The textbook deals with topical issues of socio-cultural dynamics: the mechanisms of reproduction and development of culture, the main manifestations of the global crisis of culture and the socio-cultural dynamics of education.
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The following excerpt from the book Actual problems of socio-cultural dynamics (N. M. Mukhamedzhanova, 2009) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.
1Sociocultural dynamics
1. Definition of the concept of "sociocultural dynamics". Temporal characteristics of sociocultural dynamics.
2. Mechanisms of sociocultural dynamics.
3. The problem of the relationship between the center and the periphery in culture.
4. The problem of correlation of traditions and innovations in culture.
5. Main approaches to explaining socio-cultural dynamics. Sociocultural synergy.
1.1 Definition of the concept of "sociocultural dynamics". Temporal characteristics of sociocultural dynamics
Sociocultural dynamics is a fundamental problem of modern humanities, the study of which is devoted to the work of numerous domestic and foreign scientists. It acquires particular relevance in conditions of sharp, fundamental changes in the life of society, when it becomes necessary to comprehend the general patterns of development of cultures, the reasons for their flourishing and decline, the transition from one qualitative state to another.
concept « cultural dynamics» is defined in modern cultural literature as:
1) changes or modifications of cultural features in time and space under the influence of external and internal factors;
2) a theoretical discipline, the subject of which is cultural and historical development.
Since any culture is a meaningful aspect of the joint, that is, the social life of people, it would be more accurate to talk about the problem of research sociocultural dynamics.
The basic concepts for analyzing the problems of sociocultural dynamics are the concepts of "time", "rhythm", "tempo", etc. The time factor determines the various manifestations of the dynamics of culture. The importance of this factor in the processes of culture dynamics was pointed out by F. Braudel in his book “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II”. According to F. Braudel, when studying the history of a people, one should not be limited to a chronological presentation of the life of political and religious figures, of certain historical events. In fact, time is a force that organizes the historical process, and most importantly, time is not one, it is multiple. In the multiplicity of time, F. Braudel identifies three main layers, between which, in his opinion, there is a certain interaction:
1) « time of long duration» is the time of natural processes. Man is included in nature, he not only influences it, but also obeys its requirements, its pressure, its laws. In nature, time flows very slowly, noticeable changes on this time scale occur over centuries and even millennia. Other natural rhythms are shorter, but nevertheless they are very large. To notice the changes taking place in nature and in the relationship between society and nature, one must take long periods of time (for example, to study the history of the development of agriculture in the Mediterranean basin). It is this “very long time” (la longue duree), slowly, sluggishly flowing, almost imperceptible time that, according to F. Braudel, should be the focus of the historian’s attention;
2) « average time(or length)» , which is located above the "long time" level. This is the level of economic, economic, financial, social processes. They are not as long as natural processes, but can stretch for at least many decades. If the first level is long waves, then the second level is medium waves;
3) « time is short, nervous, intermittent» - the time of human activity, the time of events, the time of political history, in which something happens every day. This is time, coming in shocks, but this is only the surface of the historical process. It is foam on the surface of the ocean, sparks that flare up and immediately go out. F. Braudel does not attach much importance to them.
Adhering to the position of economic determinism, F. Braudel nevertheless recognized that some aspects of the historical process, subject to the rhythms of "slow time", belong to human culture, to the sphere of the human spirit. So, “certain forms of mentality” are “dungeons” where “time of great duration” is imprisoned1 .
Developing the ideas of F. Braudel, modern researchers single out macro-, meso- and micro-temporal processes in socio-cultural dynamics. So, from the point of view of G.A. Avanesova, long-term processes (100 years or more) testify to historical dynamics that have their own patterns of development, and are studied within the framework of historical culturology, the theory of civilizations. Microscale changes in culture (from 25-30 years, the period of active life in the culture of one generation, up to 100 years) testify to the actual dynamics of culture. These processes, in addition to culturologists, are also of interest to specific humanitarian disciplines. Observation of manifestations of actual dynamics is available not only to scientists, but also to every person who, during his life, is able to experience such manifestations in individual practice. However, rapidly transient changes in cultural practice (eg, seasonal changes in fashion, subcultural jargon) that are not able to gain a foothold in deep layers of cultural life cannot be considered as manifestations of cultural dynamics2.
The processes of sociocultural dynamics, their rates and rhythms, are determined by the influence of many factors, which primarily include:
1) features of the territorial, natural and climatic conditions in which culture exists and which determine the features of the economic and economic development of the people. Thus, this factor was of great importance for Russia: the northern and eastern territories, which are difficult for civilizational development; harsh climate, scarcity of soils, etc. - characteristics of the "place of development" of culture, which determine the features of its dynamics;
2) features of the ethno-confessional structure of society, civilization, which determine the possibilities for the formation of a single economic, political, legal, informational and cultural space and, as a result, sustainable effects of social development;
3) features of the geopolitical position of the country, its belonging to a certain civilizational area, which determine the "nuclear" characteristics of culture: basic values and attitudes, the cultural picture of the world and mentality, stable patterns of behavior, etc.;
4) features of historical development, the nature and consequences of the interaction of society, civilization with other socio-cultural systems, which determine the specifics of its "response" to the "challenges" of history and subsequent dynamics. Thus, the constant threat of external aggression, which required the allocation of huge funds for military purposes, was of fundamental importance for the development of Russia.
Due to the action of these factors, each socio-cultural system has its own rhythms of development, which is due to the conditions of its existence, the availability of material and energy resources, and the spiritual prerequisites for development. At the same time, it should be emphasized that any developed culture is not “a coherent narrative that is easy to present”3, but a set of competing and splitting the integrity of narratives, the boundaries of which are permeable, changeable and changeable.
Consequently, various forms of culture have not only a content-functional originality, but also specific rates and rhythms of their development, which determine their ability to be renewed. Thus, the elements of culture that ensure the adaptation of the people to their natural and ecological environment and determine the specifics of the material and spiritual forms of culture are, according to F. Braudel, “time of great duration”, and therefore, their study involves consideration of huge time periods (millennia) . The same “slow time” of history includes elements of culture that ensure the adaptation of a person to the existential conditions of his existence and determine the features of the value-semantic, symbolic sphere of culture, its “core”. The processes of socio-economic, information, scientific and technical, artistic development have a faster time rhythm. The processes of this level are not so long, but they can stretch for at least decades. And finally, "time is short, nervous, intermittent" - this is an eventful time, on the scale of which the mechanisms of state organization and regulation, management and self-government, etc. are implemented. The difference in the rates and rhythms of changes is fixed at different levels of culture:
At the level of the “core” (“central zone”) of culture and the “periphery”;
At the level of specialized areas of culture and at the ordinary level;
At the level of various subcultural elements: noble and peasant, urban and rural cultures react differently to social transformations;
At the level of various spheres of culture: economic culture, religion, art also have different possibilities for their renewal;
At the ethnic, national and civilizational levels, etc.
It is the asynchrony of the development of the structural elements of culture that is the main prerequisite:
The pulsating nature of socio-cultural development, during which the asynchrony of the development of cultural elements is overcome;
Differences in the ratio of traditions and innovations in different segments of the socio-cultural space: for more dynamic elements, the predominance of innovations is characteristic, for less dynamic ones - traditions;
The emergence of unexpected, non-linear effects in the development of culture: for example, the modernization of the scientific, military, technological spheres gives rise to an unexpected rise in art - the most dynamic and sensitive to external influences;
The emergence of the effect of "resonance", a multiple increase in the dynamics of development, when the external influence is consistent with the pace and rhythms of the development of the socio-cultural system, its individual structural elements.
The most "long-lived" are the elements of the "core" of culture, which determine the nature and specificity of other elements of culture. That is why their destruction "responds" in all segments of the socio-cultural system, destabilizing the entire system. Thus, culture appears, firstly, as a fairly stable complex that ensures the adaptation of the people to the conditions of their existence; secondly, as a structure-process, which is in constant change, development and in which various microprocesses are subject to various rhythms and rates of development.
1.2 Mechanisms of sociocultural dynamics
Each culture not only has specific rhythms of development, but also specific mechanisms of sociocultural dynamics . So, Yu.M. Lotman in the book "Culture and explosion", considering culture as an open self-organizing system, which is characterized by two structural trends, interdependent and not existing one without the other - explosion and gradual development, - distinguishes two types of structures: binary and ternaries. “Ternary structures preserve certain values of the previous period, moving them from the periphery to the center of the system. On the contrary, the ideal of binary systems is the complete destruction of everything that exists as stained with irreparable vices. The ternary system seeks to adapt the ideal to reality, the binary system seeks to put into practice an unrealizable ideal. In binary systems, the explosion covers the entire thickness of being. In ternary systems, explosive processes rarely cover the entire thickness of the culture. As a rule, there is a simultaneous combination of an explosion in some cultural spheres and a gradual development in others. The author refers to ternary structures cultures of the Western type, which are more characterized by gradualness, continuity of historical development. Russian history, on the other hand, is a history “with a distinct binary comprehension”, “Russian culture is aware of itself in the categories of an explosion” 5 , which is characterized by the unpredictability of further development, experiencing itself as a unique, incomparable moment in the entire history of mankind, the idea of a complete and unconditional the destruction of the previous and the apocalyptic birth of the new, the poetry of the instantaneous construction of a “new earth” and a “new sky”, radicalism that attracts the most maximalist sections of society.
A complete and detailed study of the mechanisms of socio-cultural development is given by A.S. Akhiezer6. From the point of view of the philosopher, culture is a multi-layered, hierarchical structure, a system of values split into many dual oppositions, each of which is an elementary cell of the cultural fabric, the simplest form of organizing historically accumulated experience. For a person mastering culture, the dual opposition acts as an opportunity for an ambivalent explanation of reality, concluded between different semantic poles: good - bad, black - white, good - evil, freedom - slavery, etc. Between the poles, according to A.S. Akhiezer, a constructive tension is formed, which has to be overcome in each specific case. The resolution of tension can occur from one pole to the opposite and back, through a quick, logically instantaneous change of meaning to the opposite, for example, through the transition from assessing a phenomenon as a carrier of good to its interpretation as a carrier of evil and vice versa. From the author's point of view, inversion as a mechanism of sociocultural development is a simple change of poles, value meanings, axiological signs; inversion is the logic of operating with ready-made results, which does not create new meanings.
The resolution of tension between the two poles of the dual opposition can also take place through mediation (lat. medius - “middle”), in which the person in the process of forming decisions refuses to absolutize extremes, understands them as the beginnings of reality that interpenetrate each other, and searches for something between them the middle, synthesizing, that is, it creates a new meaning, a new solution as a result of movement between the two meanings of dual oppositions. Mediation performs a creative function, as it gives rise to new meanings based on reflection, criticism, deepening the cultural content of each of the poles of the dual opposition. Through mediation, as a result of the refusal to think and decide according to old schemes and the synthesis of historically established cultural wealth and new unexplored phenomena of reality, a new wealth of culture, a median culture, is formed.
Mediation is a socio-cultural mechanism which, according to A.S. backwardness of his own, but according to his spirit. In those cultures where mediation prevails, the ideals of the future determine the activity of society, and, consequently, its desire for development, progress, and change. These are Western countries. For countries where inversion prevails, the desire for the ideals of the past, the orientation towards adaptation to the environment, is characteristic. Consequently, inversion is the main cultural mechanism for the development of a traditional society, an immanent feature of the traditional worldview that determines the "black and white" vision of the world. In Russia, whose culture is characterized by the predominance of traditional values, the main instrument of the logic of historical development, social and cultural reproduction is inversion. Inversion, being a movement from one semantic pole to the opposite, determines the specifics of cyclical changes as one of the options for the dynamics of society. Cyclic change occurs in every culture, albeit on a different scale. But it is precisely in Russian society that these changes are inherent in a particularly strong degree. The deep inconsistency of Russian culture and the absence of a formed middle principle in it gives a special scope to the cycles of Russian history, which turned into a “breaking” of the sociocultural paradigm and was accompanied by the rejection of the former heritage, the imposition of new norms and values, the liquidation or prohibition of the heritage of the previous period. Such cyclicality gives philosophers grounds to speak of pendulum oscillations in the historical development of Russia as its most characteristic feature. In Western society, the "pendulum" also swings between the socialist and liberal poles, but they know how to limit the amplitude of the pendulum, without bringing it to the limit. In our case, the inversion logic makes each new stage in the development of culture a mirror, reverse reflection of the previous one.
Thus, the logic of inversion is two-term, binary: thesis - antithesis; as a result of it, a binary structure, a binary culture is created; the logic of mediation is tripartite, trinity: thesis - antithesis - synthesis; the result is a ternary structure, a ternary culture.
1.3 The problem of the relationship between the center and the periphery in culture
The problem of the relationship between the center and the periphery is connected with the analysis of the distribution and functioning of sociocultural elements in the cultural space, as well as interaction with other components of society, in particular with politics and the economy.
The problem of the relationship between the center and the periphery in culture is interpreted in modern humanities in three main aspects:
1) value-semantic;
2) socio-organizational;
3) territorial.
The territorial aspect involves considering the space and boundaries of culture (civilization), the nature of the core and its influence on the rest of the space. The socio-organizational aspect involves the study of political and social organization, forms of management of society, its social structure. The socio-organizational aspect of the problem of the relationship between the center and the periphery is studied by the Israeli sociologist Sh. Eisenshtadt. The center is the political center, the state and the system of government. Periphery - social and organizational structures of a local, local nature.
The value-semantic aspect (actually culturological) involves the study of the elements of the socio-cultural system in terms of their stability / mobility, their influence on development processes and intercultural communications. This aspect of the problem is considered by Edward Shils, a professor at the University of Chicago, who identifies the center (central zone) and the periphery of culture.
1Central zone “There is first of all the phenomenon of the realm of values and opinions. It is the center of the order of symbols, values and opinions that governs society. It is final and unchangeable. Many feel this immutability, although they cannot substantiate it. The most stable elements of culture belong to the central zone: the system of myths, the cultural picture of the world, religion, the system of values, traditions and customs.
The central zone provides a) sustainability and stability of the culture; b) the unity, integrity and structure of culture; c) historical continuity and reproduction of culture at different stages of its development.
