considered, first of all, from the point of view of the formation and change of the mode of production: decisive importance in explaining historical phenomena is assigned to objective, non-personal factors, and a person is assigned a secondary role. Man appears in this theory only as a cog in a powerful objective mechanism. Thus, the human, personal content of the historical process is belittled, and with it the spiritual factors of historical development.

Thirdly, the formational approach absolutizes the role of conflict relations, including violence, in the historical process. The historical process in this methodology is described mainly through the prism of the class struggle. Opponents of the formational approach point out that social conflicts, although they are a necessary attribute of social life, but, as many believe, spiritual and moral life plays an equally important role.

Fourthly, the formational approach contains, according to many critics (for example, K. Popper), elements of providentialism (predetermination). The concept of formations presupposes the inevitability of the development of the historical process from a classless primitive communal formation through class formations (slave-owning, feudal and capitalist) to a classless communist formation. Marx and his students put a lot of effort into practical proof of the inevitability of the victory of socialism, where market self-development is replaced by state regulation of all parameters of society. The creation of a "socialist camp" after the Second World War was considered a confirmation of the formation theory, although the "socialist revolutions" in Eastern Europe reflected not so much the advantages of "communist ideas" as the geopolitical expansion of the USSR. When, in the 1980s, the overwhelming majority of the countries of the "socialist camp" abandoned the "building of communism", this was considered as evidence of the fallacy of the formation theory as a whole.

Although the formational theory of Marx is subjected to strong criticism, the paradigm of the development of society, the concept of post-industrial society, which dominates in modern social science, shares almost all the basic principles of Marx's theory, although it identifies other stages in the development of society.

According to this theory (it is based on the ideas of O. Toffler, D. Bell and other institutionalist economists), the development of society is seen as a change in three socio-economic systems - pre-industrial society, industrial society and post-industrial society (Table 3). These three social systems differ in the main factors of production, the leading sectors of the economy and the dominant social groups (). The boundaries of social systems are socio-technological revolutions: the Neolithic revolution (6-8 thousand years ago) created the prerequisites for the development of pre-industrial exploitative societies, the industrial revolution (18-19 centuries) separates the industrial society from the pre-industrial one, and the scientific and technological revolution (with second half of the 20th century) marks the transition from industrial to post-industrial society. Modern society is a transitional stage from the industrial to the post-industrial system.

The Marxist theory of social formations and the institutional theory of post-industrial society are based on similar principles common to all formational concepts: the development of the economy is seen as the fundamental basis for the development of society, and this development itself is interpreted as a progressive and staged process.

The development of society: a civilizational approach.

The methodology of the formational approach in modern science is to some extent opposed by the methodology civilizational approach. This approach to explaining the process of social development began to take shape as early as the 18th century. However, it reached its fullest development only in the 20th century. In foreign historiography, the most prominent adherents of this methodology are M. Weber, A. Toynbee, O. Spengler and a number of major modern historians, united around the French historical journal "Annals" (F. Braudel, J. Le Goff and others). AT Russian science his supporters were N.Ya.Danilevsky, K.N.Leontiev, P.A.Sorokin, L.N.Gumilyov.

The main structural unit of the process of development of society, from the point of view of this approach, is civilization. Civilization is understood as a social system connected by common cultural values ​​(religion, culture, economic, political and social organization, etc.), which are coordinated with each other and are closely interconnected. Each element of this system bears the imprint of the originality of this or that civilization. This originality is very stable: although certain changes occur in civilization under the influence of certain external and internal influences, their certain basis, their inner core remains unchanged. When this core is eroded, the old civilization perishes and is replaced by another one with different values.

Along with the concept of "civilization", supporters of the civilizational approach widely use the concept of "cultural-historical types", which are understood as historically established communities that occupy a certain territory and have their own, characteristic only for them, features of cultural and social development.

The civilizational approach has, according to modern social scientists, a number of strengths.

First, its principles are applicable to the history of any country or group of countries. This approach is focused on the knowledge of the history of society, taking into account the specifics of countries and regions. True, the reverse side of this universality there is a loss of criteria for which features of this specificity are more significant, and which are less.

