Modern trends in cultural development. The latest trends in the development of culture Modern trends in the development of national culture

The phenomenon of sociology of culture from the point of view of its elements and mechanisms.

Functions of social culture.

The concept of culture, its types, forms and varieties.

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1). Culture is a diverse and multifaceted concept; there are up to a hundred definitions of culture.

For sociology, this term has a special meaning, laid down by Emile Durkheim, who viewed culture as a system of ideals, values, norms, and patterns of behavior that regulate relations between people.

Social culture is the meanings that people attribute to various signs, objects or phenomena (a temple or a ship, a painting by S. Dali or a slogan, a symbol of the state), but they acquire meaning when they mean something to people.

Culture is a set of norms and values, ideals and life ideas that perform the functions of orientation in a given specific society, a system of relations between people and between man and nature.

The purpose of sociological research of culture is to identify producers of cultural values, channels and means of its dissemination, to assess the influence of ideas on social actions, on the formation or disintegration of groups or movements.

Culture can be divided according to certain characteristics into different types:

1. According to the subject - the bearer of culture, it is divided into public culture, national, class, group, personal.

2. According to the functional role, it can be general (for example, in the general education system), and special or professional.

3. According to its genesis, culture is a folk culture and an elite one.

4. By type – divided into material and spiritual.

5. By nature it can be divided into religious culture and secular culture.

In addition, culture has its own patterns of development and continuity; it can have a temporal and spatial continuation. The development of culture is uneven and does not coincide with the development of the economy of society, its decline or prosperity. On the contrary, often in moments of shocks and cataclysms, revolutionary situations, there is a rise in spiritual culture (in our Russian culture this is the so-called Silver Age). Sometimes the flowering of culture occurs under a reactionary system in the form of a protest against the existing reality - the golden 19th century in Russian culture. And it happens when the flowering of culture coincides in time with the rise of production and a qualitative leap in economics and politics - the Renaissance in Europe, which gave the world unsurpassed examples of human genius.

In the entire history of the development of human culture, four qualitative leaps can be distinguished:

1). The appearance of writing, first in the form of cuneiform, then the appearance of coded in the form of symbols, letters, writing.

2). The invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the emergence of matrices or type, the first printing houses that made books accessible to a wide range of readers.

3). The advent of television and sound cinema, a real revolution in the field of culture.

4). The achievement of the twentieth century is the introduction of personal computers and the global Internet.

Even in ancient times, it was noticed that the human eye has a property of storing a trace of what it saw on the retina and connecting fast-moving pictures into a single row. In the 19th century, thaumatropes and stratoscopes were invented - assays with moving pictures, then photography was invented. Finally, in 1895, the cinematography of the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere appeared.

Culture, as already mentioned, can be popular and mass, public and elite. Sociologists G. Le Bon and G. Tarde wrote that culture means nothing to the masses, means something to the public, and is of great value to the elite.

Mass culture has emerged since the 20s of the twentieth century in connection with depersonalization and loss of a sense of responsibility in society. It actually opposes genuine folk culture, which embodies all the best that has been created by humanity and is created for the sake of consumption. Its main function is entertainment; it has been known since ancient times that the plebs demand bread and circuses. Often mass culture is based on the social order of specific groups of the population, which benefit from fooling people and the formation of consumer goods in the cultural field. Mass culture in bourgeois society becomes a special type of business; a striking example of this is the culture of Hollywood, which has conquered the whole world. American films create the image of a lone hero (S. Stallone, A. Schwarzenegger, S. Seagal), who can win alone against everyone in the fight for justice, while demonstrating bulging muscles. Action films, erotica, pornography, horror films, Disney cartoons have taken over the world.

In popular culture, kitsch is created - a cliche, bad taste, which creates in a person the illusion of happiness and pleasure and has nothing to do with the real satisfaction that a person experiences when communicating with genuine works of art. Books are being written - bestsellers, the purpose of which is to make a big profit. It is not true talent or high art that is valued, but monetary income.

Genuine folk culture has glorious traditions and enduring values. We admire churches and ancient icons, paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, sculptures by Michelangelo, and listen to the poems of Yesenin and Petrarch. For example, the culture of Japan with its developed folk traditions is original and interesting. There, porcelain is made from black glaze in 4,000-year-old kilns. The Japanese create dolls dressed in multi-layered paper outfits. Moreover, there is a puppet theater - bunrab, where magnificent large puppets with movable faces and body parts are controlled by three people. The Japanese forge polished, multi-layered sabers with ornaments and decorations in a forge in Gasano. They love to play kato - Japanese harps, like hundreds of years ago.

