National sector of mass culture. Trends in the development of mass culture

Mass culture is a concept that is used to characterize modern cultural production and consumption. This is cultural production, organized according to the type of mass, serial conveyor industry and supplying the same standardized, serial, mass product for standardized mass consumption. Mass culture is a specific product of a modern industrialized urban society.

Mass culture is the culture of the masses, culture intended for consumption by the people; this is the consciousness not of the people, but of the commercial cultural industry; it is hostile to truly popular culture. She knows no traditions, has no nationality, her tastes and ideals change with dizzying speed in accordance with the needs of fashion. Mass culture appeals to a wide audience, appeals to simplified tastes, and claims to be folk art.

In modern sociology, the concept of “mass culture” is increasingly losing its critical focus. The functional significance of mass culture, which ensures the socialization of huge masses of people in the complex, changing environment of a modern industrial urbanized society, is emphasized. While affirming simplified, stereotypical ideas, mass culture nevertheless performs the function of constant life support for a wide variety of social groups. It also ensures mass inclusion in the consumption system and thereby the functioning of mass production. Mass culture is characterized by universality; it covers a broad middle part of society, affecting both the elite and marginal layers in a specific way.

Mass culture affirms the identity of material and spiritual values, equally acting as products of mass consumption. It is characterized by the emergence and accelerated development of a special professional apparatus, the task of which is to use the content of consumed goods, the technology of their production and distribution in order to subordinate mass consciousness to the interests of monopolies and the state apparatus.

There are quite contradictory points of view on the question of the time of the emergence of “mass culture”. Some consider it an eternal by-product of culture and therefore discover it already in ancient times. Much more justified are attempts to connect the emergence of “mass culture” with the scientific and technological revolution, which gave birth to new ways of producing, disseminating and consuming culture. Golenkova Z.T., Akulich M.M., Kuznetsov I.M. General sociology: Textbook. - M.: Gardariki, 2012. - 474 p.

There are a number of points of view regarding the origins of mass culture in cultural studies:

1. The prerequisites for mass culture have been formed since the birth of humanity.
2. The origins of mass culture are associated with the appearance in European literature of the 17th-18th centuries of the adventure, detective, and adventurous novel, which significantly expanded the readership due to huge circulations.
3. The law on compulsory universal literacy, adopted in 1870 in Great Britain, had a great influence on the development of mass culture, which allowed many to master the main form of artistic creativity of the 19th century - the novel.

Nowadays, the mass has changed significantly. The masses have become educated and informed. In addition, the subjects of mass culture today are not just the masses, but also individuals united by various connections. Since people act simultaneously as individuals, and as members of local groups, and as members of mass social communities, the subject of “mass culture” can be considered as dual, that is, both individual and mass at the same time. In turn, the concept of “mass culture” characterizes the peculiarities of the production of cultural values in a modern industrial society, designed for mass consumption of this culture. At the same time, mass production of culture is understood by analogy with the conveyor belt industry.

What are the economic prerequisites for the formation and social functions of mass culture? The desire to see a product in the sphere of spiritual activity, combined with the powerful development of mass communication, led to the creation of a new phenomenon - mass culture. A predetermined commercial installation, conveyor production - all this largely means the transfer to the sphere of artistic culture of the same financial-industrial approach that prevails in other branches of industrial production. In addition, many creative organizations are closely connected with banking and industrial capital, which initially predetermines them to produce commercial, box office, and entertainment works. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is the mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and movie screens. Socially, mass culture forms a new social stratum, called the “middle class,” which has become the core of life in industrial society. He also made mass culture so popular. Mass culture mythologizes human consciousness, mystifies real processes occurring in nature and in human society. There is a rejection of the rational principle in consciousness. The purpose of mass culture is not so much to fill leisure time and relieve tension and stress in a person of industrial and post-industrial society, but to stimulate consumer consciousness in the recipient (that is, the viewer, listener, reader), which in turn forms a special type - passive, uncritical perception of this culture in humans. All this creates a personality that is quite easy to manipulate. In other words, the human psyche is manipulated and the emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings are exploited, and above all feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, and self-preservation.

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Mass culture is a natural attribute of mass society that meets its requirements and ideological guidelines. The dependence of the formation of social consciousness of the individual, the spiritual and moral development of the people on the content of the development of mass communication.

Adapted to the tastes of the broad masses of people, it is technically replicated in the form of many copies and distributed using modern communication technologies.

The emergence and development of mass culture is associated with the rapid development of mass media, capable of exerting a powerful influence on the audience. IN media There are usually three components:

mass media(newspapers, magazines, radio, television, Internet blogs, etc.) - replicate information, have a regular impact on the audience and are aimed at certain groups of people;
means of mass influence(advertising, fashion, cinema, popular literature) - do not always regularly influence the audience, are aimed at the average consumer;
technical means of communication(Internet, telephone) - determine the possibility of direct communication between a person and a person and can be used to transmit personal information.

Let us note that not only the media have an impact on society, but society also seriously influences the nature of the information transmitted in the media. Unfortunately, the demands of the public often turn out to be low culturally, which reduces the level of television programs, newspaper articles, variety shows, etc.

In recent decades, in the context of the development of means of communication, they talk about a special computer culture. If previously the main source of information was the book page, now it is the computer screen. A modern computer allows you to instantly receive information over the network, supplement the text with graphic images, videos, and sound, which ensures a holistic and multi-level perception of information. In this case, text on the Internet (for example, a web page) can be represented as hypertext. those. contain a system of references to other texts, fragments, non-textual information. The flexibility and versatility of computer information display tools greatly enhance the degree of its impact on humans.

At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century. mass culture began to play an important role in ideology and economics. However, this role is ambiguous. On the one hand, mass culture made it possible to reach wide sections of the population and introduce them to cultural achievements, presenting them in simple, democratic and understandable images and concepts, but on the other hand, it created powerful mechanisms for manipulating public opinion and forming an average taste.

The main components of mass culture include:

information industry- the press, television news, talk shows, etc., explaining current events in understandable language. Mass culture was initially formed in the sphere of the information industry - the “yellow press” of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Time has shown the high efficiency of mass communication in the process of manipulating public opinion;
leisure industry- films, entertaining literature, pop humor with the most simplified content, pop music, etc.;
formation system mass consumption, which centers on advertising and fashion. Consumption here is presented as a non-stop process and the most important goal of human existence;
replicated mythology- from the myth of the “American Dream”, where beggars turn into millionaires, to the myths about “national exceptionalism” and the special virtues of one or another people compared to others.