The “core” of a culture/civilization is not monolithic and not absolutely immutable (although it changes very slowly). The spiritual core of a culture/civilization is quite heterogeneous, it may include contradictory, poorly coordinating elements, since its constituent elements were integrated into the core at different periods of history.
A special case in the history of mankind are cultures/civilizations with two cores or with an unsettled, contradictory, antinomic core through which a split passes. This situation is typical for imperial formations (for example, for Russian, Latin American civilization).
2 Periphery of culture , which includes three classes of spiritual value elements:
Quickly passing elements of culture, related to the operational level of social practice and existing in culture during the life of one or two generations;
Stable elements that do not have a universal character, but exist within the framework of regional, ethno-national, class communities as subcultural elements;
Innovative elements that may eventually become nuclear, although not necessarily so. The culture periphery provides:
a) the dynamics and renewal of culture;
b) diversity and variability of culture;
d) its interaction with other cultures.
It is the interaction of elements of culture, including those borrowed from other cultures, with elements of the "core" and "periphery" that determines the possibility of renewal, complication, development of culture or, on the contrary, its impoverishment, primitivization, destruction.
1.4 The problem of correlation of traditions and innovations in culture
The interaction of traditions and innovations is a problem, the solution of which determines the effectiveness of the processes of sociocultural dynamics. Traditions ensure the stability and reproduction of culture, its unity and integrity. Innovations that arise in culture as a result of adaptation to changing environmental conditions and as a result of the openness of culture provide dynamics and renewal of culture.
For the normal development of culture, the optimal ratio of traditions and innovations is important. The excess of traditions strengthens the tendencies of degradation and primitivization of culture, its inability to adapt to changes in the environment. An excess of innovations, leading to a complication of the system and a change in its stability, increases the likelihood of collapse.
The problem of interaction between traditions and innovations is the subject of the works of the Yerevan culturologist E.S. Markaryan9. From the scientist's point of view, tradition is a mechanism for the accumulation of life experience in human communities. Ensuring the stability and reproduction of culture, traditions play the same role in it as genetic programs in the process of evolution of a biological species.
Like the genetic programs of a species, traditions are aimed at adapting to stable environmental conditions that are essential for the survival of the system: repetitive natural and social conditions, stereotyped situations, and stable processes. However, unforeseen changes in the environment, not “foreseen” by the information program, lead to mutation, significant restructuring, and the emergence of innovations. Innovations are mutations of cultural tradition, the result of their transformation.
Cultural mutations undergo sociocultural selection in society (as well as biological mutations), are stereotyped and fixed in culture as new traditions. Consequently, tradition performs in culture not only a stabilizing, but also a selective function. The constant interaction of culture with a diverse environment, gives culture a redundant character, giving rise to a "mutation bank". The "bank of mutations", existing on the periphery of the cultural space as a weakly structured and useless variety, can be in demand in the changed environmental conditions10. It is the redundancy of culture that ensures its adaptive potential in changing, unforeseen environmental conditions. Thus, E.S. Markaryan considers tradition as an organic unity of conservative and creative components, opposes the rigid opposition of traditions and innovations: on the one hand, innovation serves as a source of stereotyping of cultural tradition. On the other hand, tradition is the foundation on the basis of which innovations are formed.
According to their origin, innovations can be:
a) endogenous, i.e. caused by internal factors. Endogenous innovations (cultural mutations) occur in culture when traditional models of activity cease to be reliable, effective ways of solving problems;
b) exogenous borrowed from other cultures due to the openness and permeability of the perceiving culture.
The process of assimilation and stereotyping of innovations is a complex, contradictory process, as culture strives to protect its integrity, unity, originality and rejects innovations that do not correspond to its “core”. Therefore, a change in even seemingly insignificant, at first glance, elements of material culture or everyday life causes violent protest and rejection as a violation of the sacred tradition, the image of the sacred order, reflected in the deep "nuclear" structures of culture. So, for example, barbering, introduced by Peter I, was perceived not just as a change in some everyday norm, but as a sign of “Latinism”, an attempt by the authorities on the very foundations of the Orthodox faith. Masquerade dressing was interpreted as one of the most stable signs of demonism and was allowed only in those ritual ceremonies of the Christmas and spring cycles that symbolized the expulsion of demons and which reflected the remnants of pagan ideas that were preserved in Russian Orthodoxy. Therefore, masquerades penetrated into the life of the nobility with difficulty, or they were timed to coincide with the Orthodox calendar, merging with folk disguise. Material, utilitarian innovations are easier to assimilate; much more difficult - spiritual. Although it is very difficult to distinguish between the spiritual and the material in culture.
The nature of the interaction of traditions and innovations in culture:
1) the conflict of traditions and innovations, which, as a rule, occurs when innovations do not correspond to the "core" of culture, its mentality and basic values;
2) symbiosis - the coexistence of traditions and innovations in different segments of the sociocultural space, their localization in different groups of society, resulting in a sociocultural split in society (for example, a split in Russia as a result of Peter the Great's reforms);
3) synthesis of traditions and innovations as a result of their mutual adaptation to each other. This method of interaction, which is recognized as the most productive, occurs in culture when innovations correspond to the "core" of culture (for example, the approval of Marxist ideas in Russia, China).
1.5 Basic approaches to explaining socio-cultural dynamics.
Sociocultural synergy
In modern socio-philosophical and culturological thought, there are two main approaches to explaining socio-cultural dynamics: a) an evolutionary (linear) approach, represented by such names as I. -G. Herder, G. -V. -F.Hegel, E.Taylor, O.Kont, K.Jaspers, K.Marx and F.Engels and others; and b) civilizational (non-linear) approach developed in the works of N.Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. A. Sorokin and others12. At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century, one of the most intensively developing approaches to the study of sociocultural dynamics becomes synergistic approach, which creates a new vision of culture and the mechanisms of its development.
Synergetics is the theory of complex self-organizing systems, which is considered today as the next stage in the development of the general theory of systems. The founders of synergetics are the German researcher G.Hacken and the Belgian scientist of Russian origin I.Prigozhin; date of birth - 1973, the year of the first conference on the problems of self-organization. Since that time, the concept of "synergetics" has come to mean a set of conceptual provisions on the patterns of development of complex self-organizing systems of a very different nature - both natural and artificial, created by the mind and hands of man.
The formation and approval of the synergetic paradigm at the end of the 20th century takes place in the context of a global scientific revolution, during which non-classical science, which was formed at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, is replaced by post-non-classical science. Ideas such as linearity, predictability, determinism, and progress are being replaced by ideas about the unpredictability and multivariate development, the alternativeness of the historical process. Recognition of the limitations of the classical paradigm was associated with the realization of its inability to explain the most complex and contradictory processes and phenomena of the modern era. The global ecological crisis, social upheavals, technological disasters have required new approaches to explaining the evolution of such super-complex systems as society, culture, and personality.
One of the most important components of this paradigm revolution is the approval of a synergetic methodology for studying the processes of systems development. At present, various research schools have developed in synergetics: I.Prigozhin; G. Haken, V. I. Arnold; A.A. Samarsky and S.P. Kurdyumov; M.V.Volkenshtein and A.S.Chernavsky; N.N. Moiseeva and others. Within the framework of these schools, even its fundamental concepts are interpreted differently: self-organization, fractal, chaos, attractor, etc.; various conceptual schemes for explaining the same processes are used. Therefore, it is advisable to dwell on the generally recognized ideas of synergetics, on which various studies are based, without focusing on the personal specifics of their interpretation.
The object of research in synergetics are complex self-organizing systems, which G. Haken defines as follows: “We call a system self-organizing if it acquires some kind of spatial, temporal or functional structure without specific external influence. By a specific external influence we mean one that imposes structure or functioning on the system. In the case of self-organization, the system experiences a non-specific influence from outside. For example, a liquid heated from below acquires a macrostructure quite uniformly as a result of self-organization, forming hexagonal cells. The key concept of synergetics is the concept of "self-organization", which is understood as a spontaneous, spontaneous complication of the structure or properties that arise due to fluctuations in the order parameters. Self-organization processes can occur in systems of a very different nature with a large number of elements, the connections between which are of a non-rigid, probabilistic nature. Self-organization ensures the restructuring of the system due to the coherent, consistent "behavior" of its elements, subject to order parameters.
The main features of self-organizing systems are:
1) openness, i.e. the presence of sources and sinks, exchange of matter, energy and information with the environment. A constant exchange of matter, energy and information is a necessary condition for the existence of non-equilibrium states, which distinguishes open systems from closed ones, tending to a homogeneous equilibrium state;
2) dissipativity - generating non-equilibrium "a game, a competition of two opposite principles: creating structures, increasing inhomogeneities in a continuous medium ... and scattering, blurring heterogeneities of the principle of a very different nature"14, that is, organizing and disorganizing principles, entropy and negentropy processes. Due to dissipativity, new types of structures, transitions from chaos to order, etc. can spontaneously arise in nonequilibrium systems. A new state is achieved due to a constant influx of energy, since there is a constant dissipation (scattering) of energy, leading the system away from the equilibrium state;
3) non-linearity - the absence of rigid, unambiguous relationships between cause and effect, impact on the system and its response to external influences. In a state of disequilibrium, a weak impact can have a greater influence on the evolution of the system than a strong impact that is not adequate to the system's own tendencies. The processes occurring in a nonlinear system are of a threshold nature: for a certain range of changes, the behavior of the system can change abruptly.
The central philosophical category developed in synergetics is the category of "development", and the subject of research is the knowledge of transient processes in the evolution of complex self-organizing systems. The development of a self-organizing system is described through two models: evolutionary and bifurcation. The evolutionary model is characterized by the action of various determinations: causal, functional, systemic, correlational, etc., while maintaining the invariance of the system-forming quality. The incentive to change the system is a change in the constants of the environment with which it exchanges matter, energy and information. A feature of nonlinear self-organizing systems is that for a certain range of changes in the environment, there are no qualitative changes in the system itself. The system retains the given structure by modifying it accordingly. However, if changes in the constants of the environment have exceeded a critical value, crossed a certain threshold of sensitivity, a reworking, restructuring of the system, its transition to a new quality takes place. Sustainable development in these systems is replaced by an increase in destabilization, a deepening of the state of disequilibrium, a weakening of their internal connections, and an increase in entropy. In a situation of maximum internal disequilibrium, the system enters a bifurcation phase, characterized by the disappearance of the former system quality. Before the system, there are many possible paths of evolution, potential ways to reach new systemic qualities, which in terms of synergetics have received the definition of a “map of opportunities”, a “bundle of trajectories”. A non-linear system does not rigidly follow the paths “prescribed” to it, but “wanders” around the field of the possible, actualizing only one of these paths. The choice of a particular path by the system at the bifurcation point (the moment of instability) depends on the action of fluctuations (small perturbations, the random factor), which can grow into macrostructures and play a significant role that determines the fate of the system. At the moment of impact of fluctuations on the system, "wandering" along the field of development paths, it falls onto the structure-attractor (the end point of the trajectory of movement). A system falling into the field of attraction of a certain attractor inevitably evolves to this stable state (structure). The future state of the system determines, shapes and organizes its present. The exit to the attractor structure means the collapse of the complex, the emergence of a new order from chaos. The final moment of this phase is crystallization, that is, ordering, self-structuring of the system in accordance with the new system quality.
Thus, synergetics comes to a new understanding of the traditional philosophical categories of the possible and the real, the necessary and the accidental, the external and the internal, the whole and the part. Let us name the main ideas of synergetics, which have the most important ideological consequences:
1) the structure of a complex self-organizing system is process, and not something stationary, stable, frozen in its development;
2) randomness can play a significant role that determines the fate of the system at the moment of its extreme instability, which is especially important for social systems where randomness is realized as the activity of specific people based on individual preferences and attitudes;
3) for complex, self-organizing systems, as a rule, there are several alternative ways of development. The ambiguity of the possible results of development, the absence of rigid predetermination means that even in the most critical situation there is a possibility of choosing the path of development that is optimal for the system;
4) in a situation of extreme instability of complex self-organizing systems, determination from the future plays a decisive role: attractor structures as future states of the system, inherent in a given nonlinear environment, determine their exit from a chaotic state;
5) chaos is not only a destructive, destructive beginning in the processes of organization, but also a blessing, as it can act as a mechanism for updating the system;
6) the evolution of complex self-organizing systems is rhythmic, it constantly changes periods of rise and fall, order and disorder, integration and disintegration;
7) the unification of simple structures into one complex one in the processes of self-organization occurs through the establishment of a common rate of their evolution, synchronization of periods and phases of cyclicity15.
The basic provisions of synergetics today are becoming the methodological basis of various philosophical, sociological and cultural concepts. The application of abstract models that reflect the properties of complex self-organizing systems gives rise to a special direction of synergetics in the humanitarian sphere - social (sociocultural) synergetics, which began to develop in the 90s of the XX century and is represented by the works of such authors as M.S. Kagan, E.N. .Knyazeva, S.P. Kurdyumov, E.S. Markaryan, V.S. Stepin, G.A. Avanesova, O.N. Afanasyeva, V.V. Vasilkova, A.P. Nazaretyan, A.D. Ursul , G.G.Malinetsky, S.G.Gomayunov, V.P.Bransky, L.I.Novikova, V.A.Arshinov, K.Kh.Delokarov and others.
Within the framework of socio-cultural synergetics, culture is interpreted as an open system that is in close contact and interaction with the natural and social environment. It exists as a component of another, more complex "society-culture-nature" system, between the elements of which there is a constant process of exchange of matter, energy and information. The dynamic balance that exists between the elements of this system is a condition for the stability of culture, deviations from it are the source of changes.
Culture is an anti-entropy mechanism focused on freeing society from spontaneous fluctuations in the environment and thus ensuring its self-preservation, and the main function of culture in the "society-culture-nature" system is an adequate response to the challenges of the external, natural and social environment, that is adaptive function, which is implemented in two forms: 1) homeostatic form of adaptation, provides a slight modification of the system in accordance with changing environmental parameters; 2) a significant structural restructuring of the system with the aim of its self-preservation in a radically changed environmental conditions.
