What are the characteristics of society identified by the American sociologist? What are the main characteristics of society? General sociology

Society is the largest group to which an individual belongs. “Society” means a self-replenishing sustainable social system that consists of people of different ages and gender and forms economic, political and cultural assemblages. We can talk about Finnish society, Western society etc.

A clear definition of this concept is very difficult and its use is very diverse.

According to Rene Konig (1958), society can be understood as: 1) different type lifestyle; 2) unities formed by peoples or 3) economic and ideological associations based on treaties; 4) an integral society, i.e. wide social education, a collection of different social units. In addition, the concept of “society” is used: 5) when describing a certain historical form social life, for example, “bourgeois society” and 6) as a synonym for “social”, “society”, when we're talking about about the relationships between individuals and the structures and social processes based on these relationships.

Robertson (1977) defines society as a group of individuals who live in the same territory, are in relationships of mutual influence and have general culture. This definition contains some essential features of the concept of “society” (“culture” and “territory”), which should however be understood in in a broad sense.

Rudhard Stollberg (1983) considers the main task of sociology to be the study of society. Sociology subjects -- social phenomena and processes. At the same time, society is understood as a set of social relations and as all manifestations human life up to leisure and living conditions, as well as social groups and relationships between individuals. Thus, “society” is a very broad concept that can be defined as a system or set of social phenomena.

It can be considered that social relations appear and are realized in human activity. Therefore, one subject of sociology is the study of this activity. The second subject of sociology is the social structure of society, its division into social groups, classes, professional groups, etc. That is, into abstract level society is structure and function.

Szczepanski (1970) uses the concept of “social life”, by which he understands all phenomena caused by the interaction of individuals and communities located in a certain limited territory. Main factors public life he considers biological, territorial, demographic, economic and cultural factors.

Society is a group of people created through purposeful and intelligently organized joint activities, and the members of such a group are not united by such a deep principle as in the case of genuine community.

Society rests on convention, agreement, and the same orientation of interests. Individuality individual person changes much less under the influence of his inclusion in society than depending on his inclusion in the community. Society is often understood as the sphere that lies between the individual and the state.

After attempts to explain the essence of the concept of “society” in antiquity (Aristotle) ​​and in the Middle Ages (Augustine and Thomas Aquinas), this question became, especially in the 1st and 18th centuries, a political and philosophical problem, the comprehensive solution of which Comte tried to give in his sociology; Therefore, society became the subject of consideration and the central point of the new science - sociology.

Exist different interpretations society: subjective, which considers society as a special amateur collective of people; active, which believes that society should be considered not so much the collective itself as the process of collective existence of people; organizational, which views society as an institutional system of stable connections between interacting people and social groups.

Society as extremely broad concept to designate that part of the material world that is isolated from nature and interacts with it in a certain way. This isolation is as follows: in contrast to the elemental natural forces in the center social development stands a person with consciousness and will. Nature exists and develops according to its own laws, independent of man and society. In this sense, society is the totality of all forms of association and ways of interaction of people both among themselves and with the natural world around them.

This last definition is considered as the main one in this work.

Signs of society E. Shils

American sociologist E. Shils identifies the following criteria of society:

• · it is not part of a larger system;
• · marriages are concluded between representatives of this association;
• · it is replenished primarily by the children of those people who are already its recognized representatives;
• · the association has a territory that it considers its own;
• · the society has its own name and own story;
• · it has its own control system;
• · the association lasts longer average duration the life of an individual;
• · unites him general system values ​​(customs, traditions, norms, laws, rules) which is called culture.

Society - social organization country that ensures the joint functioning of people. This is a part of the material world isolated from nature, representing a historically developing form of connections and relationships between people in the process of their life.

Many scientists have tried to study society, to determine its nature and essence. The ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle understood society as a collection of individuals who united to satisfy their social instincts. Epicurus believed that the main thing in society is social justice as the result of an agreement between people not to harm each other and not to suffer harm.

T. Parsons defined society as a system of relations between people, the connecting principle of which is norms and values. From point of view K. Marx, society- is a historically developing set of relationships between people, emerging in the process of their joint activities.

According to Marx, production relations are the root cause of all human relations and create large social system called society.

According to the ideas of K. Marx, society is the interaction of people. Form social order does not depend on their (people's) will. Each form of social structure is generated by a certain stage of development of the productive forces.

People cannot freely dispose of productive forces, because these forces are the product of people’s previous activities, their energy. But this energy itself is limited by the conditions in which people are placed by the productive forces that have already been conquered, by the form of social structure that existed before them and which is the product of the activity of the previous generation.

