Society as a complex dynamic system definition. What characterizes society as a dynamic system

Section "Society". Topic No. 1

Society as a social system

Society- a part of the world isolated from nature, but closely connected with it, which includes ways of interaction between people and forms of their unification.

In a narrower sense, society:

– historical stage of development of society ( ancient society);

- a collection of people united by a common territory

(Russian society, European society);

- a circle of people united by a common origin (noble society), interests and activities (society of book lovers).

A country- a part of the world or territory that has certain boundaries and enjoys state sovereignty.

State- the central political organization of a given country, possessing supreme power.

System is a single whole consisting of interconnected elements, where each element performs its own function.

Society represents a single social system consisting of people, social groups, social institutions and social (public) relations. Also, as elements of society we can distinguish subsystems(spheres) of society:

– economic (production, distribution, exchange, consumption of material goods);

– social (interaction of social groups, layers, classes, nations;

as well as activities social infrastructure society);

– political (forms of state, state power, law and order, laws, security);

– spiritual (science, education, art, morality, religion).

A person enters society through a collective, being a member of several social groups: family, school class, sports team, work collective. A person is also part of larger communities of people: class, nation, country.

Public relations(social relations) - diverse connections that arise between people, social groups, classes, nations, as well as within them, in the process of life of society. Social relations arise in the economic, social, political, and spiritual life of society.

Public relations include:

a) subjects (individuals, social groups, social communities);

b) objects (material, spiritual);

Society as a dynamic system

Society is a dynamic system; it is constantly evolving.

1. Changing society can be traced in the following aspects:

– the stage of development of society as a whole is changing

(agrarian, industrial, post-industrial),

– changes occur in certain areas of society,

– social institutions are changing (family, army, education),

– some elements of society die out (serfs, feudal lords), other elements of society appear (new professional groups),

– social relations between elements of society change

(between state and church).

2. The nature of the development of society can be different:

Evolution– a slow, gradual, natural process of development.

Revolution– a radical, qualitative, rapid, violent change in the social system.

Reform- partial improvement in any area of ​​social life, a series of gradual transformations that do not affect the foundations of the existing social system. Reform is underway government agencies. Modernization– significant update, change in accordance with modern requirements.

3. Directions of development of society:

Progress– the process of change from simple to complex, from lower to higher. Regression– the process of change from higher to lower, the process of degradation and collapse of the system, a return to obsolete forms.

Progress is an ambiguous social phenomenon, because it has a side effect: " back side medals" or "price" of progress.

The founders of the theory of progress in the 18th century (Montesquieu, Condorcet, Turgot, Comte, Spencer) believed that the main engine of progress is human mind. They believed that with the development of science and education, society would be progressive, social injustice would be eliminated and a “kingdom of harmony” would be established. Today, faith in progress is undermined by global problems.

What is the criterion of progress?

The most important goal of everything social development is a man, his comprehensive development. A society in which conditions have been created for the harmonious development of the individual can be considered progressive. Based on the idea of ​​humanism, progressive is what is done for the benefit of man. The following indicators of progressive development of society are put forward as humanistic criteria: average life expectancy, mortality rate, level of education and culture, sense of satisfaction with life, degree of respect for human rights, attitude towards nature.

Topic: Society as a complex dynamic system

Goal: to bring cadets to the conclusion that society is a highly complex system and in order to live in harmony with it it is necessary to adapt to it. The conditions for adaptation to modern society is knowledge about it.

Educational:

Reveal the features of the social system.

Explain to cadets such concepts as: society, social system, social institutions

Describe the main social institutions

Educational:

1. Develop skills and abilities in working with text

Instill the skills to critically evaluate and analyze social science information

Educational:

To develop curiosity and interest in this course using the example of the topic: Society as a complex dynamic system

Features of the social system

Social institutions

During the classes

Features of the social system

Is there a connection between various events and phenomena in the life of society?

What gives stability and predictability to the development of society?

