Value is understood as a generally accepted norm, formed in a certain culture, which sets patterns and standards of behavior and influences the choice between possible behavioral alternatives.
T. Parsons noted that value- this is a representation of the desired, influencing the choice of a behavioral alternative. However, it should be noted that culture does not consist only of positive values, it also includes non-normative aspects of folklore, literature, music, as well as technological and other skills; secondly, the value and recognized patterns of behavior may not coincide, for example, prostitution in a number of cultures is a recognized pattern of behavior, but is not a value.
The problem of values is quite deeply developed in philosophy and sociology, anthropology and psychology. (E. Durkheim, P. A. Sorokin, T. Parsons and etc.). There are two polar theories in Western cultural anthropology. One of them is relativistic which denies the possibility of an objective analysis of the value structures of various societies and considers value systems as relative. Another (opposite) theory - anti-relativistic positivism, affirming the possibility of studying value structures from the standpoint of objective science.
What is the role of the value component in people's lives? Cultural life is impossible without values, since they give society the necessary degree of order and predictability. Through the system of values accumulated in culture, the regulation of human activity is carried out.
“Deprived of their significant aspects, all phenomena of human interaction become simply biophysical phenomena and, as such, form the subject of biophysical sciences,” notes Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin. And indeed, all these cultural phenomena created by people, all these works, mechanisms and things, devoid of a valuable component, become just piles of paper, metal or marble, tons of worn out paint or pieces of matter. And then they can be the subject of physics, chemistry or biology, studying their structure, structure or properties, but not social or human sciences.
According to P. A. Sorokin, it is the value that serves as the foundation of any culture. Depending on what value dominates, he divides all cultural supersystems into 3 types:
1) ideational;
2) sensual;
3) idealistic.
If ideational culture prevails, then God and Faith become the highest value in it, and an indifferent or negative attitude is formed towards the sensual world, its riches, joys and values.
In a sensual culture, the value of feelings prevails. Only what we see, hear, and touch has meaning. Its formation begins in the 16th century. and reaches its apogee by the middle of the 20th century. The values of religion, morality, and other values of an ideational culture acquire a relative character: they are either denied or completely indifferent to them. In such a culture, knowledge becomes the equivalent of the empirical knowledge represented by the natural sciences; they supplant religion, theology and even philosophy.
The idealistic system of culture, according to P. A. Sorokin, is intermediate between ideational and sensual. Its values are the values of reason rationalizing objective reality, which is partly supersensible and partly sensual.
In everyday consciousness, the concept of "value" is usually associated with the evaluation of objects of human activity and social relations in terms of good and evil, truth and lies, beauty or ugliness, permissible or forbidden, fair or unfair, etc. At the same time, evaluation comes from the position of its culture, therefore, its own value system and is perceived as "authentic", as a reference point for good and bad.
Culturology, on the other hand, proceeds from the understanding that the whole world of culture is a value, that the value systems of different cultures are equal, that there is no culture of one's own or another's, but there is one's own and another, and that the world is the more stable the more diverse.
What underlies the universal and specific values in nature? There is a huge difference between how values are perceived by different people of different cultures. This perception also depends on their idea of individual or group attitudes.
There is no culture that does not negatively evaluate murder, lying, or theft, although there are differences in ideas about the limits of tolerance for lying and theft (in some cultures, as a punishment, they cut off the hand as a punishment, in others, they deprive them of their freedom).
Values that are ubiquitous and the same or very similar in content are assimilated by all cultures as a necessary part; they are eternal and obligatory for all societies and individuals. But these values are “dressed” in specific cultural “clothes”, i.e. the configuration of the value system, the correlation and interaction of elements within it are products of a particular culture.
How do values change? What factors affect this? From time to time, in a given culture, fears arise that “their” values may be replaced by “strangers”. So, today, great concern is manifested in connection with the "Americanization" of Russian culture.