Artistic culture consists not only of folk and mass culture, but also elite culture. Elite - culture for the elite, people prepared for a subtle perception of works of art. These are feature films by Fellini and Tarkovsky, paintings by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, music by Alfred Schnittke. Innovation and an unusual way of looking at things are often found in this area. Ordinary people sometimes consider this unnecessary and incomprehensible, but freedom and human individuality are limitless. In the Western world, there is room for imagination. Exhibitions of crumpled metal, toilets, concrete, ballet of nude dancers, etc. innovations are nothing new there. It should also be noted that there are positive aspects in the field of sports, for example, the invention of new types of sports (snowboarding), the emergence of a mass of new entertainments such as jumping from a bridge on a suspended belt, when the fear of death tickles a person’s nerves, parachute jumping from the mountains, etc. The eternal search and desire for novelty and thrills is a distinctive feature of a person in the free world.

In relation to the dominant culture, subculture and counterculture are distinguished - the culture of individuals and groups. The subculture differs from generally accepted norms and values in society; it is often reformist in nature and its bearers are young people. Young people thus express a protest against existing cultural stereotypes and outdated guidelines; they offer their own vision of the world. A striking example is pop culture, rock concerts. Sometimes, a cultural trend that appears in the form of protest gains popularity and establishes itself as the dominant culture, conquering the world. This was the case with jazz, the Beatles, and singer Elvis Presley.

If a conflict with the dominant culture is brewing, then we can talk about the emergence of a counterculture, offering alternative lifestyles, anti-traditional forms of creativity, and an opposite view of things. It is a protest against the existing culture and the proposal of opposing values and norms. This movement swept the Western world in the 60s of the twentieth century. This is observed today in our country, when apathy reigns and the culture of language has declined. There has been a separation of national cultures, and the role of religion has been inflated and exaggerated.

If, according to international standards for the intellectualization of youth, the USSR in the 50s of the twentieth century occupied 3rd place in the world after the USA and Canada, then in 1985 we dropped to 50th place.

In our culture, the principle of mankrutism reigned - forgetting the past, one’s history, and this is unacceptable.

Cultural values are created both vertically and horizontally (folk and elite - vertically, and national, regional, local - horizontally). Without Euclidean geometry there would be no Lobachevsky geometry, without Newton there would be no Einstein’s theory of relativity, etc. Cultural folk traditions live and are preserved, contrary to the will of religions and sovereigns. For example, the pagan Maslenitsa, which went through difficult times after the adoption of Christianity in Rus', but remains today a favorite holiday of the people.

A society can have an open and closed culture, a conservative and statistical culture, a stable and dynamically developing one, it all depends on the specifics of the country, on the position of the state on this issue. For a long time, the USSR was behind the “iron curtain” from the world and, of course, domestic culture suffered from isolation. Ancient China also lived a lot of time behind a stone wall so as not to give away its secrets, but the secret of making silk still penetrated into Europe (as L.N. Gumilev wittily wrote, Europe needed silk to get rid of lice sliding off slippery fabric) .

2). Culture has six main functions:

1. human creative – the development of human creative potential in all forms of life, man creates culture and culture creates man, a two-way process takes place;

2. epistemological (cognitive) – culture is a means of knowledge and self-knowledge of a society, a group of people or an individual;

3. informational – this is the broadcast of social experience using the media, which provides a connection between times and generations;

4. communicative (means of communication) – it ensures the adequacy of mutual understanding between people;

5. value-orientation – culture sets a certain scale of values in which a person exists and is oriented towards;

6. managerial (normative and regulatory) – culture acts as a means of social control over human behavior.

3). Sociologists approach the phenomenon of culture from different points of view:

1. the subject point of view views culture as a static entity;

2. the value point of view pays great attention to creativity;

3. the activity point of view introduces dynamics;

4. The symbolic point of view states that culture consists of symbols;

5. the game point of view views culture as a game where it is customary to play by its own rules;

6. textual point of view focuses on language.

