Society as a dynamic system. f) high level of social mobility

Society is a system .

What is a system? “System” is a Greek word, from other Greek. σύστημα - whole, composed of parts, connection.

So, if it is about society as a system, it means that society consists of separate, but interconnected, complementary and developing parts, elements. Such elements are spheres of public life (subsystems), which, in turn, are a system for their constituent elements.

EXPLANATION:

Finding an answer to a question about society as a system, it is necessary to find an answer that contains elements of society: spheres, subsystems, social institutions, that is, parts of this system.

Society is a dynamic system

Recall the meaning of the word "dynamic". It is derived from the word "dynamics", denoting movement, the course of development of a phenomenon, something. This development can go both forward and backward, the main thing is that it happens.

Society - dynamic system. It does not stand still, it is in constant motion. Not all areas develop in the same way. Some change faster, some slower. But everything is moving. Even a period of stagnation, that is, a suspension in movement, is not an absolute stop. Today is not like yesterday. “Everything flows, everything changes,” he said. ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

EXPLANATION:

The correct answer to the question about society as a dynamic system there will be one in which we are talking about any kind of movement, interaction, mutual influence of any elements in society.

Spheres of public life (subsystems)

Spheres of public life	Definition	Elements of the sphere of public life
Economic	the creation of material wealth, the production activity of society and the relations that arise in the production process.	economic benefits economic resources, economic objects
Political	includes relations of power and subordination, management of society, the activities of state, public, political organizations.	political institutions, political organizations, political ideology, political culture
Social	internal structure of society social groups in it, their interaction.	social groups, social institutions, social interaction, social norms
Spiritual	includes the creation and development of spiritual goods, the development of public consciousness, science, education, religion, art.	spiritual needs, spiritual production, subjects of spiritual activity, that is, who creates spiritual values, spiritual values

EXPLANATION

The exam will be presented two types of tasks on this topic.

1. It is necessary to find out by signs what area we are talking about (remember this table).

1. More difficult is the second type of task, when it is necessary, after analyzing the situation, to determine the connection and interaction of which spheres of public life are represented here.

Example: The State Duma adopted the law "On Competition".

In this case, we are talking about the relationship between the political sphere (the State Duma) and the economic (the law concerns competition).

Material prepared: Melnikova Vera Aleksandrovna

Society as a complex dynamic system. Public relations

The existence of people in society is characterized by various forms of life and communication. Everything that has been created in society is the result of the cumulative joint activity of many generations of people. Actually, society itself is a product of the interaction of people, it exists only where and when people are connected with each other by common interests.

In philosophical science, many definitions of the concept of "society" are offered. In a narrow sense society can be understood as a certain group of people united for communication and joint performance of any activity, as well as a specific stage in the historical development of a people or country.

AT broad sense society — it is a part isolated from nature, but closely connected with it. material world, 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, i.e., such a system that is capable of seriously changing, at the same time retaining its essence and qualitative certainty. 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, like the one that society represents, scientists have developed the concept of "subsystem". Subsystems are called "intermediate" complexes, more complex than the elements, but less complex than the system itself.

1) economic, the elements of which are material production and relations 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 relationship and interaction with each other;

3) political, including politics, the state, law, their correlation and functioning;

4) spiritual, covering various forms and levels of social consciousness, which, being embodied in the real process of the life of society, 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 are not only interconnected, but also mutually condition 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, a 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, and in complex societies there are several levels of government and several social strata of the population, arranged 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-owning society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society.

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

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

The traditional (agrarian) society represented the pre-industrial stage of civilizational development. All societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages were traditional. Their economy was dominated by subsistence agriculture and primitive handicrafts. Extensive technology and hand tools predominated, initially providing economic progress. In his production activities man strives to adapt to environment obeyed the rhythms of nature. Property relations were characterized by the dominance of communal, corporate, conditional, state forms of ownership. Private property was neither sacred nor inviolable. The distribution of material wealth, the product produced depended on the position of a person in social hierarchy. The social structure traditional society class corporate, stable and motionless. There was virtually no social mobility: 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, unwritten laws. Providentialism dominated the public consciousness: social reality, human life perceived as the implementation of divine providence.

