The concept of culture. Forms and varieties of culture

In modern cultural literature, as the main structural elements of culture, constituting its system-forming core, the main types of culture are most often distinguished according to the main spheres of human life or spheres of cultural creativity. There are different points of view regarding their number and name, 2 but it is advisable to distinguish 4 main areas and, accordingly, the main types of culture:

1. Material and technological culture (in the literature, the following are sometimes used to denote this type of culture: “material culture”, “ social culture"and other names) – This is a culture that is formed and functions in the sphere of human material and production activity and its results. This will include tools, housing, everyday items, vehicles, labor skills and methods of practical activity, cultivated areas, dug canals, etc. It was this field of activity that made it possible for man to change his natural environment and survive as a biological being.

Engineering activities should also be considered material and technological culture. The word engineer comes from Lat. "ingenium" - cunning, inventive. In its modern meaning, the figure of the engineer appears in the 18th century with the emergence of large-scale machine production based on the conscious application of scientific knowledge in the production process. Through his activities, an engineer, as it were, connects science with production, becomes a conductor of science in production. Thus, scientific knowledge, itself an element of another, spiritual activity, becomes an element of material and technological culture.

Material and technological culture should also include certain traditions, cultural scenarios of production activities, certain relationships between people, their norms, without which it is impossible, organizational principles, etc.

2. Social culture (or "social political culture ) – culture that is formed and functions in the sphere social organization, which includes the individual in the life of the social collective and makes possible his life as a social being and a member of a certain state entity. The interaction between the individual and the state is mediated by many different cultural forms, which are included in this type of culture: the type of government and form of government; the legal system in a society, including the laws that exist there, the judicial system, correctional facilities, etc.; social structure of society (division of society into estates, classes, etc.), parties that form the ideology of these social groups, the ideologies themselves, etc.

3. Spiritual culture is a culture that is formed and functions in the sphere of spiritual production of society (the production of ideas, images and other spiritual phenomena), the purpose of which is to satisfy the spiritual needs of man. The term “spiritual” has a narrow meaning (“religious”) and a broad meaning, which includes all the diversity of human needs for self-development as an individual, turning him to higher values ​​and the corresponding experience of previous generations and eras: the need for knowledge and education, communication and moral improvement , religious consolation and experience, aesthetic creativity and pleasure, etc. Therefore, spiritual culture includes such elements as morality and art, religion and science (in the aspect of exploring the world), philosophy and mythology, the system of education and upbringing in society.

4. Household culture(or “everyday culture” is a culture that is formed and functions at the level of non-professional activity in the process life together in the family, with friends, neighbors, etc. It must be said that this layer of culture has been studied very little. Until the 20th century, culture included predominantly spiritual culture, that is, the sphere of spiritual improvement of a person, his desire for the sublime... But culturology of the 20th century expanded the understanding of the essence of culture, pointing out that culture organizes the entire life of people, thereby distinguishing them from animals. The sphere of everyday life cannot be an exception, since it has its own functions in the life of a person and society. The term “everyday life” by the end of the twentieth century turned into one of the key concepts of cultural studies and all modern humanitarian knowledge as “the technology of life of people in general” in the life element of ordinary events of individual people.

If we nevertheless try to generalize this “life element” of many people, then the following can be classified as everyday culture:

The form of the family and the entire system of family and marriage relations;

Basic principles and forms of relations between elders and juniors, men and women, etc.

Basic principles and forms of family education;

Principles and forms of organizing home holidays, guest visits, etc.;

Travel organization;

Food traditions;

Basic principles of internal organization of a home;

Forms of hygiene and in general physical culture person;

Features of the subject environment surrounding a person at home;

Norms of sexual morality;

Wedding traditions;

Organization of children's lives;

Ethical and aesthetic norms, customs, rituals, symbols associated with the eternal problems of human life - love, death, birth of children, etc.

Costume form and clothing traditions;

and many many others. Moreover, it still seems difficult to build a clear hierarchy of these elements.

The role and place of socio-cultural activities in common system spiritual life of society.