Culture has its own universal mechanisms:

Elements that signify the value-symbolic content (texts, standards, stamps);

Elements associated with specific forms of communicative activity (traditions, norms, rituals, rituals that are broadcast and transformed by performers, for example, the image of O. Bender performed by A. Mironov for many seems to be the real O. Bender);

Mechanisms of structural and organizational space (schools, religions);

And levels (mass, traditional, folk, national).

The basic elements of culture include habits, customs, traditions, mores, laws, and values. They prescribe to members of society what to do and how to act. Manners, etiquette, code are also included in the normative system of culture. For example, a duel can be attributed to etiquette; it arose in knightly times and translated from French means “duel.”

Custom is a traditionally established order of behavior, fixed by collective habits, socially approved patterns of behavior that should be followed. For example, giving way to a woman, solemnly celebrating the New Year. Mores are customs that acquire moral significance, or the most sacred customs. It is immoral to offend the weak, to insult an old person. A law is a normative act adopted by the highest body of state power; it requires unquestioning obedience. There are 2 types of laws: common law and protection of the most precious values (life, property, state secrets).

Human culture is inseparable from traditions. Tradition (transmission, legend) is a mechanism for the reproduction and transmission from generation to generation of cultural norms and traits: customs, manners, laws, morals, language. Tradition shows the vertical axis of time, what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.

Language is the primordial matter of culture; in language we transmit information and behavior patterns; thanks to language, the process of socialization occurs. It arose at the dawn of human history, and today plays an important role in determining a person’s social status. The forms of language are varied: literary, colloquial, vernacular, dialects. There are also “professional” languages, corporate jargon, argot (secret language), the jargon of the underclass and thieves' jargon. Thus, determining the cultural and speech status of a person is an important task for a sociologist.

4). What awaits people in the 21st century?

The famous futurist D. Nasbit believes that the “calling card” of the 21st century will be the development of a diversity of cultures of human self-expression - creativity, religions, arts.

In our time, the question of translator cultures has also become acute, as America represents for the whole world, striving to plant the standards of American culture everywhere. American sociologist
K. Baldwing even coined the term “superculture” - the culture of skyscrapers, airports, universities. It is characterized by a global scope.

The possible options are assimilation (absorption of one culture by another), accommodation (forced acquisition of the language of another culture), cultural selection (selective acquisition of the values of another culture). The perception of another culture, as M. Mead, a well-known representative of the scientific world, sociologist, historian, psychologist and ethnographer, found out, occurs only when both cultures had a common prototype.

The interactions of cultures in our time, according to H. Ortega y Gasset, can be: neutral, alternative or countercultural, that is, competitive or adversarial.

For modern Russia, the question of the future is connected with the question of the formation of a humanistic society, for which the main thing will be not material, but spiritual values. The representative of humanism in our country was Academician A.D. Sakharov. Russia has lost its Marxist-Leninist ideology, and an ideological vacuum reigns in society. But I want to believe that the country will become the spiritual center of humanistic civilization, combining the pragmatism of the West and the originality of the East, and perhaps the miracle of the unity of all humanity will happen.

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, is divided 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 present time axis, 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.

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 movement 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.

Functions of culture

Culture determines the development and functioning of society as a whole and man as an integral part of it. Culture is a “second nature”, which includes, on the one hand, life-giving human activity to create material and spiritual values, on the other hand, the activity of selecting, disseminating and storing these values for the purpose of further development and functioning of society on the basis of acquired historical memory . Based on this, we can identify the main functions of culture as a sociological phenomenon.

Active, creative function of culture: the process of interaction between a person and society and society with a person stimulates the development of the human-creative (humanistic) function, i.e. development of human creative abilities in the diverse forms of his life.
Cognitive (epistemological) function: the creation of a “second nature” - culture - requires significant cognitive efforts of a person comprehending the world and himself as a member of a social group, society.
Information function: transfer and exchange of knowledge and experience of life, ensuring the connection of times - past, present and future, forming the historical memory of mankind and its ability to foresight.
Communicative function (communication function): the interaction of people among themselves, between social groups and society as a whole, providing people with the opportunity to correctly understand each other in this process.
Value-orientation function: ensuring selection and selectivity of a person’s inheritance of cultural achievements, orienting him towards a kind of “map of life values”, ideals and goals of existence.
Management function: ensuring the preservation of society as a socio-cultural system; maintaining the activity regime of society, implementing a program for its development towards the target results of this activity on the basis of social and organizational norms for regulating the behavior of individuals developed by humanity in the process of historical development. In this regard, the management function is often called normative and regulatory, when culture acts as a means of social control over the behavior of individuals.