Culture as a complex, hierarchically ordered system has a "hard core" ("structural information"), in which the life experience of human communities is accumulated and transmitted. This is the most stable and stable (conservative) part of the cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation and reproduced for a long time. It is this element of the society's culture that forms its "collective memory" and ensures the self-identity of culture and continuity in its development. It acts as a set of ready-made, stereotypical programs (customs, rituals, skills, etc.) for activities with material and ideal objects. These elements of culture, representing "extrautilitarian regulatory principles in human activity"16, without which no culture can exist, provide homeostatic reactions to maintain a steady state of the entire system. This parameter forms the structure of the system, setting rigid, deterministic links between elements, it determines the highest degree of organization of the system and allows you to predict the development of the system, making it predictable.
The generalizing designation of this parameter in philosophical and cultural studies is such a concept as "tradition" ("traditions"). Traditions “act as generalized models of the probability of adaptive processes occurring. Aimed at adapting to the conditions of the future foreseen in these models, cultural traditions, like the genetic programs of species, are oriented toward stable properties of the environment that are essential for survival”17.
However, in culture as a complex hierarchical system, in addition to the “hard core”, there is also a “peripheral field”, a “field of innovations” (entropy), which arise as a result of the system’s adaptation to changes occurring in the external environment, and therefore are a kind of “ cultural mutations. It is the ratio of traditions and innovations, information and entropy processes that determines the likelihood of certain processes in the development of the system. The most stable, predictable state of the system corresponds to a maximum of structural information (traditions) and a minimum of entropy (innovations), and vice versa, to the least stable state - a maximum of entropy and a minimum of structural information18.
Thus, culture is a system, the development of which is determined by the struggle of two principles: the tendency to stability, to preservation and reproduction, and the tendency to transformation, change, to the formation of a new structure. The development of culture is a complex dialectical unity of the processes of integration and disintegration, centripetal and centrifugal forces. The unstable balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces is a condition for the constructive development of culture, ensuring, on the one hand, its stability, certainty, self-identity, on the other hand, its continuous progressive development and interaction with other cultures. It is these opposite tendencies that are the source of the development of culture.
Consequently, culture is the unity of statics and dynamics, stability and instability, conservative, preserving and progressive, developing principles. However, the statics of culture is only a particular moment of its dynamics, and equilibrium, linear states are only transitional moments in its non-equilibrium, dynamic movement. Since, in relation to this class of systems, one can speak of external functioning (life of the system in the environment) and domestic(the life of its elements in interaction with each other within the system itself), then changes in them can occur not only when the constants of the external environment change, but also as a result of the “launch” of the process of self-development in the system itself. And consequently, the factors of instability of anthropogenic systems are, firstly, an adaptive reaction to changes in the external environment, which consists in the fact that society does not adapt to the external environment so much as adapts the environment in accordance with its growing needs; secondly, the consequences of the society's own activity and its growing opportunities, that is, the logic of its self-movement.
However, the influence of these two factors in the development of the socio-cultural system is not equivalent for different historical eras. So, for example, as humanity develops, its intellectual potential and technological power increase, the system becomes more and more stable in relation to external factors, and less and less stable in relation to internal ones. The influence of these two factors in the development of the socio-cultural system is also unequal for different cultures. Thus, for Western culture, the main factor of development is the internal logic of the self-development of culture itself, its fundamental principle that determines the relationship of man to the world. For Russian culture, it seems that the main role is played by external determinants of development, the “challenges” of the external environment, although the dominance of this factor does not exclude the presence of internal contradictions in Russian culture, which are the sources of its development.
Internal contradictions can be defined as "horizontal contradictions", that is, contradictions within the system, between elements of the same level; external contradictions are “vertical contradictions”, that is, contradictions between elements of systems of different levels. External contradictions always exist in culture; they create that tension, which is a condition for the activity and development of society. Humanity is moving forward, setting itself projects, goals and objectives and implementing them in its life. External contradictions are those deviations of the parameters of the environment from the norm, which are an incentive for self-movement, and overcoming these contradictions ensures the stability of the system. However, when these deviations become too large, exceed the homeostatic range of deviations, the system loses its ability to self-regulate. Exceeding the optimum "challenge" leads the system to destabilization, instability, disequilibrium, which is the beginning of the crisis, bifurcation stage of its development.
The bifurcation phase of development is characterized by the disappearance of the former systemic quality, the disintegration of the established connections and relationships in the system, and the ultimate chaotization of the ideal field of culture. At the bifurcation point characterized by entropy maximum and structural information minimum, the unpredictability of the system sharply increases due to the “thickening of innovations” that arise as a reaction to fundamental changes in the environment, as well as due to the loss of significance and the destruction of traditions, which cease to be adequate mechanisms for responding to very diverse environmental conditions. A variety of innovations, mutations of cultural traditions have both positive and negative meanings: on the one hand, these are the discoveries of scientific thought, the emergence of new artistic styles and trends, philosophical theories and systems, new trends and phenomena in everyday life, on the other hand, deviant, deviant behavior, political anarchism, immorality, suicide and other social and moral pathologies. That is, in culture there is a confrontation between various positive and destructive tendencies, which manifests itself in all spheres of society. P. A. Sorokin called such a confrontation of inherently opposite tendencies polarization law characterizing the transitional periods of cultural development.
This state of culture can be called chaos, a state of extreme non-differentiation, formlessness, unstructured ideal field of culture - a state that can become the basis for structuring a new quality, forming a new system that is qualitatively different from the previous one. However, the “mental image” of a qualitatively new culture already exists in the present, in those trends that make up an extensive “map of possibilities” and can be realized in the future. The future is rooted in the present and plays the role of an attractor, that is, a force that attracts to itself one of the possibilities of a non-linear, polyvariant process. Thus, the present turns out to be a deterministic future. The spectrum of structures-attractors is determined by the internal properties of the system itself; it is “her inner content, … her unmanifested, her soul”19.
Since the role of an attractor structure in socio-cultural systems is played by values, the most important condition for overcoming the crisis is the diversity of the spiritual culture of society, the presence in it of a wide variety of values, ideals, norms of human relations, which were socially unclaimed property of individual groups, while society developed linearly. The crisis situation is able to "show", actualize the most "imperceptible" of them, in order to develop new, more advanced cultural regulators on their basis, adequate to the new conditions of society. It is in the buffering phase of the crisis process that the “unpacking of meanings” that are contained in a potential state in the continuum of culture takes place. This provision of synergetics is called the law of non-functional diversity (Ashby's law).
As shown above, innovations in culture play the same role as natural selection plays in the development of a biological species; mutations in genes; they perform the same functions: selective, stabilizing, guiding20. Only those mutations that best correspond to the changed environmental conditions are accepted and fixed in culture. Innovations that have passed cultural selection are stereotyped and fixed in culture as traditions, but culture itself is a culture of another, higher level. Thus, the most viable examples of culture become the basis of new "channels of evolution".
However, speaking about the role of diversity in the development of a system, it is important to emphasize that in order for it to enter a new development trend, an “optimum diversity” is needed, since an “excess” of diversity leads to a complication of the system, a decrease in its structural stability (which depends on the connections of the system elements) and increases the likelihood of decay; and, on the contrary, the absence or lack of diversity, increasing the structural stability of the system, can lead it to degradation, inability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. System stability is adaptation to a certain environment, and therefore an excessively stable system is less viable in new, radically changed conditions.
Consequently, a dynamic system always needs a certain amount of chaos (diversity), which expands the basis of development, increases the plasticity and flexibility of the system. In a crisis situation, chaos is necessary for the system to reach an attractor, a new development trend, in order to initiate the process of self-completion. With access to the attractor structure, a new phase of system development begins - "crystallization", that is, the system's self-structuring in accordance with the new system quality. Entering the attractor structure means a transition to a different level of self-organization of culture and a more perfect organization of the metasystem "society-culture-nature", the harmonization of the life of a society that overcomes dangerous destructive tendencies.
Consequently, the crisis of culture is a bifurcation phase of its development, due to the adaptive response of the system to fundamental changes in the external environment, the process of structural restructuring of the system to achieve a self-preserving effect. At this stage of development, culture, as it were, is looking for its new image, choosing from the many possible options for further movement the most optimal from the point of view of the self-preservation of society. “Crisis is a violation of equilibrium and at the same time a process of transition to some new equilibrium. This latter can be regarded as the limit of the changes that take place during a crisis, or as the limit of its tendencies. The crisis of culture is evidence of the exhaustion of the "channel of evolution" along which culture developed and the basis of which were values. If society is able to change the habitual system of values and stereotypes of behavior, the system, having overcome the crisis, can be preserved. If the society does not find new ways of development, it will disintegrate, giving way to another society with a different system of values, a different culture.
At the bifurcation point, i.e. during a crisis, fluctuations become of great importance for the further development of the system - small perturbations, which, due to the resonant effect, have great consequences, determine the movement of the system in one direction or another. In anthropogenic systems, randomness (fluctuation) is realized as the activity of specific people. It is a specific historical personality (group) that can become a “point” for the development of the entire system and its transition to a new quality. An idea, a theory, a significant event at a bifurcation point can acquire a “butterfly effect”, causing a storm on another continent with a wave of its wings. The validity of this provision has been repeatedly confirmed by history, when the appearance of a personality of the scale of Christ, Buddha, Lenin determined the fate of all mankind, its development according to one scenario or another.
The crisis of culture is not an accidental phenomenon in the history of society; it is natural, since it is conditioned by the essence of culture as a specifically human way of adapting to the external environment. Moreover, as various studies show, the more complex and intelligent the system (that is, the more important information processes play for its functioning and development), the faster it develops and the more the possibility of crisis conditions increases for it. In this case, the crisis acts as a development mechanism, and the history of intellectual systems is a periodic pulsation of evolutionary and bifurcation periods of development. Moreover, the stronger the child (new) system differs from the parent (former), the longer and more painful the period of bifurcation will be22.
Crisis as a restructuring of the system as a result of adaptation to the radically changed conditions of its existence, on the one hand, destroys, destroys or pushes the least stable, least viable elements and connections to the periphery, on the other hand, it preserves the most stable, viable elements, creating new connections between them. Consequently, the system that has overcome the crisis is more adapted to the new conditions. This circumstance can explain the phenomenon of "flourishing after the crisis."
Thus, the historical dynamics of each culture has a non-linear, pulsating character, which is reflected in the alternation of periods of rise and fall, integration and disintegration, progressive movement from simple to complex and bifurcation points, characterized by the ultimate chaos of the ideal field of culture, the uncertainty and unpredictability of its prospects. .
test questions
1. What does the concept of "sociocultural dynamics" mean?
2. What time characteristics are inherent in it?
3. What factors determine the temporal characteristics of sociocultural dynamics?
4. What mechanisms of sociocultural dynamics are identified by domestic authors?
5. What is the difference between the sociocultural dynamics of ternary and binary cultures?
6. What is the difference between inversion and mediation as mechanisms of sociocultural dynamics?
7. What is understood in cultural literature as the "center" and "periphery" of culture?
8. What is the role of the "central zone" in culture? Periphery of culture?
9. What is the role of traditions and innovations in culture?
10. Why are innovations called "cultural mutations"?
11. What factors determine the nature of the interaction of traditions and innovations in culture?
12. What is the role of cultural diversity for the self-preservation and development of culture?
13. What are the main approaches to the study of sociocultural dynamics do you know? What is the essence of each of them?
14. What are the features of a synergetic approach to the study of sociocultural dynamics?
15. What are the objective processes associated with the emergence of a new approach to the study of sociocultural dynamics?
16. What new ideas about culture and the peculiarities of its dynamics arise in socio-cultural synergetics?
17. How is the problem of the crisis of culture interpreted in socio-cultural synergetics?
Literature
1. Avanesova, G.A. Dynamics of culture (or cultural dynamics) / G.A. Avanesova // Culturology. XX century. Encyclopedia. T.1. - St. Petersburg: University book, 1998. - P.175-176.
2. Akhiezer, A.S. From culturological to sociocultural analysis of innovations in society / A.S. Akhiezer // Bulletin of Moscow State University. Ser. 12. Polit. science. - 1996. - No. 2. - S. 22-34.
3. Bransky, V.P. Social synergetics as a postmodern philosophy of history / V.P. Bransky // Social sciences and modernity. - 1999. - No. 6. - P.117-127.
4. Gomayunov, S. From the history of synergetics to the synergetics of history / S. Gomayunov // Social sciences and modernity. - 1994. - No. 2. - P.99-106.
5. Erasov, B.S. Problems of analysis of the dyad center – periphery. Review / B.S. Erasov, G.A. Avanesova // Comparative study of civilizations: a reader: textbook. allowance for university students / comp., ed. and intro. Art. B.S. Erasov. - M.: Aspect Press, 2001. - S. 180-183.
6. History of world culture: Heritage of the West: Antiquity. Middle Ages. Renaissance: a course of lectures / ed. S.D. Silver. - M.: Ros.gumanit.un-t, 1998. - S.262-267.
7. Kagan, M.S. Philosophy of culture / M.S. Kagan. - St. Petersburg: LLP TK "Petropolis", 1996. - 416 p.
8. Knyazeva, E.N. Synergetics as a new worldview: a dialogue with I.Prigozhin / E.N. Knyazeva, S.P. Kurdyumov// Questions of Philosophy. - 1992. - No. 2. - P.3-20.
9. Culture of life support and ethnos: Experience of ethnoculturological research (based on the materials of the Armenian rural culture) - Yerevan: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of Arm. SSR, 1983. - 319 p.
10. Lotman, Yu.M. Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII - early XIX century) / Yu.M. Lotman. - St. Petersburg: Art - St. Petersburg, 1994. - 399 p.
11. Lotman, Yu.M. Culture and explosion / Yu.M.Lotman. – M.: Gnosis, Ed. gr. "Progress", 1992. - 272 p.
12. Markaryan, E.S. Culture as a way of social self-organization / E.S.Markaryan. - Pushchino: ONTI NCB AN USSR, 1982. - 20 p.
13. Mukhamedzhanova, N.M. The specifics of the interaction of traditions and innovations in Russian culture during the periods of modernization of transformations / N.M. Mukhamedzhanova // Bulletin of the OSU. - 2006. - No. 7. - S. 160-169.
