General trends and features of the development of modern culture. Abstract: Main trends in the development of modern world and domestic culture Main directions in the development of world culture

Trends in the development of culture in the modern world.

The current state of culture causes reasonable concern. One of the global problems in the development of society is the erosion of spiritual culture, which arises as a result of the total dissemination of monotonous information, isolating its consumers from the work of developing ideas about the meaning of existence in the socio-cultural process, aggravating the situation of “loss of meaning” in culture.

Overcoming the crisis and preserving culture are based on the main trends of its self-development and evolution.

Culture is an open system, that is, it is not complete, it continues to develop and interact with non-culture. For this reason, first let us pay attention to the external trend in the development of culture.

Culture is “not nature”; it arose and develops in interaction with nature. Their relationship was not easy. Gradually emerging from the power of natural forces, man - the creator of culture - made of his creation an instrument, an instrument for conquering and subjugating nature. Moreover, as soon as power over earthly nature began to be concentrated in the hands of people, the most perspicacious of them came to the conclusion that, along with nature, culture, within which negative processes arose, fell into slavery to the power of human labor. Having changed the attitude towards oneself as part of nature to the attitude towards nature as a “stranger”, man found himself in a difficult situation. After all, he and his body are inseparable from nature, which has become “alien” to culture. For this reason, man forced himself to make a choice between nature and culture. Started in the 18th century. J.-J. Rousseau's criticism of culture in some concepts was carried to the point of its complete denial, the idea of ​​the “natural anti-culture” of man was put forward, and culture itself was interpreted as a means of his suppression and enslavement (F. Nietzsche). 3. Freud viewed culture as a mechanism of social suppression and sublimation of unconscious mental processes. And all this at a time when humanity was actively creating ways to suppress nature.

The confrontation between culture and nature has not disappeared today. At the same time, there has been a tendency to overcome it. The idea of ​​the noosphere - the future kingdom of Reason, Goodness, Beauty - revealed in the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky and P. Teilhard de Chardin is finding an ever wider response. As one of the attributes of cultural development, the principle of conformity to nature is recognized, based on the mutually mediated ideas of culture’s responsibility to nature, on the one hand, and the relative freedom of the “second nature” from the “first”, the artificial from the natural, a certain inevitable distance between sociocultural and biological processes - with another.

The main patterns of internal development of culture are closely intertwined with the external trend of cultural development, the evolution of its relations with nature.

One of the basic trends in the internal development of culture is associated with a change in the balance of physical and mental expenditure of human energy in favor of the latter. Since the middle of the 20th century. Thanks to the use of scientific and technological advances, the need for hard physical labor began to sharply decrease. Human physical efforts play an increasingly smaller role in the reproduction of the sociocultural process. Culture, thus, increasingly defines itself as a product of the creativity of the human spirit, mind, soul. The value of spiritual efforts in this regard will steadily increase. And if previously natural science knowledge was often considered as a criterion for the progressiveness of culture, now its parity with humanitarian knowledge will be gradually restored.

Another internal trend in the evolution of culture is the transition from confrontation of “local”, “group”, “subjective” cultures to their dialogue. The 20th century introduced intense drama and a tragic sense of irreparable loss into the understanding of the cultural process. The idea of ​​discontinuity of culture and incomparability of cultures is most consistently embodied in the concept of O. Spengler. The perception of the cultures of individual social subjects as “sealed organisms” is based on the belief that each culture grows out of its own unique “proto-phenomenon” - a way of “experiencing life”. If in the theory of cultural-historical types, cultural circles, this approach is used when analyzing relations between cultures of different ethnic groups, then in left- and right-wing radical doctrines it is used when comparing cultures of different classes (the theory of “two cultures” in a class society), and in the doctrine “new left”, and then “right” - from the same positions the relationship between the “new” counterculture and the “old” culture is characterized. However, within the framework of the sociology of economic determinism, the carriers of incompatible, mutually exclusive cultures are classes, for the “new” ones - youth and the older generation. Conflict, mutual misunderstanding and rejection of cultures are seen as an absolute inevitability.

At the same time, the current situation in the sociocultural process demonstrates the futility and even disastrousness of the position of mutual ignorance of cultures.
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The need for the integrity of culture is comprehended “by contradiction” - through the awareness of the impossibility of its further existence in the form of a conglomerate of cultures.

Another important trend in the evolution of culture should be expressed as overcoming the conflict (while maintaining contradiction) between traditional culture and innovative culture. This trend is embodied in the culture of postmodernism.

No matter how conventional the designation of entire eras in the cultural life of society with the concepts of “classicism” or “modernism” is, it allows us to see how discontinuous culture is perceived in a given period.

At the beginning of the 20th century. The “modern” style established itself in culture. Modernism - the desire to reflect reality and especially culture in a new way as “not nature”, as an unnatural, artificial, pure, refined phenomenon - has permeated all spheres of spiritual life and, first of all, art and the humanities. Non-triviality, unconventionality and anti-traditionality are considered within the framework of this style as identical concepts. Gradually, what was modernism was partially included in the tradition, from which the avant-garde of culture carefully distanced itself. At the same time, in the search for forms and meanings that are not in contact with what already existed in culture (and therefore old and unnecessary), the avant-garde led itself into the dead end of the absurd - tuneless music, non-representative painting, non-explanatory science, ideology that serves not self-preservation, but self-destruction of the subject of ideology, breaking with the tradition of mythology. The natural need of the creator of culture to express the absurdity and disharmony of the world is satisfied in such a way that it leads to a deepening of the absurd.

In a culture filled with cacaphony, the need for silence is increasingly felt, which is sometimes defined as the only thing that is still missing “to replenish the golden fund of cultural values ​​of humanity.”

Gradually, “silence” leads to calm, once-burned bridges to traditional culture are restored, and values ​​acquired and developed by the cultures of previous eras reappear in a modern-enriched form. The broken connection of times is being restored, and once again it is revealed that “manuscripts do not burn.”

Contemporary postmodern culture is a culture that painfully but steadily overcomes the gap between the old and the new, the created and the created. Its fabric is saturated with “signs”, symbols of culture; it develops a “consensus” of desires to preserve tradition and keep up with the times.

Finally, the last of the identified trends in the evolution of culture at the present stage reflects the process of change in personality as a subject of culture. The diversity of culture from the external personality becomes internal, turns into the most important characteristic of its internal life.

The creation of modern culture by an individual presupposes its distance from both attempts to abandon the desire for integrity and from a false imitation of integrity. Internal contradiction and the desire to resolve it are the natural state of the spiritual life of the individual as a subject of culture. The one-dimensional person is replaced by a person who perceives contradiction not as a tragedy, but as a stimulus for the unfolding of the creative process.

Literature:

Main:

1. Babosov, E. M. General sociology: textbook. allowance / E. M. Babosov. -Minsk, 2006.

2. Babosov, E. M. Applied sociology: textbook. manual for universities / E. M. Babosov. - Minsk, 1999.

3. Babosov, E. M. Sociology. General sociological theory: textbook. manual for universities / E. M. Babosov. - Minsk, 1998.

4. Giddens, E. Sociology / E. Giddens. - M., 2004.

5. Lapin, N. I. General sociology: textbook. manual for universities / N. I. Lapin. -M., 2006.

6. Sociological encyclopedia / edited by. ed. A. N. Danilova. -Minsk, 2003.

7. Sociology: textbook. manual for universities / under general. ed. A. N. Elsukova. -Minsk. 2004.

Additional:

8. Durkheim, E. On the division of social labor. Method of sociology / E. Durkheim. - M., 1990.

9. Kirienko V.V. The mentality of modern Belarusians as a factor of social reform // Sociology. 1999. No. 1. pp. 35 – 57.

10. Kravchenko, A. I. Sociology: a reader for universities / A. I. Kravchenko. -M., 2002.

Trends in the development of culture in the modern world. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Trends in the development of culture in the modern world." 2017, 2018.