1. Approaches to understanding culture as phenomena public life:

· technological: culture as the totality of all achievements of the material and spiritual life of society;

· activity-based: culture as a creative activity in the spheres of material and spiritual life of society;

· value-based: culture as implementation universal human values in the affairs and relationships of people.

2. The concept of culture(from Latin cultivation, processing)

· in a broad sense: a historically determined dynamic complex of forms, principles, methods and results of active activity that are constantly updated in all spheres of social life creative activity of people;

· V in the narrow sense: a process of active creative activity during which spiritual values ​​are created, distributed and consumed.

3. Material and spiritual culture(division according to human needs satisfied by values):

· material – the result of the production and development of objects and phenomena of the material world

· spiritual – a set of spiritual values ​​and creative activities for their production, development and application.

This division is conditional.

4. Functions of culture: cognitive, evaluative, regulatory (normative), informative, communicative, socialization.

5. Spiritual world of the individual- the area of ​​existence in which objective reality present in a person himself, is an integral part of his personality: knowledge, faith, feelings, experiences, needs, abilities, aspirations and goals.

The spiritual sphere of social life

Spiritual realm- this is the area of ​​ideal, intangible formations, including ideas, values ​​of religion, art, morality, etc. This is the sphere of relationships that arise in the production, transmission and development of spiritual values ​​(knowledge, beliefs, norms of behavior, artistic images, etc.).

If material life a person is associated with the satisfaction of specific everyday needs (food, clothing, drink, etc.). then the spiritual sphere of human life is aimed at satisfying the needs for the development of consciousness, worldview, and various spiritual qualities

Structure of the spiritual sphere life of society at its most general outline is this:

§ religion is a form of worldview based on faith in supernatural powers;

§ morality - system moral standards, ideals, assessments, actions;

§ art - artistic exploration of the world;

§ science - a system of knowledge about the laws of existence and development of the world;

§ law - a set of norms supported by the state;

§ education is a purposeful process of education and training.

Spiritual Needs Unlike material ones, they are not given biologically, but are formed and developed in the process of socialization of the individual.

Of course, a person is able to live without satisfying these needs, but then his life will differ little from the life of animals. Spiritual needs are met in the process spiritual activity - cognitive, value, prognostic, etc. Such activities are aimed primarily at changing individual and public consciousness. It manifests itself in art, religion, scientific creativity, education, self-education, upbringing, etc. At the same time, spiritual activity can be both producing and consuming.

Spiritual production is the process of formation and development of consciousness, worldview, and spiritual qualities. The product of this production are ideas, theories, artistic images, values, spiritual world individual and spiritual relationships between individuals. The main mechanisms of spiritual production are science, art and religion.

Spiritual consumption is called the satisfaction of spiritual needs, the consumption of products of science, religion, art, for example, visiting a theater or museum, acquiring new knowledge. The spiritual sphere of society's life ensures the production, storage and dissemination of moral, aesthetic, scientific, legal and other values. It covers various forms and levels of social consciousness - moral, scientific, aesthetic, religious, legal.

ROLE OF CULTURE:

Culture brings people together, integrates them, and ensures the integrity of the community. But while uniting some on the basis of some subculture, it contrasts them with others, separating wider communities and communities. Cultural conflicts may arise within these broader communities and communities. Thus, culture can and often does perform a disintegrating function. During socialization, values, ideals, norms and patterns of behavior become part of the individual’s self-awareness. They shape and regulate her behavior. We can say that culture as a whole determines the framework within which a person can and should act. Culture regulates human behavior in the family, school, at work, at home, etc., putting forward a system of regulations and prohibitions. Violation of these regulations and prohibitions gives rise to certain sanctions, which are established by the community and supported by the force of public opinion and various forms institutional coercion. Culture, which is a complex sign system, transmits social experience from generation to generation, from era to era. Apart from culture, society does not have other mechanisms for concentrating the entire wealth of experience that has been accumulated by people. Therefore, it is no coincidence that culture is considered the social memory of humanity.

