The essence of the concepts “culture”, “socio-cultural sphere” and “socio-cultural activity. Culture as a side of various spheres of social life (political culture, work culture, etc.)
cultural figurative public
When is culture characterized? various forms public life, then we are talking about aesthetic, moral, professional, political-legal, economic, environmental, everyday, physical culture.
Artistic culture is presented as a set of socially created artistic values, as well as the very process of creation, distribution, assimilation by society and each individual. The functions of artistic culture include: aesthetic (it is associated with the ability of art to give a person aesthetic pleasure); cognitive (expresses the specificity of art as knowledge of life through a system artistic images). Ideological (means that art acts as an exponent and conductor of a particular worldview); educational (consists in the impact of art on people, in its ability to shape spiritual world person); communicative (means that art culture serves as a channel for the transmission of not only knowledge, but also feelings, and is a means of spiritual communication between people).
Morality arises after it goes into the past myth, where a person internally merged with the life of the collective and was controlled by various magical taboos that programmed his behavior at the level of the unconscious. Now a person requires self-control in conditions of relative internal autonomy from the team.
Morality is presented as a side, as an aspect of culture as a whole, understood as a world of objective and spiritual phenomena created by people, in which human essential forces are embodied, the development of human generic abilities and capabilities in the development of the world, in the self-determination of man in the world. The following levels of moral culture are distinguished: lower - here the individual’s orientation towards the perception of moral culture through imitation and suggestion, reproduction of the generally accepted content of actions is observed; medium - implementation of moral precepts and values occurs, deterministic public opinion; the highest is the level of self-regulation based on the main moral imperative - conscience.
Law, legal culture can be presented as a set of legal knowledge, beliefs, attitudes implemented in the processes of communication, behavior, activity, as well as attitudes towards the material and spiritual values of society. Among the functions of legal culture, the following are distinguished: determination of legal processes and their normative consolidation; regulation of relationships between people in the process of social interaction; creating optimal conditions for the formation and development of processes of socially significant interactions.
Policy appears to be a set of guidelines and goals determined by the fundamental interests of social groups, parties and states, as well as their practical domestic and international activities to implement the established course and achieve the intended goals. Political culture is considered as a variety and component of general human culture; as goals, means, results of the activity of society, class, social group, individual, characterizing the level social development personality as a subject of transformation of social relations.
Ecological culture presupposes the recognition of a single system “man - nature” or “society - nature”, not only in terms of the impact of the geographical environment and population on the development of society, but also the recognition of the reverse impact of nature on society.
Household culture is an established way of life Everyday life person. The entire non-production sphere social life constitutes a system of everyday culture. Satisfying people's needs for food, clothing, housing, treatment, health prevention, as well as a person's acquisition of spiritual benefits, works of art, communication, recreation, and entertainment. Everyday culture is connected with the life of society, since everyday life influences work, social activities, mood and behavior of people. A rich and prosperous society is characterized by an organized life of its citizens.
Physical culture is based on the vital values of culture, on the values healthy image life. For supporting physical culture appropriate institutions must function in society. Specialized personnel and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle are necessary components for the maintenance and existence of physical culture in society.
An important aspect of the functioning and development of society is its spiritual life. It can be filled with rich content, which creates a favorable spiritual atmosphere in people’s lives, a good moral and psychological climate.
In other cases, the spiritual life of a society can be poor and inexpressive, and sometimes real lack of spirituality reigns in it. The content of the spiritual life of society reveals its truly human essence. After all, the spiritual (or spirituality) is inherent only to man, distinguishes and elevates him above the rest of the world.
Basic elements of the spiritual life of society. The spiritual life of society is very complex. It is not limited to various manifestations of people’s consciousness, their thoughts and feelings, although with with good reason we can say that their consciousness is the core, the core of their personal spiritual life and the spiritual life of society.
The main elements of the spiritual life of society include the spiritual needs of people aimed at the creation and consumption of appropriate spiritual values, as well as the spiritual values themselves, as well as spiritual activities for their creation and spiritual production in general. Elements of spiritual life should also include spiritual consumption as the consumption of spiritual values and spiritual relationships between people, as well as manifestations of their interpersonal spiritual communication.
The basis of the spiritual life of society is spiritual activity. It can be considered as an activity of consciousness, during which certain thoughts and feelings of people, their images and ideas about natural and social phenomena arise. The result of this activity is certain views of people on the world, scientific ideas and theories, moral, aesthetic and religious views. They are embodied in moral principles and norms of behavior, works of folk and professional art, religious rites, rituals, etc.
A special type of spiritual activity is the dissemination of spiritual values with the aim of assimilating them. a large number of people. The main motivating forces of spiritual activity are spiritual needs.