Values both at the level of the individual and at the level of society are exposed in a situation of crisis (individual or group - death, fire, disaster) or conflict (family, military, social, political, etc.). E. Durkheim introduced the concept of "anomie", denoting a state of value-normative vacuum, characteristic of transitional and crisis periods and states in the development of society, when old social norms and values cease to operate, and new ones have not yet been established. “Former Gods grow old or die, but new ones were not born” (E. Durkheim, “Sociology”). It is this state that describes Johan Huizinga in "Autumn of the Middle Ages", presenting a picture of the suffering and confusion of the conflict of values of the outgoing culture and the emergence of new forms of socio-cultural reality as a result.
Japan turned out to be, perhaps, the only exception in the modern world, where the spirit of a holistic worldview, which was formed in the unhurried Middle Ages and reflected in traditional artistic creativity, was not supplanted by the scientific and technological revolution and mass culture.
Meanwhile, the values of any culture cannot be changed either by evidence of their failure or by the demonstration of more attractive values. The "mutation" of values occurs relatively slowly even with a purposeful powerful impact, and they disappear only together with the disappearance of the culture itself.
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Value is a characteristic fixed in the mind of a person. relationship to the object. Value for a person are objects that give him positive emotions: pleasure, joy, enjoyment, etc. Therefore, he desires them and longs for them. Both material things or processes and spiritual phenomena (knowledge, ideas, ideas) can have value. Items may have value, but they are not valuable in and of themselves. Value is not an object, but a special kind of meaning that a person sees in it.
Each person, starting from childhood, develops personal value orientations, those. value representations, with the help of which he orients himself in the world of values and determines which of the values are more significant for him and which are less. The system of value orientations of the individual is formed on the basis of value ideas prevailing in the culture.
In the system of value orientations of the individual, one should distinguish between final, instrumental and derivative values.
Final values are the highest values and ideals, more important and significant than which there is nothing. They are the ultimate goals of human aspirations, the main life guidelines; the focus on such values determines the leading interests of the individual and the meaning of her whole life. This self-worth, which are valuable in themselves, and not because they serve as a means to achieve some other values.
Instrumental values are the means and conditions ultimately necessary to achieve and maintain ultimate values. So, beautiful trinkets, graceful
clothing, artistic products that people decorate their homes with can have instrumental value as a means of enjoying beauty; sports can have instrumental value as a condition for maintaining and strengthening health - the final value.
Derivatives values are consequences or expressions of other values, having significance only as signs and symbols of the latter. For example, a gift is a derivative value, a sign of love, friendship, respect. A derivative value is a medal or diploma, symbolizing the merits that a person is proud of.
In explanatory dictionaries, two meanings of the word “norm” are usually indicated: 1) a legalized establishment, a recognized mandatory order; the system of something (for example, “to return to normal” means to get in order, into a normal state); 2) established measure, average value
something (for example, “production rate”, “precipitation rate”). These meanings are close to each other, and both are meant when it comes to cultural norms. Cultural norms are legitimized and recognized primarily in the sense that they are supported by the power of traditions, customs, and public opinion. In many cases they are "unwritten".
Cultural norms surround us on all sides, and we very often follow them without realizing it. The fulfillment of sociocultural norms is based on intuitively, found or consciously
developed ideas of a person about what can and cannot be done. At the same time, the society social control over people's behavior, stimulating normative and suppressing deviant behavior.
Norm functions:
Following cultural norms is a necessary condition for organizing joint activities and maintaining public order. This is what social
function of cultural norms.
On the other hand, cultural norms are procedural rules, methods and programs of activities aimed at obtaining the desired result. This is their technological function. They determine the technology of human activity, i.e. That, what and how to do to achieve success in any business, to get a specific "technical result".
Culture functions as a living system of values, as a living organism, as long as a person actively acts as a creative, creative and active being. A person organizes the flows of values through the channels of culture, he exchanges and distributes them, he preserves, produces and consumes both material and spiritual products of culture, and by doing this work, he creates himself as a subject of culture, as a social being.
In spiritual culture can act norms, which have emerged from customs and acquired an independent existence, or specially designed for cases of special regulation of human behavior, indicating their belonging to specific social and cultural groups and expressing ideas about what is proper and desirable. Normative regulation of relations presupposes the voluntary and conscious acceptance by each person of the norms of activity common in a given culture.