National culture , as a system of unified national standards of social adequacy and unified ones emerges only in modern times during the processes of industrialization and urbanization, the formation of capitalism in its classical, postclassical and even alternative (socialist) forms.

The formation of a national culture is built as a unifying superstructure over society, setting certain universal standards for some sociocultural features of the nation. Of course, even before the formation of nations, the same kind of unifying different classes took place features of ethnic culture: first of all language, religion, folklore, some household rituals, elements of clothing, household items, etc. National culture sets fundamentally uniform benchmarks and standards implemented by publicly accessible specialized cultural institutions: universal education, the press, political organizations, mass forms of artistic culture and literature, etc.

Concepts “ethnic” And “national” culture are often used interchangeably. However, in cultural studies they have different contents.

Ethnic (folk) culture- is a culture of people connected by a common origin (blood relationship) and jointly carried out economic activities. It changes from one area to another. Local limitation, strict localization, isolation in a relatively narrow social space is one of the main features of this culture. Ethnic culture mainly covers the sphere of everyday life, customs, clothing, folk crafts, and folklore. Conservatism, continuity, and focus on preserving “roots” are characteristic features of ethnic culture. Some elements of it become symbols of the identity of the people and patriotic attachment to their historical past - “cabbage soup and porridge”, a samovar and a sundress for the Russians, a kimono for the Japanese, a plaid skirt for the Scots, a towel for the Ukrainians.

IN ethnic culture the power of tradition, habit, and customs, passed on from generation to generation at the family or neighborhood level, dominates. The defining mechanism of cultural communication here is direct communication between generations of people living nearby. Elements of folk culture - rituals, customs, myths, beliefs, legends, folklore - are preserved and transmitted within the boundaries of a given culture through the natural abilities of each person - his memory, oral speech and living language, natural musical ear, organic plasticity. This does not require any special training or special technical means of storage and recording.

The structure of national culture is more complex than ethnic. National culture includes, along with traditional everyday, professional and everyday culture, also specialized areas of culture. And since the nation embraces society, and society has stratification and social structure, the concept of national culture embraces the subcultures of all large groups, which an ethnic group may not have. Moreover, ethnic cultures are part of the national one. Take such young nations as the USA or Brazil, nicknamed ethnic cauldrons. American national culture is extremely heterogeneous, it includes Irish, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Russian, Jewish and other ethnic cultures. Most modern national cultures are multiethnic.

National culture cannot be reduced to a mechanical sum ethnic cultures. She has something beyond that. It has its own national cultural features, which arose when representatives of all ethnic groups realized that they belonged to a new nation. For example, both blacks and whites equally enthusiastically sing the US anthem and honor the American flag, respect its laws and national holidays, in particular Thanksgiving Day (US Independence Day). None of this exists in any ethnic culture or among any people who came to the United States. They appeared in new territory. Awareness by large social groups of their commitment to the territory of their settlement, the national literary language, national traditions and symbols constitutes the content of national culture.

Unlike ethnicnational culture unites people living over large areas and not necessarily related by blood. Experts believe that a new type of social communication associated with the invention of writing is a prerequisite for the emergence of a national culture. It is thanks to writing that the ideas necessary for national unification gain popularity among the literate part of the population.

However, the main difficulty in the dissemination of national culture is that modern knowledge, norms, cultural patterns and meanings are developed almost exclusively in the depths of highly specialized areas of social practice. They are more or less successfully understood and assimilated by relevant specialists; For the bulk of the population, the languages of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) are almost incomprehensible. Society requires a system of means for semantic adaptation, “translation” of transmitted information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of everyday understanding of unprepared people, for “interpretation” of this information to its mass consumer, a certain “infantilization” of its figurative incarnations, as well as “control” of the consciousness of the masses. consumer in the interests of the manufacturer of this information, offered goods, services, etc.

This kind of adaptation has always been required for children when, in the processes of upbringing and general education, “adult” meanings were translated into the language of fairy tales, parables, entertaining stories, simplified examples, etc., more accessible to children’s consciousness. Now such interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. A modern person, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in only one area, and the level of his specialization increases from century to century. In other areas, he requires a permanent “staff” of commentators, interpreters, teachers, journalists, advertising agents and other kinds of “guides” who lead him through the boundless sea of information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, etc. It cannot be said that modern man has become more stupid or childish than his ancestors. It’s just that his psyche, apparently, cannot process such a quantity of information, conduct such a multifactorial analysis of such a number of simultaneously arising problems, use his social experience with due efficiency, etc. Let's not forget that the speed of information processing in computers is many times higher than the corresponding capabilities of the human brain.

This situation requires the emergence of new methods of intelligent search, scanning, selection and systematization of information, “pressing” it into larger blocks, the development of new technologies for forecasting and decision-making, as well as the mental preparedness of people to work with such voluminous information flows. After the current “information revolution”, i.e. increasing the efficiency of information transmission and processing, as well as management decision-making, humanity expects a “forecasting revolution” - a leapfrogging increase in the efficiency of forecasting, probabilistic calculation, factor analysis, etc.

In the meantime, people need some kind of remedy that relieves excess mental stress from the information flows that fall on them, reduces complex intellectual problems to primitive dual oppositions, and gives the individual the opportunity to “take a break” from social responsibility and personal choice. dissolve it in the crowd of soap opera viewers or mechanical consumers of advertised goods, ideas, slogans, etc. The implementer of this kind of needs was Mass culture. It cannot be said that mass culture generally frees a person from personal responsibility; rather, it is precisely about removing the problem of independent choice. The structure of existence (at least that part of it that directly concerns the individual) is given to a person as a set of more or less standard situations, where everything has already been chosen by those same “guides” in life: journalists, advertising agents, public politicians, etc. In mass culture, everything is already known in advance: the “correct” political system, the only correct doctrine, leaders, place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, the fashion for the image of a “class fighter” or “sexual symbol,” movies where “ours” are always right and always win, etc.