14. Nazaretyan, A.P. Civilization Crises in the Context of Universal History: Synergetics, Psychology and Futurology / A.P. Nazaretyan. - M.: PER SE, 2001. - 239 p.
15. Shils, E. About the relationship between the center and the periphery / E. Shils // Comparative study of civilizations: a reader: a textbook for university students / comp., ed. and intro. Art. B.S. Erasov. - M.: Aspect Press, 2001. -S. 171-176.
16. Eisenstadt, Sh. The structure of relations between the center and the periphery in imperial and imperial-feudal regimes / Sh. Eisenstadt // Comparative study of civilizations: a reader: a textbook for university students / comp., ed. and intro. Art. B.S. Erasov. - M .: Aspect Press, 2001. - P. 176 - 180.
Topic 11. SOCIODYNAMICS OF CULTURE
1. Models (forms) of culture dynamics
2. Types of culture dynamics
3. Mechanisms of cultural dynamics
4. Factors of cultural dynamics
1. Models (forms) of culture dynamics
Culture cannot exist without being updated; it is always the unity of tradition and innovation. Within the evolutionism of the XIX century. the first scientific ideas about cultural dynamics appeared. Scientists talked about the programmed progressive complication of culture. They believed that all cultural change should represent a movement from the simple to the complex.
Since the XX century. change is understood not only as development, but also as any transformation within a culture, such as crises, a return to the old, complete disappearance; they begin to talk about the transformation of cultural forms, which can be stable and unstable, leading to development or crisis.
In line with the structural-functional approach, the main attention began to be paid to the phenomena of culture as an integral system, the elements of which are interconnected. At the same time, questions were raised about the sources and causes of cultural change.
P. Sorokin's book "Social and Cultural Dynamics" (1937-1941) became a milestone for the analysis of the issue of cultural changes, where the term "cultural dynamics" was first introduced into scientific circulation. Today under
cultural dynamics is understood as any change in culture, sustainable
the order of interaction of its constituent components, its periodicity, stadial nature, orientation towards some state.
Gradually, a range of issues related to the dynamics of culture was defined - types and forms (models) of cultural changes, determinants and mechanisms of cultural dynamics.
AT history and culture of change have a fixed sequence of stages or states, their continuity and periodicity can exist in two "pure" forms:
in the form of a temporary circle (cycle), which is a repeating sequence of certain phases or states;
in the form of an evolutionary process, which consists in a consistent irreversible increase in the level of complexity and organization of cultural systems.
The real course of world history shows us several more cultural models.
Cyclic model. It originated in the ancient world, within the framework of mythological models of the world in China, India and Ancient Greece. They were based on the idea of the eternal cycle of events, the periodic repetition of phenomena in nature and culture.
The first systematic presentation of this model of cultural dynamics belongs to Hesiod and other ancient thinkers. According to his views, the entire history of mankind is divided into four eras, or centuries.
- gold, silver, copper and iron - and represents movement in time, which is understood as eternity. The meaning of history is in the constant repetition of general laws. The further society moves away from the golden age, the more it deviates from the original ideal model of the archetype. Culture was understood as a set of moral norms, the nature of power, the connection of generations, the way of assimilation of cultural values. In the golden age, man was likened to gods, love and equality reigned in the world, everything for life a person received directly from nature, including the knowledge that he possessed from birth. Man came to the Iron Age with the complete oblivion of moral regulators, the war of all against all, the loss of communication between generations, the loss of harmony with nature. Development ends with a crisis of culture caused by the rebellion of nature against man. The crisis could not be considered a completely negative phenomenon, since it did not lead to the final collapse of culture, it returned it to the starting point from which a new development cycle began. Such cycles were repeated endlessly.
Inversion is a variant of the cyclic model of culture dynamics, when changes do not go in a circle, but make pendulum oscillations from one pole of cultural meanings to another. These kinds of swings occur if a strong core or structure has not developed in a culture. Therefore, the lower the degree of stability of a society, the sharper the turns in its spiritual or political life: from strict normativity to loose morals, from wordless obedience to merciless rebellion.
The inversion wave can cover a variety of periods - from several years to several centuries (in the Roman Empire - this is the transition from paganism to monotheism, accompanied by the eradication of previous cults). Inversion leads to the destruction of the previously accumulated positive heritage, which causes a revival (or restoration) of the past (the European Renaissance led to the restoration of ancient pagan culture, those values that were denied by the Christian church for many centuries). The 20th century demonstrated the transition from religion to atheism in Russia. At the end of the century, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, and we see a revival of interest in religion, both among the people and on the part of the state.
An interesting development of the idea of cyclicity was received in works of Yu.M. Lotman. In his book "Culture and Explosion" the main form of dynamics
culture is called inversion, the transition from one pole of cultural values
to to another - both continuous and in the form of an explosion, an unpredictable appearance of something new in science and art.
Modern domestic culturologist Yu.V. Yakovets understands the cycle as the time from the revolutionary upheaval, which marks the birth of a new historical system, to the next upheaval, which establishes the new system. The course of history is a spiral. The pendulum never finds itself twice at the same point, but makes oscillations similar in phase. Yakovets identified five phases in the development of civilization:
1. The origin, the formation of the initial elements of a new civilization in the bowels of the old - a long period when the development of a civilization that has not yet manifested itself on the historical stage takes place; this is her background.
2. Formation - the period from the appearance of a society that declared itself a social upheaval to the formation of its main elements. This is the beginning of history, the rapid growth of the emerging civilization.
3. Maturity - civilization fully realizes its potential in all spheres of culture, but its inherent contradictions and limits make themselves felt.
4. Decline - inside the still powerful civilization, a new civilization is already emerging, experiencing a period of formation.
5. Relic phase, when fragments of a bygone civilization remain in certain peripheral regions.
The concept of Yakovets considers not only the model of the development of civilizations (microdynamics of culture), but of all humanity as a whole (macrodynamics of culture). In his opinion, the path of development of society and culture combines irreversible evolution, a progressive transition from the stage
to steps, with reversibility to wave-spiral form of movement, periodic alternation of phases of rise, stabilization, crisis, depression, revival and a new upsurge of culture. This rhythm is specific for each element of culture, each country, but in the aggregate it forms a general symphony of the evolution of mankind, its movement from the turn
to turn of the historical spiral.
Concepts of local civilizations N.Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler,
A. Toynbee - variants of the cyclic model of culture dynamics. Rejecting the concept of world history as a single historical process, they put forward the idea of the development of individual peoples and cultures, which takes place according to cyclical laws. The development of individual civilizations can occur both sequentially and in parallel. The form of development is the same for everyone, but the content is unique for each culture. The development of local civilizations goes through the stages of emergence, development, prosperity and decline - a return to the original state.
Linear model of culture dynamics. With the advent of Christ
ancestry, the emergence of a linear (evolutionary) model of culture dynamics is connected with the comprehension of his ideas within the framework of theology. It is based on one of the fundamental paradigms of Christianity - the arrow of time,
opening eternity, introducing the concepts of the beginning and end of history - from the creation of the world to the Last Judgment and the end of the world. Within the framework of this model, the problems of progress in history and culture were first posed.
This model was actively developed within the framework of the French and German Enlightenment (A. Condorcet, I. Herder), German classical philosophy (I. Kant, G. Hegel), in Marxism, in the evolutionism of social and cultural anthropology (E. Tylor, D. Frazer , L. Morgan), as well as in the neo-evolutionary direction of cultural studies (L. White, K. Kluckhohn).
The linear model can take on a variety of forms, depending on what is recognized as the source and goal of the development of society and culture. So, for Kant, this is the development of man himself, for Hegel, the self-development of the absolute spirit, in Marxism, the development of material production. All representatives of this direction can be identified several fundamental ideas. The main of them - the idea of the unity of the human race - leads to the recognition of the uniformity of the development of culture in any part of the world. This single world culture develops from a lower, simplest state to a more complex, higher level, passing through a continuous series of successive stages, each of which is more perfect than the previous one.
An important element of linear concepts is the concept of progress.
– quantitative and qualitative improvement of human life and society. Depending on the concepts of the mechanism of cultural development, its goals and means, one or another criterion of progress is introduced. Thus, for Hegel, the criterion for the progressive development of history and culture, or the self-development of the absolute spirit, is the consciousness of freedom. In Marxism, progress is understood as the correspondence of productive forces and production relations in the process of historical development. For L. White, who considers the development of culture a process of conquering natural forces, the criterion for progress is the growth in the amount of energy spent per capita per year.
Reversible model is a variant of the linear (evolutionary) model of culture dynamics, which uses some value determinants of the cyclic development model, and, in contrast to classical evolutionary models, is an arrow of time facing the past. Everything that follows is only the degradation of culture. A person must reverse the course of history, return to the ideal initial state of culture - to the golden age. So for J.J. Rousseau, the development of culture, the growth of a person's material well-being bear the alienation of a person from the products of his labor, from society, from other people, i.e. negative factor. Human happiness is in unity with nature. You can return to it only by abandoning modern civilization and its values.
Deviant model of culture dynamics was formulated in the framework
kah neoevolutionism, based on a linear model of the dynamics of culture (A. White, A. Kroeber, D. Stewart, M. Harris). Graphically, it can be
It is presented in the form of a strongly branching tree, where the trunk is the general line of development of society and culture, and the branches are deviations from it, which make it possible to explain the specifics of individual cultures. The evolutionary interpretation of human culture as a whole must be unilinear. But human culture, as a collection of many cultures, must be interpreted multilinearly.
To explain the diversity of cultures in this model, the concept of general and specific evolution was introduced. The general evolution that forms common cultural features occurs through the processes of intercultural interaction. Specific evolution characterized each individual culture, adapted to the characteristic conditions of its natural environment.
Wave Model of Culture Dynamics combines cyclic and linear models, connecting reversible and irreversible processes. D. Viko, P. Sorokin also spoke about wave changes in culture, but this model was most fully disclosed in the works of the Russian economist ON THE. Kondratiev. He suggested that the economy and other closely related areas of culture develop on the basis of a combination of small cycles (3-5 years) with medium-term (7-11 years) and large (50 years) cycles. The upswing phase is associated with the introduction of new means of labor, an increase in the number of employees, which is accompanied by an increase in optimism in society, a balanced development of culture. The recession causes an increase in unemployment, the oppressed state of many industries and, as a result, pessimistic moods in society, the decline of culture.
The main ideas of Kondratiev were developed by the American economist J. Schumpeter, who considered innovations, both technical and socio-cultural, to be the main factor in the cyclical dynamics, which serve as an incentive for economic growth and overcoming the crisis. In the second half of the XX century. Schumpeter's ideas were implemented by developed countries in the innovation policy of firms operating in the market, which constantly offered new products. The states supported this policy with tax regulation, as a result, society has risen to a qualitatively new, post-industrial stage of development.
E. Toffler also speaks about the wave nature of human history in his work The Third Wave. He distinguishes three stages: agrarian, industrial and informational, replacing each other due to technological progress. Toffler notes the acceleration of progress: if the first stage lasted thousands of years, then the second took only three hundred years to outlive itself. Therefore, the third wave is unlikely to last more than a few decades.
The latest models of culture dynamics. One of the latest discoveries of cultural studies - synergy model dynamics of culture - created as a result of applying the models of the new science of synergetics, which studies the self-organization of simple systems, to the study of cultural phenomena.
Self-organization is a process that transfers an open (exchanging matter, energy or information with the environment) non-equilibrium (being in an extremely unstable state) system into a new, more stable state, characterized by a higher degree of complexity and order. The study of these processes began in the 1970s. within the framework of synergetics, the creators of which were the German radiophysicist G. Haken and Belgian Chemicrus originI. Prigogine. They managed to reflect the emergence of order out of chaos in mathematical models.
From the point of view of synergetics, any open non-equilibrium system in its development goes through two stages: the first is a smooth evolutionary development of the system, with well-predictable results, the second is a jump, a nonlinear process that instantly transfers the system to a qualitatively new state. When a jump occurs, the system is at a bifurcation (branching) point, it has several possible options for further evolution, but it is impossible to predict in advance which one will be chosen. The choice occurs randomly, determined by the unique combination of circumstances that will develop at a given time and place. After passing through the bifurcation point, the system cannot return to its previous state.
The synergetic paradigm can be very effectively used to study the dynamics of culture, since all-cultural systems meet the requirements of multivariate development, non-linearity and irreversibility. It allows us to see in the dynamics of culture not a linear process of development, but many paths of evolutionary or intensively rapid (up to catastrophic) development. In addition, dynamic changes in culture are a set of processes that occur at different rates, unequal directions and in different modes. The result of the dynamics can be both an upward development, growth, an increase in the complexity and adaptability of the system to the environment, and a decline, an increase in chaos, a crisis or a catastrophe, which entails a break in the linear development.
Another modern model of culture dynamics is postmodern concept. Postmodernism is the general mentality of the second half of the 20th century, based on the ideas of pluralism. Postmodernists do not reject any of the known forms of cultural dynamics, believing that all of them are compatible with each other, because many different fragments of reality cannot be reduced to a single principle that unites them.
The choice of any of the models of culture dynamics existing in modern cultural studies as the only possible one would be erroneous. Such a complex object of study as culture cannot, in principle, be reduced to a single factor, cause or model.
2. Types of culture dynamics
Qualitative changes in culture depend on the internal processes of the dynamics of culture and its constituent elements, which are called types of cultural dynamics. In modern cultural studies, several types of cultural dynamics are distinguished.
Changes leading to a change in spiritual styles, artistic trends, orientation and fashion (a change in artistic styles in the history of Western European art and culture - Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Rococo, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism - to which the concept of progress is inapplicable, because masterpieces appeared in line with any of these styles).
Changes leading to enrichment and differentiation of culture or relationships between its various elements. This is the formation of new genres and types of art, the creation of new scientific directions. Such processes take place in certain spheres of culture, while maintaining stable mechanisms for stabilizing culture as a whole (for example, the scientific and philosophical discoveries of the New Age and the industrial revolution that followed it almost did not affect the role of the church in society).
cultural stagnation as a state of long-term immutability and repetition of norms, values, meanings and knowledge and a sharp restriction or prohibition of innovations. Today, stagnation is demonstrated by the occasionally discovered tribes of Asia, Africa and Latin America, preserving their way of life and level of culture for centuries and millennia. Stagnation can also become the fate of highly organized civilizations that have decided that they have reached the ideal state of their society and culture (the civilization of Ancient Egypt, which existed for about four thousand years on the basis of conserving economic, social and cultural structures).
