Cultural development of society. The role of culture in the development of society

Society, culture and man are inextricably, organically linked. Neither society nor a person can exist outside of culture, the role of which has always been and remains fundamental. It is important to note that, however, with all this, the assessment of the ϶ᴛᴏth role has undergone a noticeable evolution.

Until relatively recently, a high assessment of the role and importance of culture was not in doubt. Of course, in the past there were periods of crisis in the history of a particular society, when existing image life was questioned. Yes, in Ancient Greece a philosophical school of cynics arose, speaking from the standpoint of a complete denial of generally accepted values, norms and rules of behavior, which was the first form of cynicism. At the same time, such phenomena were still an exception, and in general the culture was perceived positively.

Criticism of culture

The situation began to change significantly in the 18th century, when a steady trend of a critical attitude towards culture arose. At the origins of the ϶ᴛᴏth trend was the French philosopher J.-J. Rousseau, who put forward the idea of the moral superiority of the "natural man", not spoiled by culture and civilization. It is worth noting that he also proclaimed the slogan of "return to nature."

For other reasons, but even more critically assessed Western culture F. Nietzsche. He explained his attitude by the fact that science and technology dominate in contemporary culture, leaving no room for art. It is worth noting that he stated: “If we don’t die from science, we still have art.” At the beginning of the XX century. Austrian psychologist [[Sigmund Freud|3. Freud]] finds new grounds for criticism of culture. It is worth noting that he looks at human life through the prism of two main, in his opinion, instincts - sexual (the instinct of Eros, or the continuation of life) and destructive (the instinct of Thanatos, or death) Culture, according to Freud's concept, by their norms, restrictions and prohibitions suppresses the sexual instinct and therefore deserves critical evaluation.

In the 1960s and 70s. in the West has become widespread counterculture movement, which united in their ranks the radical layers of youth and students, based on the ideas of Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud and his followers, especially on the ideas of the philosopher G. Marcuse. The movement opposed the spreading values of mass culture and mass society, against the fetishization of science and technology, as well as against the basic ideals and values of traditional bourgeois culture. It is important to note that one of the main goals of the movement was proclaimed a “sexual revolution”, from which a “new sensuality” should arise as the basis of a truly free person and society.

Some totalitarian ideologies demonstrate a sharply negative attitude towards culture. As an example, in ϶ᴛᴏ, one can point to fascism. The phrase of one of the heroes of the Nazi writer Post, who declared: “When I hear the word“ culture ”, I grab the ϲʙᴏth gun”, has become widely known. Needless to say, to justify such a position, the already familiar reference to the fact that culture supposedly suppresses healthy human instincts is usually used.

Basic functions of culture

Despite the above examples of a critical attitude towards culture, it plays a huge role. positive role. Culture implements several vital important functions, without which the very existence of man and society is impossible. Chief among them will be function of socialization or human creativity, i.e. formation and education of man. As the separation of man from the kingdom of nature went along with the emergence of ever new elements of culture, so the reproduction of man occurs through culture. Outside of culture, without its understanding, a newborn cannot become a person.

This can be confirmed by the cases known in the literature when a child was lost by his parents in the forest and for several years grew up and lived in a pack of animals. Even if he was later found, the data of a few years turned out to be enough for him to be lost to society: the found child could no longer learn either human language or other elements of culture. Only through culture does a person master all the accumulated social experience and become a full member of society. Traditions, customs, skills, rituals, rituals, etc. play a special role here, which form a collective social experience and way of life. Culture with ϶ᴛᴏm really acts as "social heredity”, which is transmitted to a person and the meaning of which is no less than biological heredity.

The second function of culture, closely related to the first, will be educational, informational. Culture is able to accumulate a variety of knowledge, information and information about the world and pass them on from generation to generation. It is worth noting that it acts as a social and intellectual memory of mankind.

No less important will regulatory, or normative, function culture, with the help of which it establishes, organizes and regulates relations between people. By the way, this function is carried out primarily through a system of norms, rules and laws of morality, as well as rules, compliance with which is the necessary conditions for the normal existence of society.

Closely intertwined with those already mentioned communicative function, which is carried out primarily with the help of language, which is the main means of communication between people. Along with the natural language, all areas of culture - science, art, technology - have their specific languages, without which it is impossible to master the whole culture as a whole. Knowledge of foreign languages opens access to other national cultures and the whole world culture.

Another function is valuable, or axiological, also has great importance. It is worth noting that it contributes to the formation of a person's value needs and orientation, allows him to distinguish between good and bad, good and evil, beautiful and ugly. The criterion for such differences and assessments are primarily moral and aesthetic values.

Deserves special mention creative, innovative function culture, which finds expression in the creation of new values and knowledge, norms and rules, customs and traditions, as well as in the critical rethinking, reforming and updating of an existing culture.

Finally, playing, entertaining, or compensatory function culture, which is associated with the restoration of the physical and spiritual strength of a person, leisure activities, psychological relaxation, etc.