In cultural studies, there is the following classification of norms:
1) norms that establish order in society as a whole and its constituent groups (moral and legal);
2) economic;
3) political;
4) technical or technological;
5) norms related to the field of communication and socialization;
6) universal, national, class, group, interindividual norms.
In closed cultures, customs and norms are regulated, and their observance is rigorous. In open cultures, pluralism of norms and customs is possible, which creates an atmosphere of tolerance. Such conditions require a person to make a choice and a more creative approach to the chosen motives of behavior. All this contributes to the spiritual enrichment of the individual and the growth of social comfort in human life.
At a higher level of spiritual culture, the dominant role as regulators of human existence is acquired by values. Value is understood as a generally accepted norm, formed in a certain culture, which sets patterns and standards of behavior and influences the choice between possible behavioral alternatives. Value, as a more complex and developed regulator of behavior, implies a choice, allows for the polarity of decisions, which indicates the dual nature of value.
There are many classifications of values, and they depend on what is the basis, for example:
values vital associated with the ideals of a healthy life, physical and spiritual health, an ideal lifestyle;
values social associated with social well-being, position, wealth, comfortable work;
values political associated with the ideals of freedom, law and order and security, guarantees of civil equality;
values moral associated with the ideals of justice, honor, goodness, etc.;
religious And ideological values associated with the ideal of the meaning of life, the purpose of man;
artistic and aesthetic values associated with the ideal of beauty, harmony, beauty;
family related values associated with the ideal of family comfort, well-being and respect for the ideals of different generations;
values labor associated with the ideals of skill, talent, with the results of labor, etc.
The nature of values is such that they theological , i.e. charged with targets, and the targets, as a rule, have some sublimity, and therefore they go beyond the scope of ordinary life. There are always social forces in society that seek to refine values and give them an elitist status. There are forces that seek to downgrade and simplify values. A flexible, developed culture develops mechanisms for integrating elite values and everyday needs. Ideologists, politicians, philosophers, etc. work for this.
From time to time, in this or that culture, there are fears that its value core may be eroded, and “own” values may be replaced by “foreign” ones. Thus, today, great concern is manifested in connection with the “Americanization” of Russian culture.
Each culture has a body of exemplary norms and values that determine its uniqueness and originality. Among the fundamental values of American culture is "personal success", while in Russian culture - the achievement of truth and justice. In Islam, Allah is the absolute value, but not the person, since Allah never incarnates in people. The cult of antiquity has entered into the value core of Chinese culture, governed by Confucianism, so strong that Chinese society and the state not only existed in an almost unchanged form for more than two thousand years, but also acquired an enormous force of inertia.
So, values are the basis and foundation of culture, they are deeply rooted in it and play the role of its most important regulator both at the level of culture as a whole and at the level of the individual.
As P. Sorokin noted: “People with a deeply rooted system of values will courageously endure any disaster. It will be much easier for them than for people who either do not have any integral system of values at all, or who have a system based mainly on earthly values, from “wine, women and song” to wealth, fame and power. Such values are destroyed under the influence of crises, and their adherents remain completely bankrupt, rejected and helpless, having no purpose in life and no support. People with a transcendental value system and a deep sense of moral duty have values that no person and no catastrophe can take away from them. Under all circumstances, they retain clarity of mind, a sense of human dignity, self-respect. With these qualities, they can endure any test, no matter how severe it is.
The most important elements of human culture are norms, the totality of which is called the normative system of culture.
Norms - These are the rules that govern humanconducting. cultural norms– orders, requirements,wishes and expectations of appropriate (socially approved) behavior. With the help of sign systems, they are passed on from generation to generation and turn into "habits" of society, customs, traditions.
Functions of cultural norms: to be duties and indicate the measure of necessity in human actions; to serve as expectations regarding the future act; control deviant behavior; serve as models, standards of behavior.