Culture, concentrating the best social experience of many generations of people, acquires the ability to accumulate rich knowledge about the world and thereby create favorable opportunities for its knowledge and development. It can be argued that a society is intellectual to the extent that it fully utilizes the wealth of knowledge contained in the cultural gene pool of humanity. All types of society that live on Earth today differ significantly, primarily on this basis. In the sphere of work, life, interpersonal relationships culture, one way or another, influences people's behavior and regulates their actions, and even the choice of certain material and spiritual values. The regulatory function of culture is supported by such normative systems as morality and law.

Thus, the cultural system is not only complex and diverse, but also very mobile. It is a living process, the living destiny of peoples, constantly moving, developing, changing. Culture is an integral part of the life of both society as a whole and its closely interconnected subjects: individuals, social communities, social institutions

PLACE OF CULTURE:

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

2) culture is special human form existence, which has its own space-time boundaries;

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

CONCLUSIONS:

The term “socio-cultural activity” in everyday life is used in three meanings:

As a social practice in which many professions are involved today, which are extremely necessary for the modern socio-cultural sphere;

As an academic subject with a certain logic and structure;

As a historically established branch of scientific knowledge, a theory that develops thanks to the efforts of a large group of scientists and practitioners.

The theory of socio-cultural activity is one of components theory of pedagogy, general pedagogical system of scientific knowledge. It is based on the fundamental pedagogical science provisions from the field of human studies, sociology, psychology, history, cultural studies, etc.: transfers these provisions from their inherent general level to the specific level, thereby developing them to a certain extent. In turn, the theory of socio-cultural activity is the basic branch of scientific knowledge for many narrower specialized disciplines included in educational standards training for the arts, media, tourism, information technologies and others.

The status of a modern specialist in the socio-cultural sphere - manager, teacher, technologist - is not invented, it is not born spontaneously, but is formed under the influence of today's realities. Overcoming negative consequences The administrative-command management system has shifted priorities towards the development of initiative, entrepreneurship, and activity, which are necessary for this specialist in the modern economic situation.

Culture is an essential aspect various fields life of society: industrial, political and legal, etc. This aspect of the sociological cross-section of the structure of culture allows us to identify such elements as industrial culture, political culture, legal culture, etc.

Production is one of the most important spheres of society. It is divided into spiritual production and material.

Spiritual production is the production of products that satisfy human spiritual needs (books, paintings, articles). Thus, spiritual production is culture itself, but taken not in itself, but in a socio-economic and institutional context.

Material production is, firstly, the production of products that satisfy human material needs (food, clothing, housing), and, secondly, the production of material means with the help of which the needs for communication, transportation of products, and spiritual needs are satisfied.

For example, the production of players and televisions cannot be classified as spiritual production, since the player or television itself does not satisfy spiritual needs. It serves only as a means through which the spiritual product becomes available to the consumer.

In the socio-economic aspect, material production in general and spiritual production have certain similarities - these are forms of ownership of the means of production, forms of distribution of profits, etc. However, this similarity is very relative: spiritual production in this respect has its own specifics, in addition, different branches of spiritual production differ significantly from each other.

Spiritual and material production differ even more in terms of the product, the technology of its production, and the organization of labor.

At the same time, these differences should not be absolute either. At present, along with the preservation of differences, a tendency towards rapprochement between spiritual and material production is making its way; no wonder we're talking about about the leisure industry, show business industry, etc.

Keeping in mind the differences and similarities between the spiritual and material production, we will further use the generalized concepts of “production”, and accordingly “social production”, etc.

Following the methodological scheme proposed in the previous section, to define the concept of “production culture” it is necessary to clarify the anthropological aspects of this phenomenon and its functional specificity. In accordance with this, the concept of “culture of production” can be given the following most general, preliminary definition: “culture of production” is the methods and results of the development and use of the human potential of subjects of social production in order to increase its efficiency and increasingly fully satisfy the interests of society on its basis individual social groups and individuals.