In the previous lesson, we examined the definitions of the concept of “society”, the idea of ​​​​the interconnection of people and interaction was emphasized various fields public life. In philosophical literature, society is defined as a “dynamic system.” The new concept of “system” may seem complicated, but it makes sense to understand it, since there are many objects in the world that are covered by this concept. Our Universe, the culture of an individual people, and the activities of man himself are systems. The word “system” is of Greek origin and means “a whole made up of parts,” “a totality.” Thus, each system includes interacting parts: subsystems and elements. The connections and relationships between its parts become of primary importance. Dynamic systems allow various changes, development, the emergence of new parts and the death of old parts and connections between them.

What does the concept of system mean?

What are the characteristic features of society as a system?

How does this system differ from natural systems?

A number of such differences have been identified in the social sciences.

Firstly, society as a system has complex nature, since it includes many levels, subsystems, elements. Thus, we can talk about human society on a global scale, about society within one country, about various social groups in which each person is included (nation, class, family, etc.).

What subsystems does society consist of?

The macrostructure of society as a system consists of foursubsystems, which are the main spheres of human activity - material and production, social, political, spiritual. Each of these spheres known to you has its own complex structure and is itself a complex system. Thus, the political sphere acts as a system that includes a large number of components - the state, parties, etc. But the state, for example, is also a system with many components.

Thus, any of the existing spheres of society, being a subsystem in relation to society, at the same time itself acts as a rather complex system. Therefore, we can talk about a hierarchy of systems consisting of a number of different levels.

In other words, society is a complex system of systems, a kind ofsupersystem.

Name a characteristic feature of society

Secondly, characteristic feature society as a system is the presence in its composition of elements of different quality, both material (various technical devices, institutions, etc.) and ideal (values, ideas, traditions, etc.). For example, the economic sphere includes enterprises vehicles, raw materials and materials, manufactured goods and at the same time economic knowledge, rules, values, patterns of economic behavior and much more.

Name the main elements of society

Third, main element society as a system is a person who has the ability to set goals and choose means of carrying out his activities. This makes social systems more changeable and mobile than natural ones.

Based on historical knowledge, prove that social life is in constant change (written)

Social life is inconstant change. The pace and extent of these changes may vary; There are periods in the history of mankind when the established order of life did not change in its fundamentals for centuries, but over time the pace of change began to increase.

From your history course, you know that in societies that existed in different eras, certain qualitative changes occurred, while the natural systems of those periods did not undergo significant changes. This fact indicates that society is a dynamic system that has a property that in science is expressed by the concepts of “change”, “development”, “progress”, “regression”, “evolution”, “revolution”, etc.

Hence, Human - this is a universal element of all social systems, since it is certainly included in each of them.

Give examples proving that society is an ordered entity

Like any system, society is an ordered entity. This means that the components of the system are not in chaotic disorder, but, on the contrary, occupy a certain position within the system and are connected in a certain way with other components. Therefore, the system hasintegrative quality that is inherent in it as a whole. None of the system components, considered separately, possesses this quality. It, this quality, is the result of the integration and interconnection of all components of the system. As well as individual organs human (heart, stomach, liver, etc.) do not have the properties of a person, and the economy, health care system, state and other elements of society do not have the qualities that are inherent in society as a whole. And only thanks to the diverse connections that exist between the components of the social system, it turns into a single whole, that is, into society (as through the interaction of various human organs there is a single human organism).

The connections between subsystems and elements of society can be illustrated with various examples. The study of the distant past of mankind allowed scientists to conclude that the moral relations of people in primitive conditions were built on collectivist principles, i.e., speaking modern language, priority has always been given to the team rather than to the individual. It is also known that moral standards, which existed among many tribes in those archaic times, allowed the killing of weak members of the clan - sick children, old people - and even cannibalism. Have these ideas and views of people about the limits of what is morally permissible been influenced by the real material conditions of their existence? The answer is clear: undoubtedly, they did. The need to collectively obtain material wealth, the doom of a person separated from his clan to quick death, laid the foundations of collectivist morality. Guided by the same methods of struggle for existence and survival, people did not consider it immoral to free themselves from those who could become a burden to the collective.

