Introduction

Anthony Giddens is a representative of a new direction in modern sociology. His theory of structuration attempts to explain the problems of the transformation of the social. Comprehending the problems of changing society, Giddens opposes such foundations of social thinking as naturalism, evolutionism, positivism, structuralism (at the same time, he makes a squeeze out of each direction, since he believes that there is a reasonable grain in each of these currents). The basis for criticism of such trends are "leading laws". That is, some universal law is prescribed, and then the reality is interpreted from the point of view of this law, and the reality may not correspond to the postulates of the law. Based on this position, Giddens argues that there are no general laws about social processes, and all theoretical concepts are ways of understanding reality.

Pierre Bourdieu - French sociologist, philosopher, culturologist - is undoubtedly one of the most significant figures in modern sociology.

The sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu is built around three main categories: "field" - "capital" - "habitus"; and includes many interrelated concepts that make it possible to refer to the analysis of a wide variety of social phenomena. The origin and formation of this approach, called “genetic structuralism”, should be considered in the context of the intellectual and social situation in France, which determined the possibility of Pierre Bourdieu becoming a scientist. During his student years in the social sciences, at first philosophy reigned supreme, and then anthropology received the greatest authority. Despite the fact that it was in France that sociology first became a university discipline and had a strong academic tradition, as a course of study at that time it was not properly developed and was considered a non-prestigious specialization. P. Bourdieu explains his choice in favor of sociology by the desire for seriousness and rigor, the desire to solve non-abstract cognitive problems.

1. Integral theory of E. Giddens as a synthesis of objectivist and subjectivist paradigms in sociology

capital constructivism Bourdieu Giddens

The desire to build universal explanatory models is characteristic of any disciplinary-organized knowledge. Integral theories are designed, first of all, to overcome the "narrowness" of interpretation and analysis of problem situations from the point of view of two positions that dominate in the scientific discipline. Such well-known researchers of the methodology of science as T. Kuhn, K. Popper, I. Lakatos, P. Feyerabend adhered to the variants of scientific dynamics, when the disciplinary field assumes the presence of stages of a revolutionary revision of theoretical ideas. So, T. Kuhn considers the concept of “paradigm” to be the most important model of the metatheoretical foundations of science, I. Lakatos considers the “research program” in this function, S. Tulmin considers the “cognitive population”, etc. In domestic science, this problem area was developed by V. WITH. Stepin. At this stage of development, sociology is positioned as a "polyparadigm" scientific discipline. The main paradigms are the objectivist (going back to the interpretation of society from the standpoint of "explanation": the interpretations of the positivists O. Comte, G. Spencer, etc.) and the subjectivist (oriented to the position of "understanding": the interpretation of M. Weber, etc.) models. In the concepts of modern sociologists E. Giddens (the theory of structuration), J. Habermas (the theory of communicative action and P. Bourdieu (the theory of social space and field), an attempt is made to overcome the dichotomy of objectivist and subjectivist paradigms on the basis of their synthesis.

Let's take a look at one of them. Anthony Giddens is one of the most original and productive sociologists of our time. The range of problems studied by Giddens is very wide: the work of the English sociologist is a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of various problems that are the subject of research in various sciences - sociology, philosophy, psychology, political science, jurisprudence, and much more. The most important theoretical achievements of Giddens include the construction by scientists of an integral theory of studying the structure of society late modern with an emphasis on the global synthesis of subjectivism and objectivism, statics and dynamics. This approach in Giddens's theory serves as the foundation for the development of topical problems of sociological knowledge. Giddens set himself the task of rethinking the history of society and revising the prevailing idea of ​​modernity. After a thorough critical analysis of the theories of society, he in the early 1980s. developed a theory of structuration, and then undertook a thorough study of the concept of "reflexive modernity". Giddens tried to apply his theory, which emphasizes the concept of "choice" made by the subject in the world of "artificial uncertainty", to a practical study of the changes that are taking place. The sociologist does not describe modernity in terms of postmodernity. In this, Giddens agrees with the point of view of Ulrik Beck, who says that, in fact, “fasting” is a code word for expressing the confusion of a scientist who is entangled in new trends. It simply points to something that it cannot name, remaining in the thrall of familiar phenomena. Giddens also wrote little about the information society (at least directly). He was not interested in discussing this issue, mainly because he was skeptical about the very idea of ​​such a society. From his point of view, today we live in the era of "radical modernity", marked by a large-scale manifestation of the features that are generally inherent in modern society. He argues that although it is commonly assumed that we are just entering a new era of informatization, in fact, modern society has been "informational" from the very beginning. The theoretical constructions of Giddens lead to the fact that the special significance attributed to information, it had in the distant past, and the fact that today information has become even more valuable is not a reason to talk about the breakdown of one system and the emergence of a new one, which he insisted Daniel Bell, introducing the concept of post-industrial society. In other words, Giddens believes that in modern society there has been an "informatization" of social ties, but this does not mean that we are approaching a new "information society".

As critics of Giddens - professor of sociology at the University of Texas Stepan Meshtrovic, Irish sociologist Stephen Loyal and others - note that the views of the English scientist changed significantly under the influence of the social context.

The profound restructuring of the conceptual foundations in Western sociology can be understood as a reaction to the "decomposition of the idea of ​​society." So, after the collapse of the theory of the so-called "organized modernity" at the turn of the 60-70s. In the twentieth century, two areas of social thought were formed, the purpose of which is to restore the representational abilities of social theory, which is in crisis and is losing its significance as a moral and political doctrine that can be a guide for practice. The theory of "organized modernity" sought to express the idea of ​​a comprehensive conventionalization of social practices, which was a means of reducing social uncertainty arising from the autonomy of acting individuals, by organizing actions on the basis of principles of social acceptability and functionality. According to the Belarusian researcher V.N. Fursa, “organized modernity” manifested itself in all spheres of society:

In the economic sphere, “organized modernity” was “Fordism” as a specific model for organizing socio-economic processes based on a social compromise between capital, labor and the state.

In the political - "organized democracy" as a form of effective institutionalization of spontaneous political activity.

In the intellectual field, it was a "coalition for modernization" that united the political and administrative elite and intellectuals who reoriented themselves from remote observation to the theoretical foundation of social technologies.

V.N. Furs identifies two strategies for describing the "new" society:

postmodernist (J. Baudrillard, Z. Bauman and others), the essence of which boils down to the idea of ​​“the disappearance of the social” and the position of “the completion of modernity”;

“late (neo-)modernist” (E. Giddens, J. Habermas, P. Bourdieu, etc.), the essence of which is the idea of ​​rethinking modernity, which is reduced to the position of its continuation.

In the works of the 80-90s, criticizing the postmodern diagnostics of time, Giddens comes to the conclusion that the current state of Western societies can be defined as "late modern" (not as "postmodern"), and one of the main characteristics of modern society is the globalization of social life. , detraditionalization and destruction of the conventionalities inherent in modern society. Giddens overcomes the polarity of objectivist and subjectivist approaches in social theory and moves away from traditional dichotomous ideas: individual - structure, objective - subjective, internal - external, theory - practice. The development of social theory by a sociologist is, in fact, an attempt to resolve these issues and novelty in the very ways of working with problems: the redefinition of practice, the introduction of bipolar concepts, a concept that combines both objective and subjective principles.

Main Differences between Objectivist and Subjectivist Approaches

can be represented as follows:

The problem of the relationship between the material (or physical) elements of the social world and the mental, symbolic aspects of social life: objectivism - materialism; subjectivism - idealism.

The relationship between objective theoretical knowledge about social life, obtained as a result of non-participant observation and without taking into account the opinions of the participants themselves, and the subjective meaning of life - specific perceptions and ideas of social life by its participants: objectivism - structuralism; subjectivism - phenomenology.

The problem of distinguishing between "internal" and "external" in relation to the individual: objectivism - taking into account the "external", structuralism, functionalism; subjectivism - taking into account the "internal", methodological or ontological individualism.

The problem of the correlation of types of social causality: objectivism is a mechanistic, subjectless concept of causality; subjectivism is a voluntaristic or rationalistic theory of subjects.

The problem of the relative epistemological status of scientific concepts and those of participants: objectivism - the positions of participants are not taken into account; subjectivism - positions are built on the basis of the positions of the participants.

The problem of the possibility of covering aspects of life with the help of controlled and formalized procedures or methods: objectivism - positivism, empiricism; subjectivism - informal techniques, experience.

The problem of the correlation of theoretical and practical positions, the cognitive interests of the researcher and the practical interests of the participant: objectivism - scientism; subjectivism - epistemological skepticism, relativism

So, the specificity of the object of social theory is social reality with its dual (individual - structure) and subjective-symbolic character. One of the compromise solutions is to avoid polar approaches whenever possible.

Attempts to overcome this seemingly inevitable dichotomy are presented in the critical theory of late modernity by Giddens, Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and the methodological ideas of Habermas's critical theory. An analysis of Giddens' theoretical achievements in creating an integral theory allows us to draw the following conclusions:

The scientist does not offer a new intellectual tradition in sociology in order to replace the hitherto existing ones, but opposes the dominance of any one of the paradigms without taking into account the others.

Overcoming the dominance of one paradigm is seen by Giddens in the possibility of using the principle of duality in the social sciences, which consists in refusing to oppose the individual and the structure. Social life and society are created by social actors and are constantly reproduced by them.

The relative value of each theoretical position that takes place in the general theory of sociology, Giddens evaluates in terms of their complementarity. So, with the rejection of the limited principles of methodological monism in favor of an eclectic approach based on the selection of the most sound and adequate to modern society provisions of each of the positions, it is possible to form an integral integral paradigm.

Among the "pluses" of the integral paradigm, Giddens names such characteristics as its maximum invulnerability to criticism and brilliant explanatory potential.

2. Structuralist constructivism P. Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most prominent sociologists of the twentieth century. Bourdieu is the author of more than 25 monographs and numerous articles, and his book "Practical Sense" is considered a classic work of sociology of the 20th century. Bourdieu's views were formed under the profound influence of Marxist theory, which was the reason for the desire to combine theory and (research) practice in his sociology. In the work of Bourdieu, the influence of other well-known theorists and their ideas is also traced, especially the sociology of Weber and Durkheim, Sartre's existentialism, the anthropology of Levi-Strauss, Hegel's dialectic, Husserl's phenomenology. Widely known are the works of Bourdieu on the sociology of politics and his book "Principles", which sets out ideas about the need for a critical analysis of the means of sociological knowledge and the connection of the social position of a sociologist with his research strategy.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, social reality is a social space, which he explains from the point of view of "constructivist structuralism or structuralist constructivism", meaning that in real social reality there are objective structures that do not depend on the consciousness and will of agents (carriers of social relations and their groups ) to guide their activities. At the same time, the agents themselves “build” the social world for themselves through the perception of social reality, their position in it, as well as dispositions and interests. Thus, social reality is a world built on the principles of differentiation and distribution.

At its core, social space is a space of relationships. And the social space of interaction between agents is conditionally divided into at least two dimensions: “symbolic” (directly social) and “physical” (geographical). Since the social distance between agents is built on the principles of distinction, it is important for the agent not only to feel these distinctions, but also to recognize them as significant in the social space. Differences inscribed in the structure of social space are expressed in the division, differentiation of agents. Such a system of differences determines a certain social order and helps each agent to determine his own position in society.