Current cultural situation:

· Eurocentrism and Westernization have become the basis of world culture;

· rationalism,

· subjectivism,

· Americanism – expansion of the norms and values ​​of American culture,

· change of the model of cognition – gradual abandonment of the traditional orientation towards knowledge and transition to an information model, transformation of knowledge into unified and impersonal information; "Diagnosis of our time" (Karl Mannheim) – this is the formation of a global information space, where general stereotypes, general assessments, general parameters of behavior dominate,

· pragmatic tendency - everything that is done must have a practical orientation, a measure of commensurate modernity - calculation, benefit and benefit,

· economiccentrism – the desire to see the most essential in economic processes,

· recognition of the absolute importance of technology and technical progress,

· strict specialization,

accelerating progress

· democratization,

· the tendency of universalization of world culture and particularism,

· the desire for globalization in all spheres of human life,

· transformation of human life into a process of communication,

· in relation to the world, the importance of the subject is exaggerated, the cult of individual success,

· cultural pluralism – the coexistence of different cultural values.

Westernization – penetration of American culture into the European continent in the second half of the twentieth century.

Globalization – the process of the development of any phenomenon into a phenomenon on a global scale, the prerequisites are the emergence of a single world infrastructure, a supranational level of standardization and unification, a distinctive feature of the modern cultural situation, gives rise to a contradictory trend - ethnicization, a return to the traditional style of behavior, when tribalism comes first ethnic isolation. Global culture was formed in the 20th century. Prerequisite The process of globalization is the creation of supranational institutions.

Modern, modernism - one of the main trends in European culture. XIX – beginning XX centuries, the last monological cultural and historical era with a clearly expressed system of hierarchical value systems, manifested in all aspects of human activity. Abstractionism – a modernist movement in the art of the 20th century, which fundamentally abandoned the depiction of real objects in painting, sculpture and graphics. Avant-garde – a set of experimental, modernist, emphatically unusual, exploratory endeavors in the art of the 20th century. Pop Art – a direction in fine avant-garde art of the 1950s-1960s, “revealing the aesthetic values” of samples of mass production. An image borrowed from popular culture is placed in a different context: the scale and material change; a technique or technical method is exposed; information interference is detected, etc. Surrealism – a movement in literature and art of the 20th century that emerged in the 1920s. The general features of the art of surrealism are: absurd fantasy, alogism, paradoxical combinations of forms, visual instability and variability of images (S. Dali, R. Magritte). Cubism – an avant-garde movement in fine art of the first quarter of the 20th century, whose representatives depict the objective world in the form of combinations of regular geometric volumes: cube, sphere, cylinder, cone (P. Picasso, Barque).

Modernization of cultural life – modernization (fr. newest, modern) has several meanings:

· modernism – a complex of avant-garde phenomena in the culture of the first half of the twentieth century,

· modernism - one of the main directions of European culture of the mid-nineteenth - early twentieth centuries. The last monologue era with a clearly expressed system of hierarchical value systems, manifested in all aspects of human activity,

· postmodernism – a broad cultural movement of the last 30 years of the twentieth century, a reaction to the innovation of modernism, the desire to include in contemporary art the entire experience of world artistic practice by citing it,

· modernization – complex and diverse processes of cultural transformation, innovative changes,

· modernization – a revolutionary transition from pre-industrial to industrial society through comprehensive reforms. Changes of the last 50 years, the processes of bringing any social education into line with modern standards. The method of entry of backward countries into the world economic system.

Modernization theories are among the most influential areas of Western “development sociology” today. The main attention is paid to the problems of developing countries, their transition from agricultural to economically developed ones.

In the 50-60s. XX century the concept of modernization was understood as the influence of developed countries on social processes in developing countries through an increase in economic “aid” - the transfer of modern technologies and public investments to the “third world” countries. But the “help” turned out to increase internal social contradictions and inequality, led to a slowdown in the rate of economic development, increased unemployment, poverty, and increased social tension.

Concept "lagging" modernization argues that the direct and formal borrowing of “rational” Western socio-economic models, not supported by social institutions and socio-cultural structures, leads to an “irrational” industrial society that absorbs more resources than it has a social “return”.

Two types of modernization:

· organic – the moment of the country’s own development, prepared by the entire course of previous evolution, begins with culture, and not with the economy,

· inorganic - a response to an external challenge from more developed countries, a method of catch-up development undertaken by the government in order to overcome backwardness and avoid foreign dependence. Done by purchasing foreign equipment, patents, borrowing foreign technologies, inviting specialists, attracting investments, it begins not with culture, but with economics and politics.

Scientific and technological revolution – a set of qualitative changes in technology, technology and production organization, occurring under the influence of major scientific achievements and discoveries and having a certain impact on the socio-economic conditions of public life; processes that began in the 1940-1950s. in the development of science and technology, which caused the transformation of science into a decisive factor in sociocultural development. For modern stage of scientific and technological revolution characteristic processes:

· a new structure of the social division of labor, where scientific activity becomes one of the leading elements,

· transformation of science into a direct productive force

· radical transformation of objects of labor, instruments of production and workers,

· use of fundamentally new types of technology.

Particularism– practice of cultural isolation, political disunity and fragmentation; movement towards the isolation and separation of individual territorial units of the state.

Contradictions of modern culture - increased individual freedom and violence; elitism and mass character, pluralism and unification.

Modern Western culture – spirit of entrepreneurship, dynamism, modernism and postmodernism, scientific and technological revolution, computerization, global problems, “consumer society” and its vices (cult of individual success, lack of spirituality, asocial tendencies, drug addiction, crime, terrorism).

Trends in modern world sociocultural development – the formation of a new socio-cultural stratification of the bulk of the population, the formation of a large elite stratum of highly qualified international specialists, the reduction of mass secondary education to the level of mastering an elementary “picture of the world”.

Universalism of culture – ideological orientation towards the rapprochement of cultures, their synthesis. Representatives of this concept, despite the diversity of cultures, believe that there is a single line of universal human culture.

Ecumenical movement - arose at the beginning of the 20th century. movement for the unification of all Christian denominations, with the goal of: strengthening the influence of religion; resistance to the process of secularization; and the development of a general Christian social program suitable for believers living in countries with different social systems.

Test No. 1

By discipline: "Culturology"

on the topic of: "Main development trends
modern national culture"

Completed:
student group 67-22V
Kazakov V.A.
Checked:
Burkhanova N.A.

Almetyevsk, 2008

Introduction. 3
1. General trends and features of the development of modern domestic culture. 5
2. Politicization of Russian culture. 8
3. Features of the cultural process in modern Russia. 21
Conclusion. 24
List of used literature. 25

Introduction.