Another example could be the connection between legal norms and socio-economic relations. Let's turn to the famous historical facts. In one of the first codes of laws Kievan Rus, which is called Russian Truth, provides various punishments for murder. In this case, the measure of punishment was determined primarily by a person’s place in the system of hierarchical relations, his belonging to a particular social stratum or group. Thus, the fine for killing a tiun (steward) was enormous: it was 80 hryvnia and equal to the cost of 80 oxen or 400 rams. The life of a serf or serf was valued at 5 hryvnia, i.e. 16 times cheaper. Integral, i.e. general, inherent in the entire system, qualities of any system are not a simple sum of the qualities that make up it, but representnew quality, resulting from the interconnection and interaction of its constituent components. In the very general view this is the quality of society as a social system -ability to create All the necessary conditions for its existence, to produce everything necessary for the collective life of people. In philosophyself-sufficiency considered asmain difference society from its constituent parts. Just as human organs cannot exist outside the whole organism, so none of the subsystems of society can exist outside the whole - society as a system.

How do you understand the managerial function of society?

Another feature of society as a system is that this system is one of theself-governing. The managerial function is performed by the political subsystem, which gives coherence to all components that form the social integrity.

Any system, be it technical (a unit with an automatic control system), or biological (animal), or social (society), is located in a certain environment with which it interacts.Wednesday The social system of any country is both nature and the world community. Changes in the state of the natural environment, events in the world community, in the international arena are a kind of “signals” to which society must respond. It usually seeks to either adapt to changes occurring in the environment or adapt the environment to its needs. In other words, the system reacts to “signals” in one way or another. At the same time, it implements its mainfunctions: adaptation; goal achievement, that is, the ability to maintain its integrity, ensuring the implementation of its tasks, influencing the surrounding natural and social environment;sample maintenance - the ability to maintain one’s internal structure;integration - the ability to integrate, that is, to include new parts, new social formations (phenomena, processes, etc.) into a single whole.

Social institutions

The most important component of society as a system are social institutions.

What are social institutions

The word "institute" translated from Latininstitute means "establishment". In Russian it is often used to denote higher educational institutions. In addition, as you know from the basic school course, in the field of morality the word “institution” means a set of legal norms governing one social relationship or several relationships related to each other (for example, the institution of marriage).

In sociology, social institutions are historically established stable forms of organizing joint activities, regulated by norms, traditions, customs and aimed at meeting the fundamental needs of society.

List the characteristics of social institutions based on the definition

In the history of society, sustainable types of activities have developed aimed at satisfying the most important needs of life.

List public needs

Sociologists identify five suchpublic needs:

the need for reproduction;

need for security and social order;

need for subsistence;

the need for knowledge acquisition, socialization of the younger generation, personnel training;

the need to solve spiritual problems of the meaning of life.

What social institutions correspond to these needs?

In accordance with the above-mentioned needs, types of activities have developed in society, which, in turn, required the necessary organization, streamlining, the creation of certain institutions and other structures, and the development of rules to ensure the achievement of the expected result.

What social institutions do you know?

These conditions for the successful implementation of the main types of activities were met by historically established social institutions:

institution of family and marriage;

political institutions, especially the state;

economic institutions, primarily production;

institutes of education, science and culture;

Institute of Religion.

Each of these institutionsunites large masses of people to satisfy a particular need and achieve a specific goal of a personal, group or social nature.

The emergence of social institutions led toconsolidation specific types of interaction, making them permanent and mandatory for all members of a given society.

So, a social institution is, first of all,a set of persons engaged in a certain type of activity and ensuring, in the process of this activity, the satisfaction of a certain need that is significant for society (for example, all employees of the education system).

How are social institutions regulated?

Further, the institute is fixedsystem of legal and moral norms, traditions and customs, regulating appropriate types of behavior. (Remember, for example, what social norms regulate the behavior of people in the family).

Name the characteristic feature of social institutions

Another characteristic feature of a social institution ispresence of institutions, equipped with certain material resources necessary for any type of activity. (Think about what social institutions the school, factory, and police belong to. Give your own examples of institutions and organizations that belong to each of the most important social institutions.)

Any of these institutions is integrated into the socio-political, legal, value structure of society, which makes it possible to legitimize the activities of this institution and exercise control over it.

A social institution stabilizes social relations and brings consistency into the actions of members of society. A social institution is characterized by a clear delineation of the functions of each of the subjects of interaction, consistency of their actions, and a high level of regulation and control. (Think about how these features of a social institution manifest themselves in the education system, particularly in school.)