All these and other functions of culture can be reduced to two: the function of accumulating and transferring experience, or adaptation (adaptation) and the critically creative function. It is worth noting that they are also closely, inextricably linked, since accumulation contains a critical selection from everything that is most valuable and useful, and the transfer and recognition of experience do not occur passively and mechanically, but again imply a critical, creative attitude. At the same time, the creative function means, first of all, the improvement of all the mechanisms of culture, which inevitably leads to the creation of something new.

It is impossible to recognize as justified the judgments that culture is nothing but traditions, conservatism, conformism, stereotypes, repetition of what is already known, that it hinders creativity, the search for something new, etc. Traditions in culture do not exclude renewal and creativity. A prime example This will be Russian icon painting, which rested on a strong tradition and strict canons, and yet all the great icon painters - Andrei Rublev, Theophan the Greek, Daniil Cherny. Dionysius - have a unique creative face.

The thesis that that culture suppresses healthy human instincts. Confirmation of ϶ᴛᴏmu can be the prohibition of incest, or incest. It is believed that it was the first clear watershed between nature and culture in the history of mankind. At the same time, being a purely cultural phenomenon, ϶ᴛᴏт prohibition will be an indispensable condition for the reproduction and survival of people. ancient tribes, who did not accept this ban, doomed themselves to degeneration and extinction. The same can be said about the rules of hygiene, which are essentially cultural, but protect human health.

Culture is an inalienable property of a person

At the same time, ideas about who should be considered a cultured person can be different. The ancient Romans called a cultured person who knows how to choose worthy fellow travelers among people, things and thoughts - both in the past and in the present. The German philosopher Hegel believed that a cultured person is able to do everything that others do.

History shows that all outstanding personalities were highly cultured people. Many of them were universal personalities: their knowledge was encyclopedic, and everything they did was distinguished by exceptional skill and perfection. As an example, first of all, Leonardo da Vinci, who was at the same time a great scientist, engineer and brilliant artist of the Renaissance, should be mentioned. Today it is very difficult and, apparently, impossible to become a universal personality, since the amount of knowledge is too immense. With all this, the possibility of being cultured person increased extraordinary.
It is worth noting that the main characteristics of such a person remain the same: knowledge and competence, the volume and depth of which must be significant, and skills marked by high qualification and skill. To ϶ᴛᴏ we must add moral and aesthetic education, observance of generally accepted norms of behavior and the creation of our own "imaginary museum", in which there would be the best works all world art. Today a cultured person should know foreign languages and own a computer.

Culture and society are very close, but not identical systems, which are relatively autonomous and develop according to their laws.

Types of society and culture

Modern Western sociologist Per Monson has identified four main approaches to understanding society.

First approach proceeds from the primacy of society in relation to the individual. Society is understood as a system that rises above individuals and cannot be explained by their thoughts and actions, since the whole does not add up to the sum of its parts: individuals come and go, are born and die, but society continues to exist. By the way, this tradition originates in the concept of E. Durkheim and even earlier in the views of O. Comte. From modern trends the school of structural-functional analysis (T. Parsons) and the theory of conflict (L. Kose r. R. Dahrendorf) are primarily related to it

Second approach, on the contrary, will confuse the focus of attention towards the individual, arguing that without studying inner world man, his motives and meanings, it is impossible to create an explanatory sociological theory. By the way, this tradition is associated with the name of the German sociologist M. Weber. Among modern theories, ϲᴏᴏᴛʙᴇᴛϲᴛʙ to this approach, we can name: symbolic interactionism (G. Blumer) and ethnomethodology (G. Garfinkel, A. Sikurel)

Third Approach focuses on studying the very mechanism of the process of interaction between society and the individual, taking a middle position between the first two approaches. It is important to note that early P. Sorokin is considered one of the founders of the ϶ᴛᴏ tradition, and among modern sociological concepts, one should name the theory of action, or the theory of exchange (J. Homans)

Fourth Approach- Marxist. Type of explanation social phenomena it is similar to the first approach. At the same time, there is fundamental difference: in line with the Marxist tradition, sociology is supposed to actively intervene in the transformation and change of the surrounding world, while the first three traditions consider the role of sociology rather as a recommendation.

The dispute between representatives of these approaches is about how to understand society: as a supra-individual objective social structure or as human world life filled with culture.

If we proceed from the systematic approach laid down in the works of E. Durkheim, we should consider society not just as a set of people, but also as an objectively existing set of conditions for their joint existence. Public life will be a reality of a special kind, different from natural reality and not adapted to it, - social reality, and collective representations are the most important part of the ϶ᴛᴏ reality. It is they who are the foundation of culture, which is interpreted as a way of organizing social life, society as a social organism. Like any organisms that are complex systems, society has integrative features. which are inherent in the entire social whole, but are absent from its individual elements. Among the most important properties is the ability to historically long autonomous existence, based on the fact that only society is associated with the change of generations. Thanks to the ϶ᴛᴏm, societies will be self-sustaining systems that provide, maintain and improve the ϲʙᴏ way of life. Culture acts as a way to implement ϶ᴛᴏy self-sufficiency, and its intergenerational transmission allows society to reproduce itself.