Modern Russian culture requires deep and multifaceted consideration. On the one hand, being in direct contact with the Russian culture of past centuries in the sense of at least simply a chronological “neighborhood,” modern culture is closely linked with accumulated cultural experience, even if it outwardly denies it or plays with it. On the other hand, being part of world culture, modern Russian culture absorbs, processes, and transforms trends related to the development of culture as a whole. Therefore, to understand the modern culture of Russia, it is necessary to turn to both the Russian culture of previous eras, and to world culture as a whole, to the general trends in the cultural development of our time.
It can also be noted that cultural problems are acquiring paramount importance today also because culture is a powerful factor in social development. “Permeating” all aspects of human life - from the foundations of material production and human needs to the greatest manifestations of the human spirit, culture plays an increasingly important role in achieving the program goals of the social movement, which includes the formation and strengthening of civil society, and the disclosure of human creative abilities, and building a legal state. Culture affects all spheres of social and individual life - work, everyday life, leisure, area of ​​thinking, etc., on the way of life of society and the individual. Culture acquires social influence, first of all, as a necessary aspect of the activity of a social person, which, by its nature, involves the organization of joint activities of people, and, consequently, its regulation by certain rules accumulated in sign and symbolic systems, traditions, etc.
In a radical way, questions of cultural development are posed in our time precisely because these questions are posed by the very life of our society; orientation towards a qualitatively new state of society leads to a sharp turning point in the understanding of traditionalist and innovative trends in social development. They require, on the one hand, the deep development of cultural heritage, the expansion of the exchange of genuine cultural values ​​between peoples, and on the other, the ability to go beyond the usual but already outdated ideas, to overcome a number of reactionary traditions that have developed and been implanted over the centuries, constantly manifesting themselves in the consciousness , activities and behavior of people. In resolving these issues, a significant role is played by knowledge and an adequate modern understanding of modern Russian culture as part of world culture.
The modern world has made significant changes in human consciousness - the human gaze is turned to the limits of life, which is not limited in consciousness by the dates of birth and death. There is a tendency to realize oneself in the context of historical time, in orientation both to one’s historical and cultural roots and to the future, which is seen primarily as a process of expanding international relations, involving all countries of the world in the global cultural and historical process. Thus, significant, first of all, social changes further confirm the importance, on the one hand, of issues of cultural identity, on the other hand, of issues of intercultural interaction
The culture of Russia throughout the twentieth century is an integral part of European and world culture.
Russia experienced two world wars in the 20th century and felt the influence of scientific and technological progress and the transition to information civilization. During this period, cultural processes, mutual influence of cultures, and stylistic dynamics accelerated significantly.
Russia in the twentieth century acted as a catalyst for sociocultural processes on the planet. The October Revolution led to a split of the world into two systems, creating an ideological, political and military confrontation between the two camps. The year 1917 radically changed the fate of the peoples of the former Russian Empire. Another turn, which initiated significant changes in the development of human civilization, began in Russia in 1985. It gained even greater momentum at the end of the twentieth century. All this must be taken into account when assessing sociocultural processes both in modern Russia and in Russia of the Soviet period.
The 20th century gave the Fatherland brilliant scientists and researchers, talented artists, writers, musicians, and directors. It became the date of birth of numerous creative communities, art schools, movements, movements, and styles. However, it was in the 20th century that a totalized sociocultural mythology was created in Russia, accompanied by dogmatization, manipulation of consciousness, destruction of dissent, primitivization of artistic assessments and physical destruction of the color of the Russian scientific and artistic intelligentsia.

General trends and features of the development of modern national culture.

One of the most important problems for modern culture is the problem of traditions and innovation in the cultural space. The stable side of culture, the cultural tradition, thanks to which the accumulation and transmission of human experience in history occurs, gives new generations the opportunity to update previous experience, relying on what was created by previous generations. In traditional societies, the assimilation of culture occurs through the reproduction of samples, with the possibility of minor variations within the tradition. Tradition in this case is the basis for the functioning of culture, significantly complicating creativity in the sense of innovation. Actually, the most “creative” in our understanding of the process of traditional culture, paradoxically, is the very formation of a person as a subject of culture, as a set of canonical stereotypical programs (customs, rituals). The transformation of these canons themselves is quite slow. Such is the culture of primitive society and later traditional culture. Under certain conditions, the stability of a cultural tradition can be attributed to the need for the stability of the human collective for its survival. However, on the other hand, the dynamism of culture does not mean abandoning cultural traditions altogether. It is hardly possible for a culture to exist without traditions. Cultural traditions as historical memory are an indispensable condition not only for the existence, but also for the development of culture, even if it has great creative (and at the same time negative in relation to tradition) potential. As a living example, we can cite the cultural transformations of Russia after the October Revolution, when attempts to completely deny and destroy the previous culture led in many cases to irreparable losses in this area.
Thus, if it is possible to talk about reactionary and progressive tendencies in culture, then, on the other hand, it is hardly possible to imagine the creation of culture “from scratch,” completely discarding the previous culture and tradition. The question of traditions in culture and the attitude towards cultural heritage concerns not only the preservation, but also the development of culture, that is, cultural creativity. In the latter, the universal organic is merged with the unique: each cultural value is unique, whether we are talking about a work of art, an invention, etc. In this sense, replication in one form or another of what is already known, already created earlier is dissemination, not the creation of culture. The need to spread culture seems to require no proof. The creativity of culture, being a source of innovation, is involved in the contradictory process of cultural development, which reflects a wide range of sometimes opposing and opposing trends of a given historical era.
At first glance, culture, considered from the point of view of content, falls into various spheres: morals and customs, language and writing, the nature of clothing, settlements, work, education, economics, the nature of the army, socio-political structure, legal proceedings, science, technology , art, religion, all forms of manifestation of the “spirit” of the people. In this sense, cultural history becomes of paramount importance for understanding the level of cultural development.
If we talk about modern culture itself, then it is embodied in a huge variety of created material and spiritual phenomena. These are new means of labor, and new food products, and new elements of the material infrastructure of everyday life, production, and new scientific ideas, ideological concepts, religious beliefs, moral ideals and regulators, works of all types of art, etc. At the same time, the sphere of modern culture, upon closer examination, is heterogeneous, because each of its constituent cultures has common boundaries, both geographical and chronological, with other cultures and eras. The cultural identity of any people is inseparable from the cultural identity of other peoples, and we all obey the laws of cultural communication. Thus, modern culture is a multitude of original cultures that are in dialogue and interaction with each other, and dialogue and interaction occur not only along the axis of the present time, but also along the “past-future” axis.
But on the other hand, culture is not only the totality of many cultures, but also world culture, a single cultural flow from Babylon to the present day, from East to West, and from West to East. And first of all, with regard to world culture, the question arises about its further fate - is what is observed in modern culture (the flourishing of science, technology, information technology, regionally organized economy; and also, on the other hand, the triumph of Western values ​​- the ideals of success) , separation of powers, personal freedom, etc.) – the flourishing of human culture as a whole, or, conversely, its “decline”.
Since the twentieth century, the distinction between the concepts of culture and civilization has become characteristic - culture continues to carry a positive meaning, and civilization receives a neutral assessment, and sometimes even a direct negative meaning. Civilization, as a synonym for material culture, as a fairly high level of mastery of the forces of nature, certainly carries a powerful charge of technical progress and contributes to the achievement of an abundance of material wealth. The concept of civilization is most often associated with the value-neutral development of technology, which can be used for a wide variety of purposes, and the concept of culture, on the contrary, has come as close as possible to the concept of spiritual progress. The negative qualities of civilization usually include its tendency to standardize thinking, its orientation toward absolute fidelity to generally accepted truths, and its inherent low assessment of the independence and originality of individual thinking, which are perceived as a “social danger.” If culture, from this point of view, forms a perfect personality, then civilization forms an ideal law-abiding member of society, content with the benefits provided to him. Civilization is increasingly understood as synonymous with urbanization, overcrowding, the tyranny of machines, and as a source of dehumanization of the world. In fact, no matter how deeply the human mind penetrates into the secrets of the world, the spiritual world of man himself remains largely mysterious. Civilization and science by themselves cannot ensure spiritual progress; culture is needed here as the totality of all spiritual education and upbringing, which includes the entire spectrum of intellectual, moral and aesthetic achievements of mankind.
In general, for modern, primarily world culture, two ways to solve the crisis situation are proposed. If, on the one hand, the resolution of the crisis tendencies of culture is assumed along the path of traditional Western ideals - strict science, universal education, reasonable organization of life, production, a conscious approach to all phenomena of the world, changing the guidelines for the development of science and technology, i.e. increasing the role of the spiritual and moral improvement of man, as well as improvement of his material conditions, then the second way to resolve crisis phenomena involves the return of the human race either to various modifications of religious culture or to forms of life that are more “natural” for man and life - with limited healthy needs, a sense of unity with nature and space, forms of human existence free from the power of technology.
Philosophers of our time and the recent past take one position or another regarding technology; as a rule, they associate technology (understood quite broadly) with a crisis of culture and civilization. The mutual influence of technology and modern culture is one of the key problems to consider here. If the role of technology in culture is largely clarified in the works of Heidegger, Jaspers, Fromm, then the problem of the humanization of technology remains one of the most important unsolved problems for all of humanity.
One of the most interesting moments in the development of modern culture is the formation of a new image of culture itself. If the traditional image of world culture is associated primarily with ideas of historical and organic integrity, then the new image of culture is increasingly associated, on the one hand, with ideas of a cosmic scale, and on the other hand, with the idea of ​​a universal ethical paradigm. It is also worth noting the formation of a new type of cultural interaction, expressed primarily in the rejection of simplified rational schemes for solving cultural problems. The ability to understand someone else's culture and points of view, critical analysis of one's own actions, recognition of someone else's cultural identity and someone else's truth, the ability to incorporate them into one's position and recognition of the legitimacy of the existence of many truths, the ability to build dialogic relationships and compromise are becoming increasingly important. This logic of cultural communication also presupposes corresponding principles of action.