This begs the question: weren’t there problems in previous times with translating the meanings of a specialized culture to the level of everyday understanding? Why did mass culture appear only in the last one and a half to two centuries, and what cultural phenomena performed this function earlier? Apparently, the fact is that before the scientific and technological revolution of recent centuries there really was no such gap between specialized and everyday knowledge. The only obvious exception to this rule was religion. We know well how great was the intellectual gap between “professional” theology and the mass religiosity of the population. Here, a “translation” from one language to another was really necessary (and often in the literal sense: from Latin, Church Slavonic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. into the national languages of believers). This task, both linguistically and in terms of content, was solved by preaching (both from the pulpit and missionary). It was the sermon, in contrast to the divine service, that was delivered in a language absolutely understandable to the congregation and was, to a greater or lesser extent, a reduction of religious dogma to publicly accessible images, concepts, parables, etc. Obviously, we can consider church sermons to be the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

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Mass culture as a social phenomenon

Sociology

Mass culture is a concept that embraces the diverse and heterogeneous cultural phenomena of the 20th century, which became widespread in connection with the scientific and technological revolution and the constant renewal of mass communications. The production, distribution and consumption of mass culture products is industrial and commercial in nature. The semantic range of mass culture is very wide, from primitive kitsch (early comics, melodrama, pop hit, soap opera) to complex, content-rich forms (certain types of rock music, “intellectual” detective, pop art). The aesthetics of mass culture is characterized by a constant balancing act between the trivial and the original, the aggressive and the sentimental, the vulgar and the sophisticated. By updating and anticipating the expectations of the mass audience, mass culture meets its needs for leisure, entertainment, play, communication, emotional compensation or release, etc.

Introduction

Mass culture, being one of the most striking manifestations of the sociocultural existence of modern developed communities, remains a relatively little-understood phenomenon from the point of view of the general theory of culture. Interesting theoretical foundations for studying the social functions of culture (including mass culture) have been developed in recent years by E. Orlova. In accordance with its concept, two areas can be distinguished in the morphological structure of culture: everyday culture, mastered by a person in the process of his general socialization in his living environment (primarily in the processes of upbringing and general education), and specialized culture, the development of which requires special (professional) education . Mass culture occupies an intermediate position between these two areas with the function of translating cultural meanings from specialized culture to ordinary human consciousness. Such an approach to the phenomenon of mass culture seems very heuristic. This work sets the goal of in-depth reflection on the socio-functional characteristics of mass culture in line with this concept and correlating it with the concept of social subcultures.

Since the decomposition of primitive society, the beginning of the division of labor, social stratification in human groups and the formation of the first urban civilizations, a corresponding differentiation of culture arose, determined by the difference in the social functions of different groups of people associated with their way of life, material means and social benefits, as well as the emerging ideology and symbols of social prestige. These differentiated segments of the general culture of a particular historical community eventually came to be called social subcultures. In principle, the number of such subcultures can be correlated with the number of specialized areas of activity (specialties, professions) available in the community, but the objectives of this article do not require such a fine-grained structuring of culture. It is enough to highlight only a few main social-class (estate) subcultures that unite large groups of people in accordance with their role and functions in the production of the means of physical and social existence of a person, in maintaining or disrupting social organization and regulation of social life (order).

Types of subcultures

First of all, we are talking about the subculture of rural producers, called folk (in socio-demographic terms) or ethnographic (in terms of the greatest concentration of relevant specific features). Functionally, this culture produces mainly means of maintaining the physical (vital) existence of people - primarily food. From the point of view of the main characteristics, this subculture is characterized by a low level of specialization in individual professions (the “classical” peasant is, as a rule, a generalist worker: a farmer, a cattle breeder, a fisherman, and a carpenter at the same time, unless special landscape conditions specialize him more narrowly); low level of individual social aspirations of people; a slight gap between the everyday culture of peasant life and the specialized knowledge and skills of agricultural labor. Accordingly, the method of social reproduction of this subculture generally does not go beyond the simple intergenerational transmission of the local tradition of environmental management and the associated picture of the world, beliefs, rational knowledge, norms of social relations, rituals, etc., the transmission of which is carried out in the forms of ordinary upbringing of children in the family and does not require any special education.

The subculture of urban producers has somewhat different functions, which at the dawn of civilization was formed as a craft and trade one, and later began to be called bourgeois (burgher), industrial, proletarian, post-bourgeois (socialist), etc., although functionally it remained the same. This culture produces the means not so much of vital as of social existence of people - tools, weapons, household items, energy, transport, communications, urban habitat, knowledge about the world and about man, means of exchange (money) and the mechanisms of their functioning, trade, aesthetic values, etc. Moreover, all this, as a rule, is produced in commercial quantities.

This subculture is characterized by a relatively high and steadily increasing level of professional specialization of its subjects (even a craftsman of ancient times was a more or less narrow specialist in his field, not to mention later craftsmen, engineers, doctors, scientists, artists, etc.); moderate level of personal social aspirations (those representatives of the urban subculture who are distinguished by increased social ambitions usually strive to go into the elite or criminal spheres, and the ambitions of average urban producers are, as a rule, relatively moderate). The gap between the ordinary and specialized components of this culture in ancient times was small (the specialty of an artisan or merchant was mastered in the process of home education), but with scientific and technological development it increased significantly (especially in knowledge-intensive professions). The processes of social reproduction of this subculture were divided accordingly: the everyday culture of the average city dweller is reproduced within the framework of family education and through the institutions of the national educational standard (which will be discussed below), and the specialized culture is reproduced through a network of secondary specialized and higher educational institutions.

The third social subculture is elite. This word usually means special sophistication, complexity and high quality of cultural products. But this is not the most important feature of the elite subculture. Its main function is the production of social order (in the form of law, power, structures of social organization of society and legitimate violence in the interests of maintaining this organization), as well as the ideology that justifies this order (in the forms of religion, social philosophy and political thought). The elite subculture is distinguished by a very high level of specialization (the training of clergy - shamans, priests, etc., is obviously the oldest special professional education); the highest level of social aspirations of the individual (love of power, wealth and fame is considered the “normal” psychology of any elite). The gap between the ordinary and specialized components of this social subculture, as well as in the bourgeois subculture, until recently was not very large. The knowledge and skills of an aristocratic upbringing acquired from childhood, as a rule, made it possible to perform the duties of a knight, officer, courtier, official of any rank, and even a monarch without additional training. Perhaps only the functions of clergy required special training. This situation lasted in Europe until the 18th-19th centuries, when the elite subculture began to merge with the bourgeois subculture, turning into the highest layer of the latter. At the same time, the requirements for the professional preparedness of performers of elite functions increased significantly, which led to the emergence of corresponding educational institutions (military, diplomatic, political and administrative).