Mankind has never been a single social collective. Miscellaneous groups(populations) of people exist in a variety of local social groups ah (ethnic groups, classes, social strata, etc.) The foundation of these local groups are cultures, which are the basis for integrating people into such communities. Therefore, on Earth there is neither society in general, nor culture in general - ϶ᴛᴏ abstraction. In reality, local cultures and societies have existed and still exist on our planet. Cultures in relation to these societies (social groups) perform the tasks of integration, consolidation and organization of people; regulation of the practice of their joint life with the help of norms and values; ensuring knowledge of the surrounding world and storage of information significant for the survival of people; communication between people, for which they develop special languages and ways of exchanging information; development of mechanisms for the reproduction of society as a social integrity.

In historical development, several types of society and related cultures are distinguished.

First type- Primitive society and culture. It is worth saying that it is characterized by syncretism - the non-isolation of the individual from the main social structure, which was the consanguinity. All mechanisms of social regulation - traditions and customs, rites and rituals - were justified in myth, which was the form and way of existence of primitive culture. Its rigid structure did not allow deviations. Therefore, even in the absence of special controlling social structures, all rules and norms were observed very precisely. TO primitive society and culture adjoins archaic society and culture — modern peoples living at the level of the Stone Age (about 600 tribes are known today)

Second type society is associated with the processes of social stratification and division of labor, which led to the formation

states where hierarchical relations between people were legalized. The birth of the state took place in the countries of the Ancient East. With all the diversity of its forms - Eastern despotisms, monarchies, tyrannies, etc. they all singled out the supreme ruler, whose subjects were all the other members of society. In such societies, the regulation of relations has traditionally been based on violence. Within the framework of a society of the ϶ᴛᴏ type, it is necessary to distinguish pre-industrial society and culture where class-ideological and political-confessional forms of life prevailed, and the violence used received a religious justification. Another form was industrial society and culture, where the leading role was played by national-state formations and specialized social groups in society, and the violence was economic.

Third type society originated in ancient Greece and Rome, but has become widespread since the New Age, especially in the 20th century. In a democracy that forms a civil society, people are aware of themselves as free citizens, taking certain forms of organizing their lives and activities.
It is to a society of this type that the highest form of manifestation of economic, political and legal culture, ideologically substantiated by philosophy, science, art. In such a society, citizens have equal rights based on the principle of cooperation, communication, trade exchange and dialogue. Of course, ϶ᴛᴏ is still an ideal, and in real practice one cannot do without violence, but the goal has already been set. In many ways, ϶ᴛᴏ became possible with the formation of a new post-industrial society with the ongoing processes of globalization and the formation of mass culture.

Social institutions of culture

The real links between society and culture are provided by the social institutions of culture. The concept of "social institution" is borrowed by cultural studies from sociology and jurisprudence and is used in several senses:

a stable set of formal and informal rules, principles, guidelines that regulate various areas of human activity and organize them into a single system;
a community of people who play certain social roles and are organized through social norms and goals;
a system of institutions through which certain aspects of human activity are ordered, conserved and reproduced. Material published on http: // site

IN various types cultures, social institutions are formed in different ways, however, there are several general principles their appearance. First of all, an awareness of the need for this type is required. cultural activities. Material published on http: // site
Many peoples and cultures did without museums, libraries, archives, concert halls and so on. precisely because there was no ϲᴏᴏᴛʙᴇᴛϲᴛʙ need. The withering away of a need leads to the disappearance of the cultural institute. Thus, today the number of churches per capita is much less than in the 19th century, when the bulk of the people attended weekly services.

Secondly, socially significant goals must be set that form the motives for visiting ϲᴏᴏᴛʙᴇᴛϲᴛʙ institutions for the majority of people in this culture. Under ϶ᴛᴏm, norms and rules will gradually appear that will regulate this type of cultural activity. Material published on http: // site
The result will be the creation of a system of statuses and roles, the development of performance standards, which will be approved by the majority of the population (or at least the ruling elite of society)

Social institutions of culture carry out a number of features:

regulation of the activities of members of the society; o creation of conditions for cultural activities;
inculturation and socialization - introducing people to the norms and values of their culture and society;
conservation of phenomena and forms of cultural activity, their reproduction.

There are five main human needs and related cultural institutions:

the need for the reproduction of the genus is the institution of the family and marriage; about the need for security and social order - political institutions, the state;
the need for means of subsistence - economic institutions, production;
the need for obtaining knowledge, for the inculturation and socialization of the younger generation, the training of personnel - the institutions of education and upbringing in broad sense, including science;
the need to solve spiritual problems, the meaning of life - the institution of religion.

The main institutions contain non-basic ones, which are also called social practices or customs. Each major institution has ϲʙᴏ and systems of established practices, methods, procedures, mechanisms. For example, economic institutions cannot do without such mechanisms as currency conversion, protection of private property, professional selection, placement and evaluation of workers, marketing, the market, etc. Within the institution of family and marriage are the institutions of motherhood and fatherhood, tribal vengeance, twinning, inheritance social status parents, etc. In contrast to the main institution, the non-basic one implements a specialized task, serving a specific custom or satisfying a non-fundamental need of the smallpox.