Since the subject of social production is, in particular, individual enterprises, we can talk about the culture of production in relation to the characteristics of a particular enterprise, industry, plant, factory.

In addition, given that the concept of “production culture” correlates with the concept of “subject of activity,” it makes sense to distinguish two levels in its structure: managerial and mass. Regarding each of them, taken separately, it is probably more appropriate to apply the concept of “work culture”. The synthesis of labor culture at the managerial and mass levels gives a certain state of production culture.

Because the modern production- this is the scope of application the latest achievements science and technology, then the first absolutely necessary sign of production culture is the presence among its participants of a large volume of professional knowledge and skills.

The faster growth of science compared to production determines the dynamic development of the latter, the emergence of new industries and, accordingly, professions. Hence such a criterion of work culture at both the managerial and mass levels as the ability of workers to constantly replenish their knowledge, readiness to master new types of activities in new conditions.

The importance of an employee’s aesthetic culture is great and undeniable. The feeling of proportions, harmony or disharmony of the combination of various elements, sensitivity to color combinations not only contributes to the production of high-quality products, but also makes the employee physically incapable of defects and sloppy maintenance of the workplace. A highly developed dynamic production is impossible without a high culture of communication among its participants. Otherwise, disruptions in rhythm, inconsistency and simply an inhumane atmosphere are inevitable, which hinders the development of production.

The question of the place of the employee’s moral culture in the structure of production culture deserves special attention.

There is a widespread prejudice that capitalism creates such powerful economic incentives to work that it does not require moral motivation labor activity. However, this is not the case. As is known, the economic successes of developed capitalist countries are largely based on the ethics of Protestantism, according to which hard work coupled with frugality are the most important moral values.

In this regard, it becomes clear that a culture in which the influence of religion has been weakened faces an acute problem, which is the need to provide a secular justification for the rules and principles of work ethics.

A specific criterion for work at the managerial level is the ability to organize work, use human potential and, above all, the personal interests of production participants, in order to achieve its efficiency.

Thus, we can say with confidence that work culture reflects the general state of society’s culture. This is not surprising, since labor is most important species human activity and sphere most widely used and, consequently, the development of his essential powers. Therefore, improving the culture of work, which is a condition for the successful development of any society, requires improving the entire system of its culture. And vice versa, an increase in work culture certainly responds to an increase in the cultural level of the entire society.

Political culture. Politics is the area of ​​relationships between various social groups and states. One of its sides is political culture, which in this sense can be considered as an independent sphere of culture, which has its own specific territory in social space. However, political culture at the same time is a necessary component not only of political, but also of other types of activity: artistic, industrial and even leisure. In this second meaning, the concept of “political culture”, like the concept of “ moral culture", correlates with the concept of "subject of activity" as one of the characteristics of the latter.

Based on the above considerations and methodological principles used earlier, the concept of “political culture” can be defined as follows: “Political culture is the methods and results of human development as a subject of politics.”

Like production culture, political culture can be structured at the managerial and mass levels. Each of them, in turn, can be structured into ideal and real, spiritual and practical layers, etc.

This issue will be discussed in more detail in section 3 of this manual.

Legal culture. Very challenging sociocultural phenomenon is right. It arose in response to the needs of society for clear regulation of relations between various subjects social action: by individuals, social groups, states. The other side of this need was to create a system of supervision and control over compliance established standards and a system of penalties for deviations from the norms.

Satisfying this dual need - to create and improve a system of norms and control over their compliance - became possible with the advent of the state.

State control over compliance with the norms of relations between people is what sharply distinguishes law from morality. Society monitors compliance with moral standards.

Another difference between law and morality is that the rules of law are expressed with extreme clarity and are enshrined in laws, while the rules of morality are less clear, allow for a greater range of interpretations, and are less imperative.

Question No. 4.Culture in the spiritual life of society. Culture and activity.

Spiritual life of society - sphere of social life that determines the specifics of a particular society. This sphere includes spiritual education, culture and all its forms, all levels of social consciousness, habits and moods of society.

