Extra-curricular event for Cosmonautics Day for schoolchildren....
(material on Kravchenko)
To date, scientists have more than 500 definitions of culture. They divided them into several groups. The first included descriptive definitions. For example, cultures are the sum of all activities, customs, beliefs. Secondly, those definitions that link culture with the traditions or social heritage of a society. Culture is the socially inherited complex of practices and beliefs that defines the foundations of our lives. The third group emphasized the importance for culture of the rules that organize human behavior. In other cases, scholars understood culture as a means of adapting society to natural environment or emphasized that it is a product of human activity. Sometimes it is spoken of as a set of forms of acquired behavior characteristic of a certain group or society and transmitted from generation to generation.
V Everyday life The concept of culture is used in at least three meanings:
Firstly, by culture we mean a certain sphere of society that has received institutional consolidation . Not only in our country, but also in other countries, there is a ministry of culture with an extensive apparatus of officials, secondary specialized and higher educational institutions that train specialists in culture, magazines, societies, clubs, theaters, museums, etc., engaged in the production and distribution spiritual values.
Secondly, culture means a set of spiritual values and norms inherent in a large social group, community, people or nation.
We are talking about elite culture, Russian culture, Russian foreign culture, youth culture, working class culture, etc.
Thirdly, culture expresses high level of qualitative development of spiritual achievements.
In ancient Rome, where the word came from, culture (cultura) meant primarily the cultivation of the land. Cultivation of the soil, crops - concepts associated with the labor of the peasant. Only in the 18th-19th centuries did culture acquire a spiritual connotation for Europeans. She began to denote the improvement of human qualities. A cultured person was a well-read and refined in manners. Until now, the word "culture" is associated with belles-lettres, an art gallery, an opera house and good education.
V modern language the term culture is used very often, mainly in two meanings - "broad" and "narrow". In a broad sense, culture includes all generally accepted, established forms of life in society - customs, norms, institutions, including the state and the economy. In the "narrow sense" the boundaries of culture coincide with the boundaries of the sphere of spiritual creativity, with art, morality, and intellectual activity.
Adherents of a narrower approach to understanding culture consider it wrong to extend it to the totality of social phenomena. There is a lot of ugly, disgusting things in society, which cannot be called culture. Drug addiction, crime, fascism, prostitution, wars, alcoholism - all this is artificially created by man, they all belong to the sphere of social phenomena. But do we have the right to attribute them to the sphere of culture?
If culture, by definition, consists of values, and not only of norms and customs (they can be any), then fascism or crime cannot be included in the composition of culture in any way, since they do not have a positive value for society. They are aimed at the destruction of man, therefore, they do not act as humanistic values. But if something is aimed at destroying the positive values created by man, then this something must be called not culture, but anti-culture. The criterion here is a person, a measure of his development. And then culture is only that which contributes to the development, and not to the degradation of man.
It seems that both meanings, broad and narrow, have equal rights, and they should be used depending on the situation and context. The difference between them is this. In the first case, culture is social problems in particular, social institutions (religion, science, family, economics, law). In the second, it is limited to the history and theory of artistic culture, art. In the first case, more emphasis is placed on sociological, anthropological, ethnographic methods and data, in the second - on art criticism, philosophical and literary methods and data.
Both approaches - broad and narrow - are fruitful in their own way. The first approach has been adopted by the majority of anthropologists and sociologists, as well as by some culturologists. The second is a part of culturologists and practitioners working in the field of culture: art historians, architects, philologists, planners of the urban environment, employees of the Ministry of Culture, etc.
The second, narrow approach assumes that culture is a) a sphere of society, b) an aspect of society or species social activities. These are different things. In the "spheral" interpretation, the whole society is divided into several spheres - social, economic, political and cultural. The cultural sphere represents one of the segments of society. With the "aspect" approach, society is also divided into spheres. For example, Nizhny Novgorod culturologists distinguish 8 areas: economic, environmental, pedagogical, managerial, scientific, artistic, medical, physical culture. But there may be the same four main spheres indicated above. Their quantity is not as important here as the quality.
The definition of culture, which in 1871 was proposed by Edward Taylor(1832-1917) - an outstanding English ethnographer, one of the founders of anthropology:
culture- a complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws, customs, as well as other abilities and skills acquired by a person as a member of society.