Politicization of Russian culture.

Among the features of modern Russian culture, it is necessary to highlight the strong politicization of the cultural space. The politicization of culture is a process that has quite deep historical roots in Russia. Here, the events of the recently departed twentieth century played a huge role, understanding the significance of which for culture is extremely important.
The revolution in October 1917 marked the beginning of the transition to a new system of social relations, to a new type of culture. The ideal of culture formulated by Lenin as serving the millions of working people who constitute the color of the country, its strength, its future, demanded that culture and art become “part of the general proletarian cause,” that is, culture had to express the interests of the proletariat. In the first post-October decade, the foundations of a new Soviet culture were laid. The beginning of this period (1918-1921) is characterized by the destruction and denial of traditional values ​​(culture, morality, religion, way of life, law) and the proclamation of new guidelines for sociocultural development: world revolution, communist society, universal equality and fraternity.
The provision requiring the opening and making available to the working people all the treasures of art created on the basis of the exploitation of their labor, approved at the Eighth Congress of the RCP (b), began to be implemented almost immediately. The nationalization of culture has acquired enormous scope. Already in 1917, the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Armory and many other museums became the property and disposal of the people. The private collections of S.S. were nationalized. Shchukin, Mamontovs, Morozovs, Tretyakovs, V.I. Dalia, I.V. Tsvetaeva.
Somewhat later, from the 1920s. The party's cultural policy began to be implemented systematically. This meant that any philosophical or other system of ideas that went beyond the boundaries of Marxism in its Leninist version was qualified as “bourgeois”, “landowner”, “clerical” and was recognized as counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet, that is, dangerous for the very existence of the new political system. Ideological intolerance became the basis of the official policy of the Soviet government in the sphere of ideology and culture. In the minds of the bulk of the population, the establishment of a narrow class approach to culture began. Class suspicion of the old spiritual culture and anti-intellectual sentiments became widespread in society. Slogans were constantly spread about distrust in education, about the need for a “vigilant” attitude towards old specialists, who were viewed as an anti-people force.
This principle applied to the creativity of representatives of the intelligentsia to an even greater extent and in a strict form. The establishment of political monopoly in science, art, philosophy, in all spheres of the spiritual life of society, the persecution of representatives of the so-called noble and bourgeois intelligentsia, led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of educated people from the country, caused irreparable damage to elite culture, and led to an inevitable decline in its overall level. But the proletarian state was extremely suspicious of the intelligentsia who remained in the country. Step by step, the institutions of professional autonomy of the intelligentsia - independent publications, creative unions, trade unions - were liquidated.
Ultimately, this ended in the complete defeat of the main body of the old intelligentsia in Russia.
The new culture was directly connected with the heroes of the revolution. In the name of the power of the people, monuments to new heroes were erected on the old pedestals. New revolutionary symbols were seen as a prerequisite for the continuation of the revolution. This position was the basis for changing historical names to the names of living ones. The first post-October decade required the creation of a new proletarian culture, opposed to the entire artistic culture of the past.
The mechanical transfer into the sphere of artistic creativity of the needs of a radical revolutionary restructuring of the social structure and political organization of society led in practice both to the denial of the significance of the classical artistic heritage and to attempts to use only new modernist forms in the interests of building a new socialist culture. Finally, the fruitfulness of the centuries-old functions of artistic culture was generally denied.
The result of this policy was the mass emigration of representatives of Russian culture. In 1922, about 200 writers, scientists, and philosophers who held their own views on what was happening inside the country were sent abroad (L. Karsavin, I. Ilyin, P. Sorokin, I. Lapshin and others). Famous writers, scientists, actors, artists, musicians, whose names rightfully became the property of world culture, found themselves outside of Russia. For various reasons and at different times, A. Averchenko, K. Balmont, I. Bunin, Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, A. Kuprin, Igor Severyanin, Sasha Cherny, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Tolstoy, P. Milyukov left their homeland , P. Struve, N. Berdyaev, N. Lossky, P. Sorokin, A. Benois, K. Korovin, S. Rachmaninov, F. Chaliapin and many other outstanding figures of Russian culture.
Thus, by the mid-thirties, Soviet national culture had developed into a rigid system with its own sociocultural values: in philosophy, aesthetics, morality, language, everyday life, and science.
The main features of this system were the following:

approval of normative cultural patterns in various types of creativity;
following dogma and manipulating public consciousness;
party-class approach in assessing artistic creativity;
orientation towards mass perception;
education of the nomenklatura intelligentsia;
creation of state cultural institutions (creative unions);
subordination of creative activity to social order.

Traditions of humanism. The ideals and attitudes of modern European culture are a fusion of what was discovered by humanity in past centuries and what was achieved by the end of the 20th century.

What forms of social life, patterns of activity, ways of feeling and perceiving the world were weeded out by the “sieve of time”, what basic cultural values ​​were perceived in the 20th century?

Humanistic principles and ideals have become widespread in modern European culture. Humanism is a fairly diverse concept. For example, Renaissance humanism, which affirmed the power and freedom of the creative human spirit, was elitist because its morality was individualistic, relevant to a select few.

The essence of modern humanism is its universality: it is addressed to all people, proclaiming the right of everyone to life, prosperity, and freedom. In other words, this is not elitist, but democratic humanism.

The humanistic orientation of modern culture manifests itself in various “spheres” of modern society - economic, moral, political, artistic, etc. This trend determined, in particular, the formation of political culture. Her values

first recorded in 1789. A comparison of two documents - the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (XVIII century) and the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (XX century) - shows that the ideas developed during the era of the French Revolution are now accepted in as an ideal by the states of the United Nations.

An article-by-article comparison of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (a) and the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (b) provides a lot of interesting information in understanding the formation of a humanistic political culture.

Article 1. “People are born and remain free and equal in rights” (a). Article 1. All people are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (b).

Article 2. “The purpose of every political union is the preservation of the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights are: freedom and security, resistance to oppression” (a). These provisions are contained in articles 3, 4, 5, 8, 9.14 (b).

Articles 7,8,11 proclaim freedom of the individual, freedom of conscience, speech and press (a). These provisions are contained in Articles 12, 18, 19 (b).

Article 3. “The source of all sovereign power is always in the nation.” The addition of 1793 proclaimed the duties of society to find work for the poor, provide means of subsistence for the disabled, and take care of the education of all citizens (a). Article 21. “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government.” The remaining provisions are contained in Articles 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 (b).

The idea of ​​universal equality was put forward by Christianity. Christ taught: everyone is equal before God, for every person, regardless of his social status, has an immortal soul. However, the Christian idea of ​​equality is rather mystical in nature. After all, people are equal not in real life, but in the afterlife.