Name the signs of a social institution

Let us consider the main features of a social institution using the example of such an important institution of society as the family. First of all, every family is a small group of people based on intimacy and emotional attachment, related by marriage (spouses) and blood relationships (parents and children). The need to create a family is one of the fundamental, i.e. fundamental, human needs. At the same time, the family performs important functions in society: giving birth and raising children, economic support for minors and the disabled, and much more. Each family member occupies a special position in it, which presupposes appropriate behavior: parents (or one of them) provide a livelihood, manage household chores, and raise children. The children, in turn, study and help around the house. Such behavior is regulated not only by family rules, but also by social norms: morality and law. Thus, public morality condemns the lack of care of older family members for younger ones. The law establishes the responsibilities and obligations of spouses towards each other, towards children, and adult children towards elderly parents. Starting a family, milestones family life accompanied by established traditions and rituals in society. For example, in many countries the marriage ritual includes the exchange of spouses wedding rings. The presence of social institutions makes people's behavior more predictable and society as a whole more stable.

What social institutions can be considered the main

What social institutions can be classified as non-main

In addition to the main social institutions, there are also non-main ones. So, if the main political institution is the state, then the non-main ones are the institution of the judiciary or, as in our country, the institution of presidential representatives in the regions, etc.

The presence of social institutions reliably ensures regular, self-renewing satisfaction of vital needs. A social institution makes connections between people not random or chaotic, but constant, reliable, and sustainable. Institutional interaction is a well-established order of social life in the main spheres of people's lives. The more social needs are satisfied by social institutions, the more developed the society is.

As new needs and conditions arise in the course of the historical process, new types of activities and corresponding connections appear. Society is interested in giving them orderliness and a normative character, i.e.institutionalization.

What is institutionalization

How does it go

In Russia, as a result of reforms at the end of the 20th century. For example, such a type of activity as entrepreneurship appeared. The streamlining of these activities led to the emergence various types firms, required the publication of laws regulating business activities, and contributed to the formation of corresponding traditions.

In the political life of our country, the institutions of parliamentarism, a multi-party system, and the institution of the presidency arose. The principles and rules of their functioning are enshrined in the Constitution Russian Federation, relevant laws.

In the same way, the institutionalization of other activities that emerged in recent decades took place.

It happens that the development of society requires the modernization of the activities of social institutions that historically developed in previous periods. Thus, in the changed conditions, the need arose to solve the problems of introducing the younger generation to the culture in a new way. Hence the steps taken to modernize the institution of education, which may result in the institutionalization of the Unified State Exam and new content of educational programs.

So we can go back to the definition given at the beginning of this part of the paragraph. Think about what characterizes social institutions as highly organized systems.

Why is their structure stable?

What is the significance of deep integration of their elements?

What is the diversity, flexibility, and dynamism of their functions?

Summarizing

Society is a highly complex system, and in order to live in harmony with it, it is necessary to adapt (adapt) to it. Otherwise, you cannot avoid conflicts and failures in your life and activities. A condition for adaptation to modern society is knowledge about it, which is provided by a social studies course.

It is possible to understand society only if its quality is identified as an integral system. To do this, it is necessary to consider various sections of the structure of society (the main spheres of human activity, a set of social institutions, social groups), systematizing, integrating connections between them, and features of the management process in a self-governing social system.

IN real life you will have to interact with various social institutions. To make this interaction successful, you need to know the goals and nature of the activity that has taken shape in the social institution you are interested in. Studying the legal norms governing this type activities.

In subsequent sections of the course, characterizing individual areas of human activity, it is useful to revisit the content of this paragraph in order, based on it, to consider each area as part of an integral system. This will help to understand the role and place of each sphere, each social institution in the development of society.

Consolidation

What does the term “system” mean?

How do social (public) systems differ from natural ones?

What is the main quality of society as an integral system?

What are the connections and relationships of society as a system with the environment?

What is a social institution?

Describe the main social institutions.

What are the main features of a social institution?

What is the significance of institutionalization?

Organization homework

Using a systematic approach, analyze Russian society at the beginning of the 20th century.

Describe all the main features of a social institution using the example of an educational institution. Use the material and recommendations from the practical conclusions of this paragraph.