Modern trends in cultural development

It is sometimes argued that not a single cultural process can be assessed unambiguously and categorically in terms of “good or bad.” However, there is one natural criterion for assessing any social process, including cultural ones. This criterion is simple: how does culture serve people? Does it help him live in accordance with universal human values? Does it make him spiritually richer, kinder, nobler, more honest, more compassionate towards the grief and troubles of another person? Everything here is quite clear: if culture serves a person and develops his best - from the standpoint of universal human values - qualities, abilities and inclinations, then this good cultural process, beneficial culture! It is from this position that it is necessary to consider those visible trends in the development of the cultural situation in our country that are unfolding today.

1. De-ideologization of culture(elimination of ideological influence on culture) through the abolition of the state monopoly on the implementation of policy in the field of culture. It is believed that, in terms of content, this has led to greater freedom of creativity and freedom of choice in the cultural sphere - processes that are, of course, positive. But freedom of creativity and freedom of choice are good and unconditional only when there is confidence that they are aimed at the benefit of the individual and society as a whole. Is there such confidence today? Unfortunately, no: freedom of creativity and freedom of choice, often implemented according to the principle “I can do whatever I want!”, have led to a loss of control over the quality and level of cultural products offered to consumers.
2. Privatization and commercialization embraced culture, regardless of its characteristics and significance in human life and society. The people of Russia are alienated from cultural values, including such values as education, which have practically become paid (including primary and secondary, since school repairs, textbooks and other educational services are often paid for by parents). Culture, understood as the process of spiritual enrichment of a person through the means of music, literature, poetry, painting, etc., has, in principle, become inaccessible to the broad masses. It is turning into that mass culture and counterculture discussed above. Show business managers invest money only in this highly profitable area, since profit is the only motive for their activities.
3. Artificially fueled interest in Russia's pre-revolutionary past, including to its cultural heritage, is a trend intensively cultivated by the media. Sometimes this interest takes on grotesque forms of rehabilitation and resuscitation of an archaic, outdated heritage. For example, in an effort to revive the authority of the church, many forget such gains of a democratic society as the separation of church and state and school from church.
4. Trends in the development of national relations are forming very slowly, as this is the largest and most sensitive area requiring tact and political professionalism. Humanity as a whole, not only Russia, is faced with a choice of development strategy: will it be a “clash of civilizations” or “cross-cultural co-evolution”? The solution to the national question and the problem of the diversity of national cultures also depends on the choice of path. Will the world divide into the industrial North and the “global village” of the raw material South, or will it follow the path of searching for a fair distribution of raw materials and energy resources? Perhaps no one will say now what humanity will choose, although there is less and less time left for choice.
5. Modern processes of education and enlightenment are extremely complex. The trends in introducing universal higher education and lifelong education are opposed by the processes and phenomena of “secondary illiteracy”, the widening gap between elite culture and mass, low-quality, populist culture.
6. The problem of cultural education of young people is of particular concern. A vicious circle has formed here: the low personal culture of the consumer determines the demand for low-quality cultural products, the production of which, in turn, reproduces the low taste of the consumer. A breakthrough here is only possible through the joint efforts of civil society and the state.

The relevance of the topic of culture, its current state and development trends is beyond doubt. The relevance of the problem under consideration is due primarily to the fact that the modern world is oversaturated with conflicts and disasters, the main reason for which is the clash of people professing different cultural values. This could be religious strife, the desire of autonomies to gain independence, the struggle of financial groups. By examining the motives of such conflicts, one can always find differences in spiritual values among the conflicting parties. There are groups of people who perceive foreign culture as something hostile. Fortunately, there are those who, on the contrary, understand and recognize the equivalence of any manifestations of spirituality and culture. Consequently, modern civilization will be able to resist self-destruction only if, in addition to technological progress and an increase in material values, the spiritual potential of its culture becomes the basis for the development of society. Thus, cultural values have not lost their significance today.