Today, the discrepancy between the ordinary and specialized layers of the elite subculture has become very significant, because the ruling circles of most countries are now filled with people who, as a rule, did not receive an aristocratic upbringing at home. Although there are no convincing signs of sustainable reproduction of the traditions of everyday elite culture in most developed societies of our time (the relic of the “Russian intelligentsia”, apparently, was preserved precisely due to its contradictory kinship-antagonism with the socialist utopia), nevertheless, talking about the “death » aristocratic tradition is still premature. It’s just that the political and intellectual elite itself has become different, almost unrelated to the hereditary aristocracy of previous times. And if its specialized forms are more or less continuous in relation to the historically established ones, then at the everyday level the new “elite style”, combining aristocratic and bourgeois traditions, is still far from harmony and its forms even in the USA and Western Europe.

And finally, another social subculture is criminal. This is a culture of deliberate violation of the prevailing social orders and ideology. It has many specific specializations: theft, murder, hooliganism, prostitution, beggary, fraud, national extremism, political terrorism, revolutionary underground, illegitimate sectarianism, heresy, sex crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and further under all articles of the criminal code, as well as lists of forms of mental deviations, social inadequacy, etc. This subculture has always existed and, apparently, it is based on some features of the human psyche, leading to one or another form of protest against the absolute regulation of social existence (implanted, naturally, by the elite culture ). The parameters of this subculture that interest us are distinguished by very contradictory (amorphous, unstructured) characteristics. Here there are both highly specialized (terrorism) and completely unspecialized (hooliganism, alcoholism) manifestations of criminality, and any stable distance between these components, as well as any pronounced tendency to increase the level of specialization, is not visible. The social ambitions of the subjects of the criminal subculture also vary from extremely low (homeless people, beggars) to extremely high (charismatic leaders of extremist political movements and sects, political and financial swindlers, etc.). The criminal subculture has also developed its own special institutions of reproduction: dens of thieves, places of detention, brothels, revolutionary underground, totalitarian sects, etc.

Reasons for the emergence of mass culture

Thus, it can be assumed that the traditional opposition between folk and elite subcultures from the point of view of understanding their social functions is completely unconvincing. The opposition to the folk (peasant) subculture is seen as the urban (bourgeois) subculture, and the counterculture in relation to the elitist (culture of standards of social order) is seen as the criminal (culture of social disorder). Of course, it is impossible to completely “shove” the population of any country into one or another social subculture. A certain percentage of people, for various reasons, are always in an intermediate state of either social growth (transition from a rural subculture to an urban one or from a bourgeois to an elite one), or social degradation (sinking from a bourgeois or elite “to the bottom” to a criminal one).

One way or another, the identification of groups of people as representatives of one or another social subculture seems to be the most justified, primarily based on the specific features of the everyday culture they have mastered, realized in the corresponding forms of lifestyle. The way of life, of course, is determined, among other things, by the type of professional occupation of a person (a diplomat or a bishop inevitably has a different way of life than a peasant or a pickpocket), the indigenous traditions of the place of residence, but most of all - the social status of the person, his estate or class affiliation . It is the social status that determines the direction of the individual’s economic and cognitive interests, the style of his leisure time, communication, etiquette, information aspirations, aesthetic tastes, fashion, image, household rites and rituals, prejudices, images of prestige, ideas about one’s own dignity, norms of social adequacy, and general ideological attitudes. , social philosophy, etc., which constitutes the main array of features of everyday culture.

Everyday culture is not studied by a person specifically (with the exception of emigrants who purposefully master the language and customs of their new homeland), but is acquired by him more or less spontaneously in the process of childhood upbringing and general education, communication with relatives, the social environment, professional colleagues, etc. and is adjusted. throughout an individual’s life, depending on the intensity of his social contacts. Everyday culture is the possession of the customs of everyday life of the social and national environment in which a person lives and socially self-realizes. The process of mastering everyday culture is called in science general socialization and inculturation of the individual, which includes a person not just in the national culture of any people, but also - without fail - in one of its social subcultures, which are discussed above.

The study of the everyday culture of rural producers, according to established tradition, is mainly dealt with by ethnography (including cultural anthropology, ethnic ecology, etc.), and the everyday layer of culture of other social strata, by necessity, is general history (historical anthropology, etc.), philology (social semiotics, “ Moscow-Tartu semiotic school), sociology (sociology of culture, urban anthropology), but most of all, of course, cultural studies.

At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that until the 18th-19th centuries, none of the described social subcultures, nor even their mechanical sum (on the scale of one ethnic group or state) could be called the national culture of the corresponding state. First of all, because there were no unified national standards of social adequacy and unified mechanisms for the socialization of the individual throughout the entire culture. All this arises only in modern times during the processes of industrialization and urbanization, the formation of capitalism in its classical, postclassical and even alternative (socialist) forms, the transformation of class societies into national ones and the erosion of class barriers that separated people, the development of universal literacy of the population, the degradation of many forms traditional everyday culture of the pre-industrial type, the development of technical means of reproducing and broadcasting information, the liberalization of morals and lifestyles of communities, the increasing dependence of political elites on the state of public opinion, and the production of mass consumption products on the stability of consumer demand regulated by fashion, advertising, etc.

A special place here is occupied by the processes of mass migration of the population to cities, massification of the political life of communities (the emergence of multimillion-dollar armies, trade unions, political parties and electorates). In the last decades of the twentieth century, the dynamics of the technological revolution were added to the listed factors - the transition from the industrial stage of development (intensification of mechanical manipulation of working bodies) to the post-industrial stage (intensification of management processes - obtaining and processing information and decision-making).

Under these conditions, the tasks of standardizing sociocultural attitudes, interests and needs of the bulk of the population, intensifying the processes of manipulating the human personality, its social aspirations, political behavior, ideological orientations, consumer demand for goods, services, ideas, one’s own image, etc., have become equally relevant. n. In previous eras, the monopoly on this kind of control of consciousness on a more or less mass scale belonged to the church and political authorities. In modern times, private producers of information, consumer goods and services also entered into competition for people’s consciousness. All this required a change in the mechanisms of general socialization and inculturation of a person, preparing the individual for the free realization of not only his productive labor, but also his sociocultural interests.