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

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 opposes 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 and technical or economic. The economic base 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 rises sharply, natural isolation is destroyed. An extensive economy is replaced by an intensive one, and simple reproduction is replaced by an expanded one. All these processes occur through the implementation of the principles and structures of a market economy, based on scientific and technological progress. A person is freed from direct dependence on nature, partially subordinates it to himself. Stable economic growth is accompanied by an increase in real per capita income. If the pre-industrial period is filled with the fear of hunger and disease, then the industrial society is characterized by an increase in the well-being of the population. In the social sphere of industrial society are also collapsing traditional structures, social partitions. Social mobility is significant. As a result of the development of agriculture and industry, the proportion of the peasantry in the composition of the population is sharply reduced, and urbanization is taking place. New classes appear, the industrial proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the middle strata are strengthened. The aristocracy is in decline.

In the spiritual sphere, there is a significant transformation of the value system. The man of the new society is autonomous within the social group, guided by his 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 certain benefit) are new systems of personality coordinates. There is a secularization of consciousness (liberation from direct dependence on religion). A person in an industrial society strives for self-development, self-improvement. Global changes are also taking place in the political sphere. The role of the state is growing sharply, 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 refine the above scheme. From their point of view, the main content of the modernization process is to change 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, which determines the role of money as a general equivalent of values, the displacement of barter transactions, the wide scope of market operations, etc. The most important social consequence of modernization is the 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 belonging to a certain group (origin, pedigree, nationality). After modernization, a rational principle of distribution of roles is approved, in which the main and only criterion for taking a particular position is the candidate's preparedness to perform these functions.

Thus, industrial civilization opposes traditional society in all directions. The majority of modern industrialized countries (including Russia) are classified as industrial societies.

But modernization gave rise to many new contradictions, which eventually turned into global problems(environmental, energy and other crises). By resolving them, progressively developing, some modern societies are approaching the stage of a 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 promotion of the service sector, the individualization of production and consumption, an increase in the share of small-scale production with the loss of dominant positions by mass production, the leading role of science, knowledge and information in society. In the social structure of the post-industrial society, there is an erasure of class differences, and the convergence of the incomes of various groups of the population leads to the elimination of social polarization and the growth of the share of the middle class. The new civilization can be characterized as anthropogenic, in the center of it is man, his individuality. Sometimes it is also called informational, which reflects the ever-increasing dependence of the daily life of society on information. Transition to a 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 conditionally divided into two large groups - material relations and spiritual (or ideal) relations. Their fundamental difference from each other lies in the fact that material relations arise and develop directly in the course of a person’s practical activity, outside the consciousness of a person and independently of him, and spiritual relations are formed, having previously “passed through the consciousness” of people, determined by their spiritual values. In turn, material relations are divided into production, environmental and office relations; spiritual on moral, political, legal, artistic, philosophical and religious social relations.

A special type of social relations are interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relationships are 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 well-known sociologist Pitirim Sorokin identified 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 and many people (members of an unorganized crowd).

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

Society as a complex dynamic system. (08.09)

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

Peculiarities social system.

Characteristic features of society as a system:

1) It has a complex character (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, as 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 of carrying out their activities.

3) society as a system is self-governing. What subsystem do you think performs the management function? The administrative function is performed by the political subsystem, which gives consistency to all components that form 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 foundations for centuries, but over time the pace of change began to increase.

From the course of history you know that in the societies that existed in various 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 Change- the transition of certain social. objects from one state to another, the appearance of new properties, functions, relationships, i.e. social modifications. organizations, social institutions, social structure established in society patterns of behavior

Development - changes that lead to profound qualitative changes in society, social transformations. connections, the transition of the entire 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, degradation processes, a return to outliving oneself in forms and structures.

Evolution is a gradual continuous change, passing one into another without jumps and breaks.

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

Social reform - the reorganization of any sphere of public life (institutions, institutions and procedures, 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 separately has this property). This quality is the result of the integration and interconnection of all components of the system.

As a result of the interconnection, interaction of the components that make up the system of society, society as a social system has a new sv - in - the 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 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

Goal achievement (the ability to maintain its integrity, ensuring the implementation of its tasks, influencing the natural and social environment)

Maintaining the pattern - the ability to maintain its internal structure

Integration - the ability to integrate, i.e., to include new social formations (phenomena, processes, etc.) into a single whole.

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

The word "institution" 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 meeting the most important vital needs.

Pyramid of Abraham Maslow

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

Safety - the need to be sure that nothing threatens life.

Sociality - the need for contact with others and their role in society (friendship, love, belonging to a certain nationality, experiencing mutual feelings ...)

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

Cognition - satisfaction of the natural curiosity of a person (to know, prove, be able and study ...)

Aesthetics - internal needs and urges 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 my existence, a spiritual need, the highest role of a person in humanity, understanding my meaning of existence ... (the list is very long - Maslow's pyramid of needs - often used by many people and "spiritual" organizations, with different worldview systems and the top put their highest concept of the meaning of human existence).