American sociologist E. Shils singled out following signs societies:

1) it is not an organic part of any larger system;

2) marriages are concluded between representatives of a given community;

3) it is replenished by the children of those people who are members of this community;

4) it has its own territory;

5) it has a self-name and its own history;

6) it has its own management system;

7) it exists longer than the average life expectancy of an individual;

8) he is united by a common system of values, norms, laws, rules.

Society lives and develops according to objective laws unity (of society) with the natural environment; provision social development; energy concentration; promising activity; unity and struggle of opposites; transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones; negations - negations; compliance of production relations with the level of development of productive forces; dialectical unity of the economic basis and social superstructure; increasing the role of the individual, etc. Violation of the laws of social development is fraught with major cataclysms and large losses.

Whatever goals the subject of social life sets for himself, being in the system of social relations, he must obey them. In the history of society, hundreds of wars are known that brought huge losses to it, regardless of the goals of the rulers who unleashed them. Suffice it to recall Napoleon, Hitler, former presidents The USA, which started the war in Vietnam and Iraq.

CHAPTER 3. STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIETY

Concept social structure first applied to social object Herbert Spencer in his book "Principles of Sociology". By structure, Spencer understood stable connections between a social organism and its parts. The very concept of structure means, according to Spencer, the arrangement, order or set of functionally interconnected elements, connections and dependencies that form the internal structure of an object.

IN modern sociology There is no single approach to determining the social structure of society. Different structural elements are identified and formed various theories their interactions.

Structural elements society.

One of the most common approaches to the formation of the social structure of society is to highlight as the initial element various types social communities.

A social community is a really unrealistically existing, empirically fixed set of individuals, distinguished by relative integrity and acting as an independent subject of social action.

Social communities differ in the variety of specific historical and situationally determined types and forms. The communities differ:

1) by the number of elements that make up the community (from two elements to many millions);

2) by duration of existence (from short-term, existing less than the lifespan of one generation of people, to long-term, existing for many generations);

3) by the density of connections between members of the association (from closely knit teams to nominal associations).

Based on the totality of their characteristics, social communities can be divided into two types - mass and group. Mass communities differ from group ones primarily in the quality and degree of interaction. The signs of a mass community are the following features:

associations are amorphous formations with unclear dividing boundaries;

to unify the nature of the uncertainty of quantitative and qualitative composition, it is characterized by heterogeneity and intergroup nature

An association is characterized by a situational method of formation, an association that is not stable, but quickly changing.

Mass communities are the crowd, political and social movements, various associations.

Social stratification (stratification of society) is a hierarchically ranked social inequality, as well as a process as a result of which individuals and groups turn out to be unequal to each other. The stratification system implies a characteristic stratification and a method of its approval.

There are mixed stratification systems; in addition, according to scientists, people are in constant motion, and society is in development. Therefore, the mechanism social stratification is social mobility, which is defined as a change by the individual, family, social group, place in the social structure.

CONCLUSION

In this work, I found out that civil society is a combination of moral, religious, national, socio-economic, family relations and institutions through which the interests of individuals and their groups are satisfied.
In economic terms, this means that each individual is an owner.

He actually possesses the means that a person needs for his normal existence. He is free to choose forms of ownership, determine the profession and type of work, and dispose of the results of his work. IN socially belonging of an individual to a certain social community(family, clan, class, nation) is not absolute.

It can exist independently and has the right to sufficiently autonomous self-organization to satisfy its needs and interests. Political aspect the freedom of the individual as a citizen lies in his independence from the state, that is, in the opportunity, for example, to be a member political party or associations that criticize the existing state power, has the right to participate or not to participate in elections of state authorities and local self-government.

Freedom is considered to be secured when an individual, through certain mechanisms (court, etc.) can limit the willfulness of state or other structures in relation to himself.
Civil society is an open social entity. It ensures freedom of speech, including freedom of criticism, openness, access to various types of information, the right of free entry and exit, wide and constant exchange of information and educational technologies with other countries, cultural and scientific cooperation with foreign government and public organizations, assistance

activities of international and foreign associations in accordance with the principles and norms of international law. It is committed to general humanistic principles and is open to interaction with similar entities on a planetary scale. Civil society is a complexly structured system.

Of course, anyone social organism has a certain set of systemic qualities, but civil society is characterized by their completeness, stability and reproducibility. The presence of diverse social forms and institutions (trade unions, parties, associations of entrepreneurs, consumer societies, clubs, etc.) makes it possible to express and realize the most diverse needs and interests of individuals, to reveal all the originality of the human being.

Society is the social organization of a country that ensures the joint functioning of people. This is a part of the material world isolated from nature, representing a historically developing form of connections and relationships between people in the process of their life.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that the family is the most ancient of all societies. She is the likeness of a father, the people are like children, and all those born equal and free, if they alienate their freedom, do so only for their own benefit.