The spiritual life of society is determined not only by culture, but it can be called the core of this sphere of life. Many of the foundations of the spiritual life of society as a whole are elements of culture - these are legal, artistic, ideological and moral cultures.

Religion can also be called the most important element of the spiritual life of society.

To a large extent, the development of culture depends on historical stage development of society.

The peculiarity of culture is that it simultaneously acts as a means of development of society and the individual, and as a result of this development.

Culture- this is the foundation of the spiritual life of any society, since it is a way of organizing and implementing human life.

Culture develops and functions in a system of social values ​​and norms, through specialized institutions and organizations.

Among all types of crops, it is worth highlighting spiritual culture. The specificity of spiritual culture lies in the fact that it can be called a reflection of spiritual existence - spiritual culture grows on the basis of social existence and affects all its spheres.

Its manifestation occurs through the assimilation of the norms and values ​​of the previous generation and through the process of development of new values.

Varieties of culture

1.People's culture called the culture of the broad masses.

The peculiarity of this type of culture is that it is formed from the moment of formation of a certain national state. Its basis can be called the amateur creativity of the nation and the experience of the masses. Often these are traditions and customs.

2.elitist often formed in the upper strata of class society. This happens from the moment their high position in society is consolidated.K elitist culture include a specific lifestyle, service sector and professional art. Elite culture is disconnected from folk culture and forms its own traditions and values.

3. Mass culture became possible from the end of the 19th century. This is due to the fact that it became possible for the broad masses to receive education and to spread elements of elite culture. The cultural level of the broad masses began to rise. Thus, mass culture is formed at the intersection of folk and elite cultures.

Spiritual life- is the sphere of human and social activity that embraces wealth human feelings and achievements of the mind, unites both the assimilation of accumulated spiritual values ​​and the creative creation of new ones.

Functions of culture in society: 1.The function of accumulation, storage and transfer of cultural values. This function allows a person to determine his place in the world and, using the knowledge accumulated about him, to develop from lower to higher. It is provided by the mechanisms of cultural traditions. Thanks to them, culture preserves the heritage accumulated over centuries, which remains the unchanged foundation of the creative searches of mankind.

2. The function of goal setting and regulation of social life and human activity. As part of this function, culture creates values ​​and guidelines for society, consolidates what has been achieved and becomes the basis for further development. Culturally created goals and patterns are the perspective and blueprint of human activity. These same cultural values are approved as the norms and requirements of society for all its members, regulating their lives and activities

3.Socialization function. This function makes it possible for each individual person to acquire a certain system of knowledge, norms and values ​​that allow him to act as a full member of society. People excluded from cultural processes, for the most part, cannot adapt to life in human society.

4.Communicative function. This function of culture ensures interaction between people and communities, promotes the processes of integration and unity of human culture. It becomes especially clear in the modern world, when a single cultural space of humanity is being created before our eyes.

Culture and human activity

To material objects remained cultural phenomena, they must be supported or reproduced by human activity. Hence, material objects the world of culture is not only created by man, but is inseparable from human activity in general.

Material objects of culture are spiritualized by human activity, which gave them a certain content, endowed them with certain functions, and breathed into them a “soul” in the form of a certain value principle or meaning. Therefore all material culture in fact there is a unity of the material and the ideal.

This unity is also inherent in phenomena belonging to spiritual culture. But in order for these human creations to become accessible to other people, they must be objectified, that is, materialized in human actions, in language, oral or written, embodied in some other material forms (for example, on artist's canvas, on audio or video tape).

culture in its objective existence depends on human activity, is its product, result. The activity is completed, implemented, embodied in cultural objects.

And at the same time, cultural objects remain such not outside of activity, not beyond its boundaries, but in human activity itself. The true existence of culture is active, procedural. And it includes its objective existence.