In addition, the relevance of the problem of culture is associated with the so-called “crisis of culture”. Almost every day we hear addresses from Russian President D.A. on TV screens. Medvedev and other famous politicians about the need to improve the level of culture in our society. It should be noted that the topic of culture is relatively new for our school. Previously, this topic was studied in cultural institutes, art and theater schools, and philosophy departments at universities. There are special textbooks and programs on the theory of culture that were written in the spirit of, so to speak, stagnant times. The entire understanding of culture was reduced mainly to the Marxist-Leninist one, little attention was paid to world culture and the teachings of foreign authors. It was believed that the “true” culture is in our country, and its development is possible only on the basis of a certain ideology. However, the perestroika processes forced us to look differently at our own cultural achievements and evaluate them more modestly. It is also important that our domestic culture was recognized as part of the world.

Today we need new assessments and ideological approaches; in particular, it is necessary to recognize that the level of culture of a society is represented not in individual highest achievements, but in the everyday life of millions of people. It’s exactly the same here as in physical culture: we have world-class achievements in many sports, but the general physical culture of the masses is very low. And this, as we know, affects the health of society as a whole.

The achievement of recent years has been the understanding of a simple fact: what matters first of all is the level of culture of ordinary human life. That is, the culture of everyday life, production, the culture of streets and public institutions, the culture of everyday communication between people. Society and the state can either promote the development of culture, or, on the contrary, hinder its development. However, they will never replace an individual in creating culture.

But what is culture? Why do we miss it? What does it mean? How is it that there is a lack of culture? What exactly is missing? There are people, there are houses, there are cars, mechanisms, factories, there are theaters and libraries too. What is missing, what is perceived as a lack or low level of culture?

In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to turn to the history of the origin of the word and concept “culture”. Note that it is necessary to distinguish between a word and a concept. The word appears before the concept and serves to designate or name something. The concept already contains an understanding of the designated object or action, i.e. expresses a person's attitude towards him.

So, the word “culture” appeared in Latin. It was used in treatises and letters by poets and scientists of Ancient Rome. It denoted the action of cultivating or processing something. Roman statesman and writer Marcus Porcius Cato(234-149 BC) wrote a treatise on agriculture, the name of which in Latin would sound something like this: agriculture. This treatise is devoted not just to cultivating the land, but specifically to caring for a plot, a field, which presupposes not only the cultivation of the soil, but also a special emotional attitude towards it. There is, for example, advice on purchasing a plot of land. Cato wrote that one should not be lazy and walk around the plot of land being purchased several times. If the site is good, the more often you inspect it, the more you will like it. This is the “like” you should definitely have. If it doesn’t exist, then there won’t be good care, i.e. there will be no culture.

Consequently, the word “culture”, even in its early days of use, meant not only processing, but also veneration, perhaps even worship. It is no coincidence that there is also a related word “cult”.

The Romans used the word “culture” with some object in the genitive case: culture of behavior, culture of speech, etc. The Roman orator and philosopher Cicero (106-43 BC) used the word to refer to spirituality. He considered philosophy to be the culture of the spirit or mind. Basically, all cultural historians agree that this implies the influence of philosophy on the mind with the purpose of processing it, educating it, and developing mental abilities. But another meaning can be found here if we remember Cato. Philosophy is not only the cultivation or education of the mind, but also its veneration, respect for it and worship of it. And indeed: philosophy was born out of preference for the spiritual principle in man, out of respect for this principle.

In the Middle Ages, the word “cult” was used more often than the word “culture”. What was meant was the possibility and ability to express the creative power and will of God through a certain attitude towards him and ritual. As is known, there was also the concept of chivalry, i.e. a kind of cult or culture of valor, honor and dignity.

During the Renaissance, there was a return to the ancient meaning of the word “culture” as the harmonious and sublime development of man, containing his active, creative beginning.

In its independent meaning, the concept of “culture” appeared in the works of the German lawyer S. Pufendorf(1632-1694). He used it to denote the results of the activities of a social person. Culture is opposed to the natural or natural state of man. This sense of something extra-natural, something developed and cultivated by man has been preserved to this day in the concept of “culture”. Culture was understood as the confrontation of man and his activities with the wild elements of nature, its dark and unbridled forces. This concept is used more and more often in the sense of enlightenment, education, and good manners of a person. It is no coincidence that the birth of the concept of “culture” coincided in time with the emergence and development of new relations in society towards man and nature.