In this regard, the concept of habitus becomes significant for building a social space based on differences. This concept is introduced to explain the orderliness of the social world, its reproducibility, historical extent and variability. Habitus is "outside" the individual, being a product of historical conditions, and represents the relationship of patterns of perception, thinking and action. It is “embedded” in the consciousness of the individual and thus constitutes an inseparable part of it. Therefore, habitus, on the one hand, denotes necessity, predestination, and on the other hand, it is a system of organizing principles of action. Habitus is the past (his class, environment, family) embodied in behavior, speech, gait, tastes of a person. At the same time, the habitus also forms the agent's future on the basis of a "subjective assessment of objective probabilities", a balance between what is desired and what is possible - what can be counted on. Habitus most fully reflects the totality of features that is inherent in a particular social community. Thus, speaking about the differentiation of social space, about the social relations of agents built on the principle of distinctions, we cannot but say about the main division of all agents - the division into men and women.

We encounter the concept of habitus not only in Bourdieu; approximately the same meaning was put into it by Norbert Elias. By habitus, he meant a certain standard of regulation of behavior, regarded as personal coercion as opposed to coercion from outside. From the point of view of Bourdieu and Elias, the biological principle in a person cannot be opposed to the social environment, rather, on the contrary, one should try to see the connection between them.

According to Bourdieu, there is no "pre-social corporeality", that is, no human body exists independently of society. While still in the womb, the child becomes a member of society, since his psychological portrait has already been formed in the minds of his parents and those around him. Even the first, simplest gestures, movements and feelings are already the result of education. What is defined in psychoanalysis as a natural instinct and explained as the exact opposite of external coercion is also almost always social, representing the result of primitive interaction.

Bourdieu believed that the human body is not only a means for the production of something, but also a means for communication and expression of feelings. For example, such social relations as hierarchy and family ties are manifested in certain movements, gestures and facial expressions. This allows people to guess the intentions of others, predict their behavior, and either continue interactions or end contact. Thus, any manifestation of a person's bodily behavior (gestures, posture, facial expressions) has a symbolic meaning, more or less clearly clear to other members of society. But the body is a carrier of semantic information and in a more fundamental sense, since all categories of its perception are the same as the categories that characterize worldviews, differentiation and orderliness of the world.

At the same time, although the habitus is related to a certain social group, being always social in this sense, it does not exclude the possibility of individual interpretation and understanding of certain situations. In other words, habitus does not imply absolute patterns and models of behavior and thinking for an individual, but allows the production of a fairly large number of practices, still limited in their diversity. All possible variations in the understanding of reality will not go beyond the strict limits established in a particular social group. Habitus is the ability to freely generate thoughts, perceptions, expressions of feelings and actions, and the products of habitus are always limited by "the historical and social conditions of its own formation."

Thus, Pierre Bourdieu, as the author of the concept of structuralist constructivism, tried to combine the objective (the influence of the social structure) and the subjective (the construction of objects by the individual) in social cognition, to overcome the one-sidedness of both objectivism and subjectivism.

In defining and studying the essence of social relations, Bourdieu proposed using two fundamental approaches simultaneously:

Structuralism - in the social system there are objective structures that do not depend on the consciousness and will of people, but are able to stimulate one or another of their actions and aspirations;

Constructivism - the actions of people, due to life experience, the process of socialization, "form a social agent as a truly practical operator of constructing objects."

Combining the principles of structuralism and constructivism in his teaching, he uses two central concepts in his concept - "social field" and "habitus".

The social field is a social space in which various interactions of people take place, including a number of different fields - political, economic, cultural, spiritual, etc.

Habitus is understood as a system of strong acquired predispositions of individuals, which are formed under the influence of an objective social environment and are used by them in their actions as initial settings.

3. The concept of habitus

The term "habitus" has been used in the scientific literature by various authors such as Hegel, Weber, Durkheim, Moss in a variety of meanings, but in their works it mainly acted as an auxiliary concept. For Bourdieu, habitus is one of the central categories, which he repeatedly considers in various works, emphasizing one or another of its facets. Let's note the most important ones.

According to Bourdieu, the objective social environment produces habitus - "a system of strong acquired predispositions", which are subsequently used by individuals as an active ability to make changes to existing structures, as initial settings that generate and organize the practices of individuals. As a rule, these predispositions do not imply a conscious focus on achieving certain goals, because over a long period of time they are formed by opportunities and impossibilities, freedoms and necessities, permissions and prohibitions.

Naturally, in specific life situations, people exclude the most incredible practices.

Habitus is fundamentally different from scientific assessments. If science, after research, involves constant correction of data, refinement of hypotheses, etc., then people, according to Bourdieu, "attach disproportionate importance to early experience." The effect of inertia, routine predisposition is manifested in the fact that people who have perfectly adapted to past realities begin to act out of place in new realities, not noticing that the old conditions no longer exist.

To illustrate this thesis, the sociologist cites "Marx's favorite example" - Don Quixote: the environment in which he acts is too different from the one to which he is objectively adapted, due to the nature of his early experience. Likewise, many Russians are now unsuccessfully trying to "survive" the new economic social conditions largely because of their habitus, in particular, predispositions to the paternalistic role of the state, which were formed under the influence of their early experience.

Habitus allows social practices to link together the past, present and future. Whatever our politicians promise, the future of Russia will somehow be formed by reproducing past structured practices, incorporating them into the present, regardless of whether we like them or not today.

The concept of habitus substantiates the methodological principles of predicting the future through overcoming the antinomy - determinism and freedom, conscious and unconscious, individual and society. “Since habitus,” notes Bourdieu, “is an infinite capacity for the production of thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions, the limits of which are set by the historical and social conditions of its production, then the conditional and conditional freedom that it represents is also far from creating an unpredictable new, as well as from a simple mechanical reproduction of the original conditions" 6.

The principles of the concept of habitus orient researchers towards a more objective analysis of "subjective expectations". In this regard, Bourdieu criticizes those political and economic theories that recognize only "rational actions". According to the sociologist, the nature of the action depends on the specific chances that individuals have, the differences between individual habitus determine the unevenness of their social claims. This manifests itself in literally everything in our daily lives: the propensity to invest, for example, depends on the power over the economy. People form their expectations in accordance with specific indicators of what is available and not available, what is "for us" and "not for us", thereby adapting themselves to the probable future that they foresee and plan to implement. As can be seen, the concept of habitus allows us to debunk illusions about equals. "potential opportunities" whether in economics or politics, which only theoretically, on paper, exist for everyone.

. Capital and its types

Naturally, the agent's predisposition to one action or another largely depends on the means that they have at their disposal. In order to indicate the means by which agents can satisfy their interests, Bourdieu introduces the concept of capital. Capitals can be represented as equivalent to the concept of resources used by E. Giddens.

In his work “Social space and the genesis of “classes”, P. Bourdieu distinguishes four groups of capitals.

Cultural capital includes resources that have a cultural nature. This is, first of all, education, the authority of the educational institution that the individual graduated from, the demand for his certificates and diplomas in the labor market. A component of cultural capital is the actual cultural level of the individual himself.

Social capital is the means associated with an individual's belonging to a particular social group. It is clear that belonging to the upper class gives the individual more power opportunities and life chances.

Symbolic capital is what is usually called name, prestige, reputation. A person who is recognizable on the TV screen has more resources to achieve his goals than those individuals who are not popular.

Almost all capitals have the ability to convert into each other. Thus, having symbolic capital, one can climb up the social ladder, thereby acquiring social capital. Only cultural capital has relative independence. Even with a large amount of economic capital, it is not easy to acquire cultural capital.

. Field concept

According to Bourdieu, the social field is a logically conceivable structure, a kind of environment in which social relations are carried out. But at the same time, the social field is real social, economic, political and other institutions, for example, the state or political parties9. Introducing this concept, the sociologist emphasizes that he is not interested in institutional structures per se, but in objective connections between different positions, interests, people involved in them, their entry into confrontation or cooperation with each other for mastering the specific benefits of the field. The benefits of the field can be very different - the possession of power, economic or intellectual resources, the occupation of dominant positions, etc.

The entire social space is unevenly distributed in time and space and consists of several fields - the field of politics, the field of economics, the field of religion, the scientific field, the field of culture, etc. Naturally, this or that social field cannot exist without the practice of agents adequate to the field: not everyone enters the political field, but only those individuals who are somehow related to politics; into the religious - believers, etc.

Note that introducing the concept of an agent as opposed to a subject, Bourdieu distances himself from traditional structuralism, according to which the social structure completely determines both the social status of a person and his behavior. Agents are predisposed to their own activity. For the field to function, it is necessary not just the attitude of agents to the field, but their formal activity. What is also needed is their predisposition to act according to its rules, the presence of a certain habitus, which includes knowledge of the rules of the field, readiness to recognize them and act adequately.

The field always appears to the agent as already existing, given, and specifically, individual practice can only reproduce and transform the field. So, for example, specific people who are ready and able to engage in entrepreneurship enter the economic field. Their entrepreneurial actions in this economic field both reproduce and, to a certain extent, transform the field. Then the already reproduced new field, for its part, provides an opportunity and means for the innovative economic practice of agents, at the same time giving their behavior a normative assignment. And then the process is repeated again and again.

The field concept allows the sociologist to take into account the conscious and spontaneous in the agent's social practice, to isolate two fundamentally different mechanisms for generating actions. On the one hand, the rules of the field require at least minimal rationality (setting goals, choosing means and achievements, etc.), and on the other hand, spontaneous orientation (spontaneous assessments and actions of young businessmen in the framework of emerging market relations are very indicative in this regard) .

The representation of social life through the prism of the social field turns out to be an effective tool in the analysis of real confrontation. The field appears as a space of struggle, compromise, union of the most diverse forces, which are expressed in specific social practices. To a large extent, the attitude of struggle and alliances, their nature depends on the differences in the agents' own characteristics.

The sociologist emphasizes that in the field any competence (economic, social, intellectual, etc.) is not just a technical ability, but the capital necessary to enjoy the potential rights and opportunities that formally exist for everyone.

Conclusion

Giddens sees the main task of his theory as overcoming the opposition of macro and micro levels in sociology. Giddens calls for the use of the principle of duality in the social sciences, which implies the rejection of the natural scientific view of social reality. This principle consists in the rejection of the opposition of the individual and the structure: the individual uses the rules and resources (that is, the structure) and thus reproduces the structure. Individual action and structure are connected in a single process, individual social action and structure do not differ, since there is a basis for their unification - practice.

In the theory of structuring, Giddens singles out the main concept - "structuration". With this term, as was said, he tries to show the duality of the structure: it not only dominates the individual, but is also used by him, therefore, changes.

In defining and studying the essence of social relations, Pierre Bourdieu suggested using two fundamental approaches simultaneously:

Structuralism - in the social system there are objective structures that do not depend on the consciousness and will of people, but are able to stimulate one or another of their actions and aspirations.

Constructivism - the actions of people, due to life experience, the process of socialization, "form a social agent as a truly practical operator of constructing objects."

Central to the sociological theory of Bourdieu are the concepts of "habitus" and "social field", through which the gap between macro- and microanalysis of social realities is overcome.

At the next stage in the development of sociology, which is usually called classic, within sociology were given answers to these questions, and these answers were quite successful. So successful that it was this stage that became the main basis for theorizing in sociology up to the present time. Let's start our acquaintance with the classical period in the development of sociology with the presentation of the concept of Emile Durkheim.