Sociologists identify 5 social needs:

1) in the reproduction of the genus

2) in safety and social order

3) in livelihood

4) in obtaining knowledge, socialization of the younger generation, training

5) in solving spiritual problems of the meaning of life

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

- family and marriage

- political institutions (especially the state)

- economic institutions(primarily manufacturing)

- institutes of education, science and culture

- institute of religion

Each of these institutions brings together large masses of people to meet a particular need and achieve a specific goal of a personal, group or public nature.

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

Features of a social institution:

A social institution is a set of persons engaged in a certain type of activity 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 secured by a system of legal and moral norms, traditions and customs that regulate the respective types of behavior.

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

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

Typology of societies.

Modern researchers identify 3 main historical type societies:

1) traditional (agrarian)

2) industrial (capitalist)

3) post-industrial society (information)

The basis for the division 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)

The system of values ​​and life meanings (a generalized expression of these relations 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 Middle Ages. In a number of states in Asia and Africa, the traditional society is still preserved today, but the clash with modern Western civilization has significantly changed its civilizational features.

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

The man of the traditional society is dependent on nature.

Metaphors: the earth is a nurse, the earth is mother, express a careful attitude towards nature as a source of life from which it was not supposed to draw too much.

The farmer perceived nature as a living being, requiring a moral attitude towards himself. Therefore, a person of a traditional society is not a master, not a conqueror, and not a king of nature. He is a small fraction of the great cosmic whole, the universe.

The social basis of traditional society is the relationship of personal dependence.

A traditional society is characterized by a non-economic attitude to work: work for the master, payment of dues.

The person did not feel like a person, opposing or competing with others. On the contrary, he perceived himself as an integral part of the community, the village, the policy. The social status of a person was determined not by personal merit, but by social origin. "it is written in the family" The daily life of traditional society was remarkably stable. 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. The social habits of people have hardly changed for many generations. Organization of everyday life, ways of housekeeping and communication norms, holiday rituals, ideas about illness and death - in a word, everything we call everyday life It was brought up in the family and passed down from generation to generation. Many generations of people found the same social structures, modes of activity and social habits.

The subordination of tradition explains the high stability with an extremely slow pace of social development.

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

Topic: Society as a complex dynamic system

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

Educational:

To reveal the features of the social system.

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

Describe the main social institutions

Developing:

1. Develop skills and abilities to work with text

To instill skills to critically evaluate and analyze social science information

Educational:

To form curiosity and interest in this course on 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 analyzed the definitions of the concept of "society", the idea of ​​the relationship of people and the interaction of various spheres of public life was emphasized. 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. Systems are our Universe, and the culture of an individual people, and the activity of man himself. The word "system" of Greek origin, means "a whole made up of parts", "a set". Thus, each system includes interacting parts: subsystems and elements. Connections and relations between its parts are of primary importance. Dynamic systems allow various changes, development, the emergence of new and the withering away of old parts and the connections between them.

What does the term 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.

First, society as a system is complex, since it includes many levels, subsystems, and elements. So, we can talk about human society on a global scale, about a 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-production, social, political, spiritual. Each of these areas known to you has its own complex structure and is itself a complex system. So, political sphere acts as a system that includes big number 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 speak of 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 the characteristics of society

Secondly, 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, economic sphere includes businesses vehicles, raw materials and materials, industrial goods and at the same time economic knowledge, rules, values, patterns of economic behavior and much more.

What are the main elements of society

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

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

Public life isconstant 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 foundations for centuries, but over time the pace of change began to increase.

From the course of history, you know that certain qualitative changes took place in societies that existed in different eras, 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 is expressed in science by the concepts of “change”, “development”, “progress”, “regression”, “evolution”, “revolution”, etc.

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

Give examples proving that society is an ordered integrity

Like any system, society is an ordered integrity. This means that the components of the system are not in a 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 components of the system, considered separately, has this quality. It, it quality, result integration and interconnection of all system components. Just as individual human organs (heart, stomach, liver, etc.) do not have the properties of a person, so the economy, the health care system, the 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 (just as thanks to the interaction of various human organs there is a single human body).

You can illustrate the connections between subsystems and elements of society 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 collective, and not to the individual. It is also known that the moral norms that existed among many tribes in those archaic times allowed the killing of weak members of the clan - sick children, the elderly - and even cannibalism. Have the real material conditions of their existence influenced these ideas and views of people about the limits of the morally permissible? The answer is clear: no doubt they did. The need to work together wealth, doomed to an early death of a person who has broken away from the family, and laid the foundations of collectivist morality. Guided by the same methods of struggle for existence and survival, people did not consider it immoral to get rid of those who could become a burden for the team.