It was New Times. Its novelty lay in the fact that people for the most part began to live not in accordance with the rhythms, cycles or patterns of nature, but in the mode of urban life. A new way of life became the basis for a person’s new idea of himself. The labor activity of the townspeople also mattered. Even in the Middle Ages, village artisans made up the original population of cities. Gradually, the craft gained independence and lost its service character in relation to agriculture. Ultimately, it rose above him and became an indicator of Man’s superiority over nature, turning it into the means and object of his actions.

The city dweller was, as it were, fenced off from nature; his life was largely artificial or simply man-made, if we mean craft as his main occupation. This gave him a reason to recognize himself as a bearer of culture. By the way, city-polises were understood in antiquity as unique cultural spaces.

Bourgeois”, “burghers” (as the first inhabitants of medieval cities in Western Europe were called) gradually turned into a new class - the bourgeoisie. This process was accompanied by the accumulation of capital and the emergence of a mass of poor people, i.e. proletarians. Naturally, it was the bourgeoisie who became the owner of cultural values.

In addition, it was the era of technical and industrial revolutions, the emergence of machine production, the era of great geographical discoveries and colonial conquests. Life, activity and its results were increasingly determined by the person himself. This was especially obvious in comparing the life of a European and a resident of overseas colonies. The obviousness of the determining role of man served as the basis for the understanding of culture as an independent phenomenon.

All these events were accompanied by the formation of a new worldview. Not only people’s relationships with each other and with nature changed, but also everyone’s relationship with God.

Man no longer needed a mediator to communicate with him; he bore personal responsibility for his actions directly before God. On the other hand, an earthly measure of personal success and dignity appears: property and wealth in general, which every person could possess. In the era of initial accumulation of capital, this wealth could still arise through robbery, but as legal relations took shape in bourgeois society, personal initiative and enterprise became the source of success and well-being. A person had to hope and rely only on himself. A type of active, calculating person was being formed, for whom his own work became his own measure. We must not forget that all this happened against the backdrop of poverty and deprivation of the masses, whose situation was perceived as the result of a person’s lack of necessary business qualities. Naturally, such qualities included, first of all, rationality and enlightenment - what generally distinguishes a person from an animal. “Knowledge is power,” proclaimed the English thinker and one of the founders of modern philosophy, F. Bacon. Only a knowledgeable person is actually a person and can count on the obedience of nature. And an indicator of knowledge is the ability to do something reasonable and expedient, which ultimately elevates a person above the elements of nature as a cultural being.

French enlighteners of the 18th century. (Voltaire, Condorcet, Turgot) reduced the content of the cultural-historical process to the development of human spirituality. The history of society was understood as its gradual development from the stage of barbarism and ignorance to an enlightened and cultural state. Ignorance is the “mother of all vices,” and human enlightenment is the highest good and virtue. The cult of reason becomes synonymous with culture. This position of the enlighteners reveals pride, “secret arrogance,” as E. Soloviev called this trait. The revaluation of reason and culture became the subject of Rousseau's philosophizing. He did not associate any hopes for the eradication of vices in man with the progress of culture and contrasted the depravity and moral depravity of a civilized person with the simplicity and purity of morals of the patriarchal life of people.

It was typical for the figures of the Enlightenment to search for the meaning of history precisely in connection with the concept of “culture.” The attitude towards history, in which not only something happens, but is naturally formed, develops, and grows, took shape in the concept of “philosophy of history,” which was introduced into use by Voltaire. The concept of “civilization,” as established by the French linguist E. Benveniste, appeared in European languages in the period from 1757 to 1772. It contained the idea of a new way of life, the essence of which was urbanization and the increasing role of material and technical culture. The term “humanitarianism” or “humanitarian” was increasingly used in relation to an educated person with extensive knowledge in all spheres of human activity, to whom “nothing human is alien.” It was believed that a person acquires his knowledge by studying the “liberal arts” and classical languages. In this way, an idea of the cultural level or cultural norm was formed.

The Enlightenmentists contributed to the fact that man’s sensory relationship to reality became the subject of rational or scientific knowledge. The German philosopher Baumgarten (1714-1762) called the science of perfect sensory knowledge the term “aesthetics,” which later began to be used by some thinkers as a synonym for culture in general.

