The existence of people in society is characterized by various forms of life and communication. Everything that is created in society is the result of an aggregate joint activities many generations of people. Actually, society itself is a product of the interaction of people, it exists only where and when people are connected with each other by common interests. In philosophical science, many definitions of the concept of "society" are offered. In a narrow sense, society can be understood as a certain group of people united for communication and joint performance of any activity, as well as a specific stage in the historical development of a people or country. In a broad sense, society is a part of the material world isolated from nature, but closely related to it, which consists of individuals with will and consciousness, and includes ways of interacting people and forms of their unification. In philosophical science, society is characterized as a dynamic self-developing system, i.e., such a system that is capable of seriously changing, at the same time retaining its essence and qualitative certainty. The system is understood as a complex of interacting elements. In turn, an element is some further indecomposable component of the system that is directly involved in its creation. To analyze complex systems, like the one that society represents, scientists have developed the concept of "subsystem". Subsystems are called "intermediate" complexes, more complex than the elements, but less complex than the system itself. It is customary to consider the spheres of social life as subsystems of society, they are usually distinguished by four: 1) economic, the elements of which are material production and relations that arise between people in the process of production of material goods, their exchange and distribution; 2) social, consisting of such structural formations as classes, social strata, nations, taken in their relationship and interaction with each other; 3) political, including politics, the state, law, their correlation and functioning; 4) spiritual, covering various forms and levels of social consciousness, which, being embodied in the real process of the life of society, form what is commonly called spiritual culture. Each of these spheres, being an element of the system called "society", in turn, turns out to be a system in relation to the elements that make it up. All four spheres of social life are not only interconnected, but also mutually condition each other. The division of society into spheres is somewhat arbitrary, but it helps to isolate and study certain areas of a truly integral society, a diverse and complex social life. Sociologists offer several classifications of society. Societies are: a) pre-literate and written; b) simple and complex (the criterion in this typology is the number of levels of management of a society, as well as the degree of its differentiation: in simple societies there are no leaders and subordinates, rich and poor, and in complex societies there are several levels of management and several social strata of the population, arranged from top to bottom in descending order of income); c) society of primitive hunters and gatherers, traditional (agrarian) society, industrial society and post-industrial society; d) primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society. In Western scientific literature in the 1960s. the division of all societies into traditional and industrial became widespread (at the same time, capitalism and socialism were considered as two varieties of industrial society). The German sociologist F. Tennis, the French sociologist R. Aron, and the American economist W. Rostow made a great contribution to the formation of this concept. The traditional (agrarian) society represented the pre-industrial stage of civilizational development. All societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages were traditional. Their economy was dominated by subsistence agriculture and primitive handicrafts. Extensive technology and hand tools predominated, initially providing economic progress. In his production activities man strives to adapt to environment obeyed the rhythms of nature. Property relations were characterized by the dominance of communal, corporate, conditional, state forms property. Private property was neither sacred nor inviolable. The distribution of material wealth, the product produced depended on the position of a person in the social hierarchy. The social structure traditional society class corporate, stable and motionless. social mobility was virtually absent: a person was born and died, remaining in the same social group. The main social units were the community and the family. Human behavior in society was regulated corporate norms and principles, customs, beliefs, unwritten laws. Providentialism dominated the public consciousness: social reality, human life were perceived as the implementation of divine providence. The spiritual world of a person of a traditional society, his system of value orientations, way of thinking are special and noticeably different from modern ones. Individuality, independence were not encouraged: social group dictated to the individual the norms of behavior. One can even speak of a “group man” who did not analyze his position in the world, and indeed rarely analyzed the phenomena of the surrounding reality. He rather moralizes, evaluates life situations from the standpoint of their social group. The number of educated people was extremely limited ("literacy for the few") oral information prevailed over written information. political sphere traditional society dominated by the church and the army. The person is completely alienated from politics. Power seems to him of greater value than law and law. In general, this society is extremely conservative, stable, immune to innovations and impulses from outside, being a "self-sustaining self-regulating immutability." Changes in it occur spontaneously, slowly, without the conscious intervention of people. The spiritual sphere of human existence is a priority over the economic one. Traditional societies have survived to this day mainly in the countries of the so-called "third world" (Asia, Africa) (therefore, the concept of "non-Western civilizations", which also claims to be well-known sociological generalizations, is often synonymous with "traditional society"). From a Eurocentric point of view, traditional societies are backward, primitive, closed, unfree social organisms, to which Western sociology opposes industrial and post-industrial civilizations. As a result of modernization, understood as a complex, contradictory, complex process of transition from a traditional society