Hegel tried to view society as complex system relations, highlighting as the subject of consideration the so-called civil society, i.e. a society where there is a dependence of everyone on everyone.

The works of one of the founders were of great importance for the scientific understanding of society scientific sociology O. Comte, who believed that the structure of society is determined by the forms of human thinking (theological, metaphysical and positive). He viewed society itself as a system of elements, which are the family, classes and the state, and the basis is formed by the division of labor between people and their relationships with each other. We find a definition of society close to this in Western European sociology of the 20th century. Thus, according to Max Weber, society is a product of the interaction of people as a result of their social actions in the interests of everyone.

T. Parsons defined society as a system of relations between people, the connecting principle of which is norms and values. From the point of view of K. Marx, society is a historically developing set of relations between people that develop in the process of their joint activities.

American sociologist E. Shils identified the following characteristics of society:

§ it is not an organic part of any larger system;

§ marriages are concluded between representatives of a given community;

§ it is replenished by the children of those people who are members of this community;

§ it has its own territory;

§ it has a self-name and its own history;

§ it has its own control system;

§ it exists longer than the average life expectancy of an individual;

§ it is united by a common system of values, norms, laws, rules.

According to a number of domestic sociologists, the criteria of society include the following:

§ the presence of a single territory, which is the material basis for the social connections that arise within its boundaries;

§ universality (comprehensive nature);

§ autonomy, the ability to exist independently and independently of other societies;

§ integrativeness: society is able to maintain and reproduce its structures in new generations, to include more and more new individuals in a single context of social life.

At the same time, a number of scientific theories emerged:

The instrumental concept puts human intelligence first. Man invented special tools - tools. Well-being increased, which led to the division of labor, the functional division of the community, as well as the emergence of economic differences between people living in the community.

The sexual concept is based on physiological characteristics person. The establishment of birth control is associated with the emergence of families and the establishment of norms regulating sexual, and with them, other relationships of community members.

The gender concept is based on distributional analysis social roles between the sexes. Men create an artificial counterbalance to the female monopoly of reproduction, in the form of a male monopoly on the establishment of order. Feminist theorists argue that social organization arose when men agreed to distribute women.

The cratic concept is based on general theory systems and deduces the emergence of society from the development of control subsystems.

A person’s personal qualities (intelligence, strength, ingenuity, etc.) are distributed unevenly among people, and therefore turn into a monopoly. A person who has these qualities takes a leadership position. Leaders (elite) form and maintain a system of rules (norms) that maintain inequality. These rules formed the basis of social organization.

The semantic concept is based on the recognition of the weakness of man as a biological being. The law of survival requires the unification of human efforts, which is associated with their coordination, division and combination of functions of individuals. There is a need for preliminary approval and immediate adjustment. This is only possible through the use of language. By developing symbols and signs, rules for their interpretation, and actively using speech, people shape the world of communications. It precedes, mediates and completes the cycles of people’s material activities. As a result, a system of ordered collective interactions and special functions arises, and a society is formed.

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1. The concept of society

society- This . IN in the narrow sense words society

E. Shils

System

1) people;

Systematic approach to the analysis of society

Today, two approaches to understanding society can be distinguished. In the broad sense of the word society- This a set of historically established forms of joint life and activity of people on earth. In the narrow sense of the word society is a specific type of social and political system, specific national theoretical education. However, these interpretations of the concept under consideration cannot be considered sufficiently complete, since the problem of society occupied the minds of many thinkers, and in the process of development of sociological knowledge, different approaches to its definition.

Thus, E. Durkheim defined society as supra-individual spiritual reality based on collective ideas. From the point of view of M. Weber, society is the interaction of people who are the product of social, i.e., other-oriented actions. K. Marx represents society as a historically developing set of relations between people that develop in the process of their joint actions. Another theorist of sociological thought, T. Parsons, believed that society is a system of relations between people based on norms and values ​​that form culture.

Thus, it is not difficult to see that society is a complex category characterized by a collection of various signs. Each of the above definitions reflects certain characteristic features of this phenomenon. Only taking into account all these characteristics allows us to give the most complete and precise definition concepts of society. The most complete list characteristic features allocated American sociologist E. Shils. He developed the following characteristics characteristic of any society:

1) it is not an organic part of any larger system;

2) marriages are concluded between representatives of a given community;

3) it is replenished by the children of those people who are members of this community;

4) it has its own territory;

5) it has a self-name and its own history;

6) it has its own management system;

7) it exists longer than the average life expectancy of an individual;

8) he is united by a common system of values, norms, laws, rules.

Taking into account all these features, we can give the following definition of society: it is a historically established and self-reproducing community of people.

The aspects of reproduction are biological, economic and cultural reproduction.