The concept of “culture” in classical German philosophy. Rousseau was the founder of a critical attitude towards culture. In essence, this attitude became the main motive in the teachings of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and philosophers of Germany at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. For them, the contradictions and factors that existed in bourgeois culture and civilization that impeded the free development of man and his spirituality were obvious. Culture easily turns into its opposite if the material, mass, quantitative principle begins to predominate in it. Culture is the self-liberation of the spirit, thanks to which nature becomes more perfect and spiritual. The means of liberation of the spirit were called moral (Kant), aesthetic (Schiller, romanticism), philosophical (Hegel) consciousness. Culture, therefore, was understood as the area of human spiritual freedom. This understanding was based on the recognition of the diversity of types and types of culture, which are the steps in a person’s ascent to the freedom of his own spirit.

The role of human spiritual liberation was critically rethought by K. Marx. The condition for such liberation must be fundamental changes in the sphere of material production and relations in society. The liberation and development of genuine culture is associated in Marxism with the practical activities of the proletariat, the political and cultural revolutions that it must carry out. All history is a successive series of socio-economic formations, each of which is more culturally developed than the previous one, which is determined by the development of the method of material production. This development is the basis of the unity of world culture.

In Marxism, therefore, culture is understood as the sphere of practical human activity, as well as the totality of the natural and social results of this activity. The development of culture is a contradictory process of interaction between “two cultures,” each of which expresses the interests and goals of antagonistic classes. Culture, having gone through the stages of resolving contradictions, will ultimately become the unity of man and nature and will have a universal (communist) character. The condition for achieving such a state of culture is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the elimination of private property and the construction of a classless society.

In Marxist teaching, each formation has its own type of culture. It follows from this that each type of culture, like culture as a whole, is the result of human activity and represents a variety of changes in nature and society. Moreover, activity or labor act only as socially productive forces of man. Outside of this activity, as well as outside of society, a person simply does not exist. A person is a cultural being to the extent that he participates in social (material or spiritual) production. It not only creates culture, but also turns out to be its result and its actual content. In this understanding, culture can be defined as a way of naturally and socially conditioned active existence of a person.

Variety of definitions of the term “culture”. According to cultural theorist L.E. Kertman, there are over four hundred definitions. This is due to the diversity of culture itself and the use of this term. This situation exists, of course, not only with the word “culture”. The word “science,” for example, also has a very wide range of definitions. We are usually irritated by the lack of any one definition. But this comes from our mental laziness, from the desire to memorize and remember rather than understand and comprehend. The diversity of definitions of culture should not irritate us, since behind it lies the diversity of culture itself. And its diversity is one of the main reasons for its existence at all. Culture is like life: it exists only because it is different. And the monotony of culture is a sign of its approaching death.

From all the variety of definitions of culture, one can single out, according to L.E. Kertman, three main approaches, conventionally called anthropological, sociological and philosophical. The essence of the first approach is the recognition of the intrinsic value of the culture of each people, no matter what stage of its development it is at, as well as the recognition of the equivalence of all cultures on earth. In accordance with this approach, any culture, like any person, is unique and inimitable, being a way of life of an individual or society. There is not just one level of culture in the world, to which all peoples should strive, but many “local” cultures, each of which contains its own values and has its own level of development. To understand the essence of this approach, we provide several definitions. Culture is:

- “everything that is created by man, be it material objects, external behavior, symbolic behavior or social organization” (L. Bernard);

- “a general way of life, a specific way of adapting a person to his natural environment and economic needs” (K. Dawson);

- “the entirety of the activity of a social person” (A. Kroeber);

- “everything that is created or modified as a result of the conscious or unconscious activity of two or more individuals interacting with each other or mutually determining behavior (P. Sorokin);

- “a way of life followed by a community or tribe” (K. Whisler).

It is easy to see that with an anthropological approach, culture is understood very broadly and in content coincides with the entire life of society in its history.

Sociological understanding of culture. Too broad a definition and lack of indication of any specific characteristics make it difficult to understand culture. The sociological approach tries to identify precisely such signs. Culture here is interpreted as a factor in the organization and formation of the life of a society. It is understood that in every society (as in every living organism) there are certain culture-creating “forces” that direct its life along an organized, rather than chaotic path of development. Cultural values are created by society itself, but they then determine the development of this society, the life of which begins to increasingly depend on the values it produces. This is the uniqueness of social life: a person is often dominated by what is born of himself. Here are some definitions of culture characteristic of its sociological understanding. Culture is:

- “strong beliefs, values and norms of behavior that organize social connections and make possible a common interpretation of life experience” (W. Becket);

- “inherited inventions, things, technical processes, ideas, customs and values” (V. Malinovsky);

- “language, beliefs, aesthetic tastes, knowledge, professional skills and all kinds of customs” (A. Radcliffe-Brown);

- “a general and accepted way of thinking” (C. Jung).