5.1. The sociologism of Émile Durkheim

His sociological work begins in the 90s of the XIX century, and he, unlike all other sociologists - his contemporaries, most of all deserved the title of the first professional sociologist. Like everyone else, he himself was a self-taught sociologist, but he devoted his entire life to sociology. In his dedication to the sociology of life, he created the first department of sociology in Europe at the University of Bordeaux, he was also the organizer of one of the first in the world and then the most famous sociological journal, Sociological Yearbook. In 1912, he created the Department of Sociology at the Sorbonne, one of the centers of European education. Durkheim actually became the organizer of the first professional sociological school in Europe: his students and followers dominated French sociology until the Second World War.

Durkheim took on the mission of building sociology as an independent substantiated science, which will not be ashamed of being among the already recognized positive sciences, that is, in fact, the task of implementing the program of Auguste Comte. At the same time, he considered it necessary to strictly follow the positive method common to all sciences, which the fathers-creators of positivism and sociology themselves - Comte, Spencer, Mill - followed methodologically insufficiently strictly. Therefore, they failed to build a solid building of the science of society, as a result of which sociology almost lost the status of an independent science.

It is necessary to begin the return of independence with a clear definition of the subject of sociology, what it should study, and it should study the phenomena of the collective life of people, that which is characteristic of a person not only as a separate individual, but as a member of a group, association, society. All individuals are immersed in a multitude of social phenomena, like fish in the sea-ocean, in this natural environment of their habitat, which is a special social reality that obeys its own internal laws. Hence the main slogan of his concept, called sociologism: "Explain the social to the social." What does it mean?

First, the ban in sociology on naturalistic and psychological explanations. Social phenomena cannot be explained by reducing them to natural or psychological phenomena. About psychologism, Durkheim quite irreconcilably declares: “Whenever a social phenomenon is directly explained by a mental phenomenon, one can be sure that the explanation is false.” Irreconcilability is understandable: in sociology at that time there was a dominance of psychologism, and its main opponent was the older and much more popular then creator of the “imitation theory” Gabriel Tarde.

Secondly, the explanation of a certain social phenomenon (fact) consists in the search for another social phenomenon (fact) that is the cause of the phenomenon under study. Durkheim insists that one phenomenon always has one cause that causes it. Moreover, just as in the natural sciences, "the same effect always corresponds to the same cause." A causal explanation can be supplemented with a functional one, that is, establishing the social usefulness of the phenomenon under study, what social need it meets, however, a purely functional explanation cannot be a full-fledged replacement for a causal explanation. It is here that it is quite obvious that Durkheim does not doubt the impeccability of the classical positivist approach for sociology, and essentially does not pay attention to the criticism of the Badens or Dilthey.

Thirdly, methodically pure adherence to the positive method requires in all cases to consider social facts (phenomena) as things, that is, externally. The main requirement for sociological science is as follows: “Instead of indulging in metaphysical reflections on social phenomena, the sociologist must take as the object of his research clearly defined groups of facts that could be pointed to, as they say, with a finger, on which it was possible to accurately mark the beginning and the end - and let him enter this ground with full determination. Comte and Spencer, not to mention the others, did not follow this requirement decisively enough, and as a result, social facts in their reasoning and explanations were blocked by the metaphysical and everyday concepts and ideas that were already in their heads. Objective social reality is always shrouded in a veil woven from the opinions, assessments, preferences surrounding the researcher, and stitched with invisible metaphysical and subjective premises. The requirement to consider social facts externally, as things, presupposes a resolute rejection of this veil, the rejection of all explanations and interpretations already available in advance, so that the studied facts appear in the purity of ignorance, obscurity and force the researcher to look for a truly scientific explanation, that is, an objective external cause.

The social facts that a sociologist must investigate and explain are, first of all, human actions, actions, and to look for their causes among such objective social facts that have a coercive force in relation to these actions, such facts that express the pressure of society as a collective force, the pressure of the social environment, that is, in fact, “the pressure of everyone on everyone”, and this is what, firstly, forms a stable “substrate of collective life”, the anatomy and morphology of society. Durkheim indicates some of the most important components of this substratum: the size and distribution of the population, types of settlements, the number and nature of means of communication, forms of dwellings, but does not at all care about the completeness of the list. For him, much more important are the facts of a different kind that make up the physiology of society, namely: "modes of action", collective ideas about socially correct and functional behavior. It is more important simply because they are primary in nature, since the materialized "forms of being are only strengthened modes of action." In the anatomy of society, its skeleton, the forms of its being, actions are cast, which, due to the incessant repetition, have become ordinary, traditional. Durkheim explains: “The type of our buildings is only the way in which everyone around us and partly previous generations were accustomed to building houses. Communication routes are only that channel that has dug for itself a flow of exchange and migrations that regularly takes place in the same direction.

So, sociology must consider society as a separate reality, although connected with nature, but independent. In order to explain social phenomena, and human actions are important for sociology, we need to single out social facts, that is, real phenomena that force, push people to commit these actions. With this approach, human actions are the point of application of social forces, the interweaving of which is the environment that embraces us, that makes us act in a certain way, but this environment itself, in turn, is actions, actions of people that have become images and models of actions.

Durkheim substantiates the independence of the science of sociology by the autonomy of its subject matter, social reality itself. The main and, in essence, the only support of this reality are human actions, deeds, from which everything social in man and humanity arises. Since Durkheim's one and all-powerful god is society, human actions are the soil in which this god is born and lives.

Now briefly about the methods by which sociology should act. First, it must always and everywhere follow the general requirements of the positive method formulated by Comte and Spencer. In accordance with it, consider a social fact as a thing, that is, objectively, and use the methods of studying phenomena generally accepted in other natural sciences. The first of these methods is observation. Direct for most morphological facts and indirect for collective representations. It is clear that one can directly observe the number and distribution of the population, the form of settlements, while honor, dignity, morality are not directly observable, they are manifested only in the behavior of people, in their actions. Statistical methods are indispensable for studying collective representations. Durkheim was the first in sociology to use the method of statistical correlations as the main method to find patterns that determine human actions, patterns that establish either a causal relationship between phenomena or a functional one.

The search for regularities is carried out by the method of comparative study of similar phenomena in different societies. Comparative analysis, says Durkheim, also allows us to estimate the prevalence of the phenomena under study and determine the parameters of the norm for them. He understood the rate of prevalence of a certain phenomenon as follows: "This fact takes place in the majority of societies belonging to this type, taken in the corresponding phase of their evolution." Thanks to this definition of the norm, it makes sense to talk in quantitative terms about the norm of the level of crime, the number of suicides, marriages, divorces, etc. for this society. In principle, it is easy to determine the norm: you need to take similar societies, compare them with each other according to the characteristics of interest to the researcher and determine the quantitative parameters, the interval characteristic of the majority. This is the norm, everything that goes beyond its boundaries is evidence of a pathology, a disease of society.

He demonstrates his approach to the study of society in constructing a theory of the evolution of society, in creating a sociological theory of a certain class of social phenomena - suicide, explores the emergence of forms of primitive religions in order to understand the mechanism of formation of collective ideas in society.

His main works, which outlined his concept, he published in the 90s. XIX century. The first book was called "On the division of social labor", published in 1893, and it presented the concept of the evolution of society. His second classic book is The Rules of Sociological Method, published two years later. Here the basic principles of the construction of the science of sociology are formulated. And two years later, the book “Suicide. A sociological study” is the first sociological theory of suicide. Much later, in 1912, he published his last classic work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. These four books make Durkheim one of the main pillars of sociology. He set himself the task of realizing Comte's program for the creation of sociology as a science, and was the first sociologist to succeed so well that he had every right to say, if he wanted to: "Let others try to do better."

Let's start with his concept of the evolution of society. Quite following Comte, we can say that this evolution consists in limiting and eradicating natural human egoism and spreading and strengthening social solidarity. You well remember that the constant instruments of such limitation and eradication of egoism are three social institutions: the family, the state and religion, and the progress itself, determined by the development of the intellect, inevitably pushes humanity to the triumph of altruism and solidarity over egoism and disunity. Durkheim seeks to consider this triumphant solidarity as a thing, that is, objectively - that is, to show how the mechanism for ensuring solidarity works, and he discovers in society essentially two different mechanisms, ways, types of solidarity. One relies on the similarity of individuals and groups with each other, cuts people to a common single measure, considering any dissimilarity, peculiarity as a loophole for the spread of this egoism and disunity in society, in fact, makes a person completely dissolve in the social whole, become its simple atom. The other, on the contrary, is based on the increasingly complex diversity of society, on the differentiation and specialization of its parts, which leads to the interdependence of these parts, their interweaving, and the unity of the diverse. In the first case, society lives and acts in concert, because it is a mechanical unity of identical elements and parts, in the second, because it is an organic unity of various organs that perform different, but coordinated with each other functions. Durkheim calls the first type of solidarity mechanical, second - organic.

The general direction of evolution consists in the gradual weakening of the dominance of mechanical solidarity and the spread, respectively, of organic solidarity. This is true both for human society as a whole and for any particular society, civilization. That is, any new society inevitably begins with the obvious dominance of mechanical solidarity and also inevitably moves towards the dominance of organic solidarity in the process of its development. If we compare earlier societies with later ones at the same stages of their existence, for example, early ancient society with medieval Western European society, then, Durkheim believes, it is obvious that all human history evolves in a similar way.

Durkheim as a whole moves along the path indicated by Spencer's organismic model, but does not arrive there at all. Durkheim is by no means an organicist. Despite the term "organic", analogies with the organism are secondary for him. His types of solidarity differ primarily in the nature of collective ideas and the degree of their dominance over human behavior.

The mechanical type of solidarity is characterized by the total domination of collective ideas over the actions and lives of people in general, which means the total religiosity of society (“everything that is social, religious; both words are synonyms”), the regulation of behavior is specific and detailed, how to act in each case fixed in customs, traditions, habits, prescriptions, the law is essentially reduced to a system of punishments for wrong deeds. The similarity of individuals with each other is also supported by the fact that the division of labor is insignificant, the types of labor are quite simple, and people are relatively easy to replace each other in the labor process; Anatomically, society is a space of adjacent autonomous segments. The era of almost complete domination of this type of solidarity is the dawn of any society, but especially the beginning of human history, the era of the domination of the "horde", that is, the primitive human society, and the "clan society".

In contrast to the mechanical organic type of solidarity, the collective consciousness assumes the loss of a mandatory, prescriptive character. It is drastically reduced in volume, becomes normative, valuable, gives room for individual initiative and thus encourages the mass appearance of the individual. The area of ​​religious consciousness shrinks, its place is taken by rationalism and reflection. In place of punishment and punishment for misdeeds comes compensation for them. In this society, a mass individual appears, which does not exist and cannot exist under the dominance of mechanical solidarity. It is rationalistic and harmonious in the normal period of its development. The similarity of people in the process of labor is replaced by the organic unity of various professional corporations, and the complication of this unity, in principle, has no limits. He considered the harmonious unity of professional corporations to be the highest level of organic development.

The transition from one type to another does not occur in any way by a leap, not by a revolution, on the contrary, the dominance of the second is formed gradually under the influence of a growing population, which no longer fits in closed segments, spills out beyond their borders, transforms their autonomy into interdependence and unity, and the main point here is the gradual deepening of the division of labor in society. It is the expanding variety of interdependent and complementary activities that is now the main pillar of social solidarity in society. The place of people similar to each other in their work and way of life is replaced by professionals who are excellently "sharpened" for their specialty, but the society becomes even stronger and more harmonious from this. This becomes possible, according to Durkheim, if a person chooses a profession freely, in accordance with his natural abilities, and not on the basis of hereditary privileges of various kinds, that is, in order to be strong, stable, an organic society must be fair.