to an industrial one, the foundations of a new civilization were laid in the countries of Western Europe. It is called industrial, technogenic, scientific and technical or economic. The economic base of an industrial society is industry based on machine technology. The volume of fixed capital increases, long-term average costs per unit of output decrease. In agriculture, labor productivity rises sharply, natural isolation is destroyed. An extensive economy is replaced by an intensive one, and simple reproduction is replaced by an expanded one. All these processes occur through the implementation of principles and structures. market economy, based on scientific and technological progress. A person is freed from direct dependence on nature, partially subordinates it to himself. Stable the economic growth accompanied by an increase in real per capita income. If the pre-industrial period is filled with the fear of hunger and disease, then the industrial society is characterized by an increase in the well-being of the population. IN social sphere industrial society is also collapsing traditional structures, social partitions. Social mobility is significant. As a result of development Agriculture and industry, the proportion of the peasantry in the population is sharply reduced, urbanization is taking place. New classes appear - the industrial proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the middle strata are strengthened. The aristocracy is in decline. In the spiritual sphere, there is a significant transformation of the value system. The man of the new society is autonomous within the social group, guided by his personal interests. Individualism, rationalism (a person analyzes the world around him and makes decisions on this basis) and utilitarianism (a person acts not in the name of some global goals, but for a certain benefit) are new systems of personality coordinates. There is a secularization of consciousness (liberation from direct dependence on religion). A person in an industrial society strives for self-development, self-improvement. Global changes are also taking place in the political sphere. The role of the state is growing sharply, and a democratic regime is gradually taking shape. Law and law dominate in society, and a person is involved in power relations as an active subject. A number of sociologists somewhat refine the above scheme. From their point of view, the main content of the modernization process is in changing the model (stereotype) of behavior, in the transition from irrational (characteristic of a traditional society) to rational (characteristic of an industrial society) behavior. To economic aspects rational behavior include the development of commodity-money relations, which determines the role of money as a common equivalent of values, the displacement of barter transactions, the wide scope of market transactions, etc. The most important social consequence of modernization is the change in the principle of distribution of roles. Previously, society imposed sanctions on social choice, limiting the possibility of a person occupying certain social positions depending on his belonging to a certain group (origin, pedigree, nationality). After modernization, it is approved rational principle distribution of roles, in which the main and only criterion for taking a particular position is the candidate's preparedness to perform these functions. Thus, industrial civilization opposes traditional society in all directions. The majority of modern industrialized countries (including Russia) are classified as industrial societies. But modernization gave rise to many new contradictions, which eventually turned into global problems(environmental, energy and other crises). Resolving them, progressively developing, some modern societies are approaching the stage of a post-industrial society, the theoretical parameters of which were developed in the 1970s. American sociologists D. Bell, E. Toffler and others. This society is characterized by the promotion of the service sector, the individualization of production and consumption, the increase specific gravity small-scale production with the loss of dominant positions by mass production, the leading role of science, knowledge and information in society. IN social structure post-industrial society, there is an erasure of class differences, and the convergence of income various groups population leads to the elimination of social polarization and the growth of the share of the middle class. The new civilization can be characterized as anthropogenic, in the center of it is man, his individuality. Sometimes it is also called information, which reflects the ever-increasing dependence Everyday life society from information. Transition to a post-industrial society for most countries modern world is a very distant prospect. In the course of his activity, a person enters into various relationships with other people. Such diverse forms of interaction between people, as well as connections that arise between different social groups (or within them), are usually called social relations. All social relations can be conditionally divided into two large groups- material relations and spiritual (or ideal) relations. Their fundamental difference from each other lies in the fact that material relations arise and develop directly in the course of practical activities of a person, outside the consciousness of a person and independently of him, and spiritual relations are formed, preliminary "passing through the consciousness" of people, are determined by their spiritual values. In turn, material relations are divided into production, environmental and office relations; spiritual on moral, political, legal, artistic, philosophical and religious social relations. A special type of social relations are interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relationships are relationships between individuals. At the same time, individuals, as a rule, belong to different social strata, have different cultural and educational levels, but they are united by common needs and interests in the sphere of leisure or everyday life. The famous sociologist Pitirim Sorokin singled out the following types of interpersonal interaction: a) between two individuals (husband and wife, teacher and student, two comrades); b) between three individuals (father, mother, child); c) between four, five or more people (the singer and his listeners); d) between many and many people (members of an unorganized crowd). Interpersonal relations arise and are realized in society and are social relations even if they are in the nature of purely individual communication. They act as a personified form of social relations.