In weak cultures of small ethnic groups decline and degradation associated with the obsolescence of some elements of culture, the disappearance of its constituent parts, previously stable norms and ideals (Indians of North America, indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East). Decline also occurs in various areas of highly developed cultures, when the spiritual significance of some trends and genres weakens and they are replaced by other options for understanding the world (the high classical art of ancient Greece fell into decay in the Hellenistic era, demonstrating features of eclecticism and formalism).
Crisis of culture as a gap between the weakened or destroyed former spiritual structures and institutions and emerging new ones that better meet the requirements of a changing society, which can lead to a transformation or disruption in social regulation (the social, political and spiritual crisis of the ancient world at the end of the Hellenistic era of the 2nd-1st centuries BC AD, when imperial thinking destroyed the old ancient system of values, and the formation of world civilization received its ideological justification in the new world religion - Christianity).
Transform or culture transformation- the emergence of a new state that has arisen under the influence of intensive renewal processes taking place in a given society. New elements are introduced through a rethinking of the historical heritage or giving new meaning to established traditions, as well as through borrowing from outside, subject to a mandatory qualitative change in these elements. The result of the transformation is a holistic organic synthesis of the old and the new.
The transformation of culture usually leads to the reformation of religion or the formation of a national culture. So, the ancient Russian, and then the Moscow cultural tradition during the time of Peter I was subjected to a massive impact of European culture. During the XVIII century. their synthesis was going on, which gave the highest rise in spirituality in the first half of the 19th century, which deservedly bears the name of the “golden age” of Russian culture.
There was no doubt that there progressive development in such areas of culture as the economy (the criterion of progress is the development of productive forces, the increasing satisfaction of human needs), science (the criterion of progress is knowledge of the objective laws of nature, confirmed in practice), the media (the criterion of progress is the speed of information passing and the breadth audience reach).
But it is not possible to talk about progress in relation to art, philosophy, religion. Therefore, neo-Kantianism and diffusionism based on its ideas, the psychological school in anthropology, the American historical school, functionalism and structuralism excluded the ideas of development and progress from their basic premises. Cyclic models of local civilizations appeared that retained the concept of "progress", but understood it as a growing number of basic ideas given by God to each developing civilization for its self-expression.
At the beginning of the XXI century. overcome simplistic historicism. Today, the fundamental multivariance of history and culture, the diversity of forms of cultural dynamics are recognized, which does not exclude the possibility of progressive development of some spheres of society and culture.
3. Mechanisms of cultural dynamics
Changes are an integral property of culture and include both the internal transformation of cultural phenomena (their changes over time) and external changes (interaction with each other, movement in space, etc.). They manifest themselves both through the expansion of existing ones and through the emergence of qualitatively new cultural forms. At the same time, changes in culture proceed in the form of either activation or slowdown, which finds its expression in the pace and rhythms of culture dynamics, as well as in its various types and forms.
In cultural studies, it is customary to single out the following sources (mechanisms) of cultural dynamics: innovations, appeal to cultural heritage, cultural borrowing, cultural diffusion, synthesis. Their result is a transition from the past to the present and the future. European culture has always been oriented towards a better future; traditional Chinese culture has always turned to the past, seeing it as an ideal; many small peoples, existing in harmony with nature, are quite satisfied with the present, because it completely repeats the past and will not change in the future. But at the same time, any culture again and again faces the problem of the relationship between old and new, tradition and innovation in culture.
Innovations are the discovery or invention of new images, symbols, norms and rules of behavior, political or social programs aimed at changing the living conditions of people, forming a new type of thinking or perception of the world. Discovery is the acquisition of new knowledge about the world (all scientific discoveries). Inventions are a new combination of known cultural elements or complexes, they include a new way of making things, i.e. technology.
The carriers of innovations can be creative individuals or innovative groups that put forward new ideas, norms and methods of activity. Innovators may belong to different social groups. These are: representatives of the elite of a given society - its political leadership, figures of science and culture; people from the avant-garde environment (as a rule, figures of literature and art who are looking for special ways of self-assertion); people from marginal groups emerging on the borders between different social strata and groups who are looking for their own specifics and justification for their existence; dissidents (people who do not agree with the policy pursued by the state on any issue); people from other countries and cultures (for example, the colonies of the English Puritans in North America, which became the foundation for the formation of the future USA).
The reasons for the emergence of innovations are the rejection by individuals or groups of dominant cultural values, norms, traditions and customs and the search for their own ways of cultural and social self-assertion. At the same time, the problem of connecting the emerging innovations with the sociocultural environment always arises. So, the steam engine was almost simultaneously built by I. Polzunov in the Urals and D. Watt in England, but Polzunov's machine was broken and forgotten after the death of the inventor, and in England this invention became an important milestone in the industrial revolution.
Tradition and cultural heritage. Tradition is the mechanism of reproduction
works of culture and all cultural institutions that are legitimized and justified by the very fact of their existence in the past. Its main property is to preserve past patterns through the elimination, limitation of innovations perceived as a deviation from the ideal. Tradition is part of a broader concept - cultural heritage, which
acts as the sum of all the cultural achievements of a given society, as its historical experience, including the re-evaluated past.
At the same time, the values and symbols embodied in the monuments of the past must not only be preserved, but also reproduced. The appeal to the cultural heritage is designed to ensure the maintenance of the usual meanings, norms and values that have developed in society. Those elements of cultural heritage that are passed down from generation to generation and preserved for a long time provide the identity of culture. The content of identity is not only traditional cultural phenomena, but also its more mobile elements - values, norms, social institutions.
The protection and development of one's cultural heritage (folklore, monuments of artistic culture, books, achievements of science and technology) is a feature of any normal society, the most important part of the activities of the state, public and international organizations (UNESCO).
The process of culture dynamics is at risk of two opposing tendencies:
1) canonization of what has been achieved and the rejection of any further searches in the field of form or content (the extreme form of this desire in religion becomes fundamentalism - the restoration of earlier examples of religious faith, not affected by the corrupting influence of its later opponents: Iran, Afghanistan, Chechnya);
2) rejection of the cultural heritage, often in the course of a revolutionary breakdown of the former social and cultural structures (the ideology of Proletkult in Russia in the first years after the revolution of 1917, which rejected all previous culture as bourgeois).
The ratio of tradition and innovation is one of the bases for dividing societies into traditional and modernized (industrial). Traditional societies are characterized by reliance on traditions with minimal inclusion of innovations in culture. An industrial society is much more accepting of innovations. The combination of tradition and innovation, the ability to find the “golden mean” between them is an important task for any culture.
Diffusion of culture and cultural borrowings is a spatial, geographical distribution of elements of culture. In this case, the mutual penetration of individual elements of culture or its entire complexes occurs.
The channels of cultural diffusion are migration, tourism, missionary activity, trade, war, scientific conferences, fairs, exchange of specialists, etc. All these forms of cultural diffusion can spread in vertical and horizontal directions. Horizontal diffusion occurs between the cultures of several ethnic groups, socio-cultural groups or individuals (borrowing jargon, manners and communication of the criminal world by police officers). Vertical (stratification) diffusion develops between
6.2. Sociocultural dynamics
Among the fundamental problems in modern socio-humanitarian knowledge is the question of cultural changes and the causes that cause them. In many ways, this explains the interest in this topic on the part of almost all researchers of culture, and the need for the results of these studies takes place in all spheres of social life. The dramatic changes taking place in society, the need to manage these complex processes (not only cultural, but also political, economic, technical and technological, etc.), their forecasting and design, brought the problem of transformation and dynamics of society to a new level of actualization of its understanding. Cultures are born, spread, destroyed, many different metamorphoses take place with them, which is why the study of the dynamics of culture is of great importance for understanding the changes that are constantly taking place in society. The term "dynamics" (from the Greek bguusssts; - force) was introduced into scientific circulation by Leibniz and served as the name of the doctrine of the movement of objects under the action of forces. But despite the fact that this concept was used primarily in the exact sciences - in mechanics and mathematics, the German scientist defined the essence of dynamics much more widely. He was convinced that when creating nature, God endowed it with an internal ability to act, to be active - power. Leibniz emphasized that not mathematics, but metaphysics should reveal the essential dimensions of natural being, because not extension, but force is the main essential definition of nature. Dynamics as a science studies the interaction of forces and their direction, relying on mathematics in the method of cognition, but the specificity of force as the basis of being can only be revealed by metaphysics and philosophy, i.e. already Leibniz refers the comprehension of the processes of the dynamics of the world as a whole to the field of humanitarian knowledge.
Modern socio-humanitarian thought focuses its attention on explaining the complex processes of the historical evolution of socio-cultural systems, trying to determine the mechanisms that cause closely interconnected quantitative and qualitative transformations that determine the essence of the development of the entire world culture.
Cultural development is associated with the concept of "cultural change", which means any movement and interaction, any transformations in culture, including those that are devoid of integrity and do not have a pronounced direction. When we are talking not just about “cultural changes”, but about changes in which integrity and direction are realized, when certain patterns can be traced, then we speak of “cultural dynamics”. Thus, the dynamics of culture is characterized by the change and modification of cultural features that occur in time and space and are characterized by holism, the presence of ordered tendencies and a directional character.
But we must bear in mind that any world culture is a substantive aspect of the joint, i.e., social, life of people, so it would be more accurate to talk about the problem of studying the characteristics of sociocultural dynamics.
It is also important to note that a special section in cultural studies is being formed that studies sociocultural transformations - cultural dynamics (sociodynamics of culture). Within the framework of cultural dynamics, the processes of variability in sociocultural systems, their conditionality, direction, strength of expression, patterns and factors of adaptation of cultures to new conditions of existence are studied.
The sociodynamics of culture is not limited to the study of the evolution of certain cultural phenomena, the changeability of certain cultural facts, as well as the description of known cultural processes. It tries to identify the determinants of ongoing processes and trends, theoretically explain and comprehend them.
In this way,
?sociodynamics of culture is a theoretical discipline, the subject of which is cultural and historical development.
That is, the subject of study is not so much culture in itself, but the social factors that drive it, the social mechanisms of culture.
World scientific thought has accumulated a huge number of ideas, ideas and concepts that allow giving a philosophical, sociological, cultural interpretation of the concept of sociocultural dynamics from different cognitive-epistemological positions.
Such methodological pluralism is inevitable in the analysis of such a complex basic phenomenon as sociocultural dynamics. The complexity, and in many cases non-obviousness, of changes in culture makes different approaches to the study of cultural dynamics equally probable and complementary in relation to each other.
In the views on sociocultural dynamic processes, two opposite positions can be distinguished, between them there are many more concepts. Representatives of one of the extreme positions argue that there is no single history of mankind, which means that there are no general laws of development, and each generation of scientists has the right to interpret history in its own way. K. Popper, for example, believed that faith in the law of progress fetters the historical imagination.
Adherents of a different position believe that the course of history, the fate of peoples and the life of each person are rigidly determined, controlled and predetermined. It can be divine providence, and fate, and an astrological chart, and karma, and the law of social development, etc. A person is powerless before this predestination, he can only try to guess his fate, or, having studied the laws of development, exist harmoniously in their field, or learn to control the laws of evolution.
E. Durkheim believes that both the imaginary abilities of sorcerers and magicians to transform one object into another, and the notion that in the social world everything is arbitrary and accidental and the will of one legislator can change the face and type of society are an illusion. To manage historical evolution, to change nature, both physical and moral, according to E. Durkheim, is possible only in accordance with the laws of science.
The conceptual diversity of the problem of socio-cultural development in the macro dimension is grouped around three main areas: firstly, around the idea of linear progressive development - evolutionism, secondly, around the idea of the cyclical nature of the civilizational process, and thirdly, around actual social synergetic approaches. In this regard, it is possible to single out the main scientific directions and various models of sociocultural dynamic processes developed in the process of their development.
Linear-stage direction (evolutionism). The linear-stage direction is characterized by the consideration of society as a complex system, the elements of which are closely interconnected. In this system, specific laws of development of a universal nature operate, i.e., development occurs in one direction, has the same stages and patterns. Accordingly, the main task of science is to identify these laws, and therefore, in the study of history, it is necessary to clearly define the factors that determine historical development. This development is called "social progress". In this process, the cultural identity of each country, although recognized, recedes into the background. There are three main features inherent in the traditional theory of universal sociocultural evolution:
1. Modern societies are classified according to a certain scale - from "primitive" to "developed" ("civilized").
2. There are clear, discrete stages of development - from "primitive" to "civilized".
3. All societies pass through all stages in the same order.
The dynamics of society and culture obeys the same laws. This position was held by I. - G. Herder, J. - A. Condorcet, G. - V. - F. Hegel, O. Comte, K. Marx, E. Tylor. Their main methodological differences concerned not the very essence of sociocultural dynamics as a linear process, but the mechanisms that “trigger” it, those factors that become decisive for historical changes.
German theoretical thought (Herder, Hegel) is characterized by the construction of world-historical models of the development of culture. In the most generalized form, the idea of the linear-stage development of world history was developed in Hegel's philosophical system.
Hegel considered the development of the world spirit (superhuman mind) to be the essence of the cultural-historical process. The process of unfolding a single world spirit includes the spirit of individual peoples, which goes through the stages of formation, prosperity and decline, after which, having fulfilled its historical purpose, that is, having realized a certain form of awareness of freedom, it leaves the historical stage, and as a result we have a world history. Hegel defined world history as "progress in the consciousness of freedom."
At the same time, history, according to Hegel, is carried out out of necessity, that is, it is subject to a single law. In accordance with these principles, Hegel presented world history in the form of successively alternating stages of progress. In Hegel's philosophy of history, the world historical process was presented as a process of progressive incarnation of freedom and its awareness by the spirit. Historical cultures, according to Hegel, line up in a sequential ladder of steps of progress in the consciousness of freedom.