He was an opponent of Marxist socialism and the Marxist path to socialism and believed that although modern capitalism produces pathological forms of division of labor and therefore is a sick society, but these are growing pains that should and will be corrected gradually by limiting class contradictions and providing conditions for equalizing opportunities, namely it will make a man's success in society the result of his ability and effort. In other words, the correction of modern society is the result of a gradual effort to rationalize this society, and he assigned the most important role to sociology in this matter, since it provides reliable knowledge about all social problems and diseases of society, and therefore the very possibility of taking measures to correct them.

Durkheim can also be considered one of the founders of applied sociology, since he tried to realize Comte's precept about the usefulness of sociological science. He was the first to formulate the painful problems of society, which sociology should study and thereby help to solve them. This is one of the main functions of sociology. On the example of one of the types of human behavior, namely suicide, he proposed a method of sociological research, studying this problem, and he formulated this approach in a book with the same title. As a theory of suicide, the book may be out of date, but as a study of the social roots of people's suicidal tendencies, it represents one of the first examples of empirical research, to which, in general, all current ones are similar.

He believed that since suicide is considered a completely non-sociological object, not subject to sociological research, it is on it that the possibilities of sociology can be impressively demonstrated. What and how should sociology study in society? First, what is the subject of the sociologist when he studies suicide: statistics on the number of suicides and the dynamics of their change according to place and time. That is, the sociologist must explain why there is such a number of suicides in this region, and twice as many or less in another, why in such and such years their number increased, while in others it decreased, and decreased significantly or, on the contrary, insignificantly, but it’s not at all the case. sociologist to explain why Sidor Petrovich hanged himself in his room. This is the work of an investigator, a writer, a psychologist, but not a sociologist. A sociologist deals with a person as a representative of society, a social group, and his job is to explain the behavior of people in this group in comparison with other groups, or in the same group, but in different periods of time. Durkheim considered suicide a good object for demonstrating his method of explanation, also because there were suicide statistics in a number of European countries for many decades.

So, what should be the aim of the sociological study of this subject? He says that the sociologist must explain the causation of precisely this level of suicide in this place and at this time. The method to be used for this he calls "the method of accompanying changes." There is evidence of certain factors that can be considered as possible causes of the studied actions. Statistical correlations are established between changes in these factors and the behaviors studied, in this case, the number of suicides. And if there is a uniformity of correspondences with certain changes, these factors can be considered very probable causes of the behavior under study. Conversely, if the expected uniformity is not observed, the factors under consideration should be excluded from the causes of the behavior being studied.

In his time, among such factors were considered:

First, mental illness. That is, people who were either really mentally ill, or a tendency to suicide accompanies mental illness, were considered susceptible to suicide.

Other reasons that were invoked for explanation were inherent in geographical direction: location, climate, its changes, up to lunar eclipses.

Racial reasons have also been suggested. At the same time, races were considered not anthropologically, but rather like those of Gumplovich and Le Bon, that is, different peoples are prone to suicide to varying degrees, and this lies in their mental nature, character.

And, finally, the most fashionable explanation in France at that time by Tarde, according to which suicides spread in waves of imitation, scattering from certain points, cases. Tarde offered a statistical justification for this.

Durkheim in his book consistently and conclusively - as it seems to him - refutes all conventional explanations of suicides. An analysis of suicide statistics, he believes, provides clear evidence that all these factors do not affect the dynamics of suicide in space and time in any unambiguous way. For example, statistics show that in the 19th century the number of suicides in many countries increased by three to five times, while the number of people with mental illness did not change in any noticeable way. In general, an increase in suicides was recorded among people who did not have mental illness.

He further rejected the "racial" factor, pointing out that the increase in suicides primarily affected young people and middle-aged people, and the factor of belonging to a certain people should affect people of all ages equally. Similarly, based on the analysis of statistical data, he disproved the influence of other factors.

As a result of this “clearing of the field”, he was left with factors that can be considered as causes that cause suicide. He formulated them as partial correlations with the dynamics of suicide: “men commit suicide more often than women; city ​​dwellers more often than rural dwellers; single people more often than married people; Protestants more often than Catholics; Catholics more often than Jews…” and so on. Thus, he formulated a certain set of private correlations, all of which are social in nature, therefore, the causes of suicide must be of a social nature. Further, a comparative analysis of these partial correlations allowed him to draw the following conclusion: "The number of suicides is inversely proportional to the degree of integration of those social groups that the individual belongs to." Therefore, in today's society, the presence of a family, children, life in the countryside, belonging to a religious denomination that unites people are socially integrating factors and reduce the number of suicides.

For Durkheim, modern capitalism was a sick society, and the rise in suicide rates is a demonstration of its sickness. He defines the types of suicide that are characteristic of this society. This is "selfish" suicide, the basis of which is the rupture of social ties in society, the extreme individualism of its members, the spread of loneliness. It is also characterized by an "anomic" type of suicide. It was Durkheim who introduced the concept of "anomie" into sociology, and it later occupied an extremely important place in sociology. The growth of suicides of this type is due to the destruction of the system of norms and values ​​in a given society that regulate human behavior, hence the person has a feeling of constant “wrongness” of his behavior, the infidelity of his actions, and this condition increases his tendency to commit suicide.

He argues that in today's capitalist society, which is at a turning point, these two types of suicide account for the entire increase in the number of suicides. To these types he opposes another (sometimes he speaks of two different types) type of suicide, which, on the contrary, is becoming less and less in a given society. It is rather characteristic of a traditional society, where the mechanical solidarity of a collectivist society prevails. This is "altruistic" suicide, which suggests that the individual is completely absorbed by society and unquestioningly fulfills its norms and requirements. He himself gave an example of such a suicide, pointing to Indian society, where a woman climbs a funeral pyre after her dead husband. For traditional societies, characterized by the dominance of collective ideas, such behavior is normal, but in modern society it is typical only in exceptional cases, during natural disasters, wars, etc.

Another type that Durkheim singles out with less definiteness is the "fatalistic" suicide. Sometimes he considers it a kind of altruistic suicide. It is done as a result of an excess of regulation of human behavior, which is perceived by him as unbearable. The difference with altruistic suicide is still quite obvious here. In altruistic suicide, a person sacrifices himself to some whole that is common to many people: say, the homeland, religious principles, traditions of the people, etc. But fatalistic suicide is committed rather in protest against this whole, these traditions, customs, norms. A person cannot resist them, but he can no longer endure them either - suicide itself is an act of protest.

One can give an example from the recent Soviet past. In the 80s, a wave of self-immolations swept through the Central Asian republics, mothers of families burned themselves as a sign of protest against family slavery, expressed in endless work in the cotton fields. Together with their children, they lived in these fields for many months and worked, while the men sorted out the most “heavy” work for themselves at home, in the village: a teahouse attendant, a cotton receiver, an accountant, a chairman, etc. Without virtually free women's and children's labor, there would be no large Uzbek or Turkmen cotton. These suicides, in fact, served as one of the main reasons for the sharp reduction in the cotton field in the republics.

The general conclusion is this: the level of suicides in society is influenced by objectively existing collective forces, ideas. It is they that underlie either an increase in the number of suicides or a decrease, and individual psychological inclinations, so to speak, choose the victim. The level of suicide is determined by social causes, and to whom they happen depends on psychological characteristics or simply by chance.

Durkheim considered it his merit that by studying suicide he irrefutably demonstrated the social conditioning of human behavior. This book, moreover, represents the first attempt to write a theoretical sociological concept in the guise of a study, that is, it is externally structured as a sociological study. True, only externally: he first formulated the problem, then presented the already existing factors that explain this problem, and then carried out an analysis of these and other factors based on the available empirical data. In fact, he did not succeed in empirical research: the analysis of factors, the rejection of some and the acceptance of others as causes of behavior was carried out on the basis of philosophical reasoning, which was usual for nineteenth-century sociology, where empirical data are then appropriately used to illustrate statements already obvious to the author.

But still, it was the first swing, an application for the construction of a sociological theory to explain a certain type of human behavior as a theory based on reliable and quite comprehensive empirical data. In this sense, the book Suicide was the first prototype of modern sociology, the sociology that it became after the first world war and in which you intend to work and earn. At least many of you.

Now regarding his study of religion. Durkheim can be called the founding father of the sociology of religion, though not its only father. He articulated a radically sociological view of religion. In what sense is the sociologist interested in religion? Only as a regulator of social behavior. Religion is the space where moral norms and values ​​are created, traditions that regulate human behavior. Proceeding from this, the main thing in religion is not teaching, not gods, but religious activity, in which collective ideas are created, and thanks to them, society acquires unity, integrity. They perform an integrating role in society, unite people with a unity of understanding of what is good or bad, possible or impossible, fair or unfair. This happens due to the division through religion of people's lives into the sacred part and the everyday, everyday. Participation in sacred rituals and ceremonies makes religious principles, ideas sacred and also determines everyday human activity. In turn, religious ideas are determined by the level of development of society, the social environment. In other words, religion is such as it is required by a given society. Moreover, in essence, the irresistible power of society's influence on people's behavior is expressed in religious ideas, therefore religions without God may well exist, since, according to Durkheim, the only true god of any religion is society: "Society is God" - the true God.

For the sociologist, all religions are a fantastic display of omnipotence, the irresistible power of society as a whole over human behavior, the fate of man. Hence the extreme importance for any religions of common rituals, festivities, rituals that give rise to a sense of unity, wholeness, joint ecstasy, thanks to which religious principles and ideas acquire holiness, omnipotence, the right to subordinate human actions to their requirements. In his opinion, in crisis periods of the destruction of old values ​​and religions, humanity is able to create new ones that meet its new needs, which are born in new collective ecstatic actions, rituals, and festivities.

By Durkheim's standards, Soviet socialism was a religion. It perfectly fits his definition of religion, there are sacred ritual actions and objects. For example, party meetings with a table covered with red cloth, at which the presidium sits, a person broadcasting, to whom everyone should listen or show attention to the friendly raising of hands at the command of the chairman “for” or “against”. The holiday “the day of November 7 is the red day of the calendar”, when “everything on the street is red” and everyone needs to go to the ritual procession in front of the stands with their favorite bosses with ritual objects in their hands and ritual cries in front of these stands. Such ritual actions are strictly regulated, as it should be in religions, there are also ritual characters, like, say, the general party secretary, who embodies the wisdom of all the previous ones and adds his own, therefore everyone must certainly study his creations. Maybe in the frenzy of modern concerts and discos, a new religion is being born, who knows?

In conclusion, we can say that Durkheim was in sociology a model of integrity. Classical positivist, successor of the work of Comte, Spencer, Mill to create sociology as an objective and reliable science. A social optimist who is firmly convinced that society is gradually, evolutionarily improving, and sociology is the most important tool for this improvement. A moralist who believes that moral norms are the most important way to regulate social life. He can be called the perfect incarnation of Auguste Comte, a sociologist who, according to the precepts of Comte, developed his project of a science of society.

Question 40. Institute of public opinion, its functions.

Public opinion- this is the attitude of social communities to the problems of public life, manifested first in emotions and judgments, and then in actions.

The following functions of public opinion as a social institution are distinguished:

1) regulatory- Public opinion regulates not only relations between individuals, individuals and collectives, collectives and society, but also economic, political, moral and other relations in society;

2) control- Supervises the activities of government and administration.