Preliterate.

In ancient times, pictography (pictorial writing) was significantly developed, with the help of which rather complex notes were made. Such records are known among the tribes of Northern Siberia, the American Indians, and in many societies of Melanesia and Tropical Africa. Messages could be recorded, intended both for transmission over a distance (offers of gift-exchange, establishment of peaceful relations, love messages, etc.), and for preservation in time (fixation of important legends and memorable events). There were whole pictographic chronicles, for example, the famous "Walam olum" ("Red Record") of the North American Delaware Indians, who depicted all their historical legends with 184 drawings on tree bark - from the beginning of the universe to the appearance of European colonialists in the country. Among some tribes, peculiar equivalents of pictography developed from counting cords, conveying the idea in the form, color and arrangement of knots (“knot writing”) or shells (“wampum” of North American Indians). But, as before, if not all, then most of the pictographic symbols, and even more so entire pictograms, required oral explanations.

From pre-literacy to writing. The most important achievement of the spiritual culture of primitive mankind was the invention of a means of graphic fixation of speech information - writing. As a rule, the emergence of real, ordered writing occurred through the gradual transformation of pictographic “pre-literacy”, which conveyed only the general meaning of the message, into ideography (writing, the signs of which convey whole words, concepts), in which strictly fixed signs denoted individual words or, as in our puzzles, their significant syllables. Later, more developed syllabic and letter-sound (alphabetic) systems of writing arose from ideography, almost completely losing their original pictorial character. This path was taken by the ancient, so-called hieroglyphic (curly signs denoting whole concepts), writing of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Cretans, Japanese and many other peoples. The ideography was preserved only among the Chinese.

The emergence of orderly writing since the time of Morgan is regarded as a criterion for the transition from primitive to civilization. Indeed, this cultural achievement is closely related to the needs of emerging class societies and developing states in accurate recording of managerial, economic, statistical information, organization of official and business correspondence, recording legal norms and religious rituals, deeds of rulers and other historical events. At the same time, only in the conditions of a pre-class society, if not a class one, could a circle of people involved in writing emerge. In contrast to the publicly available primitive pictography, an extremely complex ideography (for example, the Sumerian writing assumed knowledge of approximately 1000 characters) required a long special education and was inaccessible to the general public. Moreover, the keepers (and, probably, as a rule, the creators) of the ideography-priests at first kept it in strict secrecy and surrounded it with a halo of the supernatural. In many early class societies, writing was the privilege of the priests, who were specialists in scribes, as well as the nobility. However, even in the hands of the elite, it has now become a powerful means of accumulating and transmitting knowledge, a new extremely effective tool for the development of culture.