The history of the spirit in time is, according to Hegel, the fundamental basis of the socio-cultural dynamics that determines the entire world-historical process, its beginning and end, unity and diversity within it.
For O. Comte, the historical process is a consistent transition of human thinking, culture and society from the theological stage to the metaphysical and then to the positive. Therefore, Comte's "social dynamics" is entirely devoted to the derivation and confirmation of the "law of three stages" and the factors that determine it. Moreover, O. Comte emphasized that one should not try to build a hierarchy of factors, reducing the movement of the power of history to any one of them, since they are all equivalent.
One of the engines of progress, according to Comte, is the human mind, since it always strives for positive knowledge - in this way the thinker psychologizes the idea of progress. Accordingly, the catalyst for progress in Comte's concept is the spiritual elite - the total bearer and conductor of the ideas of progressive development, carrying these ideas from generation to generation.
K. Marx's doctrine of socio-economic formations rejected the idealistic philosophy of history and brought to the fore the question of a materialistic understanding of social development, its objective dialectical patterns.
Marx was convinced of the priority of the economy, which is why for him the foundation of any society, its “basis” is the mode of material production as a combination of “productive forces”, including people and means of production, and “production relations”, characterized as a form of ownership of the means of production, and the corresponding social division of labor.
The history of society appears as the history of modes of production, which, in fact, act as sources of social development - the basis of socio-cultural dynamics, and the change in the forms of socio-economic formations and the class struggle served in Marx's concept as the key to explaining historical patterns.
Another area closely related to the linear-stage approach to explaining sociocultural dynamics is actually evolutionism, who addressed the issues of the relationship between the universal and the national in culture, the role of the individual and the people, the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures, the purpose and meaning of history. Evolutionism attracted many scientists, its most famous supporters L. Morgan, G. Spencer, J. McLennan, J. Lubbock, J. Fraser. But the founder of the evolutionary theory of the development of cultures is the English scientist E. Tylor, the author of the fundamental work "Primitive Culture". His concept was based on a few simple provisions, the meaning of which is that humanity is a single species. That human nature is the same everywhere. That the evolution of society and culture obeys the same laws everywhere. Evolutionary development proceeds from the simple to the complex, from the lowest to the highest. The character of culture then corresponds to the stage of evolution at which the society is. Similarities and differences between cultures are explained primarily by the degree of development of cultures. And the path traversed by the European peoples is common to all mankind.
Tylor considered culture as a consciously created rational device to improve the lives of people in society, therefore, in contrast, primarily to O. Comte, he considered reason to be only one of the manifestations of culture along with iron smelting, cattle breeding, and magic. It seemed to him that culture is driven not so much by reason as by the power of habits, instincts, simple associations. Free thought, invention, innovation look like something rare, even exotic. Therefore, the main goal of the study of culture is to systematize the facts, to develop a theoretical natural scientific basis for social science - evolutionary theory.
Scientific thought of the 18th–19th centuries. was focused on studying the diversity of linear development trends unfolding in time and space. She operated mainly with the concept of "humanity in general" and sought to find the "dynamic laws of evolution and progress" that determine the main direction of human history. Relatively little attention has been paid to sociocultural processes that are repeated in space (in different societies), in time, or in space and time. In many ways, this is precisely why the linear, Eurocentric concept of the sociocultural dynamics of development did not provide a satisfactory explanation for the evolution of the East, Russia and other regions that were aloof from the developed Western European civilization.
In the last third of the XIX century. the work of N. Ya. Danilevsky "Russia and Europe" (1869) was published, which laid the foundations of a new paradigm in explaining the processes of sociocultural dynamics and became the basis of a new scientific approach - civilizational (cyclic), a new understanding of the principles and mechanisms of the cultural dynamics of social processes.
For civilizational approach the denial of the concept of "universal civilization" is characteristic. The development of mankind occurs through the change of original cultural-historical types, and it cannot be said about any cultural-historical type that it acts as the basis and leader of world social evolution. Theorists of the civilizational direction proceed from the idea of constant return, circulation, the idea of a plurality of cultures, considering humanity as a set of historically established communities, each of which occupies a certain territory and has specific features inherent only to it, which together form a special cultural and historical type.
Cyclic theories were developed by many philosophers and historians of antiquity, seeking to see a certain order, rhythm, to reveal meaning in the chaos of historical events. At the same time, analogies were used with cosmic rhythms, the change of seasons, biological cycles, and the circulation of substances in nature.
But only by the end of the 19th century, theoretical concepts were formed, in which an explanation was given for the complex socio-cultural processes of development.
In cultural theories and concepts, the thinkers of the civilizational trend - N. Ya. Danilevsky, K. N. Leontiev, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. A. Sorokin, K. Jaspers - saw the origins of the dynamics of culture not in spontaneous, "divine" development of the human spirit, not in the psyche and not in the biological prehistory of mankind, but in the features of the specific unique development of each national entity.
The founder of the theory of cultural-historical types is the Russian scientist N. Ya. Danilevsky. In the book "Russia and Europe" he presented human history as divided into separate and vast autonomous formations - "historical-cultural types", or civilizations. Western - Germano-Roman civilization - is only one of many that has arisen in history, since in the reality of a common chronology, which could reasonably divide the existence of mankind into periods and which would mean the same thing for everyone, would be equally important for everything world does not exist. Not a single civilization is better or more perfect, each has its own internal logic of development and goes through various stages, peculiar only to it, in a certain sequence.
The Russian philosopher noted that the beginnings of a civilization of one cultural-historical type are not transmitted to peoples of another type. Each type develops them for itself with greater or lesser influence of civilizations alien to it, previous or modern. N. Ya. Danilevsky allowed the influence of one civilization on another only in the sense of “soil fertilizer”. He absolutely rejected any system-forming influence of alien spiritual principles on culture. All cultural-historical types are equally distinctive and derive the content of their historical life from themselves. But not all of them realize their content with the same completeness and versatility.
N. Ya. Danilevsky formulated the basic principles of socio-cultural dynamics, which are similar to the processes occurring in a living organism - this is the emergence, growth and decline of civilizations.
The cultural ideas of Danilevsky influenced the theoretical views of K. N. Leontiev, who in his work “Byzantism and Slavism” analyzes the causes and mechanisms of sociocultural changes. The process of evolution in the organic world, according to Leontiev, is a gradual transition from simple to complex, constant adaptation, on the one hand, to the environment of similar, related organisms, and on the other, individualization from similar and related phenomena. It is a continuous process of moving from "inexpressive" and "simplicity" to originality and complexity, which leads to a gradual increase in complex elements. Internal increase and at the same time continuous integration lead to the highest point of evolution - the highest degree of complexity, which is held by some internal coercive force.
According to Leontiev, every cultural organism goes through three stages during its life cycle: 1) primary simplicity; 2) blooming complexity; 3) secondary "mixing simplification".
The views of Danilevsky and Leontiev anticipated similar theoretical constructions of O. Spengler. In his main work, The Decline of Europe, he made "the morphology of world history" the subject of research. Spengler insisted on the originality of world cultures (or "spiritual epochs"), which he considered as unique organic forms, understood with the help of analogies.
He rejected the generally accepted conditional periodization of the historical and cultural process - "Ancient World-Middle Ages-Modern Time". Spengler offered a different view of the evolution of world history, explaining it by the change of a number of cultures independent of each other, living, like living organisms, periods of origin, formation and death. The decline of any culture, be it Egyptian or "Faustian" (i.e. modern Western), is characterized by the transition from culture to the last stage of its existence - civilization. Hence the key principle of his concept: the opposition of "becoming" - a living, creative principle, i.e. culture, and "has become" - dead, formalized, i.e. civilization.
The English historian and sociologist A. Toynbee, under the influence of the ideas of his predecessors, developed his own concept of the cultural-historical process, which deals with 21 relatively closed civilizations. In this work, Toynbee singled out civilizations that are characterized by unique universal religions, specific forms of government and institutionalization, as well as original art and philosophy. (Later he singled out 36 "dead" civilizations and 5 "living" civilizations of the third generation: Western Christian, Orthodox Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Far Eastern.) Each civilization in its development went through four stages: emergence, growth, breakdown and decomposition . Toynbee tried to substantiate the empirical law of the recurrence of social development. According to his concept, the evolution of society is carried out through "imitation". If in primitive societies they imitate the elderly and ancestors (which makes these societies static), then in “civilizations” they imitate creative individuals, which ensures the dynamics of development. He notes:
Man achieves civilization not as a result of biological endowment (heredity) or the easy conditions of the geographic environment, but in response to a challenge in a situation of particular difficulty, inspiring a hitherto unprecedented effort.
Unfavorable natural and climatic conditions, invasions of neighbors and brilliant achievements of previous civilizations are considered as “challenges”. If a civilization adequately responds to the challenge of history, then it receives an impetus for further development. If this challenge turned out to be beyond her strength, then civilization breaks down, and then - its decline. The driving force of civilization, which gives impetus to the search for a response to the challenge, is its elite, the creative minority, opposed to the passive majority.
One of the important concepts, which substantiates the hypothesis of a non-linear, cyclical-wave nature of historical processes, is presented in the works of P. A. Sorokin. He developed his theory of the circulation of supersystems in the four-volume "Social and Cultural Dynamics", introducing the term "sociocultural dynamics" into scientific circulation.
P. Sorokin put the well-known principle of the cycle of historical epochs into the basis of the model of socio-cultural macrodynamics. According to his model, in the history of every civilization, three types of culture consistently and inevitably replace each other:
1) sensual, which is characterized by sensory-empirical perception, where the main values are utilitarianism and hedonism;
2) ideational type, which is characterized by an orientation towards supersensible values - God, the Absolute;
3) idealistic - a mixed type that combines the features of the first and second types.
Each of these three types has a unity of values and meanings, which is manifested in all spheres of culture. The dynamics of culture can be represented as the movement of a pendulum from one extreme point - "ideational" - to another extreme point - "sensual", and back, with the passage through the intermediate phase of "idealistic", or integral, culture.
The originality of each of the proposed types of culture is embodied in law, art, philosophy, science, religion, the structure of social relations and a certain type of personality. Their radical transformation and change are usually accompanied by crises, wars and revolutions.
The concept of "sociocultural dynamics" was widely used in the second half of the 20th century, when the problems of development, change and spread of cultural institutions, cultural conflicts and innovations, degradation, stagnation and crisis of culture, typologies of cultural development (linear-progressive, phase, cyclically staged, wave, inversion, pendulum and other models), differentiation and diffusion of culture, interaction of different cultures.
One of the most intensively developing approaches to the study of the dynamics of culture is social synergetic paradigm- a complex scientific direction, which has absorbed the achievements of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, control theory, the theory of complex systems and information. Synergetics has radically changed the understanding of the relationship between order and chaos, between entropy and information. A new vision of the world of culture emerged, representing the state of chaos as a transition from one level of order to another.
The foundation of synergetics is associated with the names of the German physicist G. Haken and the Nobel Prize winner, Belgian physicist I. R. Prigogine.
In 1977, G. Haken's book "Synergetics" was published, where the theory of self-organization in open systems and the formation of structures from chaos developed by the scientist was proposed. Prigogine used mathematical theory to describe the dynamic processes that take place in the living world. He came to the conclusion that the desire for order leads to the least tension in the system, and this manifests the fundamental principle of the life of society.
One of the central postulates in the theory is the concept of complex systems. Such systems take place in various spheres of public life - in science, economics, politics, etc., and hence in culture as a whole. Two aspects of the system are especially important: the large dimension of space and the multi-level structure. It is precisely because of their complexity that systems have such a property as instability (instability). The state of the system is considered stable if, with a small deviation from it, the system returns to this initial state, and unstable - if the deviation from it grows with time. Complex systems are also characterized by a variety of non-linear processes. Synergetics also develops a new understanding of the relationship between randomness and necessity, recognizing that both determinism and randomness exist in the world around us, so it is important to trace how necessity and randomness are consistent, complementing one another.
Any complex dynamic system (in particular, a historical event or even a series of events) in its development goes through the so-called bifurcation points, or rather polyfurcations - moments of crisis in which small accidents, fluctuations (fluctuations) can become decisive in choosing the direction of further development. In synergetics, catastrophes are also distinguished - abrupt changes in the behavior of the system in response to changes in external conditions.
Within the framework of the theory of catastrophes, the term "attractor" appeared, that is, the tendency of structuring the system, the formation of order. The tendency opposite to the attractor - the tendency of the system to chaos - manifests itself through the dissipativity (scattering) of the structure. Thus, within the framework of synergetics, the internal instability of the processes of spontaneous ordering of systems is studied, when small impacts or random fluctuations can lead to major consequences in the further self-development of systems. In complex, nonlinear systems, self-organization processes are also characteristic, which have the following features:
Development occurs through instability, at bifurcation points there is a transition to a qualitatively different state;
The new appears as unpredictable, but at the same time available in the spectrum of possible states;
The present is not only determined by the past, but is also formed from the future;
In a nonlinear environment, all future states are predetermined, but only one is actualized at the bifurcation point;
Chaos is ambivalent in its essence - destructive, but it is also creative in the transition to new states;
Development is irreversible, the "arrow of time" (a term introduced by N. Moiseev) operates.
One of the leading domestic culturologists who created the original concept of cultural dynamics within the synergistic approach was M. S. Kagan.
M. S. Kagan develops a systematic approach in his view of culture, which for him is an integral part of a wider system - being in general, existing in three main interconnected forms: nature-society-man. And culture as a product of human activity becomes the fourth, integral form of being, covering all three spheres equally.
From this it is already clear that culture includes three complex levels, which is why, notes M. S. Kagan, when comprehending such a complex phenomenon as culture, it is necessary to apply a synergistic approach, i.e. consider it as a process determined from within and due to the human desire for independent, free and purposeful activity.
Cultural dynamics, according to the philosopher, correlates with the laws that operate in physical processes, that is, the transition from one level of cultural organization to another takes place through the destruction of the established order (entropy). Then the level of entropy falls, and it is replaced by a level of a more perfect order. Thus, the history of culture goes through the stages of alternation of states of harmony and chaos.