The task arises of raising the level of culture of spiritual consumption. IN in this case the consumer needs to be educated by introducing him to a real spiritual culture. To do this, it is necessary to develop and enrich the spiritual culture of society, to make it accessible and interesting to every person.
The production and consumption of spiritual values is mediated by spiritual relationships. They really exist as a person’s relationship directly to certain spiritual values (whether he approves or rejects them), as well as his relationship to other people regarding these values - their production, distribution, consumption, protection.
Any spiritual activity is mediated by spiritual relationships. Based on this, we can distinguish such types of spiritual relationships as cognitive, moral, aesthetic, religious, as well as spiritual relationships that arise between a teacher and a student, an educator and those whom he educates.
It should be noted that the term "culture" comes from Latin word cultura – cultivation, processing, education, development. Initially it meant cultivating the soil, cultivating it, i.e. changing it by man in order to obtain a good harvest.
Philosophers of the Renaissance defined culture as a means of forming an ideal universal personality - comprehensively educated, well-mannered, beneficially influencing the development of sciences and arts, and contributing to the strengthening of the state. They also raised the problem of civilization as a certain social order, different from barbarism.
We should agree with numerous researchers that culture is purely social phenomenon related to human life. Such a definition reflects only the most general in culture, since we can say the same about human society. This means that the very definition of the concept “culture” must contain what distinguishes it from the concept “society”. It has been noted that the unity of the cultural and social exists only at a very low stage of development of society. As soon as it starts social division labor - separation of agriculture from cattle breeding, crafts from agriculture; trade from agriculture, cattle breeding and crafts, this is how the growth of the actual social problems.
In the same way, it is wrong to identify spiritual production with spiritual culture. Spiritual production is the production of all kinds of ideas, norms, spiritual values, and spiritual culture is the production of spiritual values themselves, and their functioning and consumption, including in education, upbringing, various forms of human activity and communication. And here there is a very close connection and interaction between spiritual production and spiritual culture, but one cannot be reduced to the other. Spiritual culture includes spiritual production and determines it, and spiritual production contributes to the development of spiritual culture.
As we see, the desire to clarify the problem of the relationship between culture and society necessarily leads to an understanding of culture as a system of material and spiritual values involved in the socially progressive creative activity of humanity in all spheres of existence and knowledge, its social relations, social consciousness, social institutions etc. The system of spiritual values is a system of moral and other social norms, principles, ideals, attitudes, their functioning in specific historical conditions. It should be noted that culture is not reduced to values as ready-made results. It absorbs the degree of development of the person himself. Without a person there is no culture, just as there is no culture in a static state. Culture is inseparable from the entire life activity of a person who is its bearer and creator. Man is, first of all, a cultural and historical being. His human qualities are the result of his assimilation of language, value orientations of society and the social or national community to which he belongs, as well as experience and skills in work, traditions, customs, spiritual and material values inherited from previous generations and created by him.
Culture is a measure of humanity in a person, a characteristic of his own development, as well as the development of society, its interaction with nature.
The problem of human measurement was noticed in antiquity.
It is impossible not to note the importance of the personal dimension of culture from the point of view of man’s relationship to nature. Today we are already talking about ecological culture, which reflects man’s attitude to nature, his morality. This environmental morality should now act as a categorical imperative of the individual, state, and society. A person comes into the world not as a producer and not as a person, but as a person. He assimilates both the natural and social qualities of his being in the form in which he finds them in his environment, because he cannot choose one or another type of society or level of development cultural values. Man is that element of the “nature – man – society” system through which nature, society, and man himself change. And it depends on what the personal dimensions of the person himself are, what his value orientations, depend (subject, of course, to certain objective conditions) the results of its activities. Therefore, consciousness and responsibility, mercy and love for nature are far from full list human qualities, which measure human contact with nature, human ecological culture.
When we talk about the ecological culture of society, we must note that “good technology” (one that is focused on preserving and recreating nature) correspondingly gives “good ecology.” The ecological culture of society, associated with concern for the harmony of man and nature, absorbs both material and spiritual values that serve both nature and man as its integral part.
The main elements of the spiritual life of society are:
Spiritual activity;
Spiritual values;
Spiritual needs of people;
Spiritual consumption;
Individual consciousness;
Social consciousness.
The spiritual life of society is one of the main spheres of social life, which determines the specifics of a particular society in its entirety. This area includes education and culture, religion and science.
Spiritual realm
The spiritual sphere of society is a system of relations between people, which reflects moral life of this society.
The spiritual sphere is represented by such multifaceted subsystems as religion, science, culture, education, art and ideology. Why does the spiritual sphere mean so much to any developed society?