The first ideographic systems arose in the 4th millennium BC. e. in Sumer and Egypt. They show some similarities with each other and with other ideographic systems of the Old World, especially with the Proto-Indian and the Cretan-Minoan. This gives diffusionist researchers certain grounds for believing that ideography originally arose in one place, most likely in Sumer, and from there it spread to other centers of civilization. However, supporters of the theory of the convergent emergence of writing with even greater reason explain this similarity by the identity of the real objects of the outside world depicted on ideograms, for example, people, parts of the human body, animals. For example, the concept of a bull, reproduced by a schematic representation of its head, was transmitted very similarly in the ideography of the Old World, but also in the developed pictography of America. Apparently, at least in several cultural centers of antiquity - Sumer, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica - ordered writing arose independently along with the folding of classes and the state here, while in other centers it was borrowed by the peoples who entered this threshold from their neighbors. This is indirectly proved by the fact that many peoples are known (in Tropical Africa, in the North Caucasus), which were part of the class society without a written language and already in the conditions of early statehood assimilated the writing systems created by other peoples.

b) simple and complex(the criterion in this typology is the number of levels of management of a society, as well as the degree of its differentiation: in simple societies there are no leaders and subordinates, rich and poor, and in complex societies there are several levels of management and several social strata of the population, located from top to bottom as their descending social role);

in) society of primitive hunters and gatherers, traditional (agrarian) society, industrial society and post-industrial society;

G) primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society:

e) in Western scientific literature in the 1960s. the division of all societies into traditional and industrial(while capitalism and socialism were seen as two varieties of industrial society).

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

The traditional (agrarian) society represented the pre-industrial stage of civilizational development, All societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages were traditional. Their economy was characterized the dominance of rural subsistence farming and primitive handicrafts, Extensive technology and hand tools predominated, initially providing economic progress. In his production activities, man sought to adapt to the environment as much as possible, obeyed the rhythms of nature. Property relations were characterized by the dominance of communal, corporate, conditional, state forms of ownership. Private property was neither sacred nor inviolable. The distribution of material wealth, the product produced depended on the position of a person in the social hierarchy. The social structure of a traditional society is corporate by class, stable and immovable. There was virtually no social mobility: a person was born and died, remaining in the same social group. The main social units were the community and the family. Human behavior in society was regulated by corporate norms and principles, customs, beliefs, unwritten laws. Providentialism dominated the public consciousness: social reality, human life were perceived as the implementation of divine providence. The spiritual world of a person of a traditional society, his system of value orientations, way of thinking is special and noticeably different from the modern one. Individuality, independence were not encouraged: the social group dictated the norms of behavior to the individual. One can even speak of a "group man" who did not analyze his position in the world, and indeed rarely analyzed the phenomena of the surrounding reality. Rather, he moralizes, evaluates life situations from the standpoint of his social group. The number of educated people was extremely limited ("literacy for the few"), oral information prevailed over written information. The political sphere of traditional society is dominated by the church and the army. The person is completely alienated from politics. Power seems to him of greater value than law and law. On the whole, this society is extremely conservative, stable, impervious to innovations and impulses from outside, being a "self-sustaining, self-regulating immutability. Changes in it occur spontaneously, slowly, without conscious human intervention. The spiritual sphere of human existence is priority over the economic one.