In synergetic models, culture and society appear as non-equilibrium systems of a special type. Culture as an anti-entropy mechanism, developing, increases entropy in other systems and leads to periodic anthropogenic crises.
The modern view of culture suggests that culture is not just a system, but an open, complexly organized, self-developing system. That is, culture develops in accordance with certain general laws of self-organization of matter, which forces culture as an open system to exchange energy (information) with the environment. It follows from this that any changes in the system will be of a systemic nature, for example, it is impossible to change the economic system without changing the value attitudes in the society that creates this economy, and, accordingly, vice versa. Thus, the synergetic model of evolution reveals broad prospects for understanding and, consequently, for solving various kinds of sociocultural problems.
Cultural dynamics explores the changes that occur in a culture and a person under the influence of external and internal forces. Within the framework of the theory of culture, it is possible to carry out the following classification of sources that form and support changes in culture:
1. Dynamic processes, which in culture are distinguished by place and duration.
So, large scale cultural changes are considered time intervals of 100–1000 years (civilizational shifts), microscale– periods from 25–30 years (time of active life in the culture of one generation) to 100 years, fast-moving- from one month to several years (for example, seasonal changes in fashion, jargon of youth culture, which are not able to gain a foothold in the deep layers of cultural life).
2. Cultural innovation - cultural creativity, the emergence of new elements or their combination in culture.
The category of innovation includes discoveries and inventions that bring new knowledge about the world or new technologies for mastering this knowledge. The carriers of innovation, as a rule, are creative individuals or innovative groups that put forward new ideas, norms, methods of activity that differ from those accepted in a given society. An important role in the implementation of these ideas is played by the degree of society's readiness to accept certain discoveries. Any innovation is doomed to eclipse, rejection, if it does not meet with understanding from the society. Especially strong rejection of innovations reveal the traditions of society. Therefore, having appeared, they are doomed either to quick oblivion, or to use within narrow boundaries. Compass, gunpowder, paper, matches, porcelain - all these are inventions in which the primacy belongs to the Chinese. However, they did not lead to a radical change in the way of life, although they were used. But a small proportion of these inventions, some of which were made by Europeans on their own (porcelain production, book printing), and some borrowed, turned out to be enough to make a real revolution in the way of life of society.
Inventions and discoveries spread to other cultures in three main ways.
1. Cultural borrowings (targeted imitation). The concept of cultural borrowing indicates what and how exactly is adopted: material objects, scientific ideas, customs and traditions, values and norms of life.
One people does not borrow everything from another, but only that:
a) is close and understandable, necessary for his own culture, that is, something that the natives can appreciate and use;
b) will bring obvious or hidden benefits, raise the prestige of the people, allow you to have some advantage over other peoples;
c) meets the authentic needs of a given ethnic group, i.e., satisfies such fundamental needs that cannot be satisfied by cultural artifacts and cultural complexes at its disposal.
2. Cultural diffusion (spontaneous spread). Cultural diffusion is the mutual penetration of cultural forms, samples of material and spiritual subsystems when they come into contact, where these cultural elements are in demand, borrowed by societies that did not previously possess such forms.
Cultural contact may not leave any trace in both cultures, or it may end up with an equal and strong influence on each other, or no less strong, but one-sided influence.
The diffusion channels are migration, tourism, missionary activity, trade, war, scientific conferences, trade exhibitions and fairs, exchange of students and specialists, etc.
3. Independent discoveries. This means that the same invention was made independently of each other in different countries in approximately the same time period. Independent inventions are the discovery of the same cultural forms in different cultures as a result of the action of the same needs or objective conditions.
Among the factors influencing the nature of borrowing are the following:
The degree of intensity of contacts manifesting themselves in cultural expansion (from lat. expansion- distribution), in the process of which society fights for the spheres of influence of its national culture and its exit beyond the original limits or state borders. The constant or frequent borrowing of societies leads to the rapid assimilation of foreign elements. Thus, people living on the national outskirts or in shopping centers usually assimilate elements of other cultures faster than people living in the hinterland.
Contact conditions: the forcible imposition of culture inevitably gives rise to a reaction of rejection, resistance to the “occupation culture”.
The state and degree of differentiation of society. The process of borrowing is influenced by the degree of society's readiness to assimilate foreign innovations, which also means the presence of a social group that can accept these innovations in its way of life.
Reproduction of culture, or transmission, i.e., intergenerational transmission of culture through the socialization and inculturation of the younger generation, the development of the total socio-cultural experience, the assimilation of traditions and methods of communication, the development of the cultural heritage characteristic of a given society, which, in turn, is a procedure reproduction of this society as an integral, stable and specific human community - all this refers to the mechanisms of transmission of cultural heritage.
Thanks to cultural transmission, each subsequent generation gets the opportunity to start where the previous one left off, that is, there is a cultural accumulation of the experience of previous generations. As a result of accumulation, the formation of a cultural heritage occurs, i.e., material and spiritual culture, which is created by past generations and transmitted to the next as something valuable and revered. It preserves everything that at one stage or another was created in the spiritual culture of society, including that which was rejected for a while, but later found its place in society again.
Fundamentalism is a kind of cultural transmission. Closely associated with religious practice, it is focused on replicating cultural patterns, clearing them of the layers of time and keeping them intact. This is an extreme socio-cultural direction, which manifests itself as a reaction to the accelerated decay of traditions and values in countries where modernization encounters active resistance from the public consciousness.
The history of mankind shows that no society stands still: it either moves forward, and when the sum of the positive consequences of large-scale changes in society exceeds the sum of the negative ones, we speak of progress or freezes in place, and then we are talking about regression.
There are different types of sociocultural movement.
Reformist- leads to partial improvement in any area of life, gradual transformations do not affect the foundations of the existing social order. Reforms are purposeful, pre-planned and organized in a certain way.
Revolutionary- entails a complex change in all or most aspects of public life, affects the foundations of the existing system. This type is realized in leaps and represents the transition of society from one qualitative state to another. Along with reformist and revolutionary development, some researchers single out what is called cultural lag.“Cultural lag” is a concept introduced by W. Osborne (1922), which coincides in its semantic content with the concept of “developmental lag”. The term “cultural lag” describes a situation where some parts of a culture change faster and others slower. W. Osborne suggested that the value world of a person does not have time to adapt to too rapid changes in the material sphere. Young people are especially affected by this. Her spiritual world is not able to change as dynamically as it happens with the material sphere. Therefore, there is a gap in time between cultural and social dynamics. Technological inventions have already appeared in society, but cultural and social adaptation to them has not occurred.
Thus, a society that maintains a certain measure of sustainability and stability has more opportunities for effective assimilation of the new without devastating consequences for its development.
A. Ya. Flier, about whom we have already spoken, suggests that in the process of studying sociocultural dynamics, the factor of sociocultural destruction should also be taken into account. He defines it as a process of reducing the level of systemic-hierarchical structure, complexity and multifunctionality of the cultural complex of a community as a whole or individual subsystems of this complex, i.e., the complete or partial degradation of a given local culture as a system. In his opinion, any local culture also includes a certain layer of extra-systemic phenomena (“marginal fields” and other phenomena), although its socially integrating core is a relatively rigidly structured and hierarchized system of value orientations, forms and norms of social organization and regulation, languages and channels of sociocultural communication, complexes of cultural institutions, stratified lifestyles, ideology, morality and morality, ceremonial and ritual forms of behavior, mechanisms of socialization and inculturation of the individual, normative parameters of its social and cultural adequacy, acceptable forms of innovative and creative activity, etc.
Sociocultural destruction leads to a dysfunction of the integrity and balance of the cultural system, which leads to a decrease in the possibility of effective regulation of the social life of people and the growing marginalization of the population.
Summing up the consideration of the problems of sociocultural dynamics, which were presented only in the most general form, it should be noted that dynamic processes in culture are a multifactorial phenomenon, they are complex, which leads to the presence of pluralistic theoretical positions among their researchers. The construction of models of sociocultural dynamics depends on the scientific school and the time of their appearance, on the scientific preferences of the researcher and the cognitive task that is solved in this process. To some extent, the models are aimed at understanding socio-cultural changes, which allow you to more deeply see and understand the meaning of culture as such.
Within the framework of understanding the socio-cultural dynamics, as shown above, ideas about different types of cultures that arose and disappeared in the history of mankind developed. The problems of the historical typology of cultures are still relevant in theoretical cultural studies.
From the book Theory of Culture author author unknown15.2. Sociocultural Dynamics of Globalization Thus, in the context of the paradigm set by Robertson, globalization is understood as a series of empirically fixed changes, heterogeneous, but united by the logic of turning the world into a single sociocultural space. Decisive
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From the book New Trinkets: A Collection for the 60th Anniversary of V. E. Vatsuro author Peskov Alexey Mikhailovich From the book Man. Civilization. Society author Sorokin Pitirim AlexandrovichA. I. Reitblat Literary almanac of the 1820–1830s. as a sociocultural form Literary scholars, and indeed all lovers of Russian literature, are well aware that in its history there was a so-called “almanash period” (about a decade, starting from 1823), “when, according to
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Changes that occur in culture and man under the influence of external and internal forces. Change or development is an inherent property of culture. Development is the progressive movement of culture, the transition from one state to another. Development includes both an ascending line - progressive (from the lowest to the highest, from simple to complex), and regressive.
Time parameters. Within the framework of cultural studies, general generic, general social, group and individual aspects of the process of sociocultural changes are studied, the concept of "time" is quite flexible. Three types of scales:
Microscale (1-25 years) are used in the analysis of the processes occurring in the life of groups in individual individuals;
Medium-scale economic ups and downs (48-55 years), generational change (25-30 years)
Macro-scale (100 or more years) study of traditions, language changes, origin, decline, flourishing of a type of culture.
Models of change: cyclic (circular and wave), evolutionary, synergetic.
Wave patterns sociocultural dynamics. The most significant material has been accumulated in the economy. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, “commercial and industrial cycles” were identified, fixing fluctuations in the economy within 7-11 years, and periodic crises in economic life. K. Marx already noted that along with these superficial crises, there are fluctuations with a more significant period.
Modern ideas about economic waves are based on the theory of the Russian thinker Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratiev(1892 - 1938). The analysis of economic changes correlated with political and social factors allowed him to develop the theory of long economic waves with a period of 48-55 years.
The cyclic dynamics of the economic system includes four phases: increase, change, decrease and transition.
American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin(1889-1968) proposed a theory of undulating sociocultural dynamics. Cultures are driven by forces inherent in themselves, simply because that is their nature, Sorokin believes. The development of the inherent forces in the basic types (ideational and sensual) occurs to the limit, then the rollback of the “wave” begins.
The sociodynamic model of P. Sorokin is a consistent change of certain types of cultures. Three phases of a single cycle through which all the main areas of the sociocultural system pass (architecture, sculpture, painting; music, theater, literature; religion, philosophy, science, morality, law, politics; family and marriage relations, worldview, public administration, etc.). d.). Three stages, after the completion of which, the cycle resumes: the ideational stage, in which cognitive processes predominate; idealistic stage, leading ideology; sensory stage with the dominance of sensory experience.
At the first stage, the development of the world takes place, various (subject, linguistic, cognitive, technological, normative) forms are created that allow creating organizational structures. At the second stage, these forms are fixed as cultural norms that impose certain restrictions on human activity. This is how a style in art, a code of laws, a religious doctrine and a scientific paradigm is formed. At the third stage, the established and established framework of sociocultural norms becomes too narrow for the acquired experience, which prompts one to turn again to sensory experience to justify one's actions.
evolutionary models socio-cultural dynamics In the 19th century, the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin - man is a product of long-term biological evolution, a link in the chain. Evolutionism for a long time becomes the leading direction of socio-humanitarian thought, based on the unity of the laws of the history of nature and the history of man.
Evolutionism understands culture as the process of adapting people to the natural environment.
According to single line concepts of E. Tylor, L. Morgan, J. Fraser and others, in the process of evolution of man and his culture, three universal successive periods are distinguished: savagery, barbarism and civilization. Development follows the path of improvement of the human race through the increasingly complex organization of society and man.
Evolutionary ideas were improved in Marxism, where on the basis of the synthesis of Morgan's ideas and the German philosophy of Hegel, who revealed the mechanism and sources of dialectical development (the emergence, struggle and overcoming of opposites), the dialectical materialist understanding of history is substantiated. The progressive development of mankind, according to K. Marx and F. Engels, is based on the dialectic of productive forces and production relations. In its progressive development, humanity goes through the stages of primitive, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist socio-economic formations, striving to embody the ideals of communism. Progress is seen as a zigzag, uneven, antagonistic development. The primacy of the economic principle in the movement of culture. Economic determinism.
Ideas of synergetics. The need to study dynamic processes in various systems, including culture, has given rise to a new scientific direction - "synergy". Its founders were a Belgian physicist of Russian origin, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1977) Ilya Romanovich Prigogine and German physicist G. Haken.
According to synergetic ideas, culture appears to us as a non-equilibrium, open, non-linear self-organizing system. openness system means the presence in it of sources (inputs) and sinks (outputs), the exchange of matter and energy with the environment. Moreover, sinks and sources take place at each point of a self-organizing system.
The openness of a system is a necessary but not sufficient condition for its self-organization: not every open system is self-organized and builds a structure. This requires the presence of two opposite principles. The beginning, creating structures, increasing heterogeneity (order), and the beginning, blurring, dispersing heterogeneity (dissipative beginning, chaos). The role of chaos is similar to the role of a sculptor who cuts off everything unnecessary and superfluous from a stone block (system).
The struggle of these two principles constitutes the internal mechanism for the formation, restructuring, completion, unification and disintegration of complex systems. Chaos is a two-faced Janus: destroying, he creates. The system is non-equilibrium, unstable, unstable.
The non-linearity of the system means the multiplicity of ways of its evolution. At least two or more possible directions of development. bifurcation point. I.R. Prigogine emphasizes that randomness, individual small fluctuations (random deviations) can play a very significant and even decisive role in the fate of the system near these bifurcation points. Nonlinearity is the fundamental conceptual knot of the new thinking paradigm.
Nonlinearity allows for ultra-fast development of processes at certain stages ("miracle").