Question #1. Culture in life modern society

Society- this is not a crowd, but a set of all ways of interaction and forms of unification of people, in which their comprehensive dependence on each other is expressed. The implementation of any social interaction is impossible outside of culture, because it is in it that the methods and techniques of human activity, patterns of human attitude to the world are fixed. Everything that happens in society, and how it happens, finds its foundation in culture.

Whatever area of society we take: material and production(in which the production of material means necessary for life is carried out), social(in which the physical reproduction of individuals takes place), political(there is a struggle for leadership and for power in society), spiritual(in which, in fact, spiritual production is carried out) - there is culture everywhere.

culture is universal form of human activity, forms its programs, goals, methods, means.

It permeates all spheres of human life and allows the human spirit, will and mind to embody itself in life and activity.

Culture is an inalienable property of a person.

But who is considered a cultured person? ancient romans they called a cultured person who knows how to choose worthy fellow travelers among people, things and thoughts, both in the past and in the present. German philosopher Hegel argued that a cultured person is able to do everything that others can do.

Today it is very difficult and, apparently, impossible to become a universal personality, since the amount of information and knowledge, cultural values is too great. At the same time in modern era there are many more opportunities to be a cultured person.

The main characteristics of such a person are deep knowledge, broad erudition, formed general intellectual and professional skills and skills that differ high level qualifications and skills, moral and aesthetic maturity. A modern cultured person should also be able to use computer technology.

The French sociologist R. Debre noted that main means of cultural influence in the 17th century was a church sermon, in the middle of the XVIII century. - theater stage, at the end of the XIX century. - the speech of a lawyer in court, in the 30s. 20th century - daily newspaper, in the 60s. 20th century - illustrated magazine, in the second half of the XX century. - Regular TV show. At the beginning of the XXI century. we can say with good reason that the computer and the Internet have been added to television and radio as the main media of information and cultural influence.

Anyway man of culture- this is a person who is able to direct his spiritual abilities to improve himself and the world, and culture itself is a necessary and decisive condition for the existence and development of human society.

The role of culture in modern society.

In recent years, the attitude towards culture, the understanding of its importance and role in modern society, the recognition of culture as one of the most important resources for socio-economic development have changed dramatically.

feature modern stage social development is the growth of the social role of culture as one of the factors organizing the spiritual life of people. At the same time, culture is not only spiritual experience humanity, but also as a special reality, fruitful and creative, laying the foundations of a truly human existence, the ability to preserve the values and forms of civilized life.

Many modern sociologists not only state the growing role of culture as a driving force of social development, but also note that social changes are mainly culturally motivated.

People use culture to organize and normalize their own lives and activities. Culture regulates the interaction of people, determines a single scale for correlating the actions of an individual with the requirements of society.

Orientation towards traditional folk culture is a noticeable feature of the modern socio-cultural process.

Currently, in the culture of different peoples and countries, there are two global trends that are in opposition to each other.

1.globalization processes.manifested in the fact that in the world there is a spontaneous and uncontrolled borrowing of cultural values. There is a formation of some “single standards of a universal and supranational culture, facing the whole world and representing values, norms, ideas, images, symbols close to all of humanity (or a significant part of it). It is a broad layer of culture and underpinned by powerful shared processes of integration.” At the same time, there are both positive and negative aspects of these processes. On the one hand, due to the development of modern means of transport and economic ties, due to the impact of mass media on people, such processes contribute to the rapprochement of peoples, the expansion of cultural contacts, mutual enrichment, exchange, and migration of people. But on the other hand, the negative aspects of globalization processes lie in the possibility of peoples losing their cultural identity (identity). 2. regionalization processes, national-ethnic revival of cultures and peoples. It shows “the need to realize one’s own, original cultural and historical path, in a sense of rootedness in some of one’s social and cultural space, on one’s land, the need to identify one’s destiny with this land, country, religion with its past, present, future” .

In the modern period of development of society the creation of computer and information networks led to the informatization of the entire system of public life, spawned screen culture that supplanted oral and written. Today, information flows through a computer network have penetrated into all spheres of human activity.

The state of modern culture is largely determined by the culture of post-industrial society. Due to scientific, technical, computer and technological revolution modern culture has undergone fundamental changes. It begins to exist as if in three dimensions, breaking up into three main components - humanitarian, scientific and technical and mass.

1.humanitarian culture includes religion, philosophy, morality, classical art. Although this culture persists and develops, its influence in modern society is declining, especially among young people, who perceive it as outdated, boring and difficult, requiring too much time to comprehend and understand.

2. scientific and technical (intellectual culture), which includes, first of all, the new trends of modernism and avant-gardism in art, directly related to science, technology and the latest technology, addressed mainly to the intellect, and not to the feelings of a person.

3. Mass culture. (the emergence of printing and the appearance of newspapers and magazines, which later became an important means of disseminating mass culture. In the 19th century they were joined by photography, radio, cinema, and in the 20th century television appeared, which marked the beginning of a new, television and screen civilization)

Characteristic features of mass culture its accessibility, ease of perception, entertainment, simplicity, orientation to the undeveloped consciousness of people have become today.