Modern humanism focuses on achieving the possibilities of equality in real, everyday life. First of all, this is manifested in the democratization of public life and the development of civil society. More and more people are becoming involved in public life as active subjects of social organization.

But these processes also have a negative side; a person becomes too civilized to the detriment of his culture. In this regard, an outstanding humanist and thinker of the 20th century. A. Schweitzer spoke with alarm about the process of cultural degradation. It is also negatively affected by the over-organization of our social conditions. As true as it is that organized society is a prerequisite and at the same time a consequence of culture, it is so obvious

that at a certain stage the external organization of society begins to be carried out at the expense of spiritual life. Personality and ideas fall under the power of the institutions of society, instead of influencing them and keeping them alive. And this leads to a crisis of humanism, a deformation of a person’s personal self-worth. Such a crisis is also associated with the problems of material and spiritual life that appeared in the Middle Ages.

Scientism and technocratism. Another important result of the development of culture, adopted by modern Europe, is the orientation towards scientific and rational knowledge of the world and the associated sociocultural system - science. Already in the 19th century. The first signs appear that science has become a global, leading force in the development of society, uniting the efforts of scientists from different countries. Expanding the scope of application of scientific achievements at the beginning of the 20th century. led to changes in the lives of tens of millions of people living in industrialized countries. But the passion for science, its dominance in the system of spiritual and material values ​​quickly showed its negative sides associated with the impoverishment of the spiritual-emotional, irrational life of a person. The problem of “physicists” and “lyricists” formulated a contradiction that manifested itself in the opposition of two attitudes - scientistic and anti-scientist.

The basis of scientism (from lat. scientia- knowledge, science) lies the idea of ​​scientific knowledge as the highest cultural value. Scientists claim: science, as an absolute standard, is capable of solving all the problems facing humanity - economic, political, moral, etc. Indeed, modern science has penetrated into all spheres of modern society, permeating not only industry, agriculture, but also politics, administrative and military activities. However, not everything in the world is science. There is the sphere of art, faith, human feelings, relationships.

Antiscientism appeared as a reaction to the exaggeration of the role of science. It is characterized by belittling the importance of scientific knowledge, blaming science for causing all sorts of crises - economic, environmental, national. Anti-scientists claim: “Science is the plague of the 20th century.” The situation that arose was described by C. P. Snow in the famous book “Two Cultures.” He noted that the confrontation in question divided everyone into two camps: at one pole - the artistic intelligentsia, at the other - scientists and, as the most prominent representatives of this group, physicists. They are separated by a wall of misunderstanding and sometimes (especially among young people) antipathy and hostility. They have a strange idea about each other. They're so different

refer to the same things that cannot find a common language even in the field of feelings.

The type of scientific and technical culture that initially developed in Europe and then spread throughout the world gave a lot to man for the development of his freedom; first of all, in material life, the technogenic civilization that arose from the ruins of the Middle Ages fully developed. The culture of this civilization was formed on the basis of such relations between man and nature, when man sought to break out of dependence on nature, and the highest values ​​of culture were recognized as the dominance of man over nature, renewal, and the increase in technological and scientific knowledge. The development of technology and technology as a tool for human domination over nature have become the main goals and criteria of social progress.

The global scientific and technical integrity that emerged in the 20th century marked the beginning of the economic unification of the world and the transfer of advanced methods of production culture to all corners of the globe. We are witnessing the growing internationalization of economic relations. One of the expressions of this process has become transnational corporations with their uniform forms of organizational culture operating in dozens of countries and on various continents. These corporations account for more than a third of industrial production, more than half of foreign trade, and almost 80% of new equipment and technologies. The increasing internationalization of life in the modern world is evidenced by the all-encompassing nature of the scientific and technological revolution and the fundamentally new role of mass media and information.

The technogenic attitude towards nature as a means of satisfying not spiritual, but purely technical needs became widespread in the first half of the 20th century. one of the leading trends in the development of European culture. An optimistic worldview, conditioned by the successes of scientific thought, embodied in global industry and technology, served as the basis for the emergence of the characteristic human nature of the 20th century. sensations of the cosmic nature of one’s existence.

However, European culture of the 20th century. reflected the crisis into which technogenic civilization was slowly entering. Modern society, which has given birth to a new type of civilization - industrial society - has led to the dominance of impersonal economic, political, technological structures over living human activity, the individual “I” of genuine culture.

As already noted, technological civilization is based on such a relationship between man and nature, in which nature

is an object of human activity, an object of exploitation, and unlimited. It is characterized by a type of development that can be expressed in one word - “more”. The goal is to accumulate more and more material goods, wealth and, on this basis, solve human problems - social, cultural, etc.

Technogenic civilization is characterized by the idea that nature is inexhaustible precisely as an object of human exploitation. Understanding the depth of the environmental crisis has shattered this idea.

The ideological and scientific-theoretical movement of recent decades has posed the problem of creating a new ecological culture. The environmental crisis has outlined the boundaries of the existing type of economic development. There was a need for new relationships with nature and between people. Considering the modern spiritual situation, Yu. Bochensky identified four of the most important issues facing humanity.

What place does man occupy in Space?

Is there progress?

What is the value of science?

How great is the strength or powerlessness of a person?

Modern answers to these questions are very pessimistic. First, astronomy has shown that the Earth is only a small fragment of the Cosmos as a whole, for beyond the Milky Way there are billions and billions of similar galaxies, the distance between which is measured in millions of light years. For the anthropocentrism of past centuries, cultures, when man was placed at the center of the Universe, this discovery is catastrophic: the myth about the unique qualities of man, the uniqueness of life in the Universe is overthrown. It follows that man cannot be considered as the focus of universal forces.

Humanity is just a speck of dust on the outskirts of existence. The new spiritual situation does not allow us to think anthropocentrically. Modern culture is built on different foundations.

Secondly, the idea of ​​the irreversibility and growth of social progress is radically destroyed. Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the value of science and scientific and technological progress has been called into question.

One of the methodological approaches that conceptually comprehends the ongoing changes was the idea of ​​the Japanese sociologist E. Masuda. In 1945, he proposed, what seemed fantastic to many at the time, the theory of the “information society.” This is society

united by a single information network, thanks to which humanity has the opportunity to develop common goals, and humans have the opportunity to demonstrate their creative capabilities. The introduction of new information technologies, primarily computer technology and telecommunications systems, has shown that the concept of the information society is not at all utopian.

A new information culture is emerging - a concept used to designate this level of organization of information processes, the degree of intensity of information communication and approaches, the nature of the creation, collection, storage, processing and dissemination of information, which ensure the formation of information as the main cultural resource of social development and human life. , replacing the industrial resource.

All the phenomena and processes considered are far from unambiguous and lead to serious problems in the modern development of world culture. At the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. The spirit of the times also causes skepticism about the capabilities of the computer; the exact sciences are no longer considered omnipotent. Hence the feeling of powerlessness that has gripped humanity in the face of the almost uncontrollable forces of scientific and technological progress caused by it. In the most vivid form, these sentiments are expressed in the pessimistic philosophy of existentialism, where human existence is tragic and hopeless.

Postmodernism. In this regard, in the middle of the 20th century. There have been fundamental changes in the nature of Western culture - a special type of worldview is being affirmed, focused on the formation of a living space in which the main values ​​are freedom in everything, spontaneity of human activity, denial of norms and traditions, rejection of authorities, rules, and especially the omniscience of reason . The uncertainty of life, its playful nature, permissiveness, and irrationalism are growing. The role of searching for patterns is sharply decreasing, interest in everyday life, life “here and now”, and novelty as such is growing. The single style of culture is being destroyed, and cultural pluralism is blossoming.

This new culture grows out of the transformation of systems characteristic of classical European industrial society, which outwardly determine the life of an individual. A person does not want to be an element of technological, economic or political systems, where his activities are strictly determined by qualities external to his personal culture. This rigid, deterministic scheme not only weakens - a fundamentally new situation arises, meaning that socio-economic development depends on the state of the spiritual world of the individual, on his development and sociocultural aspirations.