If in traditional communities the problems of general socialization of the individual were solved primarily by means of personal transmission of knowledge, norms and patterns of consciousness and behavior (activity) from parents to children, from a teacher (master) to a student, from a priest to a parishioner, etc. (and in the content of the transmitted social experience, a special place was occupied by the personal life experience of the educator and his personal sociocultural orientations and preferences), then at the stage of the formation of national cultures, such mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction of the individual begin to lose their effectiveness. There is a need for greater universalization of the transmitted experience, value orientations, patterns of consciousness and behavior; in the formation of national norms and standards of social and cultural adequacy of a person; in initiating his interest and demand for standardized forms of social benefits; in increasing the efficiency of the mechanisms of social regulation due to the unifying effect on the motivation of human behavior, social aspirations, images of prestige, etc. This, in turn, necessitated the creation of a channel for transmitting knowledge, concepts, sociocultural norms and other socially significant information to the general public population, covering the entire nation, and not just its individual educated classes. The first steps in this direction were the introduction of universal and compulsory primary and, later, secondary education, and then the development of mass media and information (media), democratic political procedures, drawing ever larger masses of people into their orbit, etc.

It should be noted that in national culture (as opposed to class culture), the children of, say, the British queen and the children of a day laborer from Suffolk receive a general secondary education according to more or less the same type of programs (national educational standard), read the same books, study the same English laws, watch the same television programs, support the same football team, etc., and the quality of their knowledge of the poetry of Shakespeare or British history depends more on their personal abilities than on differences in programs general education. Of course, when it comes to obtaining a special education and profession, the opportunities of the compared children vary significantly and depend on the social circumstances of their lives. But the national standard at the level of general secondary education, uniformity in the content of general socialization and inculturation of community members, the development of the media and the gradual liberalization of information policy in modern countries more or less ensure the nationwide cultural unity of citizens and the unity of the norms of their social adequacy. This is national culture, in contrast to class culture, where even the norms of social behavior differed for different social groups.

The formation of a national culture does not negate its division into the social subcultures described above. National culture complements the system of social subcultures, is built as a unifying superstructure over them, reducing the severity of social and value tensions between different groups of people, setting certain universal standards for some sociocultural features of the nation. Of course, even before the formation of nations, there were similar features of ethnic culture that united different classes: first of all, language, religion, folklore, some household rituals, elements of clothing, household items, etc. At the same time, it seems that ethnographic cultural features inferior to national culture primarily in terms of its level of universality (due to its predominantly non-institutionalized nature). The forms of ethnic culture are very plastic and variable in the practice of different classes. Often even the language and religion of the aristocracy and the plebs of the same ethnic group were far from identical. National culture sets fundamentally uniform standards and benchmarks, implemented by publicly accessible specialized cultural institutions: general education, the press, political organizations, mass forms of artistic culture, etc. For example, some forms of fiction exist among all peoples who have a written culture, but Before the historical transformation of an ethnos into a nation, it does not face the problem of forming a national literary language, which exists in different regions in the form of various local dialects. One of the most significant characteristics of national culture is that, in contrast to ethnic culture, which is primarily memorial, reproducing the historical tradition of collective forms of life of the people, national culture is primarily prognostic, articulating goals rather than the results of development, developing knowledge, norms , contents and meanings of a modernization orientation, imbued with the pathos of intensification of all aspects of social life.

However, the main difficulty in the dissemination of national culture is that modern knowledge, norms, cultural patterns and meanings are developed almost exclusively in the depths of highly specialized areas of social practice. They are more or less successfully understood and assimilated by relevant specialists; For the bulk of the population, the languages of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) are almost incomprehensible. Society requires a system of means for semantic adaptation, translation of transmitted information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of everyday understanding of unprepared people, “interpretation” of this information to its mass consumer, a certain “infantilization” of its figurative incarnations, as well as “control” of the consciousness of the mass consumer in interests of the manufacturer of this information, offered goods, services, etc.

This kind of adaptation has always been required for children when, in the processes of upbringing and general education, “adult” meanings were translated into the language of fairy tales, parables, entertaining stories, simplified examples, etc., more accessible to children’s consciousness. Now such interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. A modern person, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in one field, and the level of his specialization (at least in the elite and bourgeois subcultures) is increasing from century to century. In other areas, he requires a permanent “staff” of commentators, interpreters, teachers, journalists, advertising agents and other kinds of “guides” who lead him through the boundless sea of information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, economic problems, etc. n. It cannot be said that modern man has become stupider or more childish than his ancestors. It’s just that his psyche, apparently, cannot process such a quantity of information, conduct such a multifactorial analysis of such a number of simultaneously arising problems, use his social experience with due efficiency, etc. Let’s not forget that the speed of information processing in computers is many times higher than the corresponding capabilities of the human brain.

This situation requires the emergence of new methods of intelligent search, scanning, selection and systematization of information, pressing it into larger blocks, the development of new technologies for forecasting and decision-making, as well as the mental preparedness of people to work with such voluminous information flows. It can be assumed that after the current “information revolution”, i.e. increasing the efficiency of transmitting and processing information, as well as making management decisions with the help of computers, humanity will experience a “forecasting revolution” - a sudden increase in the efficiency of forecasting, probabilistic calculation, factor analysis, etc. etc., although it is difficult to predict with the help of what technical means (or methods of artificial stimulation of brain activity) this can happen.

Mass culture

It cannot be said that mass culture generally frees a person from personal responsibility; rather, it is precisely about removing the problem of independent choice. The structure of existence (at least that part of it that concerns the individual directly) is given to a person as a set of more or less standard situations, where everything has already been chosen by those same “guides” in life: journalists, advertising agents, public politicians, show business stars etc. In popular culture, everything is already known in advance: the “correct” political system, the only true doctrine, leaders, place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, fashion for the image of a “class fighter” or “sexual symbol”, films where “our “always right and will certainly win, etc.

This begs the question: weren’t there problems in earlier times with translating the ideas and meanings of a specialized culture to the level of everyday understanding? Why did mass culture appear only in the last one and a half to two centuries and what cultural phenomena performed this function earlier? Apparently, the fact is that before the scientific and technological revolution of recent centuries, there really was no such gap between specialized and everyday knowledge (as there is still almost no gap in the peasant subculture). The only obvious exception to this rule was religion. It is widely known how great the intellectual gap was between “professional” theology and the mass religiosity of the population. Here, a “translation” from one language to another was really necessary (and often in the literal sense: from Latin, Church Slavonic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. into the national languages of believers). This task, both linguistically and in terms of content, was solved by preaching (both from the pulpit and missionary). It was the sermon, in contrast to the divine service, that was delivered in a language absolutely understandable to the congregation and was, to a greater or lesser extent, a reduction of religious dogma to publicly accessible images, concepts, parables, etc. Obviously, the church sermon can be considered the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

Of course, some elements of specialized knowledge and samples from elite culture always entered the popular consciousness and, as a rule, underwent a specific transformation in it, sometimes acquiring fantastic or popular forms. But these transformations are spontaneous, “by mistake,” “by misunderstanding.” Phenomena of mass culture are usually created by professional people who deliberately reduce complex meanings to primitiveness “for the uneducated” or, at best, for children. It cannot be said that this kind of infantilization is so simple in execution; It is well known that the creation of works of art intended for a children’s audience is in many respects more difficult than creativity “for adults,” and the technical skill of many show business stars evokes sincere admiration among representatives of the “art classics.” Nevertheless, the purposefulness of this kind of semantic reduction is one of the main phenomenological features of mass culture.