Modern culture in general based on European culture urban type strongly pressed the folk culture.

In modern society, there is displacement of the center of cultural and spiritual influence on people from schools, universities, classical art and church to fashion and television. Together they become the defining core of culture and all modern human life, fulfilling the role that religion, reason, philosophy and science used to play.

In general, modern culture is becoming more and more simplistic.

Many researchers believe that culture arose primarily under the influence of social demands and needs. First of all, society needed to consolidate and transfer spiritual values, which, outside the social forms of human life, could perish along with the author of these values.

Society, thus, gave a stable and successive character to the process of creating values. In society, the accumulation of values became possible, culture began to acquire a cumulative character of development. In addition, society has created opportunities for public creation and the use of values, which led to the possibility of their faster understanding and testing by other members of society.

First of all, it is necessary to emphasize the idea that the concept of "culture" is one of those general historical categories that are valid for all eras. Culture arises together with the appearance of mankind on earth, and each step of a person along the path of social progress was at the same time a step forward in the development of culture, each historical epoch, each special form of society had its own, unique culture.

The essence of culture lies in the fact that it constitutes a fundamental, defining dimension of human life, embodies the proper human way of existence.

IN mass consciousness established the idea of culture as a special sphere of society, which is, as it were, separated from Everyday life and is virtually identical to art and literature. This view is enshrined in expressions such as "worker of culture", "workers of culture", which means poets and writers, musicians and artists.

In fact, culture is a large-scale phenomenon, irreducible to art alone, a phenomenon commensurate with society and civilization. Therefore, culture is not only closely connected with all aspects of the life of society and man, but also permeates it.

In order to clarify the nature of culture, let us first dwell on its concept. The term "culture" is of Latin origin and originally meant the cultivation of the soil. In the Middle Ages, they denoted progressive methods of cultivating cereals, thus, now there is a good famous term"agriculture".

In the XVIII - XIX centuries, culture is interpreted in an aristocratic spirit. Educated, well-read, "well-bred" people who possessed "good manners" began to be considered cultural. Such an understanding of culture, apparently, has been preserved to some extent to this day: for example, we are talking about cultured and uncultured people, about lack of culture, we associate culture with education, intellectual work, etc. This division thus goes back to the division of society into cultured aristocrats and uncultured common people.

Subsequently, culture began to be understood as everything that was created by man, in contrast to the natural world, nature. From the standpoint of modern philosophy and science, culture is a humanized world transformed by people. This is the second nature, built on by man over the first, “natural”. It therefore includes in fact the same content as the concepts of society and civilization.

Specifically, the face of culture is especially clearly revealed when we compare different nations, society, country. Differences in the way of life, typical and characteristic of these peoples, their customs, their different attitude, for example, to work or family, raising children or life success their habits and traditions. All these differences are focused in the systems of values and life guidelines inherent in these peoples. Thus, Americans are traditionally oriented towards personal success, within their culture the myth of a shoe shiner who became the president of the country varies in different ways, they value people who have achieved high status and popularity - athletes, artists, singers, etc. A. Morito, one of the founders of the famous Sony company, when reflecting on the Japanese and American systems of labor relations, singled out such differences. The Japanese system is characterized by corporate patriotism, the system of "family ties", democracy in relations between managers and employees, "collective management" (very reminiscent of the domestic system of constant linkages and coordination of decisions), the equalizing principle of remuneration, according to which it increases every year by as the worker gets older and more experienced. The American system of labor relations, according to A. Morito, is based on individualism, formal relations between an employee and a firm, a narrow specialization of an employee, it is focused on extracting maximum profit and is devoid of a “human dimension”.

This example shows that the same needs (in this case economic) can be satisfied, the same goals can be achieved on the basis of various systems values, traditions, ways, rules and models of behavior, i.e. everything that forms a special culture.

Culture, therefore, attaches a certain meaning to human activity and life (for example, work is considered and evaluated as a duty, or as an obligation, or as a duty, or as a way to achieve other goals), introduces meaning into them. Therefore, culture can also be thought of as the set of meanings by which people make sense of themselves and the world around them.

Culture embodies the originality, uniqueness and uniqueness of society, people, social group, in short - the subject to which it belongs. Culture from this point of view can be represented as a portrait of a social community. This is due to the fact that it develops over a long period of time and represents the accumulation of a kind of historical experience that people have acquired. In other words, every culture certainly has a “historical dimension”, which may not be noticeable at first glance, but, nevertheless, without it, no culture, even if we are talking about the culture of a small social group, exists.

Culture therefore contains the most typical, repetitive, widespread, regularly reproduced features and properties of the social community. common denominator of the entire diverse content of culture, therefore, can be considered a tradition. It reveals itself in all elements of culture, forming its originality, and on the surface of social life it manifests itself in the form of a habit.

We can say that every culture has a mechanism of selection, selection, thanks to which it sort of filters out public life, practice, leaving only some elements as cultural samples, standards, canons. They become general and, to a certain extent, obligatory for all members of the social community.