Another example may be the relationship between legal norms and socio-economic relations. Let's turn to known historical facts. In one of the first codes of laws Kievan Rus, which is called Russian Truth, provides for various punishments for murder. At the same time, the measure of punishment was determined primarily by the place of a person in the system of hierarchical relations, his belonging to one or another social stratum or group. So, the fine for killing a tiun (steward) was huge: it was 80 hryvnias and equaled the cost of 80 oxen or 400 rams. The life of a smerd or a serf was estimated at 5 hryvnias, i.e. 16 times cheaper. Integral, i.e., general, inherent in the whole system, qualities of any system are not a simple sum of the qualities of its components, but representnew quality, arising as a result of the relationship, the interaction of its components. In the very general view 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 regarded asmain difference society from its constituent parts. Just as human organs cannot exist outside of an integral 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-managed. The administrative function is performed by the political subsystem, which gives consistency to all components that form social integrity.

Any system, be it a technical one (a unit with automatic system management), or biological (animal), or social (society), is 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. Usually it seeks to either adapt to changes in the environment, or to adapt the environment to its needs. In other words, the system responds to "signals" in one way or another. At the same time, it implements its mainfunctions: adaptation; goal achievement, i.e. the ability to maintain its integrity, ensuring the implementation of its tasks, influencing the natural and social environment;sample maintenance - the ability to maintain its 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 Society as a system are social institutions.

What are social institutions

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

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

List the signs of social institutions, based on the definition

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

List social needs

Sociologists identify five suchpublic needs:

the need for the reproduction of the genus;

the need for security and social order;

need for means of subsistence;

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

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

What social institutions correspond to these needs

According to the named needs, the society also developed the types of activities, which, in turn, required the necessary organization, streamlining, the creation of certain institutions and other structures, the development of rules that ensure the achievement of the expected result.

What social institutions do you know

These conditions for the successful implementation of the main 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 institutionsbrings together large masses of people to satisfy a particular need and achieve a specific goal of a personal, group or public nature.

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

So, a social institution is, first of all,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 social institutions are regulated

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

Name a characteristic feature of social institutions

Another one characteristic social institution -the presence of institutions equipped with certain material resources necessary for any type of activity. (Think about which social institutions school, factory, police belong to. Give your examples of institutions and organizations related 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.

Social institution stabilizes social relations brings coherence to 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, the consistency of their actions, and a high level of regulation and control. (Think about how these features of a social institution show up in the education system, particularly in schools.)

Name the signs of a social institution

Consider the main features of a social institution on the example of such an important institution of society as the family. First of all, each family is a small group of people based on intimacy and emotional attachment, connected by marriage (wife) and consanguinity (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: the birth and upbringing of children, economic support for minors and the disabled, and much more. Each family member occupies his own special position in it, which implies appropriate behavior: parents (or one of them) provide a livelihood, run household chores, and raise children. Children, in turn, study, help around the house. Such behavior is regulated not only by intra-family rules, but also social norms: morality and law. Thus, public morality condemns the lack of care of older family members about the younger ones. The law establishes the responsibility and obligations of spouses in relation to each other, to children, adult children to elderly parents. The creation of a family, the main milestones of family life, are accompanied by traditions and rituals established in society. For example, in many countries, the marriage ritual includes the exchange of wedding rings between spouses. The presence of social institutions makes people's behavior more predictable and society as a whole more stable.

What social institutions are the most important

What social institutions can be classified as non-principal

In addition to the main social institutions, there are non-principal 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. The social institution makes connections between people not random and not chaotic, but permanent, reliable, stable. Institutional interaction is a well-established order social life in the main areas of human life. The more social needs are met by social institutions, the more developed the society.

Since new needs and conditions arise in the course of the historical process, new types of activity and corresponding connections appear. Society is interested in giving them an orderly, normative character, that is, in theminstitutionalization.

What is institutionalization

How does she get through

In Russia, as a result of the reforms of the late XX century. appeared, for example, such a type of activity as entrepreneurship. The streamlining of this activity led to the emergence various kinds firms, required the issuance of laws regulating entrepreneurial activity contributed to the formation of relevant traditions.

In the political life of our country, institutions of parliamentarism, a multi-party system, and the institution of 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 types of activity that have emerged over the past decades has taken place.