This definition organically combined both meanings of culture - broad and narrow.
culture- a set of symbols, beliefs, values, norms and artifacts. It expresses the characteristic features of a given society, nation, group. Thanks to this, societies, nations and groups differ precisely in their culture. The culture of a people is its way of life, its clothes, dwelling, cuisine, folklore, spiritual ideas, beliefs, language and much more.
The culture also includes social attitudes, gestures of politeness and greetings accepted in society, gait, etiquette, hygiene habits. Household utensils, clothes, ornaments, folklore - all this has an ethnic tone and is passed down from generation to generation, forming an ethnic style. The inscriptions in the entrance and on the fences, which do not always correspond to the norms of the literary language, also express a certain culture, or rather, a youth subculture.
(material not according to Kravchenko)
A feature of the sociological approach to understanding culture is that culture is seen as a mechanism for regulating human behavior, social groups, the functioning and development of society as a whole.
In the most general sociological approach to understanding culture, three characteristics are usually noted:
1) culture is a generally shared system of values, symbols and meanings;
2) culture is what a person comprehends in the course of his life;
3) culture is everything that is transmitted from generation to generation.
Thus, we can give the following definition: culture is a system of socially acquired and transmitted from generation to generation of significant symbols, ideas, values, beliefs, traditions, norms and rules of behavior, through which people organize their life.
The concept of tradition originates from the Latin word traditio, which means “to pass on”. Initially, this word was understood in the literal sense, meaning a material action. For example, in ancient Rome, they used it when it came to handing someone a certain item and even marrying off their daughter. But the transferred object can also be intangible, for example, a skill or skill.
Tradition is a set of elements of cultural and social heritage that has been passed down from one generation to another. Such transmission still occurs constantly and everywhere and is present in all spheres of people's lives.
Traditions appeared in the distant past. They belong to the spiritual side of human life. Traditions are mobile and energetic, just like social life itself. They appear, are activated by vital necessity, develop and modify with the change of these same needs.
Nothing appears in the life of society if there is no need for it. Traditions are called to life and are supported because they carry an informative load and perform certain functions for them, namely: the appointment of support and the transfer of experience, skills, acquisitions in the field of spiritual and material culture from generation to generation, the functions of applying those established in previous eras traditions.
In the literature, traditions are divided into progressive and reactionary, which creates serious methodological obstacles. Not possessing a sufficiently reliable objective criterion when formulating what should be classified as progressive and what as reactionary, the creators of this concept sometimes, without realizing it, were forced to resort to biased considerations and assessments. In this regard, it is necessary to abandon it and take objectivity and historicism as a basis, since before writing about traditions, you need to know them well, explore all their aspects and connections, how they appeared and what social function they perform.
Tradition reflects the hereditary connection in development, the connection of eras. Traditions as a single social action include not only positive, but also ancient elements that have outlived their time.
There are a lot of interesting, sensible and colorful things in the old traditions. The development of the younger generation good relationship to the cultural heritage of the past is one of the most important elements pedagogical work which contributes to the development of their feelings of love, to respect everything that gives people joy, delight and aesthetic pleasure. These include labor traditions, wise parables, luxurious traditional public holidays, respect for women, the elderly and their rich life experience.
Traditions perform informational functions. Everything new in life, the positive experience of the older generation, which has become traditional, is passed on as an invaluable legacy to the next generation.
Today, more and more people are interested in everything ethnic, including national music, crafts, and dances. Most, exhausted by the pressures of globalization, are looking for a chance to get closer to living history. Many interactive museums open, various festivals and outdoor fairs are held. Learning the cultural customs and traditions of your nation is very worthy and exciting!
A set of traditions, customs, social norms, rules that regulate the behavior of those who live now and are passed on to those who will live tomorrow.
The continuity of culture is achieved through socialization. And he oversees whether socialization is going right or wrong, a special mechanism, or, as they used to say in the old days, an institution. It's called social control. Control permeates the entire society, takes many forms and guises ( public opinion, censorship, investigation, etc.), but consists of only two elements - social norms (prescriptions of what one should do) and sanctions (rewards and punishments that stimulate compliance with the prescriptions). Social control is a mechanism for regulating the behavior of individuals and groups, including norms and sanctions. When there are no laws and norms in society, disorder or anomie is established. And when an individual deviates from the norms or violates them, his behavior is called deviant.