This situation is caused not only by global threats to the existence of humanity, but also by a radical revolution in the system of “man-production” relations. The modern economy is innovative in nature. This means that material and material factors of production cease to be the main carrier of values, as they become obsolete every 3-4 years. Tools, machines, machine tools, production lines are changing literally before our eyes. The main factor in updating production and making a profit is man, his intellectual and creative capabilities. The development of personal qualities, creativity and capabilities, and the education of a highly qualified workforce becomes the most profitable investment of capital. As a result, the social subject becomes increasingly independent from the base, and its freedom increases. In modern society, human choice turns out to be the decisive determinant of socio-historical development.

Mass and elite culture. Rapid cultural changes of the 20th century. are also expressed in the division of artistic culture. If until the middle of the 19th century. Since it was almost exclusively the lot of the free and wealthy upper strata of society, and the people were content with “folklore” culture, then with the rapid growth of the “middle class” the situation is changing dramatically. In cities there are a large number of people who have some free time and money (after working in a factory, in a store) for entertainment and recreation, for consuming works of art that are affordable to them in terms of quality (difficulty of perception) and price.

Demand gives rise to supply, and free spiritual creativity is replaced by the so-called “spiritual production”, living according to the laws of the market. The technical capabilities of reproducing cultural works (radio, cinema, printing, then audio and video products, television), the growing market for these works also makes cultural production a business. Its main goal, like any other business, is to make a profit. Hence the focus on mass production, not of works of art, but of “cult goods”: in business, the main thing is not artistic value, but income, which is immeasurably higher with the mass “stamping” of such goods.

Profit growth depends on sales volume. That is why in mass culture it is so important not to satisfy artistic needs, but to form them, educate them, and prepare the consumer. In addition, mass production presupposes the availability of cultural goods, therefore their production is based on feelings, emotions, needs, etc., inherent in the maximum possible number of consumers. They want to be “in culture” and not strain themselves, so mass culture is a production

simple, publicly available, recognizable, effortlessly perceived artistic images in order to obtain maximum profits. (A striking example is advertising, show business, the main products of Hollywood, comics, detective stories, rock music).

It is important to distinguish mass culture from folk culture. The latter is based on artistic traditions, archetype images (fairy tales, folk songs), while the mass one is based on marketability, the venality of art, which ceases to be creativity for the soul, but becomes a matter for money.

Of course, not all artists greeted these market (“bazaar”) processes with enthusiasm. As a kind of reaction to the inevitable sharp drop in the artistic level in the production of mass culture (which is more than convincingly evidenced, for example, by modern popular music, television series, etc.), a desire arises on the part of some artists to engage in “high” art, art for art’s sake, understandable only to a narrow circle of “select” and not generating monetary income. This is an elitist culture (the elite is the best part); it is designed, so to speak, for “internal” use and often fundamentally strives to complicate its language, to make it inaccessible to most people, perceived only by a select few. This is how the artistic avant-garde is born, characterized by extreme individualism, a bold search for new forms and ideas, and a rejection of traditions. The consumers of elite art are either its creators themselves, or representatives of the political and economic elite, seeking to show their elevation above the crowd.

There is a complex interaction between mass and elite culture (the former, in one way or another, feeds the latter materially, and the elite mass culture – ideologically and figuratively). Each of them has the right to exist, it is only important not to be limited by the framework of mass culture, to strive not only for entertainment, but also for artistic growth and enrichment. The latter is primarily ensured by the perception of the so-called classical (exemplary) culture, represented by the best works of human genius that have stood the test of time.

1. The concept of “culture” is one of the most frequently used in modern humanitarian knowledge. It came to European languages ​​from Latin (cultura - cultivation, education, development, veneration). In the broadest sense, culture is what is created by man, it is the entire set of products of human activity, forms of socio-political organization of society, spiritual processes, human states and types of his activities. Thus, culture includes and unites objectified, “frozen” human activity, the results of the “cultivation” of reality and “living” - the very life of humanity, the current process of cultivation, cultivation of reality.

Culture can be defined as the level of development of man and society, reflected in the material and spiritual values ​​they create, as well as the very process of people’s creative activity.

The concept of “culture” is actively used by social sciences and humanities in the 20th century, which is accompanied by the development of a myriad of definitions of culture, of which we will pay attention to the two most laconic: culture is “second nature” (K. Marx) and culture is “not nature” (E. Markaryan). In both the first and second cases, the question of the relationship between culture and nature is raised and in some way resolved. The “first” nature is the most important condition for the emergence of the “second” nature. But, arising on the basis of nature, starting from it, culture changes it, isolating itself, gaining independence. The study of the long and gradual process of isolation of culture from nature, the growth of culture from nature allows us to deeply analyze the history of the development of society.

The specificity of the sociological approach to culture is the analysis of the relationship between culture and social development: with the stages of development of civilization, with shifts in the formational state of society, with ethnic evolution, with the development of relations between all major social actors. At the same time, not only is culture considered as a whole, as a single system, but its differentiation is explored, conditioned by the diversity of forms of social life - the cultures of various social subjects are distinguished: national cultures, class cultures, cultures of different generations, different types of settlements, etc.

Culture is a holistic phenomenon formed from the infinite variety of cultures of various social subjects included in it. At the same time, the ways of interaction, dialogue or conflict of these “subcultures” within the “big” culture are especially important for sociology. Analysis of this problem allows us to identify two vectors in the development of relations between cultures of classes, ethnic groups, generations, genders, city and rural residents: in the direction of self-isolation, isolation and in the direction of rapprochement. These trends have been traced in most detail in the study of national cultures by modern sociology, which is reflected in the design of alternative sociological directions - linear evolutionism and the cultural-historical school.

One of the central problems of cultural development - the interaction of tradition and innovation - is reflected in the interaction of urban and rural culture; the problem of elite and mass culture, considered from the point of view of sociology, is refracted in the problem of dialogue between the culture of people engaged in mental work and the culture of people engaged in physical labor; the problem of the historical development of culture, the change of styles in it is reflected in the sociological analysis of the dialogue of cultures of different generations, the process of emergence, formation of the “counterculture” of the younger generation and the gradual absorption of the most significant phenomena of this counterculture by the “big” culture, which ensures the continuity of the cultural-historical process.

At one or another stage of sociocultural development, first one or another subsystem within a culture can be updated. But sociological analysis shows that all subsystems are necessary and in this sense are equivalent for the development of culture. The role of every ethnic group, every generation, every class in culture is eternal.

It is customary to divide culture into material and spiritual, according to the two main types of labor and methods of human cultivation of reality - physical and mental.

Usually, material culture is understood as the sphere of material activity and her results (tools, housing, everyday items, clothing, means of transport and communication, etc.). The concept of “spiritual culture” is used to designate the sphere of consciousness, spiritual production (cognition, morality, education, law, science, art, literature, religion, ideology, mythology); spiritual culture can be defined as the level of development of man and society, reflected in the created by them spiritual values, as well as the process of creative activity of people. Physical effort allows the phenomenon of culture to take on flesh and materialize. Spiritual efforts determine the style of cultivating reality, developing measures and criteria for the culturality or unculturedness of human actions.

Culture cannot exist outside of society without relying on its certain economic level of development and on a system of legal norms. At the same time, its core is spiritual activity, reproduced in three main forms: science, art, morality. The entire “great” culture can be considered as a result of the development of this “core”, as the objectification of new achievements of science, art, morality and their reproducing traditional forms. It is necessary to pay special attention to the last point in order to optimize the process of foreseeing the prospects for the development of the sociocultural process. The reproduction in culture of religious, national, caste and other stereotypes of behavior, not only rational, but also irrational symbols and attributes of social activity is the empirical reality that is most difficult to take into account and is often overlooked when designing social changes. Ignoring the spiritual and cultural values ​​of social life most often ultimately determines the collapse of attempts to reform society. It was these realities that thwarted the plans of the Stolypin reform in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, the most left-radical projects for transforming society (“war communism” in Russia, Maoism in China, etc.) and others

attempts to “leap” over existing cultural and historical development paradigms. We are seeing something similar today.