Secondly, emphasizing the specifics necessarily implies the idea of ​​history as a multi-linear, multi-variant process. But the awareness of this multivariance does not always help, and often even makes it difficult to understand which of these options is better and which are worse (after all, all civilizations are considered equal).

Thirdly, the civilizational approach assigns a priority role in the historical process human spiritual, moral and intellectual factors. However, emphasizing the importance of religion, culture, mentality for the characterization and evaluation of civilization often leads to abstraction from material production as something secondary.

The main weakness of the civilizational approach lies in amorphous criteria for identifying types of civilization. This allocation by the supporters of this approach is carried out according to a set of features, which, on the one hand, should be of a fairly general nature, and on the other hand, would make it possible to identify specific features characteristic of many societies. As a result, just as there is a constant discussion among supporters of the formational approach about the number of main formations (their number most often varies from three to six), different adherents of the civilizational approach name a completely different number of main civilizations. N.Ya.Danilevsky counted 13 types of "original civilizations", O.Spengler - 8, A.Toynbee - 26 (Fig. 4).

Most often, when distinguishing types of civilizations, a confessional criterion is used, considering religion as a concentrate of cultural values. So, according to Toynbee, in the 20th century. There are 7 civilizations - Western Christian, Orthodox Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian (Far Eastern), Buddhist and Jewish.

Another weak side of the civilizational approach, which reduces its attractiveness, is the denial of progress in the development of society (or at least the emphasis on its homogeneity). For example, according to P. Sorokin, society constantly rotates within the cycle “ideational culture – idealistic culture – sensual culture” and is unable to go beyond it (Fig. 4). Such an understanding of the development of society is quite organic for the societies of the East, in whose cultural traditions the image of cyclic time dominates, but is hardly acceptable for Western societies, in which Christianity has accustomed to the image of linear time.

Rice. four. TYPOLOGY OF CIVILIZATIONS(according to A. Toynbee).

Rice. 5. CYCLE OF CROPS in the development of Western European society, according to P. Sorokin.

Like formational concepts, the civilizational approach also allows for a “simplified” interpretation, and, in this form, can become the basis for the most odious ideologies and regimes. If formational theories provoke social engineering (forced imposition by some countries on others of their own, “more progressive” model of development), then civilizational theories provoke nationalism and xenophobia (cultural contacts allegedly lead to the destruction of original cultural values).

Both approaches - formational and civilizational - make it possible to consider the historical process from different angles of view, therefore they do not so much deny as complement each other. Probably, in the future, social scientists will be able to synthesize both of these approaches, avoiding the extremes of each of them.

Vukolova Tatiana, Latov Yuri

Literature:

Momdzhyan K. Kh. Society. Society. Story. M., Nauka, 1994
Giddens E. Sociology. M., 1999
Kazarinova N.V. . Ed. G.S. Batygin. M., 2000
Volkov Yu.G., Mostovaya I.V. Sociology: Textbook for universities. Ed. V.I. Dobrenkov. M., 2001
Semenov Yu.I. Philosophy of history. (General theory, main problems, ideas and concepts from antiquity to the present day). M., 2003

Any newly born baby instantly becomes a member of society with the appropriate rights and rules. But what is this society that we all belong to? This concept is quite broad and includes many aspects. Society is a kind of system in which people interact and communicate, and are also divided into different groups depending on the feature that unites them.

In contact with

Origins

The first community arose back in primitive times, when people united in order to survive together. In this way, entire clans were created with their hierarchy, who were engaged in a common cause and were often at war with other communities. In order to develop successfully, it was necessary to fight for food and territory, and then share them. In addition, differences in religion or interracial prejudices could serve as reasons for conflicts.

It was from this distant primitive community that the modern society, which at first glance looks so different from it, came about.

Definition in dictionaries

Society is such a broad concept that completely different groups of people can be called this word. So, it can be called children who are engaged in a macrame circle, and at the same time, the entire population of the whole planet is also united under this broad concept. The thing is that all members of society are united by their interaction. So, people who are completely different in worldview, skin color, character, are forced to maintain social relations and get along peacefully with each other.