The collective work of Russian sociologists states: “...society exists and functions in diverse forms... Indeed important question comes down to not losing society itself behind the special forms, the forests behind the trees.” How does this statement relate to the understanding of society as a system? Give reasons for your answer.

Society as a complex dynamic system.(08.09)

The word “system” is of Greek origin and means “a whole made up of parts,” “a totality.” Each system includes interacting parts: subsystems and elements. The connections and relationships between its parts become of primary importance. (What is dynamics?) Dynamic systems allow various changes, development, the emergence of new parts and the death of old parts.

Features of the social system.

Character traits society as a system:

1) It is complex in nature (includes many levels, subsystems, elements. The macrostructure of society consists of four subsystems - spheres of social life. Society is a supersystem.

2) The presence in its composition of elements of different quality, both material (various technical devices, institutions, etc.) and ideal (values, ideas, traditions, etc.)

3) The main element of society as a system is a person who has the ability to set goals and choose the means to carry out his activities.

3) society as a system is self-governing. What subsystem do you think performs the management function? The managerial function is performed by the political subsystem, which gives coherence to all components that form the social integrity.

Social life is in constant change. The pace and extent of these changes may vary. There are periods in the history of mankind when the established order of life did not change in its fundamentals for centuries, but over time the pace of change began to increase.

From the history course you know that in societies that existed in different eras, certain qualitative changes occurred, while the natural systems of those periods did not undergo significant changes => society is a dynamic system.

Types of Social Dynamics

Social Changes - the transition of certain social. objects from one state to another, the appearance of new properties, functions, relationships in them, i.e. modifications in social media organizations, social institutions, social structure, socially established patterns of behavior

Development is changes that lead to profound qualitative changes in society, social transformations. connections, the transition of all social systems to a new state.

Progress is the direction of development of society, which is characterized by a transition from lower to higher, from less perfect to more perfect.

Regression is a movement from higher to lower, processes of degradation, a return to self-destructive forms and structures.

Evolution is gradual continuous changes, transforming one into another without jumps or breaks.

Revolution is a fundamental qualitative revolution in the entire social structure of society, fundamental changes covering the economy, politics, and spiritual sphere

Social reform is the reorganization of any sphere of social life (institutions, institutions and orders, etc.) while maintaining the existing social system.

Man is a universal component of all social systems, since he is necessarily included in each of them.

Society as a system has an integrative property (none of the components of the system individually has this property). This quality is the result of the integration and interconnection of all system components.

As a result of the interconnection and interaction of the components included in the social system, society as a social system has a new sacred ability to create more and more new conditions for its existence, to produce everything necessary for the collective life of people.

In philosophy, self-sufficiency is seen as the main difference between society and its constituent parts.

Any system is located in a certain environment with which it interacts.

The environment of the social system of any country is nature and the world community.

Functions:

Adaptations

Achievement of goals (the ability to maintain its integrity, ensuring the implementation of its tasks, influencing the surrounding natural and social environment)

Maintaining a pattern - the ability to maintain one’s internal structure

Integration – the ability to integrate, that is, to include new social formations (phenomena, processes, etc.) into a single whole.

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

The word "institute" in Latin means "establishment"

In sociology, a social institution is a historically established stable form of organizing joint activities, regulated by norms, traditions, customs and aimed at satisfying the most important needs of life.

Abraham Maslow's Pyramid

Physiology – the base needs of the body, aimed at its vital functions (hunger, sleep, sexual desire, etc.)

Safety is the need to be sure that life is not in danger.

Sociality – the need for contact with others and one’s own role in society (friendship, love, belonging to a certain nationality, experiencing mutual feelings...)

Recognition is respect, recognition by society of his success, the usefulness of his role in the life of such a society.

Cognition – satisfying a person’s natural curiosity (to know, prove, be able to and study...)

Aesthetics is the internal need and motivation to follow the truth (a subjective concept of how everything should be).

I am the need for self-realization, self-actualization, the highest mission of one’s existence, a spiritual need, the highest role of a person in humanity, an understanding of one’s meaning of existence... (the list is very large - a pyramid Maslow's needs– often used by many people and “spiritual” organizations, with different systems worldviews and the elite put their highest concept of the meaning of human existence).