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

As a result of modernization, understood as a complex, contradictory, complex process of transition from a traditional society to an industrial one, the foundations of a new civilization were laid in the countries of Western Europe. It is called industrial, technogenic, scientific and technical or economic. The economic base of an industrial society is industry based on machine technology. The volume of fixed capital increases, long-term average costs per unit of output decrease. In agriculture, labor productivity rises sharply, natural isolation is destroyed. An extensive economy is replaced by an intensive one, and simple reproduction is replaced by an expanded one. All these processes occur through the implementation of the principles and structures of a market economy, based on scientific and technological progress. A person is freed from direct dependence on nature, partially subordinates it to himself. Stable economic growth is accompanied by an increase in real per capita income. If the pre-industrial period is filled with the fear of hunger and disease, then the industrial society is characterized by an increase in the well-being of the population. In the social sphere of an industrial society, traditional structures and social barriers are also collapsing. Social mobility is significant. IN As a result of the development of agriculture and industry, the proportion of the peasantry in the composition of the population is sharply reduced, and urbanization is taking place. New classes appear industrial proletariat and bourgeoisie, the middle layers are strengthened. The aristocracy is in decline. In the spiritual sphere, there is a significant transformation of the value system. The man of the new society is autonomous within the social group, guided by his personal interests. Individualism, rationalism (a person analyzes the world around him and makes decisions on this basis) and utilitarianism (a person acts not in the name of some global goals, but for a certain benefit) are new systems of personality coordinates. There is a secularization of consciousness (liberation from direct dependence on religion). A person in an industrial society strives for self-development, self-improvement. Global changes are also taking place in the political sphere. The role of the state is growing sharply, and a democratic regime is gradually taking shape. Law and law prevail in society, and a person is involved in power relations as an active subject.

A number of sociologists somewhat refine the above scheme. From their point of view, the main content of the modernization process is in model change(stereotype)

behavior, in the transition from irrational(characteristic of a traditional society) to rational(peculiar to industrial society) behavior. The economic aspects of rational behavior include the development of commodity-money relations, the determining role of money as a general equivalent of values, the displacement of barter transactions, the wide scope of market transactions, etc. The most important social consequence of modernization is the change in the principle of distribution of roles. Previously, society imposed sanctions on social choice, limiting the possibility of a person occupying certain social positions depending on his belonging to a certain group (origin, pedigree, nationality). After modernization, a rational principle of distribution of roles is approved, in which the main and only criterion for taking a particular position is the candidate's preparedness to perform these functions.

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

But modernization gave rise to many new contradictions, which eventually turned into global problems (environmental, energy and other crises). By resolving them, progressively developing, some modern societies are approaching the stage post Industrial Society, the theoretical parameters of which were developed in the 1970s. American sociologists D. Bell, E. Toffler and others. This society is characterized by the promotion of the service sector, the individualization of production and consumption, an increase in the share of small-scale production with the loss of dominant positions by mass production, the leading role of science, knowledge and information in society. In the social structure of post-industrial society, there is an erasure of class differences, and the convergence of the incomes of various groups of the population leads to the elimination of social polarization and the growth of the proportion of the "middle class". The new civilization can be characterized as anthropogenic, in the center of its - man, his personality. Sometimes it is also called informational, which reflects the ever-increasing dependence of the daily life of society on the means mass media. The transition to a post-industrial society for most countries of the modern world is a very distant prospect.

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

All social relations can be conditionally divided into two large groups - relations material and relationships spiritual (or ideal). Their fundamental difference from each other lies in the fact that material relations arise and develop directly in the course of a person’s practical activity, develop outside the consciousness of a person and independently of him, and spiritual relations are formed beforehand “passing through the consciousness” of people, determined by their spiritual values. In its turn material relations are divided into production relations, environmental relations and office relations; spiritual - on moral, political, legal, artistic, philosophical and religious social relations.

A special type of social relations are interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relationships are relationships between individuals. At the same time, individuals, as a rule, belong to different social strata, have different cultural and educational levels, but they are united by common needs and interests that lie in the leisure or everyday life. The well-known sociologist Pitirim Sorokin singled out the following types of interpersonal interaction:

a) between two individuals (husband and wife, teacher and student, two comrades);

b) between three individuals (father, mother, child);

c) between four, five or more people (the singer and his listeners);

d) between many and many people (between members of an unorganized crowd).

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

Development of views on society

Since ancient times, people have tried to explain the causes of the emergence of society, the driving forces of its development. Initially, such explanations were given by them in the form of myths. Myths are legends of ancient peoples about the origin of the world, about gods, heroes, etc. The collection of myths is called mythology. Along with mythology, religion and philosophy also tried to find their answers to questions about pressing social problems, about the relationship of the universe with its laws and people. It is the philosophical doctrine of society that is the most developed today.