It happens that the development of society requires the modernization of the activities of social institutions that have historically developed in previous periods. Thus, in the changed conditions, it became necessary 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 Examination, the new content of educational programs.

So, we can return 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 importance of deep integration of their elements?

What is the diversity, flexibility, 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, failures in your life and work. The condition for adaptation to modern society is knowledge about it, which gives the course of social science.

Society can be understood only if its qualities are identified as complete system. To do this, it is necessary to consider various sections of the structure of society (the main areas of human activity, a set of social institutions, social groups), systematizing, integrating the links between them, the features of the management process in a self-governing social system.

AT real life you will have to interact with various social institutions. To make this interaction successful, it is necessary to know the goals and nature of the activity that has taken shape in the social institution of interest to you. This will help you to study the legal norms governing this type of activity.

In subsequent sections of the course, characterizing individual areas activities of people, 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.

Anchoring

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 relations 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 meaning of institutionalization?

Organization homework

Using a systematic approach, analyze Russian society early 20th century

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

AT teamwork Russian sociologists say: "... society exists and functions in diverse forms... The really important issue is to ensure that society itself is not lost behind special forms, and forests behind trees." How is this statement related to the understanding of society as a system? Justify your answer.

In the definition of the concept of "society" in the scientific literature, there is a variety of approaches, which emphasizes the abstract nature of this category, and, defining it in each specific case, it is necessary to proceed from the context in which this concept is used.

1) Natural (the influence of geographical and climatic conditions on the development of society).

2) Social (the causes and starting points of social development are determined by society itself).

The totality of these factors predetermines social development.

There are various ways of development of society:

Evolutionary (gradual accumulation of changes and their naturally conditioned nature);

Revolutionary (characterized by relatively rapid changes subjectively directed on the basis of knowledge and action).

VARIETY OF WAYS AND FORMS OF PUBLIC DEVELOPMENT

Social progress created in the XVIII-XIX centuries. works of J. Condorcet, G. Hegel, K. Marx and other philosophers was understood as a natural movement along a single main path for all mankind. On the contrary, in the concept of local civilizations, progress is seen as going in different civilizations in different ways.

If you mentally take a look at the course of world history, then you will notice a lot in common in the development of different countries and peoples. Primitive society has everywhere been replaced by a society controlled by the state. Feudal fragmentation was replaced by centralized monarchies. Bourgeois revolutions took place in many countries. Colonial empires collapsed and dozens of independent states arose in their place. You yourself could continue listing similar events and processes that took place in different countries, on different continents. This similarity reveals the unity of the historical process, a certain identity of successive orders, the common destinies of various countries and peoples.

At the same time, the specific ways of development of individual countries and peoples are diverse. There are no peoples, countries, states with the same history. The variety of concrete historical processes is also caused by the difference natural conditions, and the specifics of the economy, and the originality of spiritual culture, and the peculiarities of the way of life, and many other factors. Does this mean that each country is predetermined by its own development option and it is the only possible one? Historical experience shows that under certain conditions it is possible various options solutions to urgent problems, it is possible to choose methods, forms, ways further development, i.e. the historical alternative. Alternative options are often offered by certain groups of society, various political forces.

Remember that when preparing Peasant reform held in Russia in 1861, various social forces proposed different forms of implementing changes in the life of the country. Some defended the revolutionary path, others - the reformist one. But among the latter there was no unity. Several reform options have been proposed.

And in 1917-1918. a new alternative arose before Russia: either a democratic republic, one of the symbols of which was a popularly elected constituent Assembly, or a republic of Soviets led by the Bolsheviks.

In each case, a choice has been made. Such a choice is made by statesmen, ruling elites, the masses of the people, depending on the balance of power and influence of each of the subjects of history.

Any country, any nation, at certain moments in history, faces a fateful choice, and its history is carried out in the process of implementing this choice.

The variety of ways and forms of social development is not limitless. It is included in the framework of certain trends in historical development.

Thus, for example, we have seen that the elimination of obsolete serfdom was possible both in the form of a revolution and in the form of reforms carried out by the state. And the urgent need to accelerate economic growth in different countries was carried out either by attracting new and new natural resources, i.e., in an extensive way, or by introducing new equipment and technology, improving the skills of workers, based on the growth of labor productivity, i.e., in an intensive way. In different countries or in the same country, different options for implementing the same type of changes can be used.

Thus, the historical process, in which general tendencies are manifested - the unity of diverse social development, creates the possibility of choice, on which depends the originality of the ways and forms of the further movement of a given country. This speaks of the historical responsibility of those who make this choice.