Sociologists identify 5 social needs:

1) in the reproduction of the species

2) in safety and social order

3) in the means of subsistence

4) in acquiring knowledge, socializing the younger generation, training

5) in solving spiritual problems of the meaning of life

According to these general needs, types of activities have developed. Which required the necessary organization, streamlining, the creation of certain institutions and other structures, and the development of rules to ensure the achievement of the expected result. These conditions for the successful implementation of the main types of activities were met by historically established social institutions :

- family and marriage

- political institutions (especially the state)

- economic institutions (primarily production)

- institutes of education, science and culture

- Institute of Religion

Each of these institutions brings together large masses of people to satisfy one or another need and achieve a specific goal of a personal, group or social nature.

The emergence of social institutions led to the consolidation of specific types of interaction, making them permanently obligatory for all members of a given society.

Features of a social institution:

A social institution is a set of persons employed a certain type activities and ensuring, in the process of this activity, the satisfaction of a certain significant need (for example, all employees of the education system)

The institute is enshrined in a system of legal and moral norms, traditions and customs regulating the corresponding types of behavior.

The presence of institutions equipped with certain material resources necessary for any type of activity.

The presence of and makes people's behavior more predictable, and society as a whole more stable.

Typology of societies.

Modern researchers identify 3 main historical types of society:

1) traditional (agrarian)

2) industrial (capitalist)

3) post-industrial society (information)

The basis for dividing into these types of society is:

The attitude of people to nature (and the natural environment modified by man),

The relationship of people to each other (type of social connection)

Value system and life meanings(generalized expression of these relationships in the spiritual life of society)

Traditional society.

The concept of T.O. covers the great agrarian civilizations of the Ancient East (Ancient India, Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, medieval states of the Muslim East), European states of the Middle Ages. In a number of countries in Asia and Africa, traditional society continues to exist today, but the collision with modern Western civilization has significantly changed its civilizational characteristics.

In T.O. the basis of life activity is agricultural labor, the fruits of which provide a person with all the necessary means of life.

A person in a traditional society is dependent on nature.

Metaphors: nurse earth, mother earth, express a caring attitude towards nature as a source of life from which one should not draw too much.

The farmer perceived nature as a living being that required a moral attitude towards itself. Therefore, a person in a traditional society is not a master, not a conqueror, and not a king of nature. He is a small part of the great cosmic whole, the universe.

Social basis traditional society – an attitude of personal dependence.

Traditional society is characterized by a non-economic attitude towards work: work for the master, payment of quitrents.

The person did not feel like an individual opposing or competing with others. On the contrary, he perceived himself as an integral part of the community, village, polis. Social status a person was determined not by personal merit, but by social origin.

“it was written in the family” The daily life of traditional society was characterized by amazing stability. It was regulated not so much by laws as by tradition. Tradition is a set of unwritten rules, patterns of activity, behavior and communication that embody the experience of ancestors.

People's social habits have remained virtually unchanged for many generations. The organization of everyday life, methods of housekeeping and norms of communication, holiday rituals, ideas about illness and death - in a word, everything that we call everyday life - was brought up in the family and passed on from generation to generation. Many generations of people have experienced the same social structures, ways of doing things, and social habits.

Submission to tradition explains the high stability and extremely slow pace of social development.

! During the transition from a traditional society to an industrial one, a non-economic attitude towards work.

The existence of people in society is characterized by various forms of life activity and communication. Everything that is created in society is the result of the combined joint activities of many generations of people. Actually, society itself is a product of interaction between people; it exists only where and when people are connected with each other by common interests. society attitude civilizational modernity Society can be understood as either a certain group of people who have united to communicate and jointly perform any activity, or a specific stage in the historical development of a people or country.

In a broad sense society -- it is a part of the material world isolated from nature, but closely connected with it, which consists of individuals with will and consciousness, and includes ways of interaction of people and forms of their association.

In philosophical science, society is characterized as a dynamic, self-developing system, that is, a system that is capable of seriously changing and at the same time maintaining its essence and qualitative certainty. In this case, the system is understood as a complex of interacting elements. In turn, an element is some further indecomposable component of the system that is directly involved in its creation.