Many of its main provisions were formulated back in the Ancient World, when attempts were first made to substantiate the view of society as a specific form of being that has its own laws. Thus, Aristotle defined society as a collection of human individuals who have come together to satisfy social instincts.

In the Middle Ages, all explanations of social life were based on religious dogmas. The most prominent philosophers of this period - Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas - understood human society as being of a special kind, as a kind of human life activity, the meaning of which is predetermined by God, and which develops in accordance with the will of God.-

In the period of modern times, a number of thinkers who did not share religious views put forward the thesis that society arose and developed in a natural way. They developed the concept of the contractual organization of public life. Its ancestor can be considered the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, who v believed that the state rests on a social, contract that people have entered into to ensure general justice. Later representatives of the contract theory (T. Hobbes, D. Locke, J.-J. Rousseau and others) developed the views of Epicurus, putting forward the idea of ​​so-called "natural rights", that is, such rights that a person receives from birth.

In the same period, philosophers developed the concept "civil society". Civil society was seen as "a system of universal dependence", in which "the subsistence and welfare of a single person and his existence are intertwined with the subsistence and welfare of all, are based on them, and only in this connection are they truly ensured"(Hegel).

In the 19th century, part of the knowledge about society, which gradually accumulated in the depths of philosophy, stood out and began to constitute a separate science of society - sociology. The very concept of "sociology" was introduced into scientific circulation by the French philosopher and sociologist O. Comte. He divided sociology into two main parts: social static And social dynamics. Social statics studies the conditions and laws of functioning of the entire social system as a whole. The same section discusses the main social institutions: the family, the state, religion, the functions they perform in society, as well as their role in establishing social harmony. The subject of study of social dynamics is social progress, the decisive factor of which, according to O. Comte, is the spiritual and mental development of mankind.

A new stage in the development of problems of social development was the materialistic theory of Marxism, according to which society was considered not as a simple sum of individuals, but as the totality of "those connections and relations in which these individuals are to each other." Defining the nature of the process of development of society as natural history, with their own specific social laws, K. Marx and F. Engels developed the doctrine of socio-economic formations, which determines the role of material production in life

society and the decisive role of the masses in social development. They see the source of the development of society in society itself* in the development of its material production, believing that social development is determined by its economic sphere. According to K. Marx and F. Engels, people in the process of joint activity produce the means of life they need - thereby they produce their material life, which is the basis of society, its foundation. Material life, material social relations, which are formed in the process of production of material goods, determine all other forms of human activity - political, spiritual, social, etc. And morality, religion, philosophy are only a reflection of the material life of people.

Human society goes through five socio-economic formations in its development: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist. Under socio-economic formation Marx understood a historically defined type of society, representing a special stage in its development.

The main provisions of the materialistic understanding of the history of human society are as follows:

I* This understanding comes from the decisive, determining role of material production in real life. It is necessary to study the real process of production and the form of communication generated by it, i.e. civil society.

2. It shows how various forms of social consciousness arise: religion, philosophy, morality, law, etc., and what influence material production has on them.

3. It believes that each stage of the development of society sets a certain material result, a certain level of productive forces, certain production relations. New generations use the productive forces, the capital acquired by the previous generation, and at the same time create

create new values ​​and change the productive forces. Thus, the mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes taking place in society.

The materialistic understanding of history, even during Marx's lifetime, was subjected to various interpretations, with which he himself was very dissatisfied. At the end of the 19th century, when Marxism occupied one of the leading places in the European theory of social development, many researchers began to reproach Marx for reducing all the diversity of history to economic factor and thereby simplified the process of development of society, consisting of a variety of facts and events.