3) protective Public opinion "takes under its protection" individuals or official institutions

4) advisory Public opinion can give advice, recommendations to various social institutions on the choice of ways to solve certain problems;

5) directive Through a referendum or through direct pressure, public opinion indicates the way in which policies can be carried out with respect to certain issues that are at the center of public attention.

Question 41. The social structure of society.

The social structure of society is a set of interconnected and interacting social communities and groups, social institutions, social statuses and relations between them. All elements of the social structure interact as a single social organism.

Elements of social structure:

1) Ethnic structure (clan, tribe, nationality, nation)

2) Demographic structure (groups are distinguished by age and gender)

3) Settlement structure (urban, rural)

4) Class structure (bourgeoisie, proletariat, peasants)

The essence of the social structure of society is most fully expressed in its general features, which include:

The variety of social elements that form the social structure of society (social institution, social group, social community, etc.);

Different degree of influence of each constituent element of the social structure of society on social processes and phenomena, the difference in their social roles;

The presence of relatively stable links between the constituent elements of the social structure of society.

Multifunctionality and stability - each element of the social structure of society performs its own specific functions, which are different from the roles of other social elements.

Question 42. Object and subject of sociology, its mission.

Sociology- it is a science that studies society as a whole, trends and patterns, the formation, functioning and development of various social formations.

The object of sociology - society as a whole.

The subject of sociology - concept, a scheme of social reality, in which its main elements are brought into the system and logically derived from each other.

Functions of sociology:

1) Theoretical-cognitive - allowing to expand and concretize knowledge about the essence of society

2) Practical-political - allow to develop recommendations and proposals for policy and practice.

3) Ideological and educational - manifested in the fact that sociology studies the spiritual world of society, its value and behavioral guidelines, the transformation of which directly affects the historical process.

4) Prognostic - is to determine the state of society and predict its future development, which is especially important in the modern dynamic era, characterized by a rapid change in paradigms, values, ideals, etc.

Question 43. Sociological concepts of society and their creators.

Representatives organic school, which arose at an early stage of the existence of sociology as an independent science (G. Spencer, A. Scheffle, A. Espinas and others), interpreted social reality as a kind of organism that works by analogy with the biological. They argued that in society, as in the body, each element performs its necessary and irreplaceable function.

Functionalism- the direction, the foundations of which were laid by the French sociologist E. Durkheim. Durkheim proposed his own paradigm of understanding society as a powerful special reality standing above the individual, irreducible to any other - be it physical, psychological or economic - and possessing an irresistible force of coercion in relation to the individual. The basis of society, according to Durkheim, is irreducible, i.e. indecomposable into simpler elements, a social fact.

In the future, the ideas of functionalism were developed within the framework of structural functionalism T. Parsons, who considered society as a system consisting of subsystems. The essence of the functionalist paradigm is the vision of society as a self-reproducing whole, asserting itself in this capacity, resisting the destructive influence of the external environment.

Integrative understanding of society P. Sorokin adjoins the functional approach, but Sorokin bases his vision of society on the concept of social interaction, defining it through the concept of functional dependence: “... When a change in the mental experiences or external acts of one individual is caused by the experiences or external acts of another individual, when between there is a functional connection between the two, then we say that these individuals interact. Social interaction for Sorokin acts as an initial social cell from which one can begin the study of social reality. But social reality as a whole is made up of the presence of individuals, the mutual conditioning of their actions, and the transmission of stimuli and reactions to them from one individual to another. All this forms the structural elements of interaction.

Conflict approach to the understanding of society is based on the idea of ​​the dynamic nature of social reality. If functionalists consider society to be a closed system, which in itself strives for peace and balance and has the ability to spontaneously restore them, then for conflictologists the essence of the social is a struggle, an ongoing conflict, as a result of which society never comes to a calm state, but is always riddled with conflicts of different significance and scale - from individual to class.

Methods of social differentiation in the study of society, they are guided by the primacy of individuals and social interaction over the whole. G. Simmel, who completely reduced society to the interaction of individuals, should be mentioned as one of the predecessors of the founders of this approach. In Simmel's view, social action is conditioned by individual motivation - personal interests, drives and needs of individuals.

Sociological personality theory- sociological theory, which has as its subject the personality as an object and subject of social relations within the framework of the socio-historical process and integral social systems, at the level of relationships between the individual and social communities, including small contact groups and collectives.

This theory establishes the dependence of personality traits on the objective socio-economic, socio-cultural and objective-active features of the socialization of individuals, as a result of which the social typology of the personality acquires the greatest importance in the theory - the identification of the essential personality traits due to its lifestyle, life activity.

The theory of personality of K. Marx. K. Marx considered man as a social being. Therefore, K. Marx noted, any manifestation of his life - even if it does not act in the direct form of a collective manifestation of life, performed jointly with others - is a manifestation and affirmation of social life. (See: Marx, K. Soch. / K. Max, F. Engels. - T. 42. - S. 119). The main thing in personality is "not abstract physical nature, but its social quality". (Ibid. - T. 1. - S. 242).

Considering the personality as an object and subject of social interaction, Marx first drew attention to the fact that, interacting with other individuals, a person “looks, as if in a mirror, at another person” and, in accordance with his perception of this “spiritual Self”, corrects his activity and behavior.

In general, the Marxist concept of personality emphasizes the subject-active nature of the formation of personality, its activity in the development of diverse forms of human activity. The alienation of the individual from certain forms of human activity in a class society is a factor of one-sided development.

The theory of "mirror self". The theory of the “mirror self” is a concept of personality that comes not from the internal characteristics of a person, but from the recognition of the decisive role of the interaction of individuals who act in relation to each of them as a “mirror” of his self. One of the founders of this theory, W. James, singled out in I am the "social self", which was what others recognize this person. A man has as many "social selves" as there are individuals and groups whose opinion he cares about.

Developing this theory, C. Cooley considered the ability of an individual to distinguish himself from the group and realize his self as a sign of a truly social being. An indispensable condition for this was the communication of the individual with other people and the assimilation of their opinions about him. There is no feeling of I without corresponding feelings of We, He or They. Conscious actions are always social; they mean for a person to correlate his actions with those ideas about his "I" that affect other people. Other people are those mirrors in which an image of himself is formed for the individual. As C. Cooley notes, personality is a set of mental reactions of a person to the opinion of the people around him about him. His own self is a perceived mirror image, the summation of the impressions that he thinks he makes on those around him. Self includes: 1) the idea of ​​"what I seem to another person"; 2) the idea of ​​how this other evaluates my image and 3) the specific “feeling of I” resulting from this, such as pride or humiliation - “self-respect”. All this adds up to the human "sense of personal certainty" - "mirror self". sociological society mobility behavior

The theory of the “mirror self” was developed by J. Mead, who introduced the concept of “stages” of the formation of the self. itself as a social object.

Status concept of personality. The concept of "status" in ancient Rome meant the state, the legal status of a legal entity. At the end of the century, the English historian G. D. S. Main gave it sociological significance. social status- the social position of a person in society, due to the social functions performed by him. Social status, according to the definition of the Russian-American sociologist P. Sorokin, is the place occupied by an individual in social space. In order to determine the social position of a person, it is important to know his social statuses.

Each person is included in different social groups and, therefore, performs different social functions, and at the same time has many statuses. Among this set, one can single out a key, main status. Main status- this is the defining social position characteristic of a given individual in the system of social relations (for example, a student, director of an enterprise, etc.) Not always the main status of a person, determined by society, others, may coincide with the status that an individual determines for himself.

Depending on whether a person occupies this position due to inherited characteristics (gender, nationality, social origin, etc.) or due to acquired, own efforts (teacher, locksmith, engineer, student, etc.), they distinguish prescribed and achieved (acquired) statuses.

The concept of social status characterizes the place of the individual in the system of social relations, the assessment of the activity of the individual by society, expressed in such indicators as wages, prestige, awards, etc., as well as self-esteem. A problem can arise if one's own social status is misunderstood by a person. Then he begins to focus on other people's patterns of behavior, which may not always be positive.

Role theory of personality. This is a theory according to which a person is described by means of learned and accepted by her or forced to perform social functions and patterns of behavior - roles. They are determined by the social status of the individual. The main provisions of this theory were formulated in social psychology by J. Mead (1934) and in sociology by the social anthropologist R. Lipton.

J. Mead believed that we all learn role-playing behavior through the perception of ourselves as some significant person for us. A person always sees himself through the eyes of others and either begins to play along with the expectations of others, or continues to defend his role. In the development of role functions, Mead distinguished three stages: 1) imitation, i.e., mechanical repetition (for example, children repeat the behavior of adults); 2) games, when, for example, children understand behavior as the performance of a certain role, that is, they move from one role to another; 3) group membership (collective games), i.e., mastering a certain role through the eyes of a social group that is significant for a given person. For example, when children learn to be aware of the expectations of not only one person, but the entire group. At this stage, a sense of social identity is acquired.

The social role has two aspects: role expectation- what others expect from us from the performance of a particular role, and role performance(behavior) - what a person actually does.

Talcott Parsons tried to systematize the social roles performed using five main features:

• 1) emotionality, i.e. some roles require emotional restraint in situations (teachers, doctors, police officers);
• 2) the method of obtaining, i.e., it can be a prescribed role by status or won;
• 3) scale - some roles are limited to certain aspects of human interaction;
• 4) formalization - some roles involve interacting with people in accordance with established rules;
• 5) motivation - roles are conditioned by different motives.

Since people simultaneously have several statuses, each status will correspond to a range of roles. The combination of these roles is called role set. And since a person performs many social roles, this can cause role conflict. Role conflict- this is a clash of role requirements for a person, caused by the multiplicity of roles performed by him (for the first time these concepts were introduced into sociology by R. Merton). There are the following types of role conflicts:

• 1) a conflict caused by differences in the understanding of the individual of his social role and the social group. For example, a person's rejection of certain standards of behavior supported by society and the state;
• 2) a conflict caused by the fact that different subjects present different (opposite) requirements to the individual to perform the same role. For example, from a working man, the boss demands high dedication at work, and the wife demands high dedication at home;
• 3) conflict, when different subjects differently evaluate the significance of the same role. For example, a lawyer is required to achieve an acquittal of the client, but at the same time, as a lawyer, he is required to fight crime;
• 4) the conflict between the personal qualities of the individual and role requirements. For example, a person holds a position, but does not have the necessary qualities;
• 5) conflict between roles, when different roles intersect in personality. For example, a conflict may arise due to the inconsistency between the role of "father" and "family man" and "scientist who devotes himself to science."

Role conflicts can lead to role tension. In order to reduce it, it is necessary to single out for oneself from all the roles performed a more important, defining one.

Psychobiological concept of personality by Z. Freud. The psychoanalytic theory of Z. Freud shows that a person is basically a biological being, and all his activity is directed and organized by an internal impulse to satisfy his instincts (and especially sexual ones), produced by bodily needs expressed in the form of desires. But society in its organization is based on social norms, principles and rules that restrain the predominance of the unconscious in the behavior of the individual, which can lead to dissatisfaction and mental disorder. Thus, according to Freud, instincts obey the principle of entropy, according to which any energy system strives to maintain dynamic balance, i.e. energy does not disappear anywhere, but simply passes into its other forms, as a result, you can get a manifestation of aggression in exchange for a rejected feeling of love .

Freud introduced three levels into the personality structure: Id ("It"), Ego ("I") and Superego ("Super I").

Upper - Id ("It") - this environment is completely unconscious, means the primitive, instinctive and innate aspects of the personality and expresses the immediate discharge of psychic energy produced by especially sexual and aggressive urges.