When we fill in empty cells - statuses - with people, then in each cell we find a large social group: all pensioners, all Russians, all teachers. Thus, social groups stand behind the statuses. The totality of large social groups (they are sometimes called statistical or social categories) is called the social composition of the population. Every person has needs. The most important, or fundamental, needs are the same for everyone, and the secondary
different. The former are universal, i.e. inherent in the entire population, and therefore characterize society as a whole. Institutions designed to meet the fundamental needs of society are called social institutions. Family, production, religion, education, the state are the fundamental institutions of human society that arose in ancient times and exist to this day. In its embryonic form, the family, according to anthropologists, appeared 500 thousand years ago. Since then, it has constantly evolved, taking many forms and varieties: polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, cohabitation, nuclear family, extended family, single-parent family, etc. The state is 5-6 thousand years old, education is the same, and religion has a more respectable age. A social institution is a very complex institution, and most importantly, it really exists. After all, we get a social structure by abstracting from something. Yes, and the status can only be imagined mentally. Of course, to unite all people, all institutions and organizations that have been associated with one function for centuries - family, religion, education, state and production - and present them as one of the institutions is also not easy. And yet the social institution is real.
First, in each this moment time, one institution is represented by a combination of people and social organizations. The totality of schools, technical schools, universities, various courses, etc. plus the Ministry of Education and its entire apparatus, scientific research institutes, editorial offices of magazines and newspapers, printing houses and many other things connected with pedagogy, constitute the social institution of education. Second, the core or general institutions are in turn made up of many non-core or private institutions. They are called social practices. For example, the institution of the state includes the institution of the presidency, the institution of parliamentarism, the army, the court, the bar, the police, the prosecutor's office, the institution of the jury, etc. The same is the case with religion (monastic institutions, baptism, confession, etc.), production, family, education.
The set of social institutions is called social system society. It is connected not only with institutions, but also with social organizations, social interaction, social roles. In a word, with what moves, works, acts.
So, let's make a conclusion about sociology: statuses, roles, social groups do not exist by themselves. They are formed in the process of meeting the fundamental needs of society. The mechanisms of such satisfaction are social institutions, which are divided into basic (there are only five of them: family, production, state, education and religion) and non-basic (there are many more of them), also called social practices. So we got a complete picture of society, described with the help of sociological concepts. This picture has two sides - static, described by the structure, and
dynamic, described by the system. And the initial bricks of the building are status and role. They are also dual. To complete the picture, two more important concepts are missing - social stratification and social mobility.
Traditions are some historically established group experience embodied in social stereotypes, which is accumulated and reproduced in society. It is necessary to distinguish this concept from art, which represents a more individual creative activity. Through traditions, a certain group of individuals inherits the knowledge necessary for self-development and even survival. That is, this term can be interpreted as a certain mechanism of collective communication. Experts identify the main types of traditions: folk (ethnic), social, national, religious and cultural.
Origin of the term
The well-known word "tradition" for many has a fairly clear meaning. In terms of literal translation, Latin the term means "transmission".
Initially, the concept of "tradition" was used only in a literal sense and denoted an action. The ancient Romans used it when they had to give someone a material object or marry a daughter. Subsequently, material objects faded into the background, they were pushed aside by the transmitted skills and abilities. Thus "tradition", or rather, its semantic spectrum, indicates the main difference from everything that could be summed up under this concept. Tradition is something that does not belong to a certain individual, as it is transferred from outside. The derived meaning is associated with everything that is connected with the distant past, which has irrevocably lost its novelty, is unchanged and symbolically stable. And strict adherence to customs relieves many of the need to independently comprehend the situation and make a decision.
Traditions and society
Each new generation, having at its disposal a certain set of traditional samples, does not accept and does not assimilate them into ready-made, it unwittingly carries out their own interpretation. It turns out that society chooses not only its coming future, but also the past that has sunk into oblivion. Social groups and society as a whole, selectively accepting some elements of the social heritage, simultaneously reject others. Therefore, social traditions may well be both positive and negative.
national heritage
In general, traditions are the so-called element of culture, which arises in one generation and is transmitted from ancestors to descendants, remaining for a long time. These are certain norms, rules of conduct, rituals, procedures that must be followed. Considering the definition of the word “heritage” together with this term, we can say that the concepts are almost identical.