Among the main manifestations and trends of mass culture of our time, the following can be distinguished:

the industry of “childhood subculture” (artworks for children, toys and industrially produced games, products for specific children’s consumption, children’s clubs and camps, paramilitary and other organizations, technologies for collective education of children, etc.), pursuing the goals of explicit or camouflaged standardization of content and forms of raising children, introducing into their consciousness unified forms and skills of social and personal culture, ideologically oriented worldviews that lay the foundations of basic value systems officially promoted in a given society;

a mass comprehensive school that closely correlates with the attitudes of the “subculture of childhood”, introducing students to the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, philosophical and religious ideas about the world around them, to the historical sociocultural experience of the collective life of people, to the value orientations accepted in the community. At the same time, it standardizes the listed knowledge and ideas on the basis of standard programs and reduces the transmitted knowledge to simplified forms of children's consciousness and understanding;

mass media (print and electronic), broadcasting current relevant information to a wide segment of the population, “interpreting” to the average person the meaning of ongoing events, judgments and actions of figures from various specialized areas of social practice and interpreting this information in the “necessary” perspective for the client engaging this media , i.e., actually manipulating the consciousness of people and shaping public opinion on certain problems in the interests of their customer (in this case, in principle, the possibility of the existence of unbiased journalism is not excluded, although in practice this is the same absurdity as an “independent army);

a system of national (state) ideology and propaganda, “patriotic” education, etc., controlling and shaping the political and ideological orientations of the population and its individual groups (for example, political and educational work with military personnel), manipulating the consciousness of people in the interests of the ruling elites, ensuring political reliability and desirable electoral behavior of citizens, “mobilization readiness” of society for possible military threats and political upheavals, etc.;

mass political movements (party and youth organizations, manifestations, demonstrations, propaganda and election campaigns, etc.), initiated by the ruling or opposition elites with the aim of involving broad sections of the population in political actions, most of them very far from the political interests of the elites, few understanding the meaning of the proposed political programs, for the support of which people are mobilized by whipping up political, nationalistic, religious and other psychosis;

mass social mythology (national chauvinism and hysterical “patriotism”, social demagoguery, populism, quasi-religious and parascientific teachings and movements, extrasensory perception, “idol mania”, “spy mania”, “witch hunt”, provocative “information leaks”, rumors, gossip etc.), simplifying the complex system of human value orientations and the variety of shades of worldview to elementary dual oppositions (“ours - not ours”), replacing the analysis of complex multifactorial cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena and events with appeals to simple and, as a rule, fantastic explanations (world conspiracy, the machinations of foreign intelligence services, “drums”, aliens, etc.), particularizing consciousness (absolutizing the individual and random, while ignoring the typical, statistically predominant), etc. This, ultimately, liberates people, not prone to complex intellectual reflection, from efforts to rationally explain the problems that concern them, gives vent to emotions in their most infantile manifestation;

entertainment industry, which includes mass artistic culture (almost all types of literature and art, perhaps with the certain exception of architecture), mass staged entertainment performances (from sports and circus to erotic), professional sports (as a spectacle for fans) , structures for organized entertainment leisure (appropriate types of clubs, discos, dance floors, etc.) and other types of mass shows. Here the consumer, as a rule, acts not only as a passive spectator (listener), but is also constantly provoked into active involvement or an ecstatic emotional reaction to what is happening (sometimes not without the help of doping stimulants), which is in many respects the equivalent of the same “subculture” childhood”, only optimized for the tastes and interests of an adult or teenage consumer. At the same time, technical techniques and performing skills of “high” art are used to convey simplified, infantilized semantic and artistic content, adapted to the undemanding tastes, intellectual and aesthetic needs of the mass consumer. Mass artistic culture often achieves the effect of mental relaxation through a special aestheticization of the vulgar, ugly, brutal, physiological, i.e., acting on the principle of the medieval carnival and its semantic “reversals.” This culture is characterized by the replication of the unique, culturally significant and its reduction to the everyday and publicly accessible, and sometimes irony over this accessibility, etc. (again, based on the carnival principle of profaning the sacred);

the industry of recreational leisure, physical rehabilitation of a person and correction of his bodily image (resort industry, mass physical education movement, bodybuilding and aerobics, sports tourism, as well as a system of surgical, physiotherapeutic, pharmaceutical, perfume and cosmetic services to correct appearance), which, in addition to the objectively necessary physical recreation of the human body, gives an individual the opportunity to “tweak” his appearance in accordance with the current fashion for the type of image, with the demand for types of sexual partners, strengthens a person not only physically, but also psychologically (raises his confidence in his physical endurance, gender competitiveness and etc.);

the industry of intellectual and aesthetic leisure (“cultural” tourism, amateur artistic activities, collecting, intellectually or aesthetically developing interest groups, various societies of collectors, lovers and admirers of anything, scientific and educational institutions and associations, as well as everything that falls under the definition of “popular science”, intellectual games, quizzes, crosswords, etc.), introducing people to popular science knowledge, scientific and artistic hobby, developing general “humanitarian erudition” among the population, updating views on the triumph of enlightenment and humanity , to “correct morals” through an aesthetic influence on a person, etc., which is fully consistent with the “Enlightenment” pathos of “progress through knowledge” that still persists in Western culture;

a system of organizing, stimulating and managing consumer demand for things, services, ideas for both individual and collective use (advertising, fashion, image making, etc.), formulating in the public consciousness the standards of socially prestigious images and lifestyles, interests and needs, imitating the forms of elite samples in mass and affordable models, including the ordinary consumer in the rush demand for both prestigious consumer goods and behavior patterns (especially leisure activities), types of appearance, culinary preferences, turning the process of non-stop consumption of social benefits into an end in itself of the individual’s existence ;

various kinds of gaming complexes from mechanical gaming machines, electronic consoles, computer games, etc. to virtual reality systems, developing a certain kind of psychomotor reactions of a person, accustoming him to reaction speed in information-insufficient situations and to choice in information-rich situations, which is used both in training programs for certain specialists (pilots, cosmonauts), and for general developmental and entertainment purposes;

all kinds of dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, catalogues, electronic and other banks of information, special knowledge, public libraries, the Internet, etc., designed not for trained specialists in relevant fields of knowledge, but for mass consumers “from the street”, which also develops the Enlightenment mythology about compendiums of socially significant knowledge (encyclopedias) that are compact and popular in language of presentation, and essentially return us to the medieval principle of “registry” construction of knowledge.