Medium - Ego ("I") - is a component of the mental apparatus responsible for making decisions. This is the "executive" organ of the personality and the area of ​​intellectual processes.

Lower - Superego ("Super Self") - these are internalized social norms and standards of behavior obtained in the process of "socialization". The superego tries to completely inhibit any socially condemned impulses, and the sides of the id try to direct a person to absolute perfection in thoughts, words and deeds. (See: Encyclopedic Sociological Dictionary. - M., 1995. - P. 614).

There are other concepts of personality. Thus, the behavioral (behavioristic) concept proposed by B. Skinner and J. Homans considers personality as a system of reactions to various stimuli.

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1. The concept of sociology of the French thinkerE. Durkheim

At the end of the 19th century, the influence of Comte's positivism noticeably increased in various areas of the spiritual culture of France. The idea of ​​sociology as an independent science that could develop the foundations for the scientific reorganization of society gradually began to find support in the circles of social reformers.

In Durkheim's understanding, sociology is the study of mainly social facts, as well as their scientific explanation. The scientist sought to prove that sociology can and should exist as an objective science, the subject of which is social reality, which has special qualities inherent only in it. The elements of this social reality, according to Durkheim, are social facts, the totality of which makes up society. The sociologist gives the following definition: “A social fact is any mode of action, established or not, capable of exerting external coercion on an individual.”

In order to single out and consider sociology as a special science, according to Durkheim, at least two conditions must be met: a) it must have a special subject that differs from the subjects of other sciences; b) this subject must be accessible to observation and give in to explanation in the same way as and insofar as the facts that other sciences deal with are observable and explainable.

From this peculiar double "sociological imperative" follow two famous formulas of Durkheim's doctrine: social facts must be considered as things; these facts have such a basic distinguishing feature as a coercive effect on the individual.

Speaking of social facts, Durkheim distinguishes two groups. On the one hand, these are morphological facts that act as forms of social being. On the other hand, he speaks about the facts of collective consciousness, i.e. collective ideas, which are the essence of morality, religion, law.

Sociology appears in Durkheim as a complex structural formation, including three main parts: social morphology, social physiology and general sociology. The task of the first is to study the structure of society and its material form (the social organization of peoples, the geographical basis of their life, population, its distribution over territories, etc.). The second task is characterized as the study of specific manifestations of social life (religion, morality, law, economics, etc.). As for the third - general sociology, then, according to Durkheim's plan, it should establish, reveal the most general laws of the life of society and synthesize them into a single whole.

In the concept of the French scientist, a special place is occupied by the question of the relationship of sociology with other social sciences, primarily with philosophy. Sociology occupies a central place in his system, since it equips all other social sciences with a method and theory on the basis of which research can and should be conducted in various areas of social life. The task of sociology is to unite representatives of various social and humanitarian disciplines with the help of a common point of view on the nature of social facts, matching criteria for their assessment, and a single research method. Only in this case, sociology will cease to be an abstract, metaphysical science, and other social disciplines will become peculiar branches, sections of sociological knowledge that study collective ideas in their specific form - moral, religious, economic, legal, etc.

In the question of the relationship between sociology and other social sciences, its relationship with philosophy is of particular importance. Durkheim proceeds from the fact that the influence of sociology on philosophy should be no less than that of philosophy on sociology. This influence has a purely positive direction, since it is aimed at freeing philosophy from its speculative and speculative nature and giving it certain specifics, i.e. the quality that is inherent in sociology as a science. However, it is impossible not to discover another requirement of the French scientist - about the separation of sociology from philosophy and giving it the status of a completely independent science.

The central methodological place in his work is occupied by the theory of society, called "sociologism". Two main propositions characterize Durkheim's "sociologism". First, it is the primacy of the public over the individual. Society is seen as a richer and more meaningful reality than the individual. It acts as a factor determining human activity, and social facts in this approach should "be" outside their individual manifestations.

The concept of society was so significant for Durkheim that he literally deified it - not only figuratively, but also in the literal sense of the word.

He called society God, used the concepts of God and society as synonyms in order to establish, instead of decrepit religious ideas, new ones, supposedly meeting the criteria of rationality and secularism. On the one hand, Durkheim emphasized the sacredness of society, endowing it with the features of spirituality, on the other hand, he emphasized the earthly, social roots of religion. Durkheim wanted to express the idea of ​​the moral superiority of society over individuals. But by doing so, he painted it in traditional religious colors.

In accordance with the interpretation of the relationship between the social and the individual, Durkheim made a clear distinction between the collective and individual consciousness. “The totality of beliefs and feelings common in it to members of the same society,” he wrote, “forms a certain system that has its own life; it can be called collective or common consciousness.” Collective, or general, consciousness he called the mental type of society and considered the conditions of its existence and the way of development, irreducible to the material basis. To designate emotionally colored beliefs and ideas, Durkheim coined the term "collective representations". In an effort to express the dynamic aspect of the collective consciousness, its spontaneous unregulated nature, he introduced the term "collective representations" to refer to emotionally colored common ideas and beliefs.

The second main position of "sociologism" is formulated as the principle of an objective scientific approach to social facts, associated with the requirement to explain some of them by others, but not to reduce them to biological or psychological phenomena and processes. In this sense, one can speak of Durkheim's critique of biological and psychological reductionism.

The main features of a social fact are their independent, objective existence and their coercive character, i.e. the ability to exert external pressure on an individual, these are collective ideas or facts of collective consciousness. Durkheim contrasted the latter with facts that he understood as forms of social being or the so-called social morphology, which studies the structure and form of individual "material" parts of society, its "anatomical structure".

The facts of a morphological order, along with collective representations, Durkheim called the “internal social environment”, emphasizing the ability of collective consciousness to produce other social facts and even create a society, the sociologist gave it a self-sufficient autonomous character, never raising the question of the boundaries of this autonomy or its relative nature. The concept of the “material substratum” of society that he used was embodied in ecological, demographic and technological material.

The first rule, which, according to Durkheim, was supposed to provide an objective approach to social reality, was expressed in principle: "Social facts must be considered as things."

To interpret social phenomena as "things," the sociologist explained, means to recognize their existence independent of the subject and to investigate them objectively, as the natural sciences investigate their subject. The goal of sociological science is not reduced to the description and ordering of social facts through observable objective manifestations. With the help of the latter, deeper causal relationships and laws are established. The presence of law in the social world testifies to the scientific nature of sociology, which reveals this law, to its relationship with other sciences.

2. Concepts of German classical sociology.

2.1 Byunderstanding sociologyM. Weber

sociological weber durkheim tennis

M. Weber (1864-1920) organically continues the great traditions of German philosophy. M. Weber defines his sociology as understanding. The idea of ​​the German sociologist is that when explaining the phenomena of nature, people resort to judgments confirmed by human experience in order to have the feeling that they understand them. Here, understanding is achieved through the definition of concepts and the establishment of links between them, so to speak, "indirectly" way. Moreover, these natural phenomena themselves, as such, have no meaning.

Another thing is human behavior. Here the understanding is immediate: the professor understands the behavior of students listening to lectures; the passenger understands why the taxi driver does not run a red light. Human behavior, in contrast to the "behavior" of nature, is an outwardly manifested meaningfulness associated with the fact that people are endowed with reason. Social behavior (social action) contains a meaningful structure that sociological science is able to understand and explore.

The principle of understanding turns out to be the criterion by which the sphere that is important for the sociologist is separated from that which cannot be the subject of his research. The sociologist understands the behavior of the individual, but not the "behavior" of the cell. Equally, according to Weber, the sociologist does not understand the "actions" of the people or the national economy, although he may well understand the actions of the individuals who make up the people. In other words, the possibilities of sociological understanding are limited to the actions and behavior of individuals.

We are talking about the fact that Weber proclaims that the specific object of understanding sociology is not the internal state or external attitude of a person as such, taken in itself, but his action. Action, on the other hand, is always an understandable (or understood) attitude towards certain objects, an attitude that is characterized by the fact that it presupposes the presence of a certain subjective meaning.

Revealing the main features of understanding sociology, Weber dwells on three of them, which characterize the presence of explainable human behavior and the meaning attached to it.

Understanding in its purest form takes place where there is purposeful rational action. In a goal-oriented action, for Weber, the meaning of the action and the actor himself coincide: to understand the meaning of the action means, in this case, to understand the acting individual, and to understand him means to understand the meaning of his act. Such a coincidence Weber considered an ideal case, from which sociology as a science should start. In Weber's understanding sociology, the problem of value and evaluation occupies an important place. In this matter, neo-Kantians, primarily G. Rickert, had a significant influence on him. Weber distinguishes between two acts - attribution to value and evaluation. Evaluation has a subjective nature, while value turns our individual opinion into an objective and generally valid judgment. Science, according to Weber, should be free from value judgments. But does this mean that a sociologist (or any other scientist) should generally abandon his own assessments and judgments? No, it does not, but they should not "intrude" into his own scientific analysis, and he can express them only as a private person (but not as a scientist).

From here, Weber had the concept of value as the interest of the era. Delimiting the value judgment and reference to value, Weber had in mind that the first is a subjective statement of the moral or life order, while the second is the content of objective science. In this distinction, one can see the difference between political and scientific activities and, at the same time, the commonality of interests of a politician and a scientist. On an individual-personal level, within the framework of his own life destiny, Weber wanted to be a scientist, but at the same time he aspired to political activity.

Since the nodal category of understanding sociology is understanding, Weber's treatment of it is of interest. It distinguishes direct understanding and explanatory understanding. The first means a rational direct understanding of thoughts and the intended meaning of the action. We directly understand the action of a woodcutter chopping wood, or a hunter aiming to shoot an animal. Explanatory understanding means revealing the motivational meaning of actions. We understand the actions of someone who is chopping wood or aiming before a shot, not only directly, but also motivationally, explaining why a person does this and not that, does this and not otherwise, etc.

Interpreted in this way understanding, according to Weber, means interpretive comprehension: a) actually assumed in individual cases (if we are talking about a historical analysis of events); b) alleged, bribes in the average and approximate meaning (if we are talking about the sociological consideration of mass phenomena); c) meaning or semantic connection in a scientifically constructed pure type of some frequently repeated phenomenon.

In essence, M. Weber laid the foundation for modern sociology. Sociology must strive above all to understand not just human behavior, but its meaning. A sociologist is called upon to understand the meaning of human actions and what meaning a person himself attaches to his actions, what purpose and meaning he puts into them.

2.2 Processes and FormsinteractionsG. Simmel

G. Simmel's sociology is usually called formal. Formal sociology studies and classifies forms - universal ways of embodying historically changeable contents. The identification of pure forms, separated from content, is followed by their ordering, systematization and psychological description in historical time. Simmel emphasizes that the form (as matter) cannot be lost, only its only possibility of realization can be lost. Formal sociology singles out pure forms from the totality of social phenomena.

Thus, the main thing in his work was the concept of form, although he realized that it arises on the basis of the content associated with it, which, however, cannot exist without form. For Simmel, the form acted as a universal way of embodying and realizing the content, which was historically conditioned motives, goals, motivations of human interactions.

The problem of the relationship between form and content could not but excite him. He well understood their dialectics, the special role of form in it, when it is capable of breaking the isolation of parts of the whole. In a number of cases, he opposes form to content, while in others he sees a close connection between them, each time resorting to comparison with geometric forms in connection with their contradictions, their correspondence to certain bodies, which can be considered as holding these forms.