And it’s not for nothing that “society” is the same root as the word “communicate”. It could not have formed without this simple action. If people were deprived of the need to talk to each other, everyone could live alone, but this is completely inefficient. Every person in society has a role to play. A striking example of this is the difference in professions.

Another example is an organization, firm or company, since people working in any production are united by a common goal - the release of quality products. That is why each institution is assigned the names of the form economic activity, which characterize the property from a legal point of view and indicate the nature of the relationship of people working there.

The most famous and complete dictionary was created by V. I. Dalem. In addition, there is a special dictionary dedicated to the interpretation of social science terms, the author of which is N. E. Yatsenko. So, what interpretation of society do these authors give?

Dictionary N. E. Yatsenko

Dictionary of V. I. Dahl

Oddly enough, but in this popular explanatory dictionary there is no definition of society as such. His lexicographer interpreted the verb "to communicate" - that is, to connect, unite something or someone, as well as to communicate and interact with oneself. You can also watch with another person. for the same thing different points vision and yet unite into one whole unification.

Society structure

Society cannot exist without society and social interactions. It can be imagined as a single organism, for the normal functioning of which the coordinated work of all members is necessary. . And that means, it is possible to single out separate systems and structures in it, including the following categories:

• institutions;
• segments of society;
• community;
• social groups.

All these categories are affected by external factors. In every society, the appearance of an individual who will develop and change the views of a group of people is quite natural. This can lead both to minor deviations from the original foundations, and to a change in the history of entire nationalities.

They play a very important role in the development of any association, as they establish connections and interactions not only within one group, but also between several communities.

Characteristic features

Society has characteristic features and characteristics that distinguish it from other organizations of groups of people. These characteristics include fundamental features, which will be described below.

Relationships and connections

So , society in the simplest sense- this is the interaction of its members with each other, leading to the emergence of a social structure. This interaction is carried out both between individuals and between groups, cells and similar elements of society.

At birth, a person enters the society of people, as well as the group of his family. Then he begins to enter the society of his peers in kindergarten and school. Over time, the number of such groups increases. A person enters society on the basis of interest in a common cause, profession, favorite business. Moreover, these groups do not always meet the needs individual person, so that the association of people in which we are not always suits us and satisfies our needs. So, it happens due to the imperfection of the division of the general flow of people into smaller groups.

Nevertheless, a person communicates in his group according to certain rules. They can be both open and not vowels. However, this does not mean that a person cannot influence or change them. In the group, you can take a lower position than you would like, or a higher position compared to the rest. This leads to a certain inequality of group members.

To achieve the same position of all members of the group is not possible. It is only before the law that everyone should be equal, but, for example, in an interest group, someone will still occupy a leading position due to greater talent or a stronger character. Such positions can be identified in any society - a family, a political party, a work collective.

Types of society depending on science

There is a special science - social science, aimed at studying the concept under consideration. But besides it, there are other sciences (psychology, philosophy, and the like) that actively use the term society. Wikipedia considers the meaning these definitions are also for interdisciplinary and sub-disciplines of anthropology.

Social science

No matter how broad the concept considered here, it is possible to distinguish several historical types as a classification. They will be discussed next:

social anthropology

Social society is the main form of human existence, which includes self-regulation mechanisms. Most often in sociology it is divided into types based on the level of their development. Sociologist D. Lenski compiled the following classification:

• hunting and gathering group - a community in which responsibilities were first divided;
• an agrarian simple society is a group of people that does not have a separate leader to manage it;
• agrarian complex - a group of people in the political structure of which there are people involved in managerial activities;
• industrial - a society engaged in production activities;
• special, which cannot be attributed to any of the above types.

Also in sociology they use the term virtual society, it functions on the Internet, which is typical for modern age technologies.

Since society also call the totality of all people on the planet, it is important to understand how they represent its development. It is assumed that the first tribes, who rallied for the sake of survival, chose the territory in which they led a settled life. Developing, they turned into villages, and then cities. Whole states grew out of the latter. Subsequently, people developed laws and certain norms of behavior that a group of individuals had to follow. People could deserve a certain status and improve your position in the team.