This definition allows us to distinguish the concept of society from the concept of “state” (the institution of governance social processes, which arose historically later than society) and “country” (a territorial-political entity formed on the basis of society and the state).

The study of society within the framework of sociology is based on a systems approach. The use of this particular method is also determined by a number of characteristic features society, which is characterized as: a social system of a higher order; complex system education; complete system; a self-developing system because the source is within society.

Thus, it is not difficult to see that society is a complex system.

System- This in a certain way an ordered set of elements interconnected and forming some kind of integral unity. Undoubtedly, society is a social system that is characterized as holistic education, the elements of which are people, their interactions and relationships, which are sustainable and reproduced in the historical process, passing from generation to generation.

Thus, as the basic elements of society as social system the following can be distinguished:

1) people;

2) social connections and interactions;

3) social institutions, social strata;

4) social norms and values.

Like any system, society is characterized by close interaction of its elements. Taking this feature into account, within systematic approach society can be defined as a large ordered collection social processes and phenomena more or less connected and interacting with each other and forming a single social whole. Society as a system is characterized by such features as coordination and subordination of its elements.

Coordination is the consistency of elements, their mutual functioning. Subordination is subordination and subordination, indicating the place of elements in a holistic system.

The social system is independent in relation to its constituent elements and has the ability to self-develop.

Functionalism was developed based on a systematic approach to the analysis of society. The functional approach was formulated by G. Spencer and developed in the works of R. Merton and T. Parsons. In modern sociology it is complemented by determinism and an individualistic approach (interactionism).

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1. The concept of society

Systematic approach to the analysis of society

Today, two approaches to understanding society can be distinguished. In the broad sense of the word society- This a set of historically established forms life together and human activities on earth. In the narrow sense of the word society- this is a specific type of social and state system, a specific national theoretical formation. However, these interpretations of the concept under consideration cannot be considered sufficiently complete, since the problem of society occupied the minds of many thinkers, and in the process of development of sociological knowledge, various approaches to its definition were formed.

Thus, E. Durkheim defined society as supra-individual spiritual reality based on collective ideas. From the point of view of M. Weber, society is the interaction of people who are the product of social, i.e., other-oriented actions. K. Marx represents society as a historically developing set of relations between people that develop in the process of their joint actions. Another theorist of sociological thought, T. Parsons, believed that society is a system of relations between people based on norms and values ​​that form culture.

Thus, it is not difficult to see that society is a complex category characterized by a combination of various characteristics. Each of the above definitions reflects certain characteristic features of this phenomenon. Only taking into account all these characteristics allows us to give the most complete and accurate definition of the concept of society. The most complete list of characteristic features of society was identified by the American sociologist E. Shils . He developed the following characteristics characteristic of any society:

1) it is not an organic part of any larger system;

2) marriages are concluded between representatives of a given community;

3) it is replenished by the children of those people who are members of this community;

4) it has its own territory;

5) it has a self-name and its own history;

6) it has its own management system;

7) it exists longer than the average life expectancy of an individual;

8) he is united by a common system of values, norms, laws, rules.

Taking into account all these features, we can give the following definition of society: it is a historically established and self-reproducing community of people.

The aspects of reproduction are biological, economic and cultural reproduction.

This definition allows us to distinguish the concept of society from the concept of “state” (an institution for managing social processes that arose historically later than society) and “country” (a territorial-political entity formed on the basis of society and the state).

The study of society within the framework of sociology is based on a systems approach. The use of this particular method is also determined by a number of characteristic features of society, which is characterized as: a social system of a higher order; complex system education; holistic system; a self-developing system because the source is within society.

Thus, it is not difficult to see that society is a complex system.

System- this is a certain ordered set of elements that are interconnected and form some kind of integral unity. Undoubtedly, society is a social system, which is characterized as a holistic formation, the elements of which are people, their interactions and relationships, which are sustainable and reproduced in the historical process, passing from generation to generation.

Thus, the following can be identified as the main elements of society as a social system:

2) social connections and interactions;

3) social institutions, social strata;

4) social norms and values.

Like any system, society is characterized by close interaction of its elements. Taking this feature into account, within the framework of a systems approach, society can be defined as a large, ordered set of social processes and phenomena that are more or less connected and interact with each other and form a single social whole. Society as a system is characterized by such features as coordination and subordination of its elements.

Coordination is the consistency of elements, their mutual functioning. Subordination is subordination and subordination, indicating the place of elements in a holistic system.

The social system is independent in relation to its constituent elements and has the ability to self-develop.

Functionalism was developed based on a systematic approach to the analysis of society. The functional approach was formulated by G. Spencer and developed in the works of R. Merton and T. Parsons. In modern sociology it is complemented by determinism and an individualistic approach (interactionism).