If we talk about national traditions, then these are rules that are manifested in almost everything. This applies not only to clothing, style and behavior in general, they are also manifested in movements, gestures and other elements that are present in the psychology of people. Such concepts and manifestations are very important for a person, since it is they who are able to launch an unconscious mechanism in a person who is clearly able to determine the line between "one's own" and "alien".
National traditions are a phenomenon that has been formed as a result of the life of each people or nation, regulated by functions in the human mind. In other words, regulation occurs in family life, in communication, and behavior. Traditions have their own characteristics, namely, they have high stability, continuity and even stereotyping. They are characterized by a long-term factor, which is the regulator of social phenomena.
Modern attitude to cultural traditions
The variety of traditions of most countries is sometimes simply amazing. The fact that for a certain people is the norm of everyday life, in another country can often be perceived as a personal insult. We can say that traditions are one of the fundamental things in cultures. various countries peace. Therefore, if you decide to relax in some exotic country, you must first familiarize yourself with its customs in order not to get into an awkward position. For example, in Turkey, one of the important traditions is the need to remove shoes when entering a house and a temple. In no case should you refuse an offer to drink a cup of tea, this can be perceived as an insult.
Not just a set of rules
Cultural traditions are not only a set of etiquette rules, they are a certain semantic flow aimed at showing the depth of the history of a particular country, these are values laid down over the centuries, passed down from generation to generation to maintain and reveal the unique mentality of its inhabitants. For example: countries where Buddhism is widespread believe that touching a person’s head is unacceptable, since the human soul lives in it. Unfortunately, in many countries, traditional rites have gone out of fashion, so to speak, and have lost their value due to technological progress. I would like the interest in preserving one's culture not to lose its relevance in any corner of the world.
Word synonym
The word "tradition" is a feminine noun, if necessary, it can be replaced by the concepts custom, practice(masculine nouns), legacy, tradition(nouns of the middle gender). Instead of a single term, you can use phrases with the word "so", for example: so it is, so it is. Among writers, and not only among them, traditions are called unwritten laws. One of the most unusual synonyms in Russian for this noun is the word "itihasa", which means "that's exactly what happened." Most sources define a synonym for the word "tradition" in several variants, in which, in addition to those presented above, norm, establishment, habit, value. An interesting option is the use of the word "khashar" (a term that has long been included in the Turkic and Tajik languages and means "joint work").
Religious traditions
Religion also has its own traditions, which makes it a spiritual and cultural treasure. represent a set of stable forms and methods of worshiping the gods (God). Each of the religions existing on earth carefully preserves and in every possible way maintains its tradition, but most often in each religion there are several traditions at once, for example: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism - in Christianity, Shiites and Sunnis - in Islam, Mahayana and Hinayana - in Buddhism. The religious traditions of the East practice a certain technique of working with both the body and consciousness, which is aimed at enlightenment, i.e. obtaining extremely high states of human consciousness. Christian religious traditions include church attendance, prayers, confession and worship. The most famous holidays are Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, Trinity, Ascension, Annunciation. Also, not all traditions are observed, if only because in the digital age people have become not as pious as their ancestors were. Now few people festive table asks for harvest or rain. Just a holiday has become another reason to get together with the whole family.
There is no future without a past
Traditions are a heritage that is unshakably authoritative, they are meekly accepted and transmitted in accordance with the fact that the departed ancestors - "carriers" - have a solid foundation in the life of their heirs - "followers".
Its result is a socially mature person. And what is a person without culture?
culture - a set of traditions, customs, social norms, rules that regulate the behavior of those who live now, and transmitted to those who will live tomorrow.
The continuity of culture is achieved through socialization. And he oversees whether socialization is going right or wrong, a special mechanism, or, as they used to say in the old days, an institution. It's called social control.He permeates the entire society, takes on many forms and guises (public opinion, censorship, investigation, etc.), but consists of only two elements - social norms (prescriptions of what one should do) and sanctions (rewards and punishments that stimulate compliance with the prescriptions) .
social control - a mechanism for regulating the behavior of individuals and groups, including norms and sanctions.