One of the basic concepts in Simmel's sociological theory was the concept of interaction. His German sociologist considered the main "cell" of society. He wrote that “society in general is the interaction of individuals. Interaction is always formed as a result of certain inclinations or for the sake of certain goals. Erotic instincts, business interest, religious impulses, defense or attack, play or entrepreneurship, the desire to help, learn, as well as many other motives induce a person to work for another, to combine and harmonize internal states, i.e. to the production of influences and, in turn, their perception. These mutual influences mean that a unity, a "society" is formed from individual carriers of stimulating impulses and goals.

Emphasizing the key role of interaction in Simmel's sociological concept, suffice it to say that the central category of sociology - society - was considered by him as a set of interactions of form and content. In this regard, the following position of the sociologist, which has become, in essence, a textbook, is of great importance: "Society", in whatever sense this word is now used, becomes a society, obviously, only thanks to the indicated types of interaction. A certain number of people form a society not because in each of them lives some concretely defined or individually driven life content; only if the vitality of these contents takes the form of mutual influences, if one of them affects the other - directly or through a third - a society is born from a purely spatial neighborhood or a temporary change of people.

There are two main meanings of the concept of society. Firstly, society, as the sociologist emphasizes, is a "complex of socialized personalities", "social-formed human material". Secondly, it is the sum of those forms of relations due to which a society in the above sense of the word is formed from individuals. Society is continuously generated by interaction. Individuals unite in society, i.e. "socialized". Thus, the term "society" of the German sociologist is closely related to another key term - "socialization".

The task of sociology as a science is to study the various forms of socialization, to classify and analyze the forms of social life. If there is a science whose subject is society, and nothing else - and there is such, he believes, and this science is called sociology - then its only goal can only be the study of interactions, types and forms of socialization. The subject of sociology should be the study of the forms of social life, not its content. According to Simmel, social content does not require special sociological consideration, because it is the subject of attention of many social sciences. They are not engaged in the study of social forms. Since sociology arose later than most of these sciences, it was left (and inherited) precisely this subject field.

Socialization as a process is characterized by a number of features. One of them is the number of participants. Socialization is possible if two or more individuals participate in the interaction, if they relate to each other in an appropriate way. Another sign of socialization is that it requires its localization in a certain space.

The analysis of the processes of socialization should lead, according to Simmel, to the isolation of factors that are not observable in their pure form in social phenomena. These "pure forms of socialization" become the subject of sociology. The German scientist noted that the sociological method singles out the moment of socialization from social phenomena in the same way that grammar separates the pure forms of language from the content in which these forms live, sociology must not only identify these pure forms, but also systematize them, give their psychological justification and description. in historical change and development. This is how sociology becomes an understanding sociology.

Simmel considered understanding sociology as a sociological theory of knowledge, as a theory of historical understanding.

The German researcher distinguished between general and pure or formal sociology. By general sociology he understood the application of the sociological method in various social sciences. As for formal sociology, it was seen as a description and systematization of pure forms of socialization. In addition, Simmel included the sociological theory of knowledge and social philosophy (he called it social metaphysics) in the system of sociological knowledge.

Being a prominent representative of formal sociology, G. Simmel in a number of works concretize his doctrine of society with the help of classifications of social forms and their detailed consideration. He gives examples of such a classification and analysis in Sociology. Researchers of the work of the German sociologist note that one of them includes social processes, social types and models of development.

Simmel refers to social processes subordination, domination, reconciliation, competition, etc. The second category of social forms covers social types, meaning the systematization of some essential characteristic qualities of a person that do not depend on interactions between people (aristocrat, poor man, cynic, coquette, merchant, woman, alien, bourgeois, etc.). The third group of social forms includes models of development and characterizes social differentiation, the relationship between the group and the individual. Simmel writes that the strengthening of individuality leads to the degradation of the group (the smaller the group, the less individual its members are and, conversely, with the increase in the group, its members become more dissimilar to each other).

Simmel defines sociology as the science of society: it explores the forms of social reality that are a universal way of embodying historically changing contents. The latter is considered by him as historically conditioned goals, motives, motivations of human interactions. In the totality of interactions between the form and the content that fills it, society is realized.

2.3 Social forms and their evolutionF. Tennis

A significant contribution to the development of Western sociology of the classical period was made by one of the founders of professional sociology in Germany, the founder and first president of the German Sociological Society, Professor Ferdinand Tennis.

Sociology, according to Tennis, studies the differences in relationships between people. The main type (or form) of differences is characterized by the presence or absence of connectedness between people.

Tennis says that sociology as a special science has its own specific subjects. These are "things" that take place only in social life. “They,” the sociologist writes, “are products of human thinking and exist only for human thinking, but primarily for the thinking of the socially connected people themselves. This "connectedness" of people (ie various forms of social connections between them) is studied by sociology.

Essentially, it is about the study of interdependence and human interaction. As the simplest case of social bonding, Tennis analyzes exchange.

But, of course, social connections are not limited to exchange. They are much more diverse, and their types and forms form the basis of the sociological concept of Tennis. He compares (and, to a certain extent, opposes) two types of connections and the corresponding types of society. He defines the first type of social ties as communal (general), the second - as public. Community (general) ties are determined by such psychological characteristics as spiritual intimacy, the inclination of people to each other, the presence of emotions, affection, personal experiences. Public relations have the characteristics of a rational plan: exchange, trade, choice. The first type of relations is characteristic mainly of patriarchal-feudal societies, the second - of capitalist ones. Community (general) relations include tribal relations, relations of neighborhood and friendship. Social relations have a material nature and are built within the framework of the principles and structures of rationality.

These two series of connections are communal (general) and public. In a community (community), the social whole logically precedes the parts in society, on the contrary, the social whole is made up of parts. The difference between the community (community) and society is the difference between the organic and mechanical connection (solidarity) of the parts that make up the social whole. In the sociological concept of Tennis, two types of relationships, respectively, two types of organization of social life are closely connected with two types of will - natural, instinctive and rational, rational. The first type of will is the foundation of communal (general) ties, the second - public ties. The German sociologist paid great attention to the problem of volition. Social cohesion between people is based on the fact that the will of one influences the will of another, either by stimulating or fettering it.

Community and society appear in Tennis as the main criteria for classifying social forms. The forms of social life themselves are subdivided by the sociologist into three types: a) social relations; b) groups, aggregates; c) corporations, or associations, unions, associations, partnerships. These types of forms of social life are characterized by historians of sociology as one of the very first attempts to consider the social structure of society.

Social relations are objective. Tennis emphasizes that one should distinguish between social relations of a comradely type, social relations of the type of domination and mixed relations. Each of these types of relations takes place both in the organization of the community and in the social organization.

The totality of social relations between more than two participants is a "social circle". This is the stage of transition from social relations to a group or aggregate. The totality is the second concept of form (after social relations); “The essence of the social totality lies in the fact that the natural and mental relations that form its foundation are consciously accepted, and therefore they are consciously wanted. This phenomenon is observed everywhere where folk life takes place, in diverse forms of communities, for example, in language, way of life and customs, religion and superstitions ... ". A group (set) is formed when the association of individuals is considered by him as necessary to achieve some specific goal.

The third form considered by the scientist is the corporation. It arises when the social form has an internal organization, i.e. certain individuals perform certain functions in it. "Her (corporation) , - writes the sociologist, “the distinguishing feature is the capacity for unified volition and action—a capacity that is most clearly represented in the capacity for decision making…”. A corporation can arise from natural relationships (Tennis cites blood ties as an example), from a common relationship to the land, from living together and interacting both in the countryside and in the city. In relation to a corporation, the same procedure for considering human relations according to the criterion of "partnership - domination" takes place, followed by the division of types of social relations into community (community) and public.

Based on the differences in social forms, Tennis argues that as they develop from the original basis of common life, individualism arises, which is the harbinger of the transition from community to society. One of the options for describing such a transition, associated with the emergence of individualism, is as follows: “... not just social life is decreasing, but communal social life - it develops, acquires more and more power, and, finally, another, new interaction that comes from the needs , interests, desires, decisions of acting personalities. Such are the conditions of "civil society" as a radical form of diverse phenomena that are embraced by the sociological concept of society and are boundless, cosmopolitan and socialist in their tendency. This society - essentially a capitalist society - is a collection of families and individuals of a predominantly economic nature.

The doctrine of social forms is the subject of pure, or theoretical, sociology. He distinguished between pure (theoretical), applied and empirical sociology. The first analyzes society in a state of statics, the second - dynamics, the third explores the facts of life in modern society on the basis of statistical data. Therefore, empirical sociology was called by him sociography.

Tennis himself conducted empirical (sociographic) research on crime, suicide, industrial development, demographic changes, the activities of political parties, etc. As can be seen, the range of interests of the German sociologist in empirical problems was quite wide. And some of his studies were very scrupulous.

3. American sociological thought inachal20th century

On the development of sociological thought in the early twentieth century. The Chicago School played a huge role. It was the first institutional academic school in North American sociology. In fact, during the first third of the 20th century, the Chicago School was basically the sociology of the United States.

The school arose from the first department of sociology in the United States, organized since the creation of the new University of Chicago in 1892.

The American researcher Lester Kurtz identifies three generations in the development of the Chicago School of Sociology. First generation covers the period of development from the founding of the school to the first world war.

The founder and first dean of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago was Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926), who was the first professor of sociology in the United States.

In 1825 he founded the American Journal of Sociology and was its editor for three decades. As far as Small's view is concerned, the basic raw material of the social process is for him the activity of the group. Group activity is based on elementary human interests, and the inevitable conflict of these interests gives dynamics to the social process. At the same time, he believed that conflicts could be resolved and anarchies avoided if they were carried out under the authoritative control of the state, which adjudicated on group antagonisms.

In 1893, Small proposed an extended scheme of human interests arising in comparable forms of group manifestations. In developing this scheme, he also used the ideas of Gustav Ratzenhofer, an Austrian social Darwinist, in it.

It was the first generation of the Chicago school - Small, Vincent, Thomas, Henderson - who approved liberalism as the main socio-philosophical doctrine of the sociological school. Liberalism is understood in the United States as an ideological orientation based on the belief in the importance of the freedom and well-being of the individual, as well as on the belief in the possibility of social progress and improving the quality of life through changes and innovations in the social organization of society.

The five-volume work of this period of the Chicago School, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, published by William Isaac Thomas and Florian Witold Znaniecki, entered the world sociological classics.

William Thomas formulated the concept of the social situation, which he divided into three major components: 1) the objective conditions embedded in existing social theories and values; 2) attitudes of the individual and the social group; 3) the formulation of the essence of the situation by the acting individual.

In joint work with Znaniecki, Thomas studied in detail the system of social attitudes and showed that conflicts and social disintegration necessarily arise in cases where individual definitions of a situation by a person do not coincide with group values.

As a representative of the psychological direction in sociology, Thomas singled out four groups of human motivating desires that play a leading role in determining his behavior: the need for new experience, security, stability in his lifestyle, the need for recognition from the environment and the thirst for dominance over his environment. He associated the individual configuration of these desires with the innate characteristics of a person, primarily with his temperament.

One of the most significant innovations in The Polish Peasant is the typology of personalities in terms of their predominant mechanisms of social adaptation.

The petty-bourgeois type is characterized by the traditional nature of its attitudes; bohemian is distinguished by unstable and little connected attitudes with a general high degree of adaptation; the creative type is the most significant, although frivolous, for the fate of social progress, since only this type of personality is capable of generating inventions and innovations.