We can list a number of other particular areas of mass culture.

All this has already taken place at different stages of human history. But living conditions (the rules of the social community game) have changed radically today. Today, people (especially young people) are focused on completely different standards of social prestige, built in a system of images and in a language that has actually become international and which, despite the grumbling of the older generation and traditionally oriented groups of the population, quite suits those around them, attracts and attracts . And no one is imposing this “cultural product”. Unlike political ideology, nothing can be imposed on anyone here. Everyone retains the right to turn off the TV whenever they want. Mass culture, as one of the most free distribution of goods in the information market, can only exist in conditions of voluntary and rush demand. Of course, the level of such excitement is artificially maintained by interested sellers of goods, but the very fact of increased demand for precisely this, made precisely in this figurative style, in this language, is generated by the consumer himself, and not by the seller. In the end, the images of mass culture, like any other image system, show us nothing more than our own “cultural face”, which in fact has always been inherent in us; It’s just that in Soviet times this “side of the face” was not shown on TV. If this “person” were completely alien, if there were no truly massive demand for all this in society, we would not react to it so sharply.

But the main thing is that such a commercially attractive component of mass culture put up for free sale is by no means its most significant feature and function, but may even be its most harmless manifestation. Much more important is that mass culture represents a new in sociocultural practice, a fundamentally higher level of standardization of the system of images of social adequacy and prestige, some new form of organization of the “cultural competence” of a modern person, his socialization and inculturation, a new system of management and manipulation of his consciousness, interests and needs, consumer demand, value orientations, behavioral stereotypes, etc.

How dangerous is this? Or maybe, on the contrary, in today's conditions it is necessary and inevitable? No one can give an exact answer to this question.

Two points of view on popular culture

Currently, people do not have a single point of view on mass culture - some consider it a good thing, because it still carries a semantic load and forces society to pay attention to certain facts. Others consider it evil, a tool for controlling the masses by the ruling elite. Below these points of view will be discussed in more detail.

About the benefits of mass culture

For several decades now, cultural experts in Europe have been criticizing mass culture for its primitive level, market orientation, and dumbing effect. The assessments “kitsch”, “primitive”, “flea market literature” are typical. But in recent years, defenders of elite art have increasingly begun to notice that elite literature does not convey socially important information. And entertainment products like Mario Puzo's The Godfather turn out to be quite accurate and in-depth analyzes of Western society. And it may be that the success of such literature is due precisely to its educational, rather than entertaining, side.

And with regard to old Soviet films, for example films by Eldar Ryazanov, there is no doubt about their educational value. But this is not specific information about some realities of existence, but a representation of the structures of relationships, typical characters and conflicts. These are ideological orientations of the bygone past, primarily the relations of collectivism, the concept of a common cause, a bright future and heroic behavior. What has lost its appeal at the ideological level retains it at the level of mass consciousness. And here the prediction of the German philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini unexpectedly comes true, who wrote in 1950 in his work “The End of Modern Times” that one should not be afraid of “mass society”, but should hope that it will overcome the limitations of an individualistic society in which a full-blooded development is possible only for a few, and orientation towards common tasks is generally unlikely.

The growing complexity of the world, the emergence of global problems that threaten humanity, requires a change in orientation from individualism to solidarity and camaraderie. What is required is a unification of efforts, a coordination of activities that “is no longer possible for individual initiative and cooperation of people of an individualistic nature.”

What a representative of an individualistic society dreamed of has already been achieved in our country, has been lost, and is now somehow being restored again at the level of the “culture of poverty” and in the imagination. It is imagination that is the main sphere of realization of mass culture. New myths of Eurasianism, geopolitics, the clash of civilizations, and the return of the Middle Ages are being formed in Russia and filling the ideological vacuum of the post-Soviet space. Thus, the place of the classical pre-industrial and fairly systematized industrial Russian culture being pushed out of Russia is being replaced by the eclectic culture of a transitional society.

In contrast to the mass culture of developed countries, which mosaically complements the rigid systematicity of the technological and socio-normative levels and thereby creates a new manipulative totality, the mass culture of Russia chaotically fills the chaotic social reality.

Mass culture, as we know, does not produce values. She replicates them. The ideologeme precedes the mythologem - it is no longer interesting to talk about how mass culture uses archaic methods of reproduction. And, of course, one should not accuse her of “new barbarism.”

The mechanism of culture is not always identical to its content - completely barbaric methods of spreading culture can be put at the service of civilization. Thus, American cinematography has been successfully promoting violence in the name of freedom, preaching law-abidingness and justifying private life for many years.

And the mythologems of post-Soviet mass culture come from themselves. There are no clear and distinct ideologies that would articulate a consciously accepted and hierarchically structured system of social values.

It is quite natural that people who have not mastered the production of ideologies are far from adequately interpreting the phenomena of mass culture. More precisely, most often they are not noticed.

Mass culture is evil

Currently, Western civilization is entering a phase of stagnation and ossification. It should be noted that this statement relates mainly to the realm of the spirit, but since it determines the development of other spheres of human activity, stagnation will also affect the material levels of existence. Economics is no exception here, because at the end of the 20th century it became obvious that most of the world's population made a voluntary or forced choice in favor of the economy of market liberalism. A new, first, economic totalitarianism is coming. At first it will be “soft”, since the current generations of Western people are accustomed to eating well and having an easy and pleasant living environment. Accustoming new generations to less comfortable living conditions and the subsequent reduction of old generations will make it possible to introduce a more rigid model, which will require appropriate control over social relations.

This process will be preceded by a toughening and simplification of the position of the media. This trend can be observed in all countries and, in fact, at any level, from respectable newspapers and magazines and “first” television channels to the tabloid press.

It is clear that the establishment of a “new world order” in its totalitarian form requires not only economic and ideological support, but also an aesthetic basis. In this area, the fusion of liberal-democratic ideology and positivistic-materialistic individualistic philosophy gives rise to the phenomenon of mass culture. The replacement of culture with mass culture should simplify human control, since it reduces the entire complex of aesthetic sensations to animal instincts, experienced in the form of a spectacle.