When there are no laws and norms in society, disorder is established, or anomie. And when an individual deviates from the norms or violates them, his behavior is called deviant.
So, let's do third output: The solution that holds society together is strong because it is mobile. This quality is given to it by the social interaction of huge masses of people. In order for it to be an orderly process, society has developed a special mechanism for regulating behavior - social control. It consists of sanctions and cultural norms that people learn in the process of socialization.
When we fill empty cells - statuses with people, then in each cell we find large social group: all pensioners, all Russians, all teachers, etc. Thus, social groups stand behind the statuses.
The totality of large social groups (they are sometimes called statistical or social categories) is called the social COMPOSITION of the POPULATION.
Not only sociologists, but also statisticians are engaged in it.
Every person has needs, which he is obliged to satisfy: physiological, social, spiritual. The most important, or fundamental, needs are the same for everyone, while the secondary ones are different. The former are universal, i.e. inherent in the entire population, and therefore characterize society as a whole.
Institutions designed to meet the fundamental needs of society are called social institutions.
Family, production, religion, education, state - Fundamental institutions human society, which arose in ancient times and exist to this day. In its embryonic form, the family, according to anthropologists, appeared 500 thousand years ago. Since then, it has constantly evolved, taking on many forms and varieties: polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, nuclear family cohabitation, extended family, single-parent family, etc. State 5-6 thousand years, the same amount of education, and religion has a more respectable age. A social institution is a very complex institution, and most importantly, it is real. After all, we get a social structure by abstracting from something. Yes, and the status can only be imagined mentally. Of course, to unite all people, all institutions and organizations that have been associated with one function for centuries - family, religion, education, state and production - and present them as one of the institutions is also not easy. And yet the social institution is real.
First, at any given moment in time, one institution is represented by a combination of people and social organizations. The totality of schools, technical schools, universities, various courses, etc. plus the Ministry of Education and its entire apparatus, scientific research institutes, editorial offices of magazines and newspapers, printing houses and many other things connected with pedagogy, constitute the social institution of education. Secondly, basic, or general institutions in turn are made up of many not basic or private institutions. They are called social practices. For example, the institution of the state includes the institution of the presidency, the institution of parliamentarism, the army, the court, the bar, the police, the prosecutor's office, the institution of the jury, etc. The same is the case with religion (monastic institutions, baptism, confession, etc.), production, family, education.
The set of social institutions is called social system society.
It is connected not only with institutions, but also with social organizations, social interaction, social roles. In a word, with what moves, works, acts.
So, let's make the fourth conclusion: statuses, roles, social control do not exist by themselves. They are formed in the process of meeting the fundamental needs of society. The mechanisms of such satisfaction are social institutions, which are divided into basic (there are only five of them: family, production, state, education and religion) and non-basic (there are many more of them), also called social practices. So we got a complete picture of society, described with the help of sociological concepts. This painting has two sides - static, described by the structure, and dynamic, described by the system. And the initial bricks of the building are status and role. They are also dual. To complete the picture, perhaps two more important concepts are missing - social stratification and social mobility.
social stratification - a set of large social groups arranged hierarchically according to the criterion of social inequality and called strata.
This is a different version of the social structure. Statuses are located not horizontally, but vertically. Only on the vertical axis can they be combined into new groups - strata, layers, classes, estates, which differ from each other in terms of inequalities. The poor, the wealthy, the rich general model stratification. In order to move from the general to the particular, we will divide the vertical space into four "rulers": the income scale (in rubles, dollars), the education scale (years of study), the power scale (number of subordinates), the scale of professional prestige (in expert points). The place of any status is easy to find on these scales and thus determine the overall place in the stratification system.
The transition from one stratum to another, unequal (say, from poor to rich), or equal (say, from drivers to tractor drivers) is described by the concept of social mobility, which can be vertical and horizontal, upward and downward.
That is all that can be said about the subject of sociology. In essence, we talked about the whole of sociology, but in the most general terms. The book as a whole is devoted to highlighting in more detail what is summarized in this paragraph.
Let's single out key concepts that are the subject of sociology.