Political anthropology

This subdiscipline classifies There is a society according to the political structure into the following types:

• tribe;
• chiefdom;
• state.

Moreover, the strength of these types will primarily depend on the environment of other groups of people who can be friendly or hostile. Usually a more isolated society is more secure from encroachment and lives more peacefully.

Based on the foregoing, it can be concluded that that society is a living organism where each member plays an important role and influences the development of other individuals and the life of the organization as a whole.

The human community is called society. It is characterized by the fact that members of the community occupy a certain territory, conduct joint collective productive activities. There is a distribution of the jointly produced product in the community.

Society is a society that is characterized by the production and social division of labor. A society can be characterized by many features: for example, by nationality: French, Russian, German; state and cultural; by territorial and temporal; according to the method of production, etc. .

Nevertheless, this society is not reduced either to its material carriers, which is characteristic of naturalism (vulgar sociological interpretation of society) or to mentalities and forms of communication (“societies”), which is characteristic of its phenomenological interpretations. Society in the phenomenological sense is mens intensas (mind, thought as if in itself) - a set of social worlds of our mentalities, worlds imprinted in our consciousness. Society in the naturalistic approach is res extensas (extended things) - a set of bodies, physical and biological, that are in real objective relations to each other.

In a number of species of living organisms, individual individuals do not have the necessary abilities or properties to ensure their material life (consumption of matter, accumulation of matter, reproduction). Such living organisms form communities, temporary or permanent, to ensure their material life. There are communities that actually represent a single organism: a swarm, an anthill, etc. In them, there is a division between members of the community of biological functions. Individuals of such organisms outside the community die. There are temporary communities - flocks, herds, in them, as a rule, individuals solve this or that problem without forming strong ties. common property of all communities is the task of preserving this type of living organism.

Closed society - according to K. Popper - a type of society characterized by a static social structure, limited mobility, inability to innovate, traditionalism, dogmatic authoritarian ideology (there is a system when most members of society willingly accept the values ​​that are intended for them, usually it is a totalitarian society ).

In an open society, each participant is responsible for his own life and takes care primarily of himself, while the society respects the right to private property and personal dignity. In a closed society, the “sacred duty” is to take care of others, and private property is a dubious (reprehensible) or even criminal, unworthy matter.

Notes:

• The above reasoning about the types of closed and open society can only be valid for societies in the size of the state. If a person in an open society, unlike a closed one, finds the core values ​​on his own, then he can then coexist with other like-minded people who also form a society with him, which can have common values, but which cannot be classified as closed on this basis.
• There are universal values ​​that are common to all mankind, otherwise it would not be possible to call it a human society.

The functioning and development of a social system necessarily implies a change of generations of people and, therefore, social inheritance - members of a society pass on knowledge and culture from generation to generation. See "education" and "socialization".

Modern society

Undoubtedly, the key issue of any civilized society is the issue of its organization. Modern society is organized exclusively on capital, which gives it the right to be called capitalist.

Society in literature and cinema

In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by R. Bradbury, a totalitarian society is described that relies on mass culture and consumer thinking, in which all books that make you think about life are to be burned.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what "Society" is in other dictionaries:

society society, and... Russian spelling dictionary

In a broad sense, a part of the material world isolated from nature, which is a historically developing form of human life. In a narrow sense, human stage. history (social economic formations, interformational ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

Society, society (society, society wrong.), cf. 1. The totality of certain production relations, forming a special stage of development in the history of mankind. “... Marx put an end to the view of society as a mechanical unit ... ... Dictionary Ushakov

State * Army * War * Elections * Democracy * Conquest * Law * Politics * Crime * Command * Revolution * Liberty * Navy Power * Administration * Aristocrat ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

(Kravchenko A.I. Social science. Textbook for the 8th grade. M., 2007, p. 9-16, §1)

1. The concept of society.

The concept of "society" often has a very different content. Firstly, it is a group of people united for communication and (or) activity. Such a definition implies any collective, from a primitive tribal community to a fan club, but small in scale. On the contrary, in the broad, philosophical sense of the word, this concept unites all of humanity, in contrast to animals, plants, and inanimate nature (O. is a part of the material world isolated from nature, a set of historically established forms of joint human activity).