In this regard, it seems appropriate to consider the basic sociological concepts of culture from the point of view of the interaction of “cultural” and “social”.

A significant role in overcoming illusions regarding the omnipotence of reason in the reproduction of the sociocultural process and in the formation of historical sociology was played by V. Dilthey, who considered the spiritual and mental integrity of being, culture as “spirit,” to be almost identical to life itself. The special “spiritual world” inherent in each culture and era determines, according to Dilthey, social activity by the totality of meaning-forming factors contained in it.

O. Spengler agrees with Dilthey on this issue, who emphasized that the “spiritual world,” being imprinted in the forms of economic, political, religious and artistic life, creates a cultural and historical era and distinguishes it as an integrity from another.

It should be noted the special merits of Russian philosophical and sociological thought in the study of culture as a social phenomenon. Neo-Kantian ideas in Russian sociology, developed by A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky, B. A. Kistyakovsky, P. I. Novgorodtsev, P. B. Struve and others, brought to the forefront of social cognition the understanding of the spiritual and ethical foundations of society that determine specificity of the social world. The position of the “national spirit” (national self-awareness or national character) as the most important factor in socio-historical development was consistently defended in Russian social thought.

The idea of ​​cultural and value-based conditioning of social processes was, in a certain sense, a “common denominator” for most Russian thinkers, and the theme of Russian socio-cultural civilizational uniqueness became one of the leading ones in the works of N. A. Berdyaev (“Soul of Russia”, etc.), I. A. Ilyin (“The Path of Spiritual Renewal”), S. L. Frank (“Russian Worldview”), N. O. Lossky (“Character of the Russian People”), I. A. Solonevich (“People’s Monarchy”) and in a number of works other major researchers.

E. Durkheim and M. Weber made their contribution to the formulation of the problem of culture as a social phenomenon.

Durkheim defined culture as “the collective or common consciousness.” The latter has, from his point of view, specific features that transform this “consciousness” into a special reality: a set of beliefs and feelings that are common mainly to the same society.

The author of understanding sociology, M. Weber, believed that it is impossible to “understand” the behavior of social subjects without comprehending the “meaning” of his behavior experienced by the subject himself. According to Weber, the primary reality of society is culture, which can manifest itself both in social structures such as family, state, and in spiritual forms - religion, art, science. Culture, unlike technological civilization, is emotional, personal, and socially orients the subject. Weber emphasized that the “intended meaning” of real behavior in the overwhelming majority of cases is vaguely or not realized at all by the actor himself.

Speaking about the concepts of culture, one cannot ignore the socio-psychological scheme of 3. Freud, according to which three levels of the psyche are distinguished: “It” - the concentration of the unconscious (instincts, drives, repressed ideas and images), striving to break out of its “basements”; “I” is the concentration of our consciousness, which carries out the functions of suppression and sublimation of the unconscious; “Super-ego” is the concentration of conscience, norms and values, “the representative of society in the psyche.” According to Freud, culture is a dynamic system that performs a kind of feedback function between the individual and society both along the line “unconscious - conscious - normative-value - social-behavioral” and in the opposite direction (adjustment of behavior - revaluation of values, revision of norms - repression of patterns and ideas into the unconscious). From Freud's point of view, the preservation of the past in mental life is the rule rather than the exception.

A unique approach to the problem of interaction between culture and society, reflecting the stylistic features of the culture of the 20th century, was developed in the theory of I. Huizinga, which considers play as the most important source and way of existence of culture. Huizinga places not only art, but also science, everyday life, jurisprudence, and military art into the “playing space.” He shows that the ability to play is deeply connected with culture, which is opposed by the denial of play, gloomy seriousness based on the lack of imagination, the idea of ​​relativity, temporality, and fragility. At the same time, true culture requires a balance of gaming and non-game principles.

Let us highlight the main functions of culture in society, which coincide with the classification of the main types and forms of human activity:

Practical-transformative - the needs of human practice bring to life certain cultural changes as a condition for the development of society;

Cognitive - studying the mechanism of interaction between culture and society with the help of all forms of cultural development and, first of all, science, accumulation and transmission of information, maintaining continuity, historical and social memory;

Value-oriented - the development of norms regulating social behavior, including political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious ideals and behavioral stereotypes;

Communicative - exchange of information, communication, development of generally accepted attributes of behavior;

The function of socialization is the inclusion of the individual in the sociocultural process.

A constant source of development and reproduction of culture is the interaction of people, which makes it important to analyze the functional connection between personality and culture.

2. The role of the individual in the development of culture is a special, always actively discussed issue. Man is a “cell” of a cultural organism, the result of cultivation and the creator of culture. On the one hand, a person cannot bring the ultimate truth into culture, “cultivate” reality to perfection, to the absolute; on the other hand, the activity of an individual is always significant, never indifferent to culture, and can creatively develop or deform culture in all its forms.

For the sociological theory of culture, it is important to clarify the different content and individual significance levels of a person’s relationship with culture (culturality), to which certain levels of individual consciousness must correspond.

An individual’s cultural level can be high or low depending on how fully and harmoniously the subject has mastered culture in its traditional and innovative forms. Culture is a complex phenomenon; it is a complex system. Therefore, a high level of mastery of culture presupposes a systematic, rather than fragmentary, mastery of it. “By retreating from primitive elementarity,” a person becomes cultured. Therefore, in concept difficulties, as V.V. Rozanov noted, there is an external definition of culture, and its internal meaning is in the concept cult.“A cultured person is one who not only carries some kind of cult within himself, but who is also complex, that is, not simple, not monotonous in his ideas, in his feelings, in his aspirations, and finally, in his skills and the whole way of life.”

What appears, according to Rozanov, as the internal meaning of culture - a cult, or the internal and special attention of an individual to something, a preference for something over everything else - is gradually formed in the individual. It focuses on a person’s worldview, a way of seeing the semantic essence of the surrounding world and one’s own place in it. It arises under the influence of the general stylistic features of culture as a historical integrity, which determine the individual’s possible approaches to the objective world. The process of changing such approaches - discernment, contemplation, observation - was considered by S. S. Averintsev. Thus, the cultural personality of the ancient world was characterized by a spectacular approach. Contemplation becomes the dominant feature of medieval culture. Then this type of culture exhausts itself. Observation and, as a consequence of this, a practical-experimental approach to culture become a factor in the uniqueness of modern human culture. The cultural character of a person, his cult, arises under the direct influence of the sociocultural semantic field of the era, which determines the hierarchy of values ​​and objects of possible cult.

However, let us return to the “external” level of a person’s culture, directly related to the problem of complexity and multivariance of his behavior in society. Individual culture presupposes the role correlation of the individual with the culture, connecting his most important life needs with the norms and values ​​enshrined in the social institutions of society. The concept of role is one of the central ones in the empirical research of sociologists. However, the content of the role characterizes not so much the personality itself, the level of its mastery of culture, but rather the social system in which the person functions. One of the most important problems of self-realization of an individual in the sociocultural process is the problem of resolving contradictions that arise between an individual’s worldview, his basic spiritual values ​​and the requirements of his social roles, and stereotypes of behavior of an individual as a member of various social groups and processes. A cultured person finds in each case a unique way out that allows him to avoid extremes: either a complete rejection of “indulging in conventions” in order to maintain the purity of the cult, or absolute ideological relativism, which allows one to be guided only by considerations of momentary gain or convenience.