Norms are classified on various grounds: by scope - in a small or large social group. Accordingly, there are 2 types: 1) group habits- norms that arise and exist only in small groups (youth get-togethers, companies of friends, families, work teams, sports teams); 2) general rules- norms that arise and exist in large groups or in society as a whole. American sociologist William Graham Sumner identified the following types of cultural norms: customs (folkways); mores (mores); laws. Today, the typology of cultural norms takes into account traditions, customs, habits, mores, taboos, laws, fashion, taste and hobbies, beliefs and knowledge, etc.
Habit - the initial cell of the social and cultural life of people at the same time. They distinguish one nation from another, one social stratum from all others. Manners- external forms of human behavior (based on habits), receiving a positive or negative assessment of others. Separately, manners are elements, or features of culture, and together they form a special cultural complex - etiquette. A custom is a traditionally established order of conduct. Customs - mass patterns of actions approved by society that are recommended to be performed, they are inherent in the broad masses of people (as opposed to manners and etiquette). Habits and customs passed down from one generation to the next traditions(everything that is inherited from predecessors) A kind of tradition is rite- a set of actions established by custom or ritual. rite characterizes not selective, but mass actions in which certain religious ideas or everyday traditions are expressed; it covers all segments of the population. Ceremony- a sequence of actions that have a symbolic meaning and dedicated to the celebration of any events or dates. Ritual - a stylized and carefully planned set of gestures and words (with symbolic meaning) performed by persons specially chosen and prepared for this action. manners- especially protected and highly honored by society mass models of actions. Mores reflect the moral values of society; their violation is punished more severely than the violation of traditions. Taboo - an absolute ban imposed on any action, word, object.
Variety of manners - laws, i.e. norms, or rules of conduct issued by a parliamentary or governmental document. supported by the political authority of the state and requiring strict implementation. Right - a system of mandatory rules of conduct, sanctioned by the state and expressed in certain norms. Law, law, custom and values of society are closely interconnected and form the foundation of the normative system of culture. A person learns traditions and customs regardless of his will and desires. There is no freedom of choice here. Such elements of culture as tastes, hobbies and fashion testify to the free choice of a person. Taste- an inclination or predilection for something, an understanding of the elegant. Fashion - the fleeting popularity of something or someone.
Culture rests on a system of values. Value is a characteristic fixed in the mind of a person relationship to the object. Values justify norms and give them meaning (human life is a value, and its protection is a norm). But value is not identical to the economic understanding of it as value (monetary expression of value). Values cannot always be expressed in monetary form, just as it is impossible to express inspiration, remembrance, the joy of creativity and other manifestations of the human soul in commodity-money form. In other words, value acts as a criterion by which a person evaluates the significance of actions, ideas and opinions.
Value must be distinguished from utility. A valuable thing may be useless, and a useful thing may have no value. The French philosopher I. Gobry singled out as the main values: benefit, beauty, truth and goodness.
Knowledge- reliable information about something, scientific information, the result of knowledge of a specialized activity carried out by trained people. Unlike knowledge, ering- conviction, emotional commitment to any idea, real or illusory.
The whole set of considered types of cultural norms is normative system of culture, in which all elements must be consistent. The pattern of building a society: the totality of values must correspond to the totality of norms. The key element of the normative system of culture is the social morality - prescriptions of what is right and wrong behavior in accordance with the proclaimed norms. Cultural differences may take the form of contradiction or clash (cultural or normative conflict). The imbalance in the normative system of culture takes different forms. Anomie- such a state of society in which a significant part of the inhabitants, knowing about the existence of norms obliging them, treats them negatively or indifferently. Anomie- this is a violation of the cultural unity of society, which arose as a result of the absence of clearly established cultural norms. moral standards- these are unwritten requirements that function in society in the form of principles, concepts, ideas, assessments. Moral norms are not the product of some specialized institutional activity. Their implementation is ensured not by coercion, but by moral persuasion (conscience) or by means of public opinion through the approval or condemnation of certain actions.
There are three functions of morality:
Motivational- moral principles act as the causes of behavior, prompting to action.
constructive- morality is the central form of social culture, and its principles are higher in relation to other forms of culture.