These elements (patterns, standards, canons) must, on the one hand, be effective and expedient, helping the social community to maintain its existence as a whole under changing circumstances. This is especially clearly seen in the example of professional culture, in which there are numerous means of developing, transferring, replicating samples and models, the canons of professionalism, maintaining it at the “proper level” and monitoring it. If professional culture blurred (say, due to the substitution of professional criteria for assessing the work of a specialist with political requirements of loyalty), then the professional community itself is destroyed, the boundary between, for example, a doctor and a healer, a scientist and a charlatan, a writer and a graphomaniac, a policeman and a bandit disappears. The professions themselves are simply degrading.

On the other hand, new elements should fit into the existing culture, correspond to its fundamental values, norms, patterns, traditions, not tear its fabric, but, on the contrary, strengthen it. Take, for example, such an important component of culture as language. Although its existence is associated with the constant emergence of new words and the introduction of foreign borrowings into its vocabulary, in general, the vocabulary remains constant, the rules are even more stable. Thus, the selection mechanism helps to preserve the originality and uniqueness of each culture, whether it is a national, professional, generational or any other culture.

From this point of view, attempts to change culture by force, in addition to the mechanism of selection, without taking into account the originality of culture, to introduce new “progressive” elements into it are indicative. Such a path either destroys the integrity of culture, its internal interconnections, turning the cultural fabric into a collection of “cuts and shreds” (this, however, rarely happens), or ends in nothing.

Here is an unfortunate example. legal nihilism, dismissive attitude to law and law - our tradition, which has its roots far into the past and "canonized" in the well-known proverb "the law that draws, where you turn, it went there." In the era of perestroika, the European idea of the rule of law was introduced into the public consciousness, and since then attention to legal regulation society, even attempts are being made to reform the judiciary. But the practice and deep attitude to the law has not changed, since the law itself, which remained unlawful, has not changed, “by the will of the ruling class”, since the idea of a rule of law state was not “linked” with the fundamental values national culture, first of all - with the idea of justice. Moreover, since it is the legislators and “law enforcers” themselves who demonstrate disregard for the law, legal nihilism only intensifies.

The culture of the people is formed and crystallized over the course of entire historical epochs, it is the past, overturned into the present. She is a "memory" of the past, fixed in the stereotypes of consciousness and behavior, symbols, rituals and customs. These are its deepest layers, which are connected by a thousand threads with more dynamic and changing surface layers, reflecting the specifics of a particular historical era and often carrying new and contrary to tradition content.

Culture as an integral phenomenon performs certain functions in relation to society.

Adaptive function- culture ensures the adaptation of man to the environment. The term adaptation means adaptation. Animals and plants develop adaptation mechanisms in the process biological evolution. The mechanism of human adaptation is fundamentally different; it does not adapt to the environment, but adapts the environment to itself, creating a new artificial environment. Man as a biological species remains the same in a very wide range of conditions, and culture (forms of economy, customs, social institutions) differ depending on what nature requires in each particular region. A significant part of cultural traditions has rational grounds associated with some useful adaptive effect. The other side of the adaptive functions of culture is that its development is all in more provides people with safety and comfort, increases labor efficiency, new opportunities for spiritual self-realization of a person appear, culture allows a person to reveal himself with the greatest fullness.

Communicative function– culture forms the conditions and means human communication. Culture is created by people together; it is the condition and result of people's communication. The condition is because only through the assimilation of culture between people are established truly human forms of communication, culture gives them the means of communication - sign systems, languages. The result is because only through communication can people create, store and develop culture; in communication, people learn to use sign systems, fix their thoughts in them and assimilate the thoughts of other people fixed in them. Thus, culture connects and unites people.

Integrative function- culture unites the peoples of the social groups of the state. Any social community, in which its own culture is formed, is held together by this culture. Because among the members of the community, a single set of views, beliefs, values, ideals characteristic of a given culture is spreading. These phenomena determine the consciousness and behavior of people, they form a sense of belonging to one culture. Preservation of the cultural heritage of national traditions, historical memory creates a bond between generations. This is the basis for the historical unity of the nation and the self-consciousness of the people as a community of people that has existed for a long time. wide frames cultural community created by world religions. One faith closely binds representatives of various peoples that make up the world of Islam or the Christian world.

Socialization function- culture is essential tool the inclusion of individuals in social life, their assimilation of social experience, knowledge of values, norms of behavior corresponding to a given society, social group and social role. The process of socialization allows the individual to become a full-fledged member of society, take a certain position in it, and live as required by customs and traditions. At the same time, this process ensures the preservation of society, its structure, the forms of life that have developed in it. Culture determines the content of the means and methods of socialization. In the course of socialization, people master the programs of behavior stored in culture, learn to live, think and act in accordance with them.

Information function of culture- with the emergence of culture, people have a special “suprabiological” form of information transmission and storage that differs from animals. In culture, information is encoded by structures external to the person. Information how to acquire own life and capacity for self-development. Unlike biological information, social information does not disappear with the death of the individual who obtained it. Thanks to this, in society, it is possible that something that will never be possible in the animal world is the historical multiplication and accumulation of information that is at the disposal of man as a generic being.