Culture is generally inseparable from human activity. Works of art, scientific discoveries

, technical innovations are all products of creative labor. Its specificity is that the artist, scientist relies on all previous developments of culture and, in cooperation with his contemporaries, continues the process of cultural creation.

in creativity, the conscious beginning of activity is associated with freedom - freedom of goal-setting, choice of means, freedom for a person to demonstrate his abilities, qualities, his “tribal essence”. Without freedom of creativity, culture cannot develop. Genesis of culture

man creates culture and at the same time culture creates man.

Concept of culture

Culture- This is a very complex, multi-level system. On the one hand, these are the material and spiritual values ​​accumulated by society, on the other hand, human activity, based on the heritage of all previous generations, generating and transmitting this heritage to those who will replace those currently living.

The concept of “culture” appeared in ancient times. They were originally characterized by (activities) involving cultivation, processing of soil, metal, stone, and education.

This concept of culture has from the very beginning covered a huge range of human activities. As people penetrated deeper into the secrets of nature and man himself, the very concept of “culture” expanded.

IN modern science There are hundreds of definitions of culture. Unfortunately, most of them are incomprehensible and difficult to reproduce, while the concept of “culture” should be operational and easy to use. These requirements are met by understanding culture as a qualitative characteristic of life activity society as a whole and its main subjects individually. It becomes and develops along with the formation of society, improving along with it.

IN modern language the concept of culture is used in different meanings. Culture means:

• the totality of human achievements in various spheres of public life;
• way of organization public relations, represented in the system of official and informal social institutions;
• the degree of personal development, a person’s familiarization with the achievements of science, art, law, morality and other areas of spirituality.

Material and spiritual culture

Culture is divided into. It is important here not to confuse it with objects, cultural items. St. Basil's Cathedral, Grand Theatre etc. are cultural objects, but here is their qualitative characteristics: who, when, where, with what, etc. — culture. Violin - musical instrument, an object of culture, and the Stradivarius violin is an object of culture of the 16th century. Performed on it musical composition- a subject of spiritual culture, but who, how, when, where, etc., i.e. its qualitative characteristic is culture.

The life activity of society is multi-sphere (labor, politics, economics, ethics, aesthetics, law, family, religion, etc.) Each of the spheres of society corresponds to a certain level of culture achieved by him as a qualitative characteristic of his life activity.

We offer a gradation of the levels of achieved culture: knowledge, abilities, skills, experience, mastery, creativity, which reflect the degree of development of each of the spheres of life of a particular subject of social life: labor, political, economic, etc. Focusing on them, you can build a development graph culture of each subject of social life: personality, social group, society of any country.

A similar graph is shown in the figure below.

Unfortunately, the curve reflecting achieved level culture in various spheres of Russian life, is omitted, demonstrating insufficient high culture in a number of important areas. It shows that the level of working culture of Russians is higher than political or economic, and even more so aesthetic or ethical. There are many highly cultured people in the country, but even more fall short of this comprehensive indicator.

When we talk about culture social subject , We we mean its total potential, formed in all spheres of society. Sociology focuses on the functioning elements in spiritual culture. What are these elements?

Knowledge, formulated in concepts and recorded in language, as a system of signs and symbols endowed with a certain meaning.

Language— a tool for the formation, accumulation and transfer of knowledge. In turn, knowledge is the basis of beliefs - an important element of culture.

Rice. 1. Diagram of the culture of the subject of social life

Belief- a certain spiritual state, a sensory experience of knowledge as personally significant and reliable. Beliefs are the unity of knowledge, emotions and will, appearing in the form of: value orientations, attitudes, norms, principles of behavior, motives for action. They are based on values ​​- the property of a social object to satisfy certain needs of a social subject. In sociology, values ​​are considered as ideas about good, evil, happiness, honesty, fidelity, love, virtue - factors regulating social interactions. Values ​​are the defining element of culture, its core. Entering the life of society, a person gives his assessment to everything. Its basis is values. Values ​​orient, encourage, motivate a social subject to specific actions. Sociology is primarily interested in values ​​that regulate the interactions of people in society, i.e. social values. Important elements of culture are social norms, habits, manners, etiquette, customs, traditions, rites, rituals, mores, fashion, faith, etc.