In general, the destruction of culture is a direct consequence of Western liberal democracy. After all, what is democracy? Democracy is a government that represents the majority of the population of a particular region or organization. Liberalism embodies absolute adherence to market laws and individualism. In the absence of authoritarian and spiritual counterweights, producers of an aesthetic product are guided only by the opinions and tastes of the crowd. It is obvious that under such a combination of circumstances, the phenomenon of “revolt of the masses” inevitably arises. The masses demand, first of all, bad taste, endless bestsellers and soap operas. If the elite does not care about the formation and instillation of high ideals among the masses, then these ideals themselves will never establish themselves in people's life. High is always difficult, and the majority always choose what is easier and more convenient.

A curious paradox arises in which mass culture, being the product of broad democratic strata of society, begins to be used by the liberal elite for governing purposes.

By inertia, part of the “top” still continues to strive for true masterpieces, but the system does not favor either creativity or consumption of the latter. Thus, the boor who created mass culture begins to be controlled by a boor who is part of the elite. From now on, belonging to the “higher” class is determined only by purely technical, intellectual abilities, the amount of money controlled and clan affiliation. There is no longer any talk of any spiritual or ethical superiority of the elite over the masses.

There is no need to think that this process has no impact on everyday life. Rudeness makes its way both in the jargon of the language, and in the decline in the level of, as they say, humanitarian knowledge, and in the worship of the spirit of plebeianism that reigns on television. Most totalitarian dictators of the past can be accused of misanthropy, pathological cruelty and intolerance, but almost none can be accused of banality. They all ran away from vulgarity in every possible way, even if they did it poorly.

Now, at last, the opportunity has arisen to merge in eschatological ecstasy with the boor leading and the boor being led. Everything that does not fit into their ideas about the structure of the world will be marginalized, or will be completely deprived of the right to exist.

Conclusion

Although mass culture, of course, is an “ersatz product” of specialized “high” areas of culture, it does not generate its own meanings, but only imitates the phenomena of a specialized culture, uses its forms, meanings, professional skills, often parodying them, reducing them to the level of perception of the “low-cultural” "consumer, this phenomenon should not be assessed negatively. Mass culture is generated by objective processes of social modernization of communities, when the socializing and inculturating functions of traditional everyday culture (class type), accumulating the social experience of urban life in the pre-industrial era, lose their effectiveness and practical relevance, and mass culture actually takes on the functions of an instrument for ensuring primary socialization individuals in a national society with erased class and class boundaries. It is likely that mass culture is the embryonic predecessor of some new, still emerging everyday culture, reflecting the social experience of life already at the industrial (national) and post-industrial (in many ways transnational) stages of development, and in the processes of selection of its still very heterogeneous according to its form characteristics, a new socio-cultural phenomenon may arise, the parameters of which are not yet clear to us.

One way or another, it is obvious that mass culture is a variant of the everyday culture of the urban population of the era of a “highly specialized individual”, competent only in his narrow field of knowledge and activity, and otherwise preferring to use printed, electronic or animate reference books, catalogs, “guides” ” and other sources of economically compiled and reduced information “for complete fools”.

In the end, the pop singer dancing around the microphone sings about the same thing that Shakespeare wrote about in his sonnets, but only in this case translated into simple language. For a person who has the opportunity to read Shakespeare in the original, this sounds disgusting. But is it possible to teach all of humanity to read Shakespeare in the original (as the Enlightenment philosophers dreamed of it), how to do this and - most importantly - is it necessary at all? The question, it must be said, is far from original, but lies at the basis of all social utopias of all times and peoples. Popular culture is not the answer. It only fills the gap left by the absence of any answer.

I personally have a twofold attitude towards the phenomenon of mass culture: on the one hand, I believe that any culture should lead people upward, and not sink to their level for the sake of commercial profit, on the other hand, if there is no mass culture, then the masses will be separated from culture at all.

Literature

Electronic encyclopedia “Cyril and Methodius”

Orlova E. A. Dynamics of culture and goal-setting human activity, Morphology of culture: structure and dynamics. M., 1994.

Flier A. Ya. Culture as a factor of national security, Social Sciences and Modernity, 1998 No. 3.

Foucault M. Words and things. Archeology of humanities. St. Petersburg, 1994.

A. Ya. Flier, mass culture and its social functions, Higher School of Cultural Studies, 1999

Valery Inyushin, “The Coming Boor” and “M&A”, Website “Polar Star”, (design. netway. ru)

Subject description: “Sociology”

Sociology (French sociologie, Latin Societas - society and Greek - Logos - the science of society) is the science of society, individual social institutions (state, law, morality, etc.), processes and public social communities of people.

Modern sociology is a variety of movements and scientific schools that explain its subject and role in different ways and answer the question of what sociology is in different ways. There are various definitions of sociology as the science of society. “A Brief Dictionary of Sociology” defines sociology as the science of the laws of formation, functioning, and development of society, social relations and social communities. The “Sociological Dictionary” defines sociology as the science of the laws of development and functioning of social communities and social processes, of social relations as a mechanism of interrelation and interaction between society and people, between communities, between communities and individuals. The book “Introduction to Sociology” notes that sociology is a science that focuses on social communities, their genesis, interaction and development trends. Each of the definitions has a rational grain. Most scientists tend to believe that the subject of sociology is society or certain social phenomena.

Consequently, sociology is the science of the generic properties and basic patterns of social phenomena.

Sociology not only chooses empirical experience, that is, sensory perception as the only means of reliable knowledge and social change, but also theoretically generalizes it. With the advent of sociology, new opportunities have opened up to penetrate into the inner world of the individual, to understand his life goals, interests, and needs. However, sociology does not study a person in general, but his specific world - the social environment, the communities in which he is included, way of life, social connections, social actions. Without diminishing the importance of numerous branches of social science, sociology is still unique in its ability to see the world as an integral system. Moreover, the system is considered by sociology not only as functioning and developing, but also as experiencing a state of deep crisis. Modern sociology is trying to study the causes of the crisis and find ways out of the crisis of society. The main problems of modern sociology are the survival of humanity and the renewal of civilization, raising it to a higher level of development. Sociology seeks solutions to problems not only at the global level, but also at the level of social communities, specific social institutions and associations, and the social behavior of an individual. Sociology is a multi-level science, representing the unity of abstract and concrete forms, macro- and micro-theoretical approaches, theoretical and empirical knowledge.

Sociology

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