In the work of W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki, the method of studying personal documents was actively used. Data from Polish archives, press materials, documents from American social migration agencies, and so-called "deep" interviews were also intensively used.

By analyzing letters and diaries, Thomas and Znaniecki discovered many motivational and behavioral responses to the social environment; reactions reflecting the emotional and event side of individual adaptation. Scientists came to the conclusion that society is a universal series of social characters: Philistine - bourgeois, Bohemian - bohemian, creative - active, or creative.

These three characters carry a single mechanism of adaptation, represented by steps: 1) Determination of character by innate temperament. The construction of the organization of personal life, which completes the process of objectification of the various relationships that give character; 2) Adaptation of character to the requirements of society and the immediate environment; 3) Adaptation of the individual life organization to a specific social organization.

After analyzing the process of personal adaptation, Znaniecki and Thomas came to a fundamental conclusion for sociologists: social evolution, on the one hand, tames the process, on the other hand, it requires a person to have more individualized reactions of consciousness and behavior. It is in historical dictate that the reason for the formation and rule of social characters lies.

The first type of character - Philistine unites people who are oriented in consciousness and behavior towards stability. Their psyche hardly perceives the requirements of a changing situation. The life of the Philistine is connected with traditional situations, and he is formed as a conformist. However, he shows the ability to resist, the pressure of changes in the external environment.

Bohemian is characterized by spontaneity of behavioral reactions. People of this type are not capable of forming stable patterns of behavior. As Znaniecki and Thomas noted, the bohemian tends to demonstrate a certain degree of adaptability to new conditions, but it does not lead him to a new holistic model of life organization. The historical roots of this character are generated by the transitional state of society, in which no permanent social guidelines have had time to develop.

The third type - the creative one - is the most socially effective character, since he builds his life on the basis of a tendency to modification and diversity, while following his own goals. He constantly expands his control over the social environment and adapts his desires to it, i.e. adaptation goes through a different mechanism - the mechanism of vigorous activity. Creative people form the dynamic core of social systems. Although they are a minority in any society, their activities are the most productive.

Thus, all types of social character are the result of an alloy of temperament and socio-historical conditions for the formation of personalities.

Already in the early works of Znaniecki, the problem of values, the key problem of philosophical discussions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was in the center of attention. It was the values ​​that became the basis for drawing the dividing line between the world of nature and the world of culture. For authors, any item that has identifiable content and meaning for members of a social group is of value. Attitudes are the subjective orientation of group members towards values.

Znaniecki proceeds from the fact that values ​​are not subjective by nature, they really exist, like natural things, which means that the sciences of culture have the same right to exist as the sciences of nature. Znaniecki connects the right to existence of any science with the study of a certain aspect of reality, i.e. with the corresponding subject, which acts as a relatively closed system. Each of these systems consists of a limited and theoretically observable number of elements, and also has a specific internal structure. The empirical reality itself, according to Znanetsky, is presented in the form of an inexhaustible variety of facts, and only as a result of the study is the method of their connection into a certain structure and system revealed.

Znaniecki distinguished four types of basic social systems that form the basic concepts of sociology: a) social actions; b) social relations; c) social personalities; d) social groups

Among the basic concepts of sociology, the category of social actions has been developed in the most detailed way. Znaniecki devotes his fundamental work "Social Action" to her. He refers to the category of social action only those individual and collective human actions that other human individuals have as their main value. These human actions aim to bring about certain changes in these core values ​​(social objects).

The main ideas of Znaniecki related to the interpretation of social actions have become firmly established in the foundation of modern sociological theory. F. Znanetsky conducted a detailed analysis and gave a classification of possible types of social action. He divides all kinds of social action into two categories: adaptations and oppositions. The first includes those actions that cause the desired behavior of individuals or groups without threatening any of the values ​​or capabilities of the partner, the second - those that are associated with threats and repression.

According to Znaniecki, in its own categorical definition, social action does not confront human individuals or collectives as psychobiological realities. In this regard, people - the objects of social action - are called social values ​​in order to distinguish them from aesthetic, technical, economic and other values. And it is social action that acts as the central subject of sociological research.

Znaniecki's other main category is the social personality system. A social personality is created in a certain environment and reproduces the already created models, which express the real system of rights and obligations, and is a social value within the framework of social relations and interactions.

As one of the types of social systems, Znaniecki also considers a social group in which a person performs the appropriate roles, occupies a particular position, and also has the corresponding rights and obligations. The social life of an individual is not limited to the framework of a separate social group, just as a huge number of social actions of a person are not limited to one social group, of which he is a member.

Unlike, for example, Durkheim, Znaniecki does not make the individual's behavior strictly dependent on the group, does not accept the unilinear determination of the individual by the group. The relationship between a social group and an individual is considered by him in the perspective of a middle path between sociological holism and individualism. His theory of social groups as a cultural system has as its foundation a well-known methodological principle - the humanistic (human) coefficient. The introduction of this coefficient is due to the fact that each group, like a social personality, has the character of a social value, i.e., being an object, it is also a subject.

His sociological concept is opposed to Durkheim's sociology, which neglects the role of the individual in the social process, as well as Simmel's formal sociology. Based on his views, sociology should not follow either the path of speculative search, or the path of bare empiricism, or the path of extreme holism, or the path of extreme individualism, but seek a middle path between extreme methodological positions.

Emphasizing the role of the subject, taking into account the "humanistic coefficient" in the structure of social systems, Znaniecki at the same time considered sociology to be nomothetic, i.e. formulating laws based on the inductive method of data collection. Thus, his sociology is based on empirical social reality, on which alone theoretical generalizations and the construction of a sociological theory are possible.

In full between the First World War and the mid-1930s, the leaders of the Chicago School, Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, showed themselves. The main problems of their work are various aspects of urbanization, the sociology of the family, and social disorganization. The book An Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921) written by Park and Burgess, which for a long time was the main textbook for students of sociology at US universities, gained great fame. It is considered fundamental to the formation of modern empirical sociology.

Robert Ezra Park is considered the ideological creator of the Chicago School. His works “The Immigrant Press and Its Control” (1922), “The City” (1925) are widely known, in which various aspects of the influence of the social environment on human life are analyzed, and biological and economic factors of human life are also considered.

Among the important sociological concepts first introduced by Park, one should especially note the concept of social distance, as an indicator of the degree of closeness or alienation of individuals or social groups, as well as the concept of a marginal personality, which characterizes an individual located in a social structure at the junction of social groups or on their periphery.

Much attention is paid to the development and use of various methods of empirical research. The attitudes and value orientations (attitudes) of various social groups are studied. For this, the survey method is used - both oral (interview) and written (questionnaire), and the method itself is worked out in detail. For the first time, the problems of its advantages and disadvantages are raised.

One of the main achievements of the Chicago School was work in the field of social ecology (closely related to the study of the city). The social ecology of the Chicago School is sometimes called the theory of social change, the foundations of which were formulated by Park. It is about the fact that society must be considered as an organism subject to evolution. The latter is a movement from one order to another, higher one. The Park names four of these orders: ecological (spatial-territorial), economic, political, socio-cultural.

The condition for the survival and development of society is to maintain, first of all, the ecological, or territorial, order. It is a consequence of the spatial, physical interaction of individuals. On its basis, an economic order arises, which is the result of production, trade and exchange. On the basis of the achieved economic order, a political order appears, which can be implemented with the help of political means, control and regulation of behavior. Finally, the most informal type of order in society is the socio-cultural order, which is most often influenced by traditions.

At the heart of every kind of order, Park argues, is a special kind of social interaction that allows people to move from conflict to agreement.

There are also specific scientific research carried out under the direct supervision of Burgess. These studies were carried out in Chicago itself using, as mentioned above, methods, primarily the method of social mapping. A number of social maps of Chicago were developed - leisure places (dance floors, cinemas, theaters, etc.), locations of certain ethnic communities (Italians, Germans, blacks, mulattoes, Chinese, etc.). Moreover, students were engaged in compiling such places (mapping). This made it possible, within the framework of the "City as a Social Laboratory" program, to determine and present in a manual, systematized form a certain structure of the city.

Considerable interest is observed in relation to the use of qualitative non-formalized research methods, which is most characteristic of Burgess's work. In general, he was one of the first in sociology to use the case study method, aimed at a comprehensive description and explanation of a particular social fact (case). Sometimes this method is called monographic.

The work of Park and Burgess had a great influence on small-town exploration, in particular, carried out outside the Chicago School by the couple Helen and Robert Lind. As classic as many of the Chicago School, these works explored community life and social inequality in a small American city. The impetus for the above-mentioned works of the Linds was Park's study of the problems of blacks in America and, in general, racial relations.

The characterization of the Chicago School will be incomplete if one does not touch, at least briefly, on the views of two of its well-known representatives, W. Ogborn and L. Wirth. They also did a lot of successful study of the American city. Ogborn, in contrast to the leaders of the school, Park and Burgess, who sought to organically combine quantitative and qualitative methods of urban research, insisted on the need for only the former. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the statistical methodology of the study received the most noticeable expression in his works.

One of Ogborn's major works is "Social Change". In it, he outlined his theory of cultural lag, or, as it is sometimes called, cultural lag. Its essence lies in the fact that changes in material culture occur, as a rule, faster. and more active than transformations in non-material (adaptive) culture. This means that developing technology, which primarily affects the state of material culture, determines all other social changes. He became one of the first representatives of technological determinism in sociology. However, the cultural lag theory was criticized in the literature of that time and caused discussions for opposing two types of cultures - material and non-material.

If Ogborn's theory was not rigidly connected with the study of the city, then Wirth's concept was the most urbanistic and concerned the development of a theory of urban lifestyle. He was the first in sociology to introduce the concept of "urban lifestyle", which he contrasted with the rural one.

Within the framework of the Chicago school, the prerequisites were created for the emergence of the urban concept of Louis Wirth, who developed the concept of the urban lifestyle. In his concept, Wirth linked together the characteristics of the spatial and social organization of a large city (large population, high concentration, social heterogeneity of the population) with the characteristics of a special urban personality type that is formed under these conditions. According to Wirth, the size, density and heterogeneity of the population is characterized by: the predominance of anonymous, businesslike, short-term, partial and superficial contacts in interpersonal communication; a decrease in the importance of territorial communities; the diminishing role of the family; variety of cultural stereotypes; the instability of the social status of the city dweller, the increase in his social mobility; weakening the influence of traditions in regulating the behavior of the individual .

Withlist of used literature

1. Zborovsky, G.E. History of sociology: textbook / G.E. Zborowski. - M.: Gardariki, 2007. - 608 p.

2. History of sociology in Western Europe and the USA. Textbook for high schools. Managing editor - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences G.V. Osipov. - M.: Publishing group NORMA - INFRA. - M., 1999. - 576 p.

3. History of sociology. XIX-XX centuries: in 2 hours. Part 1. Western sociology: textbook. allowance for students studying in the direction 540400 “Social-econ. education” / A.V. Vorontsov, I.D. Gromov. - M.: Humanitarian, ed. Center VLADOS, 2005. - 423 p.

4. History of sociology: Proc. Manual / Elsukov A.N., Babosov E.M., Gritsanov A.A. and etc.; Under total ed. A.N. Elsukova and others - Minsk: Higher. school, 1993. - 319 p.

5. Kapitonov E.A. History and theory of sociology. Textbook for universities - M .: "Publishing house PRIOR", 2000. - 368 p.

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