The cognitive function of culture is determined by a certain criterion of cognition, mastery human strength nature and society, as well as the degree of development of the "human" in man himself. Covering all forms public consciousness taken in their unity, culture gives complete picture knowledge and exploration of the world. Of course, culture is not reduced to the totality of knowledge about the world, but systematized scientific knowledge is one of its most important elements.

However, culture not only characterizes the degree of human knowledge of the surrounding world. At the same time, culture reveals not only the degree of development of forms of social consciousness in their unity, but also the level of skills and abilities of people manifested in their practical activities. Life is extraordinarily complicated and all the time it poses more and more new problems for people. This causes the need for knowledge of the processes taking place in society, their awareness from both scientific and artistic and aesthetic positions.

Culture also contributes to the implementation heuristic the goals of man, his search for the most productive forms of learning new things, the discovery of new ways and methods of social life, the strengthening of man's power over the elemental forces of nature.

As follows from what has been said, the role of culture in this case was reduced to something specific and not much, but important.

In today's ideas about the functions of culture, the most important place, as a rule, is given to the human-creative function.

So the efforts of great thinkers who called for seeing in culture only a condition for development human qualities, have not been wasted. But real life culture is still not limited to human-creative function. The variety of human needs served as the basis for the emergence of a variety of functions. Culture is a kind of self-knowledge of a person, since it shows him not only the world around him, but also himself. This is a kind of mirror where a person sees himself both as he should become and as he was and is. The results of knowledge and self-knowledge are transmitted in the form of experience, worldly wisdom, through signs, symbols from generation to generation, from one people to another.

Axiological (value) function of culture, it fixes the ability of accumulation in culture art treasures and their impact on the way people think and behave. The whole variety of material and spiritual culture can act as material and spiritual values, which are evaluated in terms of truth or untruth, beautiful or ugly, permissible or forbidden, fair or unfair, etc.

The totality of the established, well-established value orientations of the individual form a kind of axis of his consciousness, providing a certain continuity of culture and motivation for his behavior. Because of this, orientations are the most important factor regulating and determining human actions. developed value orientations- a sign of the maturity of the individual, an indicator of the measure of his sociality. This is the prism of perception not only of the external, but also of the inner world of the individual. Thus, the axiological or value function of culture is manifested not only in the assessment of culture, its achievements, but also in the socialization of the individual, in the formation of social relations, and people's behavior.

Aesthetic function of culture, first of all, manifests itself in art, in artistic creativity. As you know, in culture there is a certain sphere of "aesthetic". It is here that the essence of the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the base, the tragic and the comic is revealed. This sphere is closely connected with the aesthetic attitude to reality, to nature. V. Solovyov noted that “beauty, spilled in nature in its forms and colors, is concentrated, condensed, emphasized in the picture”, and the aesthetic connection between art and nature “does not consist in repetition, but in the continuation of that artistic work that was started by nature ".

Related to the aesthetic function is the hedonic function. Hedonism in Greek means pleasure. People enjoy reading a book architectural ensembles, museums, visits to theaters, concert halls, etc. Pleasure contributes to the formation of needs and interests, affects the lifestyle of people.

The main, synthesizing function of culture, reflecting it social meaning, is humanistic function. All of the above functions are somehow connected with the formation of personality, human behavior in society, with the expansion of its cognitive activity, development of intellectual, professional and other abilities.

The humanistic function is manifested in the unity of opposite, but organically interconnected processes: the socialization and individualization of the individual. In the process of socialization, a person masters social relations, spiritual values, turning them into the inner essence of his personality, into his social qualities. But these relations, values a person masters in his own way, uniquely, in individual form. Culture is a special social mechanism that implements socialization and ensures the acquisition of individuality.

Introduction

1. Definition of the concept of "culture"

2. Interaction of culture and society

3. Culture spiritual and material

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

We humans live in constant communication with our own kind. This is called the scientific term - society. The whole history of mankind is the emergence, development and destruction of the societies of the most different types. However, in all societies one can find permanent properties and signs, without which no association of people is possible. Society as a whole and its individual constituent groups have specific cultures. The relevance of this topic is due to the fact that culture affects the course of human history, where it interacts with society, with society.

Culture is a product of creative and constructive human activity. Many researchers believe that culture arose primarily under the influence of social demands and needs. Society needed to consolidate and transfer spiritual values, which, outside the social forms of human life, could perish along with the author of these values. Society, thus, gave a stable and successive character to the process of creating values. In society, the accumulation of values became possible, culture began to acquire a cumulative character of development. In addition, society has created opportunities for the public creation and use of values, which has led to the possibility of their faster understanding and testing by other members of society.

Thus, culture helps people to live in their natural and social environment, to maintain the unity of society in interaction with other societies, to carry out production activities and the reproduction of people.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze culture and society, as well as their interaction.

The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and a list of references. The total amount of work is 20 pages.