First of all, the significance of the spiritual sphere lies in its function of identifying the value system of society. It is through defining values that one can understand the level of development public consciousness.
Without a developed spiritual sphere, it is quite difficult to imagine a developed society of people. Through education, people become more intelligent and knowledgeable. the world from new sides, thanks to culture, society is constantly enriched spiritually, since people have the opportunity to express their personal qualities and creativity.
Culture
Culture is a set of spiritual and material values, ways of creating them and opportunities to use them for further development humanity and personality in particular. We can say that human labor is the first source of cultural development.
Culture is the totality of the spiritual achievements of humanity. But it is not without reason that they say that every country or every nation has its own culture. This is due to the fact that each country developed in its own way and each country has its own history.
As a result cultural development Each nation has a certain cultural and spiritual heritage, which creates cultural customs. There are cultural achievements that are commonly called “transtemporal” - these are those cultural and spiritual phenomena that are not subject to change and time.
Education
The process and result of a person’s assimilation of knowledge, skills and abilities is usually called education. It is in this way that a person’s mind and feelings develop, his own opinion, value system, worldview and cognitive process.
Education is Main way to growing up and understanding the world around us. Children begin to learn from early years- first just sounds and movements, then the alphabet and counting, and every year the child learns something new.
In adolescence, a person not only accumulates systematized knowledge, he already learns to think critically and creatively - to independently evaluate the phenomena around him and the historical past.
Getting an education is important for every person - after all, without a system of generally required knowledge, he will not be able to fully communicate with people and feel comfortable in society. Education is a socially organized process.
Religion
Religion is one of the forms of social consciousness. And in the scientific sense, we talk about religion as a special form of awareness of the world, which is determined by belief in the supernatural. Any type of religion includes moral norms and types of behavior, and also represents a union of people in certain organizations.
An example of such an organization is the church. The basis for religion is the concepts of God, the meaning and purpose of life, good and evil, morality and honesty. That is why religion is one of the fundamental subsystems of the spiritual sphere of society.
The science
The sphere of human activity aimed at theoretical systematization and development of knowledge about reality is usually called science. It is easiest to say that science is the collection of objective knowledge about the world.
Culture is an important component of social consciousness. It is a means of forming social personality, the sphere of communication between people and the implementation of their creative potential. culture and its features are the object of study by philosophers, cultural scientists, and intellectuals who seek to determine the role of spiritual culture in society and in human development.
Concept of culture
Human activity throughout history develops into culture. This concept covers the widest sphere of people's lives. The meaning of the word “culture” - “cultivation”, “processing” (originally - land) - is due to the fact that with the help of his various actions a person transforms the surrounding reality and himself. Culture is an exclusively human phenomenon; animals, unlike people, adapt to the world, and humans adapt it to their needs and requirements. It is in the course of these transformations that it is created.
Due to the fact that the spheres of spiritual culture are extremely diverse, there is no single definition of the concept of “culture”. There are several approaches to its interpretation: idealistic, materialistic, functionalist, structuralist, psychoanalytic. Each of them highlights individual aspects of this concept. In a broad sense, culture is all the transformative activities of a person, directed both outward and inward. In a narrow way - this is creative activity human, expressed in the creation of works of various arts.
Spiritual and material culture
Despite the fact that culture is a complex, complex phenomenon, there is a tradition of dividing it into material and spiritual. To the area material culture It is customary to include all the results of human activity embodied in various objects. This is the world surrounding a person: buildings, roads, household utensils, clothing, as well as a variety of equipment and technologies. Spheres of spiritual culture are associated with the production of ideas. These include theories, philosophies, moral standards, scientific knowledge. However, often such a division is purely conditional. How, for example, can we separate works of art such as cinema and theater? After all, the performance combines the idea literary basis, acting, as well as subject design.
The emergence of spiritual culture
The question of the origin of culture still causes lively debate between representatives of different sciences. Social science, for which the sphere of spiritual culture is an important research area, proves that cultural genesis is inextricably linked with the formation of society. Condition for survival primitive man became the ability to adapt the world around us to our needs and the ability to coexist in a team: it was impossible to survive alone. The formation of culture was not instantaneous, but was a long evolutionary process. A person learns to convey social experience, creating for this a system of rituals and signals, speech. He has new needs, in particular the desire for beauty, social ones are formed and all this becomes a platform for the formation of spiritual culture. Understanding the surrounding reality and searching for cause-and-effect relationships lead to the formation of a mythological worldview. It explains the world around us in symbolic form and allows a person to navigate life.