The framework of “appropriate” behavior in a particular role, in a particular social group can be perceived and considered by a cultured person not so much as a “Procrustean bed” limiting the freedom of self-realization, but as a disciplining factor that allows one to be included in the process of cultural creation not from scratch, but relying on established, established mechanisms for supporting the creative activity of the individual by society.

In the modern world, the problem of reflecting and recreating culture by an individual is also complicated because it involves mastering not only roles, but also what can be called “inter-role”, “marginal” behavior. A person increasingly finds himself not in one culture or another (national, class, generation, gender, territorial settlement group), but between cultures. Social differentiation in modern society is dynamic and rapidly transforming; Along with the globalization of social life, individualization and focus on the individual are also developing. Therefore, in an effort to be cultured, a person increasingly cannot rely on an established stereotype, take advantage of an already prescribed role, and is forced to create a relatively new pattern of behavior that corresponds to his worldview, on the one hand, and his non-trivial social status, on the other.

3. The current state of culture causes reasonable concern. One of the global problems in the development of society is the erosion of spiritual culture, which arises as a result of the total dissemination of monotonous information, isolating its consumers from the work of developing ideas about the meaning of existence in the socio-cultural process, aggravating the situation of “loss of meaning” in culture.

Overcoming the crisis and preserving culture are based on the main trends of its self-development and evolution.

Culture is an open system, i.e. . it is not completed, it continues to develop and interact with non-culture. Therefore, to begin with, let us pay attention to the external trend in the development of culture.

Culture is “not nature”; it arose and develops in interaction with nature. Their relationship was not easy. Gradually emerging from the power of natural forces, man - the creator of culture - made of his creation an instrument, an instrument for conquering and subjugating nature. However, as soon as power over earthly nature began to be concentrated in the hands of people, the most perspicacious of them came to the conclusion that, along with nature, culture, within which negative processes arose, fell into slavery to the power of human labor. Having changed the attitude towards oneself as part of nature to the attitude towards nature as a “stranger”, man found himself in a difficult situation. After all, he and his body are inseparable from nature, which has become “alien” to culture. Therefore, man forced himself to make a choice between nature and culture. Started in the 18th century. J.-J. Rousseau’s criticism of culture in some concepts was carried to the point of its complete denial, the idea of ​​“natural anti-culture” of man was put forward, and culture itself was interpreted as a means of his suppression and enslavement (F. Nietzsche). 3. Freud viewed culture as a mechanism of social suppression and sublimation of unconscious mental processes. And all this at a time when humanity was actively creating ways to suppress nature.

The confrontation between culture and nature has not disappeared today. However, there is a tendency to overcome it. The idea of ​​the noosphere - the future kingdom of Reason, Goodness, Beauty - revealed in the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky and P. Teilhard de Chardin is finding an increasingly wider response. As one of the attributes of the development of culture, the principle of conformity to nature is recognized, based on the mutually mediated ideas of culture’s responsibility to nature, on the one hand, and the relative freedom of the “second nature” from the “first”, artificial from the natural, a certain inevitable distance of sociocultural and biological processes - from another.

The main patterns of internal development of culture are closely intertwined with the external trend of cultural development, the evolution of its relations with nature.

One of the main trends in the internal development of culture is associated with a change in the balance of physical and mental expenditure of human energy in favor of the latter. Since the middle of the 20th century. Thanks to the use of scientific and technological advances, the need for hard physical labor began to sharply decrease. Human physical efforts play an increasingly smaller role in the reproduction of the sociocultural process. Culture, thus, increasingly defines itself as a product of the creativity of the human spirit, mind, soul. The value of spiritual efforts in this regard will steadily increase. And if previously natural science knowledge was often considered as a criterion for the progressiveness of culture, now its parity with humanitarian knowledge will be gradually restored.

Another internal trend in the evolution of culture is the transition from confrontation of “local”, “group”, “subjective” cultures to their dialogue. The 20th century introduced intense drama and a tragic sense of irreparable loss into the understanding of the cultural process. The idea of ​​discontinuity of culture and incomparability of cultures is most consistently embodied in the concept of O. Spengler. The perception of the cultures of individual social subjects as “sealed organisms” is based on the belief that each culture grows out of its own unique “proto-phenomenon” - a way of “experiencing life.” If in the theory of cultural-historical types and cultural circles this approach is used when analyzing relations between cultures of different ethnic groups, then in left- and right-wing radical doctrines it is used when comparing cultures of different classes (the theory of “two cultures” in a class society), and in the teaching of “new left” and then “right” - from the same positions the relations between the “new” counterculture and the “old” culture are characterized. Thus, within the framework of the sociology of economic determinism, the carriers of incompatible, mutually exclusive cultures are classes, for the “new” ones - youth and the older generation. Conflict, mutual misunderstanding and rejection of cultures are seen as an absolute inevitability.

However, the current situation in the sociocultural process demonstrates the futility and even disastrousness of the position of mutual ignorance of cultures. The need for the integrity of culture is comprehended “by contradiction” - through the awareness of the impossibility of its further existence in the form of a conglomerate of cultures.

Another important trend in the evolution of culture can be expressed as overcoming the conflict (while maintaining contradiction) between traditional culture and innovative culture. This trend is embodied in the culture of postmodernism.

No matter how conventional the designation of entire eras in the cultural life of society with the concepts of “classicism” or “modernism” is, it allows us to see how discontinuous culture is perceived in a given period.

At the beginning of the 20th century. The “modern” style established itself in culture. Modernism - the desire to reflect reality and especially culture in a new way as “not nature”, as an unnatural, artificial, pure, refined phenomenon - has permeated all spheres of spiritual life and, first of all, art and the humanities. Non-triviality, unconventionality and anti-traditionality are considered within the framework of this style as identical concepts. Gradually, what was modernism was partially included in the tradition, from which the avant-garde of culture carefully distanced itself. However, in the search for forms and meanings that are not in contact with what already existed in culture (and therefore old and unnecessary), the avant-garde led itself into the dead end of the absurd - tuneless music, non-representative painting, non-explanatory science, ideology that serves not self-preservation, but self-destruction a subject of ideology that breaks with the tradition of mythology. The natural need of the creator of culture to express the absurdity and disharmony of the world is satisfied in such a way that it leads to a deepening of the absurd.

In a culture filled with cacaphony, the need for silence is increasingly felt, which is sometimes defined as the only thing that is still missing “to replenish the golden fund of cultural values ​​of humanity.”

Gradually, “silence” leads to calm, once-burned bridges to traditional culture are restored, and values ​​acquired and developed by the cultures of previous eras reappear in a modern-enriched form. The broken connection of times is being restored, and once again it is revealed that “manuscripts do not burn.”

Contemporary postmodern culture is a culture that painfully but steadily overcomes the gap between the old and the new, the created and the created. Its fabric is saturated with “signs”, symbols of culture; it develops a “consensus” of desires to preserve tradition and keep up with the times.

Finally, the last of the identified trends in the evolution of culture at the present stage reflects the process of change in personality as a subject of culture. The diversity of culture from the external personality becomes internal, turns into the most important characteristic of its internal life.

The creation of modern culture by an individual presupposes its distance from both attempts to abandon the desire for integrity and from a false imitation of integrity. Internal contradiction and the desire to resolve it are the natural state of the spiritual life of the individual as a subject of culture. The one-dimensional person is replaced by a person who perceives contradiction not as a tragedy, but as a stimulus for the unfolding of the creative process.

Self-test questions

1. Define culture.

2. What are the specifics of material and spiritual culture? What is the essence of the social functions of culture?

3. What is the role of culture in the formation and development of the spiritual life of society?

4. How are changes in culture and changes in the structure of society related?

5. What key points can be identified in the process of cultural diffusion? Why do we say that any cultural pattern is a product of collective creativity? Determine your opinion about the role of the individual in the development of culture.

6. What is the current state of culture? What are the main trends in its development?