Using the terms "feudal society" or "industrial society", we mean a certain historical stage of development, characteristic of various countries and peoples. But under "civil society" philosophers and political scientists understand the sphere of social relations, connections, groups that are independent of the state. (In such a society, citizens are able to independently defend their common rights and interests, solve local problems and influence government policy on a national scale). And if earlier the “society” included only its elite, now it is the entire population of the country.

In the most common sense among sociologists, society is the social organization of a given country (or ethnic group), i.e. not just the totality of the population, but also its structure, the system of relationships and connections. It is necessary to separate "society" from the political organization of the given country - the state. By the way, you should not confuse the state with the territory on which it operates - in fact, the country. Although very often politicians, in order to give themselves weight, broadcast on behalf of the whole country - both the state and society, deliberately mixing geographical, political and social concepts.

2. Signs of society.

Note that the last definition of society also applies to those human groups - clan, tribe, union of tribes - which in ancient times have not yet “grown up” to the creation of a state. However, if this organization is to some extent self-sufficient and has "its own face", we have a society before us. Here are its signs:
- it is no longer part of major system;
- marriages are concluded between representatives of this association;
- it is replenished mainly at the expense of children born in such marriages;
- the association has a territory that it considers its own;
- it has its own name and its own history;
- it has its own control system;
- the association exists longer than the average life expectancy of an individual;
- unites it general system values ​​(customs, traditions, norms, laws), which is called culture.

3. Spheres of society.

What is modern society in this sense? There are different methods of its structuring or models that contribute to a more detailed analysis.

First, you can build all sorts of layers or social groups vertically, from top to bottom, depending on their wealth or proximity to power, in other words, on their economic and political influence. Then society will appear before us as a pyramid, at the top of which is a wealthy and powerful elite, at the bottom - the "gray" majority, and the middle class - between them.

Secondly, one can imagine a society as a set of institutions that satisfy its most important needs within the framework of established social norms (institution - Latin “establishment”). The most important social institutions are the family (with the function of population reproduction), production (creation of material wealth), the state (regulation of social relations, protection of law and order and sovereignty, and many others), education (accumulation and transfer of experience), religion.

But the most common approach invites us to study society in its spheres (subsystems): economic, political, social and spiritual.

The economy includes the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods and services. Politics brings together institutions involved in solving the most important problems of society. First of all, this is the state - with all its ramified structure of government bodies - and parties, since the political sphere includes everything related to the struggle for this power, for influence on the adoption of strategically important decisions. A mature society has regulated mechanisms for the change of power and political struggle.

The social sphere covers relations between various social groups, classes, and strata. If society could be considered on its own, apart from economics and politics, then this hypostasis of it would be the social sphere. However, this term is also used in a narrower sense: for example, an official refers to the system of public transport and utilities, education and health care in this way. Here the "social sphere" is a set of public institutions that serve our needs. An even narrower meaning of this phrase is a system of public assistance to vulnerable segments of the population (pensioners, the unemployed, the disabled, orphans, etc.). When we hear about the imperfection of the social sphere and its insufficient funding, we are talking about the last two meanings of the term.
And last but not least, we remember the spiritual realm! And this includes science, and education, and all the treasures of art, together with museums and libraries, as well as religion and other forms of intellectual activity.

Of course, the division of society into spheres is to some extent conditional: in real life All parts of this complex system are interconnected and intertwined.

4. World community and globalization.

In conclusion, it must be said that society - as a social organization of the country - in a certain sense is already becoming a thing of the past. Isn't our Russian society, just like American or Japanese, part of a larger system - the world community? Globalization - the process of historical rapprochement of peoples and the transformation of mankind into a single political system - is increasingly covering countries and continents. Starting in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, prompted by the capitalist development of industrial countries, it linked the world first economically, and now creates a common political, legal and cultural space. People from different countries and continents discuss the same news, listen to the same music, “cheer” for “their own” at world sports competitions, defend the rights formulated by the UN assemblies, and demand certain political decisions from their representatives in the Security Council, European Union, NATO and dozens of other international organizations.