To analyze complex systems, such as the one that society represents, scientists have developed the concept of “subsystem”. Subsystems are “intermediate” complexes that are more complex than the elements, but less complex than the system itself.

• 1) economic, the elements of which are material production and relationships that arise between people in the process of production of material goods, their exchange and distribution;
• 2) social, consisting of such structural formations as classes, social strata, nations, taken in their relationships and interactions with each other;
• 3) political, which includes politics, state, law, their relationship and functioning;
• 4) spiritual, embracing various shapes and levels of social consciousness, which, being embodied in the real process of social life, form what is commonly called spiritual culture.

Each of these spheres, being an element of the system called “society”, in turn, turns out to be a system in relation to the elements that make it up. All four spheres of social life not only interconnect, but also mutually determine each other. The division of society into spheres is somewhat arbitrary, but it helps to isolate and study individual areas of a truly integral society, diverse and complex social life.

Sociologists offer several classifications of society. Societies are:

• a) pre-written and written;
• b) simple and complex (the criterion in this typology is the number of levels of management of society, as well as the degree of its differentiation: in simple societies there are no leaders and subordinates, rich and poor, but in complex societies there are several levels of government and several social strata of the population, located from top to bottom as income decreases);
• c) society of primitive hunters and gatherers, traditional (agrarian) society, industrial society and post-industrial society;
• d) primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society.

In Western scientific literature in the 1960s. The division of all societies into traditional and industrial became widespread (while capitalism and socialism were considered as two varieties of industrial society).

The German sociologist F. Tönnies, the French sociologist R. Aron, and the American economist W. Rostow made a great contribution to the formation of this concept.

Traditional (agrarian) society represented the pre-industrial stage of civilizational development. All societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages were traditional. Their economy was characterized by the dominance of rural subsistence farming and primitive crafts. Extensive technology and hand tools prevailed, initially ensuring economic progress. In his production activities, man sought to adapt as much as possible to environment, obeyed the rhythms of nature. Property relations were characterized by the dominance of communal, corporate, conditional, state forms property. Private property was neither sacred nor inviolable. The distribution of material goods and manufactured products depended on the person’s position in social hierarchy. The social structure of traditional society is class-based, corporate, stable and immobile. Social mobility was virtually absent: a person was born and died, remaining in the same social group. The main social units were the community and the family. Human behavior in society was regulated by corporate norms and principles, customs, beliefs, and unwritten laws. Providentialism dominated in the public consciousness: social reality, human life were perceived as the implementation of divine providence.

The spiritual world of a person in a traditional society, his system value orientations, the way of thinking is special and noticeably different from modern ones. Individuality and independence were not encouraged: the social group dictated norms of behavior to the individual. One can even talk about a “group person” who did not analyze his position in the world, and in general rarely analyzed the phenomena of the surrounding reality. He rather moralizes, evaluates life situations from the perspective of their social group. Number educated people was extremely limited (“literacy for the few”), oral information prevailed over written information. In the political sphere of a traditional society, the church and the army dominate. The person is completely alienated from politics. Power seems to him to be of greater value than right and law. In general, this society is extremely conservative, stable, impervious to innovations and impulses from the outside, representing a “self-sustaining self-regulating immutability.” Changes in it occur spontaneously, slowly, without the conscious intervention of people. The spiritual sphere of human existence has priority over the economic one.

Traditional societies have survived to this day mainly in the countries of the so-called “third world” (Asia, Africa) (therefore, the concept of “non-Western civilizations”, which also claims to be well-known sociological generalizations, is often synonymous with “traditional society”). From a Eurocentric point of view, traditional societies are backward, primitive, closed, unfree social organisms, to which Western sociology contrasts industrial and post-industrial civilizations.