1. Definition of "culture"

Culture arose as a result of a long historical development and exists in society, being passed on from generation to generation. The term "cultura" comes from the Latin verb colo, which means "cultivate", "cultivate the soil". Initially, the word "culture" denoted the process of humanization of nature as a habitat. However, gradually, like many other words of the language, it changed its meaning.

In modern language, the concept of "culture" is used mainly in a broad and narrow sense. IN narrow sense when talking about culture, they usually mean those areas creative activity that are related to art. In a broad sense, the culture of society is usually called the totality of forms and results of human activity, entrenched in social practice and transmitted from generation to generation with the help of certain sign systems (linguistic and non-linguistic), as well as through learning and imitation, i.e. culture is an exclusively human, social mechanism in its origin and purpose. It is legitimate to say that culture is a universal form of human communications, its functioning ensures the continuity of the development of society, the interaction of individual subsystems, institutions, elements of society. The emergence and development of the human personality, the existence of society are impossible outside the cultural context.

In the history of social thought, there have been various, often opposing points of view on culture. Some philosophers called culture a means of enslaving people, so the German philosopher F. Nietzsche proclaimed the thesis that a person by nature is an anti-cultural being, and culture itself is an evil that was created to suppress and enslave a person. A different point of view was held by those scientists who called culture a means of ennobling a person, turning him into a civilized member of society. The stages of cultural development were considered by them as stages of the progressive development of mankind.

In the XIX and the first half of the XX centuries. culture was defined mainly through the difference between the results of human activity and purely natural phenomena, that is, they gave a “definition through denial”. With this approach, the concept of "culture" practically merged with the concept of "society". Therefore, it is impossible to derive some complete, universal definition of culture, since behind this concept a truly immense world of human activity, searches, passions, etc. is hidden. Decades of research and discussion have significantly advanced the understanding of the essence of cultural phenomena; modern culturologists already have more than five hundred definitions. In general, most authors attribute to culture all types of transformative human activity, as well as the results of activity - a set of material and spiritual values created by man. This idea can be illustrated with an example. Let's say a tree growing in a forest remains a part of nature. But if it is grown (or transplanted) by a person in a park, garden, forest belt, etc. - this is already an object of culture, a "second nature" created by man for any of his human purposes: to strengthen the soil, create a recreation area, get fruits, decorate the landscape, etc. There is also a countless number of wood products that man has been creating since ancient times - all of them, of course, are man's creations, i.e. cultural items. Thus, the concept of "culture" contains a certain human, social, and not a natural, not a biological principle. Culture is the result of the activity of man, society, the totality of everything that is created by man, society, and not nature. Therefore, culture is considered the most important, essential characteristic of a person and society. However, despite various assessments of the influence of culture on people's lives, almost all thinkers recognized that:

1) spiritual culture plays an important role in the life of society, being a means of accumulation, storage, transfer of experience accumulated by mankind;

2) culture is a special human form of being, which has its own spatial and temporal boundaries;

3) culture is one of the most important characteristics life of both an individual and a particular society as a whole.

If we analyze the most common approaches to the definition of culture, adopted in modern science, the following components can be distinguished: culture is:

The experience of society and its constituent social groups, accumulated as a result of activities to meet the needs and adapt to the natural and social environment;

This is not any experience, but only one that becomes the property of the whole group or the whole society. An experience that an individual has not shared with members of his group is not part of the culture;

This is an experience that is transmitted through language, and not through biological mechanisms (the gene pool);

And finally, only that experience is included in the cultural baggage, which does not remain within one generation, but is transmitted from generation to generation.

Thus, culture - it is the group experience of a society or group, which is transmitted from generation to generation through language.

Culture as a concept is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - The concept of culture

Main elements of culture(fig.2) are:

Figure 2 - Structural elements culture

Values- beliefs shared in a society (group) regarding the goals to which people should strive, and the main means of achieving them (terminal and instrumental).

social norms- standards (rules) that regulate behavior in a social setting.

patterns of behavior- stable complexes of behavioral acts that are customary to demonstrate in any society in response to a standard social stimulus and / or social situation.

Knowledge- ideas about the properties of nature and society and the patterns that govern them, functioning in this society, or social group.

Skills- practical methods of manipulating natural and social objects, common in a given society (group).

Symbols- Signs in which the relationship between them and the values they display is conditional. The symbols of each particular culture include various signs that make it possible to classify the phenomena of nature and society, as well as the alphabet of writing.

Artifacts- a set of objects produced within the framework of a culture, and reflecting its norms, values, knowledge contained in it, achieved technological methods that serve as symbols of this culture.

The mechanism of culture translation transmission of its norms and values from generation to generation is language. In most modern societies, culture exists in the following main forms (Figure 3):

Figure 3 - Forms of culture

1) high, or elite culture - fine art, classical music and literature produced and consumed by the elite;

2) folk culture- fairy tales, songs, folklore, myths, traditions, customs;

3) mass culture - a culture that has developed with the development of means mass media, created for the mass and consumed by the mass. There is a point of view that mass culture is a product of the mass itself. Media owners only study the needs of the masses and give what the masses want. The boundaries between them are very permeable and conditional.