Coordinating- morality ensures the unity and consistency of the interaction of people in different circumstances.
The Golden Rule of Morality says: Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Values are the main element of culture, the basis of the value-normative mechanism that regulates the behavior of groups and communities. The public nature of values is manifested in the fact that the culture of each society has its own hierarchy of values, the most important and significant goals recognized in this society, which have a deep meaning for people.
Each sphere of human cultural activity has a value dimension immanent to it: the values of material life, economics, social order, politics, morality, art, science, and religion are quite autonomous. However, each type of culture is associated with hierarchization, subordination of value spheres.
The process of cultural development is associated with a reassessment of values, starting with the promotion of a new standard, from the standpoint of which objects that have previously established value characteristics are considered. Depending on the chosen basis for classification, values are divided into subjective and subjective, lives and cultures, values-means and values-goals, relative and absolute. Allocate cultural values (vital, material, memorial, artistic, ideological, moral, religious, social benefits, existential orientations, etc.), which determine the proper behavior and lifestyle of people in the culture system of a given society. Such proper behavior is designed to unite society, ensure its survival, as well as its normal functioning. ethnic values are designated by the ethnos itself as the most specific qualities that mark its historical and cultural originality. The basis for the formation of a system of ethnic values is the historical social experience of the collective life of the members of the ethnic group. At the same time, the most functionally effective and socially acceptable forms of meeting the interests and needs of people, contributing to an increase in the level of their social integration, are accumulated in the system of value orientations of a given community, and are included in its cultural tradition. Such ethnic values most often include some features of the national character, traditional forms of life support, everyday customs and features of national etiquette, features of religiosity, elements of everyday worldview, national mythology, features of folk art culture. Ethnic values are replenished with cultural forms that have developed in the sphere of specialized segments of culture: political, economic, legal, military, religious, artistic, etc. These are traditions and symbols of national statehood, systems of suits and social structure, confessional, artistic and stylistic and other ethno-identifying markers.
Cultural norms - a standard of cultural activity that regulates people's behavior, testifies to their belonging to specific social and cultural groups and expresses their idea of \u200b\u200bthe proper, desirable. The purpose of the norm is to minimize random circumstances, subjective motives, and psychological states. Normative regulation of relations presupposes the voluntary and conscious acceptance by each person of the norms of activity common in a given culture. Norms regulate the activities of people in all spheres of culture - from elementary acts of a material and practical nature to morality, art, science and religion. On the basis of norms, various social technologies and ways of rationalizing the life world are formed. In their historical existence, norms are inseparable from the values existing in a given culture, since they translate ideas about them into an instrumental plane. Along with the change in the value scale, the promotion of new ideals of the socio-cultural plan, the norms also change.
There are different ways to classify norms. The American sociologist Talcott Parsons, in particular, calls:
o norms that establish order in society as a whole and in its constituent groups;
o economic norms;
o political norms;
o actually cultural norms related to the field of communication and socialization.
It is possible to single out a variety of cultural norms (samples, patterns, rules, standards, canons, traditions, morality, ethics, aesthetics, style, fashion, normativity of functional manifestations: the culture of work and consumption, everyday life and leisure, communication and interaction, etc.) . There are norms universal, national, class, group, interindividual. At the same time, the requirements for the same norms, common in different social communities and in different historical periods, diverge from each other. The norms differ from each other in terms of the level of obligatory implementation, in terms of the degree of freedom of their choice in situations of uncertainty. There are norms, the obligation of which is unambiguous up to the application of strict sanctions (implementation of legal norms, norms of technical activity in industrial production, etc.). In other cases, variability in the norms of behavior is allowed: for example, traditions often contain a set of standard patterns from which a person can choose. Situations are possible when a sufficiently free human response is provided: outdoor environment, home environment.
The operation of any norm is not absolute; the norm is going through a period of inception, approval, then loses stability, begins to collapse. The destruction of some cultural norms is always accompanied by the creation of new ones. Rule-making is the same essential feature of cultural dynamics as anomie, i.e. breaking the rules.
Cultural universals - These are the norms and values inherent in all cultures.