In the 20th century the materialistic theory of social life was supplemented. who formulated the theories of industrial and post-industrial society. First -* industrial society theory(R.Aron) - describes the process of progressive development of society as a transition from a backward agrarian "traditional" society dominated by a subsistence economy and class hierarchy, to an advanced, industrialized "industrial" society. The main features of an industrial society:

a) widespread production of consumer goods, combined with a complex system of division of labor among members of society;

b) mechanization and automation of production and management;

c) scientific and technological revolution;

d) a high level of development of means of communication and transport;

e) high degree of urbanization;

f) high level of social mobility. From the point of view of the supporters of this theory, it is precisely these characteristics of large-scale industry - industry - that determine the processes in all other spheres of public life.

This theory was popular in the 60s of the XX century. In the 70s, it was further developed in the views of American sociologists and political scientists D. Bell, Z. Brzezinski, A. Toffler. They believed that Any society goes through 3 stages in its development:

1 stage - pre-industrial (agrarian):

2 stage - industrial:

Stage 3 - post-industrial(D. Bell), or technotronic (A. Toffler), or technological(Z. Brzezinsky).

At the first stage, the main area economic activity is agriculture, the second - industry, the third - the service sector. Each of the stages has its own, special forms of social organization and its own social structure.

Although these theories, as already indicated, were within the framework of a materialistic understanding of the processes of social development, they had a significant difference from the views of Marx and Engels. According to the Marxist concept, the transition from one socio-economic formation to another was carried out on the basis of a social revolution, which was understood as a radical qualitative revolution in the entire system of social life. As for the theories of industrial and post-industrial society, they are within the framework of the trend called social evolutionism: according to them technological upheavals taking place in the economy, although they entail upheavals in other areas of public life, are not accompanied by social conflicts and social revolutions.

Since the second half of the 19th century, various attempts have been made to explain social reality using the data of specific sciences: geography, biology, psychology, cybernetics, and, more recently, synergetics (G. Spencer, M. Kovalevsky, Z. Freud, J. Piaget, I. .Prigozhiy and others).

Traditional(agrarian) society represented the pre-industrial stage of civilizational development. All societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages were traditional.

Them the economy was characterized

v dominance of agricultural subsistence farming and primitive handicrafts.

v Extensive technology and hand tools predominated, initially providing economic progress.

v In his production activities, a person sought to adapt to the environment as much as possible, obeyed the rhythms of nature.

v Property relations were characterized by the dominance of communal, corporate, conditional, state forms of ownership. Private property was neither sacred nor inviolable.

v The distribution of material wealth, the product produced depended on the position of a person in the social hierarchy.

v The social structure of a traditional society is corporate, stable and immovable.

v There was virtually no social mobility: a person was born and died, remaining in the same social group.

v The main social units were the community and the family.

v Human behavior in society was regulated by corporate norms and principles, customs, beliefs, unwritten laws.

v Public consciousness was dominated by providentialism: social reality, human life were perceived as the implementation of divine providence.

The spiritual world of a person of a traditional society, his system of value orientations, way of thinking - special and noticeably different from modern ones. Individuality, independence were not encouraged: the social group dictated the norms of behavior to the individual. One can even speak of a “group man” who did not analyze his position in the world, and indeed rarely analyzed the phenomena of the surrounding reality. Rather, he moralizes, evaluates life situations from the standpoint of his social group.

v The number of educated people was extremely limited (“literacy for the few”) oral information prevailed over written information.

In the political sphere of traditional society:

1. dominated by the church and the army.
2. The person is completely alienated from politics.
3. Power seems to him of greater value than law and law.
4. In general, this society is extremely conservative, stable, immune to innovations and impulses from outside, being a "self-sustaining self-regulating immutability." Changes in it occur spontaneously, slowly, without the conscious intervention of people. The spiritual sphere of human existence is a priority over the economic one.

Traditional societies have survived to this day mainly in the countries of the so-called "third world" (Asia, Africa) (therefore, the concept of "non-Western civilizations" is often synonymous with "traditional society".