In 1871, the book “Primitive Culture” by the English ethnographer E. Tylor was published. He is, so to speak, one of the fathers of cultural studies. In general, his views can be attributed to the anthropological understanding of culture, but he had several definitions of it, including those close to the sociological. “From an ideal point of view, culture can be looked at as the general improvement of the human race through the higher organization of the individual with the aim of simultaneously promoting the development of morality, strength and happiness of man,” wrote E. Tylor. Here, culture includes such aspects of the development of society as “general improvement”, “higher organization”, and “goal”. These seem to be understandable things, but the difficulty is that, as they say, they cannot be touched or seen directly. And yet it is difficult to argue against the fact that they play a major role in the life of a person and society.

Philosophical approach to culture differs from other approaches precisely in that, through analysis, certain features, characteristics, and patterns are identified in the life of society. They are understood as what constitutes the basis of culture or the reason for its development. Here it is important to understand the specifics of the philosophical approach as such, and not only to culture. Philosophy usually deals with that which is inaccessible to simple, direct perception. We are not talking about any special, abstruse things. Philosophy explores what already seems understandable and known. But it often turns out that in reality we do not have an understanding, that it just seemed to us that we understood something. You need to look with special vision - speculation, i.e. understand, not just watch. Seeing and understanding are two different things. Philosophy deals With understanding. That's why The philosophical approach to culture is not limited to describing or listing cultural phenomena. It involves penetration(through thinking, understanding) into their essence. Culture is understood as the “content” or “way of being” of society. Here are some definitions in line with this approach:

- “culture is a relatively constant intangible content transmitted in society through the process of socialization” (G. Becker);

- “a symbolic expression rooted in the subconscious and brought into the public consciousness, where it is preserved and remains in history (D. Regin).

Thus, it is important to note that from a philosophical point of view, culture is understood not simply as a sum of ideas or things that can be isolated, separated from each other, described. Man’s whole world is the world of his culture, and the question of culture is, in essence, a question about man himself, about his human way of existence and about his attitude towards himself. This attitude is characteristic only of man, and to understand its essence, its birth and development is the task of research in the field of philosophy of culture.

Let us now return to the problems of modern culture and the main trends in its development. Of course, the development of world culture in the 21st century. is a complex and contradictory process. It was influenced by a number of factors:

Two world wars and several local ones;

Dividing the world into two camps;

The establishment and fall of fascist regimes in a number of countries;

Revolutionary pro-communist movement;

Collapse of the socialist system, etc.

All this made its own adjustments to the world cultural and historical process. In the 21st century, there are four types of cultural activities:

1. religious;

2. actually cultural:

a) theoretical-scientific,

b) aesthetic and artistic,

c) technical and industrial;

3. political;

4. socio-economic. The socio-economic sphere has received the greatest development. Lately you can see process of industrialization of culture, which is manifested both in the development of science and technology, and in the emergence of technical branches of culture, as well as in the industrial production of works of literature and art.

The scientific and technological revolution has entered a new stage of its development. Today, the problems of automation and computerization of production are being solved. But the scientific and technological revolution had not only positive, but also negative consequences. It led to the formulation of the question of human survival, which was reflected in artistic creativity.

The industrialization of culture led to the movement of the center of world cultural progress to the most economically developed country - the USA. Using its industrial power, the United States gradually expanded its influence in the world. American stereotypes of thinking and cultural values are being imposed. This was especially clearly reflected in the development of world cinema and music. The expansion of the United States created the preconditions for establishing a monopoly in the field of culture. This forced many European and Eastern countries to intensify efforts to preserve their cultural and national traditions. However, this problem still remains unresolved. This seems problematic, especially with modern means of communication.

Exacerbation of social contradictions in the 20th century. contributed politicization of culture. This was expressed in its ideologization, in the political content of works of literature and art, in their transformation into means of propaganda, in the use of scientific and technological achievements for military-political purposes, as well as in the personal participation of cultural figures in socio-political movements. All this led, to a certain extent, to the dehumanization of world art.

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