Main areas
Over time, all spheres of spiritual culture grow from mythology. The human world is evolving and becoming more complex, and at the same time, information and ideas about the world are becoming more complex, and special areas of knowledge are being identified. Today, the question of what the sphere of spiritual culture includes has several possible answers. In the traditional sense, it includes religion, politics, philosophy, morality, art, and science. There is also a broader view according to which the spiritual sphere includes language, the system of knowledge, values and plans of humanity for the future. In the narrowest interpretation, the sphere of spirituality includes art, philosophy and ethics as the area of formation of ideals.
Religion as a sphere of spiritual culture
The first one that stands out is religion. All spheres of spiritual culture, including religion, represent a special set of values, ideals and norms that serve as guidelines in human life. Faith is the basis for understanding the world, especially for ancient people. Science and religion are two antagonistic ways of explaining the world, but each of them represents a system of ideas about how man and everything that surrounds him were created. The specificity of religion is that it appeals to faith, and not to knowledge. The main function of religion as a form of spiritual life is worldview. It sets a person’s framework of worldview and worldview, and gives meaning to existence. Religion also performs a regulatory function: it controls the relationships of people in society and their activities. In addition to these, faith performs communicative, legitimizing and cultural-translating functions. Thanks to religion, many outstanding ideas and phenomena appeared; it was the source of the concept of humanism.
Morality as a sphere of spiritual culture
Moral and spiritual culture is the basis for regulating relationships between people in society. Morality is a system of values and ideas about what is evil and good, about the meaning of people’s lives and the principles of their relationships in society. Researchers often consider ethics highest form spirituality. Morality is a specific sphere of spiritual culture, and its features are due to the fact that it is an unwritten law of behavior of people in society. She represents the unspoken social contract, according to which all nations consider man and his life to be the highest value. Main public functions morals are:
Regulatory - this specific function consists in managing the behavior of people, and they are not dominated by any institutions or organizations that control a person. In fulfilling moral requirements, a person is motivated by a unique mechanism called conscience. Morality establishes rules that ensure human interaction;
Evaluative-imperative, i.e. a function that allows people to understand what is good and what is evil;
Educational - it is thanks to it that the moral character of an individual is formed.
Ethics also performs a number of socially significant functions such as cognitive, communicative, orienting, and prognostic.
Art as a sphere of spiritual culture
Cinema and theater
Cinema is one of the youngest and at the same time the most mass arts. Its history is short compared to the thousand-year history of music, painting or theater. At the same time, cinema halls are filled with millions of spectators every day, and more people watch movies on television. Cinema renders powerful impact on the minds and hearts of young people.
Today theater is less popular than cinema. With the ubiquity of television, it has lost some of its appeal. Besides, theater tickets are now expensive. Therefore, we can say that the visit famous theater has become a luxury. Still, theater is an integral part intellectual life each country and reflects the state of society and the minds of the nation.
Philosophy as a sphere of spiritual culture
Philosophy - oldest human. Like other areas of spiritual culture, it grows out of mythology. It organically combines the features of religion. Philosophers satisfy the important need of people to find meaning. The main questions of existence (what is the world, what is the meaning of life) receive different answers in philosophy, but allow a person to choose his life path. Its most important functions are ideological and axiological; it helps a person build his own system of views and criteria for assessing the world around him. Philosophy also performs epistemological, critical, prognostic and educational functions.
Science as a sphere of spiritual culture
The latest sphere of spiritual culture to emerge was science. Its formation occurs quite slowly, and it is intended primarily to explain the structure of the world. Science and religion are forms of overcoming the mythological worldview. But unlike religion, science is a system of objective, verifiable knowledge and is built according to the laws of logic. The leading need that a person satisfies through science is cognitive. It is human nature to ask various questions, and the search for answers gives rise to science. Science is distinguished from all other spheres of spiritual culture by strict evidence and testability of postulates. Thanks to it, a universal human objective picture of the world is formed. The main social ones are cognitive, ideological, practical-transformative, communicative, educational and regulatory. Unlike philosophy, science is based on a system of objective knowledge that is verifiable through experiments.
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 industries 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.
Since modern production is the scope of the latest achievements science and technology, then the first absolutely necessary sign of production culture is the presence of a large amount of professional knowledge and skills among its participants.
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.
Great and undeniable significance aesthetic culture employee. 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. Highly developed dynamic production is impossible without high culture communication between 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.
Specific criterion labor 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 the sphere of greatest application and, consequently, its development essential forces. 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 improvement in work culture is certainly reflected in an increase cultural level the whole 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, having 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. Law is a very complex sociocultural phenomenon. It arose in response to the needs of society for clear regulation of relations between various subjects of social action: individuals, social groups, states. The other side of this need was to create a system of supervision, control over compliance with established standards and a system of penalties for deviations from the rules.
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.