As a result of modernization, understood as a complex, contradictory, complex process of transition from a traditional society to an industrial one, the foundations of a new civilization were laid in the countries of Western Europe. They call her industrial, technogenic, scientific_technical or economic. The economic basis of an industrial society is industry based on machine technology. The volume of fixed capital increases, long-term average costs per unit of output decrease. In agriculture, labor productivity increases sharply and natural isolation is destroyed. Extensive farming is being replaced by intensive farming, and simple reproduction is being replaced by expanded farming. All these processes occur through the implementation of principles and structures market economy, based on scientific and technological progress. Man is freed from direct dependence on nature and partially subjugates it to himself. Stable economic growth is accompanied by an increase in real income per capita. If the pre-industrial period is filled with fear of hunger and disease, then industrial society is characterized by an increase in the well-being of the population. In the social sphere of industrial society, traditional structures and social barriers are also collapsing. Social mobility is significant. As a result of development Agriculture and industry, the share of the peasantry in the population is sharply reduced, and urbanization occurs. New classes are emerging - the industrial proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the middle strata are strengthening. The aristocracy is in decline.

In the spiritual sphere, there is a significant transformation of the value system. A person in a new society is autonomous within a social group and is guided by his own personal interests. Individualism, rationalism (a person analyzes the world around him and makes decisions on this basis) and utilitarianism (a person acts not in the name of some global goals, but for a specific benefit) are new coordinate systems for the individual. There is a secularization of consciousness (liberation from direct dependence on religion). A person in an industrial society strives for self-development and self-improvement. Global changes are also taking place in the political sphere. The role of the state is sharply increasing, and a democratic regime is gradually taking shape. Law and law dominate in society, and a person is involved in power relations as an active subject.

A number of sociologists somewhat clarify the above diagram. From their point of view, the main content of the modernization process is a change in the model (stereotype) of behavior, in the transition from irrational (characteristic of a traditional society) to rational (characteristic of an industrial society) behavior. The economic aspects of rational behavior include the development of commodity-money relations, determining the role of money as a general equivalent of values, the displacement of barter transactions, the wide scope of market transactions, etc. The most important social consequences modernization is considered to be a change in the principle of distribution of roles. Previously, society imposed sanctions on social choice, limiting the possibility of a person occupying certain social positions depending on his membership in a certain group (origin, birth, nationality). After modernization, a rational principle of distribution of roles is established, in which the main and only criterion for occupying a particular position is the candidate’s preparedness to perform these functions.

Thus, industrial civilization opposes traditional society on all fronts. Most modern industrialized countries (including Russia) are classified as industrial societies.

But modernization gave rise to many new contradictions, which over time turned into global problems(ecological, energy and other crises). Resolving them and progressively developing, some modern societies are approaching the stage of post-industrial society, the theoretical parameters of which were developed in the 1970s. American sociologists D. Bell, E. Toffler and others. This society is characterized by the foregrounding of the service sector, the individualization of production and consumption, an increase in the share of small-scale production while mass production has lost its dominant position, and the leading role of science, knowledge and information in society. IN social structure post-industrial society, there is an erasure of class differences, and a convergence in income various groups population leads to the elimination of social polarization and an increase in the share of the middle class. The new civilization can be characterized as anthropogenic, with man and his individuality at its center. Sometimes it is also called informational, which reflects the ever-increasing dependence Everyday life society from information. Transition to post-industrial society for most countries modern world is a very distant prospect.

In the course of his activity, a person enters into various relationships with other people. Such diverse forms of interaction between people, as well as connections that arise between different social groups (or within them), are usually called social relations.

All social relations can be divided into two large groups-- material relationships and spiritual (or ideal) relationships. Fundamental difference The difference between them is that material relations arise and develop directly in the course of a person’s practical activity, outside of a person’s consciousness and independently of him, and spiritual relationships are formed by first “passing through the consciousness” of people and are determined by their spiritual values. In turn, material relations are divided into production, environmental and office relations; spiritual to moral, political, legal, artistic, philosophical and religious social relations.

A special type of social relations are interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relationships refer to relationships between individuals. At In this case, individuals, as a rule, belong to different social strata, have different cultural and educational levels, but they are united by common needs and interests in the sphere of leisure or everyday life. The famous sociologist Pitirim Sorokin highlighted the following types interpersonal interaction:

• a) between two individuals (husband and wife, teacher and student, two comrades);
• b) between three individuals (father, mother, child);
• c) between four, five or more people (the singer and his listeners);
• d) between many, many people (members of an unorganized crowd).

Interpersonal relationships arise and are realized in society and are social relationships even if they are of the nature of purely individual communication. They act as a personalized form of social relations.