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

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

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

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

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

1) economic, the elements of which are material production and relations that arise between people in the process of production of material goods, their exchange and distribution;

2) social, consisting of such structural formations as classes, social strata, nations, taken in their relationship and interaction with each other;

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

4) spiritual, covering various forms and levels of social consciousness, which, being embodied in the real process of the life of society, form what is commonly called spiritual culture.

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

Sociologists offer several classifications of society. Societies are:

a) pre-written and written;

b) simple and complex (the criterion in this typology is the number of levels of management of a society, as well as the degree of its differentiation: in simple societies there are no leaders and subordinates, rich and poor, and in complex societies there are several levels of management and several social strata of the population, arranged from top to bottom in descending order of income);

c) society of primitive hunters and gatherers, traditional (agrarian) society, industrial society and post-industrial society;

d) primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But modernization gave rise to many new contradictions, which eventually turned into global problems (environmental, energy and other crises). By resolving them, progressively developing, some modern societies are approaching the stage of a post-industrial society, the theoretical parameters of which were developed in the 1970s. American sociologists D. Bell, E. Toffler and others. This society is characterized by the promotion of the service sector, the individualization of production and consumption, an increase in the share of small-scale production with the loss of dominant positions by mass production, the leading role of science, knowledge and information in society. In the social structure of the post-industrial society, there is an erasure of class differences, and the convergence of the incomes of various groups of the population leads to the elimination of social polarization and the growth of the share of the middle class. The new civilization can be characterized as anthropogenic, in the center of it is man, his individuality. Sometimes it is also called informational, which reflects the ever-increasing dependence of the daily life of society on information. The transition to a post-industrial society for most countries of the modern world is a very distant prospect.

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

All social relations can be conditionally divided into two large groups - material relations and spiritual (or ideal) relations. Their fundamental difference from each other lies in the fact that material relations arise and develop directly in the course of a person’s practical activity, outside the consciousness of a person and independently of him, and spiritual relations are formed, having previously “passed through the consciousness” of people, determined by their spiritual values. In turn, material relations are divided into production, environmental and office relations; spiritual on moral, political, legal, artistic, philosophical and religious social relations.

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

a) between two individuals (husband and wife, teacher and student, two comrades);

b) between three individuals (father, mother, child);

c) between four, five or more people (the singer and his listeners);

d) between many and many people (members of an unorganized crowd).

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

The inhabitants of Island K lead a subsistence economy. They exchange their wooden crafts with tourists visiting the island for the items they need. Which of the following characteristics supports the conclusion that the inhabitants of the island live in a traditional society?

1) the meeting of the legislative assembly traditionally opens with a speech by the oldest participant
2) commodity-money relations underlie the economic system
3) primary education for children is compulsory
4) the basis of social organization is large families headed by an older man

SOLUTION:

The traditional (agrarian) society represented the pre-industrial stage of civilizational development. All societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages were traditional.
Their economy was dominated by subsistence agriculture and primitive handicrafts. Extensive technology and hand tools prevailed. In his production activities, man sought to adapt to the environment as much as possible, obeyed the rhythms of nature. Property relations were characterized by the dominance of communal, corporate, conditional, state forms of ownership.
Private property was neither sacred nor inviolable.
The distribution of material wealth, the product produced depended on the position of a person in the social hierarchy. The social structure of a traditional society is corporate by class, stable and immovable. There was virtually no social mobility: a person was born and died, remaining in the same social group. The main social units were the community and the family. Human behavior in society was regulated by corporate norms and principles, traditions, customs, beliefs, unwritten laws. Providentialism dominated the public consciousness: social reality, human life were perceived as the implementation of Divine Providence.
Individuality, independence were not encouraged: the social group dictated the norms of behavior to the individual. The number of educated people was extremely limited.
The political sphere of traditional society is dominated by the church and the army. The person is completely alienated from politics. Power seems to him of greater value than law and law.
In general, this society is extremely conservative, stable, immune to innovations and impulses from outside, being a "self-sustaining self-regulating immutability." Changes in it occur spontaneously, slowly, without the conscious intervention of people.