With this understanding of dynamic processes, it becomes clear that such complexly organized systems as culture cannot be imposed on the paths of their development. It is obvious that the traditional approach to management: the impact - the result - is wrong, and even harmful. The problem of management in the light of synergetics comes down to the need to understand how to contribute to their own development trends.
BASIC CONCEPTS AND IDEAS IN CULTURE
The object of study of this article is the main theorizing of the relationship between human nature, society and culture, available in philosophical anthropology and social thought. The subject is the concept of socio-cultural dynamics in its key meanings and constituent "ingredients".
The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the use of this concept in three general senses: holistic, individualistic and transcendental. Holistic use sets the metaphysical priority of the Whole. The individualist interpretation expresses the protest moods of the individual. In the third case, sociocultural dynamics is understood as the interaction of profane and sacred factors in history.
Particular attention is paid to substantiating the thesis that the holistic understanding of sociocultural dynamics more adequately expresses anthropological realities. The following means of cultural-philosophical analysis were used: the principle of historicism, the principle of development, generalization, systematization, comparative and typological methods. The main conclusions of the study are: a content-semantic analysis of the main components of the concept of "sociocultural dynamics", the definition of its heuristic merits in humanitarian studies.
The author's special contribution to the study of the topic can be called the identification of the key meanings attached to the use of this category. The novelty of the study lies in the argumentation of the thesis that such key meanings govern the possible interpretations of this category and the logic of its application.
Keywords: sociocultural dynamics, holism, individualism, transcendental approach, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, sociocultural whole, goals of culture, factors, meanings.
The object of research of the article is the main theorizations of the relationship between human nature, society and culture which exist in philosophical anthropology and social thought. The subject of the research is the concept of social and cultural dynamics in its basic meanings and components.
The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the use of this concept in three general ways: holistic, individualistic and transcendental. Holistic metaphysical use sets the priority of the Whole. Individualist interpretation expresses the mood of protest of the individual. In the third case, the socio-cultural dynamics is understood as the interaction of profane and sacred factors in history. Special attention is given to substantiation of the thesis that the holistic understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics more adequately expresses anthropological realities.
The author uses the following tools of cultural-philosophical analysis: the principle of historicism, the principle of development, compilation, systematization, comparative and typological methods. The main conclusions of the study are: content-semantic analysis of the main components of the concept of "socio-cultural dynamics", the definition of its heuristic merits in humanitarian research.
The special contribution of the author to the study is revealing the key meanings when using this category. The novelty of the research is defined in terms of proof that such core meanings manage possible interpretations of this category and the logic of its use.
keywords: socio-cultural dynamics, holism, individualism, transcendental approach, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, socio-cultural whole, purposes of culture, factors, meanings.
Many are wondering about the meaning of their individual presence, their place and purpose in the order of existence. This is philosophically legitimate and encouraged by centuries of tradition. Indeed, whatever conclusions the reflector draws will be favorably received - precisely as one of the potentially innumerable individual legends of existence. However, there is a slightly different attitude towards the question of the meaning of the existence of humanity, our species, which is often recognized as immodest and ambitious: who gives you the right to talk about everyone - in fact, “impute” our evolutionary, historical goals, aspirations and implementation to all of us? And do they exist at all?
At the same time, despite the existence of such "politically incorrect" or "dilapidated metaphysics" in the discussion of such abstract issues, they are updated again and again - in the new socio-cultural circumstances of our life. The problem that initiated the proposed article arose at the crossroads of three main approaches that have developed in the history of views on the purpose of our species existence: holistic, individualistic and transcendental. The holistic approach sets the meaning of the metaphysical priority of the Whole
in understanding human destiny. The individualistic interpretation expresses the protest moods of a self-conscious personality in relation to its existential destiny. In the third case, history is understood as the interaction of profane and sacred factors.
The universal, in which the controversy of these approaches is clearly traced, is the subject of our study. The concept of sociocultural dynamics is one of the limiting ones in a number of social sciences and humanities, and therefore has a rather abstract and vague content (there is a “very wide range of interpretations of the sociocultural and the fuzziness of the theoretical and methodological positions of many authors” [Popkov, Kostyuk 2013: 70– 71] Our task is to clarify:
– its initial components;
– heuristic scale;
– its fundamental meanings.
Through the analysis and discussion of these categorical markers, we will be able to identify and compare the advantages / disadvantages of the existing fundamental approaches, and argue our theoretical preferences. The addressing of the article is quite broad - due to the obvious metaphysical nature of the issues discussed in it - and can be useful as food for thought for both philosophers and social scientists.
The definition under study has two components: “sociocultural” and “dynamics”. Let us consider both their primary humanitarian meanings and the newly formed ones.
First, let's ask ourselves the question: why are two terms - "social" and "cultural" - combined into one? There seem to be two theoretical unifying motives.
First: in principle, "society" and "culture" are one and the same: they exist in human activity, through it and in this sense are opposed to the "natural". The association gives an integral description of the unity of the functional-technical (in the broadest sense) and spiritual-creative principles of mankind.
Second: social and cultural are one and the same, but their unification is a combination of other meaningful moments: a) common, “social” as an “anthropological” principle; b) more specific, "special social", formed under the influence of the specifics of the region, climate, ethnic group - cultural. The same combination is possible, but with the attribution of a more general meaning not to social, but to cultural.
One way or another, but the term "sociocultural" as a result of a semantic combination does indeed give some heuristic increments. What are they? Firstly, here we can state the legitimization of integration processes in humanitarian studies using the example of such conceptual neoplasms. People of different humanitarian specialties thereby overcome their guild isolation, get used to the situation of openness. Secondly, the use of the term corresponds to the need for universalization in the humanities. A culturologist, historian, sociologist, philosopher use this term when they want to designate universal determination, in system
which the phenomenon under study turns out to be at the crossroads of cross-cutting, general, civilizational, epochal patterns and equally general regional, cultural patterns. Thirdly, the use of the term makes it possible to achieve a synchronous combination in studies of the perspective of a linear, cross-cutting, unifying anthropological vision and, at the same time, preserving the meanings of social and cultural pluralism [Temnitsky 2007].
The term "dynamics" (Greek - pertaining to strength, strong) is borrowed from the natural-scientific conceptual inventory, where it characterizes the state of movement, the course of development, the change in a phenomenon under the influence of factors acting on it [Khrapov 2010]. The word "dynamics" gives the whole combination a self-sufficing, self-explanatory and objectivist character. In this regard, it is interesting to compare the term "sociocultural dynamics" with Spinoza's term "substance". The addition of "dynamics" gives "society" and "culture" a new, Spinoza-like quality of "being the cause of oneself." it case sui, but devoid of its metaphysical-abstract aura, placed on the ground of causality, multifactoriality and natural science. The combination of a term that is natural-science in its semantic basis, revealing a complex, medium-vector and objective way of being of the phenomenon being characterized (dynamics) with a system-synthetic designation of the context of the phenomenon (socio-cultural), provides serious methodological benefits [Socio-cultural ... 2011].
The use of this concept can be viewed as a conceptualization of the further development of a holistic vision of a person and his communities, where individual problems and phenomena are fragments of the global mosaic. It also dynamizes the entire humanitarian worldview - the world is understood not as a set of things, but as a set of interactions between centers of autonomous forces. The world-process and its integral fragments - society and culture - are subject to force causality.
Now let's try to outline the philosophical meanings associated with this concept. What, in fact, does the concept of "sociocultural dynamics" mean, taken in its possible content limits? If it denotes the disposition of a certain, activist-powerful, multiple-vector understanding of the specifics of the existence of human communities, then what can be its characteristic meanings? For example, what factors determine the functional aspect of the existence of a socio-cultural whole, and what determine the progressive course of its development? And what are the criteria for giving some factors the meanings of functioning, while others - the meanings of goals, final causes? The answer to the last question sets, in fact, the possible limits of the entire disposition of "sociocultural dynamics", and hence the answers to the previous questions.
Indeed, what should be taken as the main thing, and what - for the secondary? Which factors in the socio-cultural dynamics will be "functional" and which will be "progressive"? And "where" do you go? Questions like these lead us to metaphysical the level of philosophical anthropology, since the answers to them mean postulating, the priority choice of one or another axiomatic statement from the group of equally general and equally justified judgments.
What is the meaning of sociocultural dynamics and what is it [Sorokin 2000]? The history of culture and philosophy suggests three possible radical answers based on a different understanding of the essence and purpose of a person:
- the socio-cultural whole, called humanity, is a specific reality of the group of living beings dominating the planet, whose main semantic profiles express the interests of self-maintenance of this community;
- the socio-cultural whole is just a term that hides and ennobles the dominance of zooanthropological principles in humanity and the suppression of the principle of the individual-spiritual, "super-human", which is the true possible meaning;
- the socio-cultural whole is an expression of the true, esoteric reality of transcendent meaning - the realization in human evolution of a certain cosmic law, Divine Providence, the beginning of the supra-individual and superhuman.
First a semantic combination that affirms the metaphysical priority of the Whole, its self-sufficiency, an increase in public happiness, the sum of benefits for the masses, can be found at the basis of many seemingly different concepts: Plato and J. Bentham, G. W. F. Hegel and K. Marx . A separate individual here is a euphemism for nothingness and transience.
This has its own rationale. Indeed, we can be aware that we are only a small curl of foam on the crest of a human wave, coming from the indistinguishability of the past and going into the immensity of the future. What factors will this metaphysical setting declare as "progressive" for sociocultural dynamics? Objective, medium-vector consequences that straighten the whirlwinds of individual and group beliefs into a linear progressive sequence of development: economics, morality, improvement of the state and its institutions, virility of human thinking, science and technology – to improve the situation of mankind as a whole [Yakovets 2001].
Second the semantic combination, which is an expression of the protest mood of an individualistically minded consciousness, sets the priority of its self-affirmation - contrary to external socio-cultural objectivism. The highest possible meaning is seen
in opposition, rebellion of self-realization. Breakthrough, negation and cultivation of a secondary, individual spiritual reality are common in the past, present and future acts of creativity of the thinking minority. In fact, it is thanks to them that previously extremely slow and ever more accelerating shifts in the organically inert functioning of the sociocultural whole take place. Accordingly, the “progressive” factors here include those areas of human life where new ideas are produced: be it religion, morality, art, philosophy, ideology, science, military affairs, politics or economics.
Progression from this point of view means every time a unique and incomparable flowering of the human spirit:
in various specific ethnic and regional forms, with peculiar accents in one area or another. Progression here is just a step, but not in a definitely linear perspective. Indeed, "inventions": the moral standard of civilization or the idea of "due"; transcendental world or formal logic; monotheism or fire; Pythagorean theorems or radioactivity - it is impossible to compare and calibrate in terms of significance or some milestones. Therefore, the socio-cultural dynamics does not have a progressive orientation, although in each time interval “functional” areas are quite distinguishable, in which the production of new ideas was not observed, and “progressive”, where they were present. The “goals” of the socio-cultural dynamics here will be the individual goals of the self-affirming creative consciousness projected onto the level of society and culture: self-realization, expansion in the existent, subjugation of the environment or harmony with it. Will it be the erection of beautiful "idealistic castles" in the individual imagination or practical "know-how" - what's the difference? The main thing -
in the cultural celebration of the creativity of bright individuals, which in this position pushes the functioning of the masses into the background [Popkov, Tyugashev 2012].
Third the semantic combination underlies many religious and philosophical projects, the authors of which sincerely believe that their intuitions grasp some innermost secret of the universe. Some consider themselves prophets, mediators between people and the supernatural or cosmic beginning. Sociocultural dynamics here will be interpreted as the interaction of profane and sacred factors. Religious organizations, movements, God-inspired personalities, signs, theophany in various areas of human activity can be declared priority incarnations of supernatural-substantial or personal principles. What is it specifically: irrational primitive freedom (N. Berdyaev), world Will (A. Schopenhauer); the completely rational Logos of the Stoics or the absolute idea of G. W. F. Hegel; traditional-confessional monotheistic lords of existence - it is unimportant. Important here is the excitement and the suggestion of an idealistically obsessed mind directed at others, subjugating an inert, lazy, enchanting mass. Golden dreams are always valuable. They are important for both the possessed and the enchanted. Human life, sociocultural dynamics always acquire here the seriousness, significance and even universal meaning that they lack so much.
Sociocultural dynamics is considered here from the point of view of sacredly marked space and time. Moreover, these markings are found outside the profane present and are placed either in the past or in the future. This is either sacred history or the future (the apocalypse, God-manhood, the Omega point, etc.). Accordingly, religious thinkers impose their confessional scale on the sociocultural dynamics or postulate the postulates of a new faith [Sorokin 1992].
Thus, we see a clear dependence of diverse understandings of sociocultural dynamics on some initial fundamental assumptions that have a value-worldview character. Indeed, from what we recognize, whether we are aware of it or not, meaning sociocultural dynamics, the criterion of analysis of its internal differences also depends. Of course, if we want more than just a stating-positivist approach to its study, when we inevitably move from fixing what “is”, to “how”, “why”, “for what” it is.
Meanings govern concepts and investigations, and not vice versa, as we are accustomed to. The meanings themselves form the ideal flesh of human existence, internal proportions, proportions, goal-setting of human activity: practical-everyday and mental-mental. “Socio-cultural dynamics” is one of the most general abstractions denoting the system-activity, “vector” being of human communities. Therefore, its content is also controlled by general or metaphysical meanings [Sociocultural… 1997].
Of course, if we do not confine ourselves to historical-semantic or historical-philosophical analysis. As long as we fix and describe, metaphysical analysis is inappropriate and unnecessary, it is foreign. But if we imperceptibly begin to move on to the definition significance, then we immediately fall into the sphere of influence of metaphysical meanings as old as the world that govern our assessments and criteria. And here it is necessary to reflect on why and how certain general semantic combinations are chosen for the role of the conceptual coordinate system, in our case three: holistic, individualistic and transcendental.
In our opinion, the first of them, the holistic understanding of sociocultural dynamics, more adequately expresses anthropological realities [Lapin 2005]. No matter how attractive the individualistic and transcendental interpretations of the meaning of sociocultural dynamics are, they are more an expression of the mindset and desires of an individual consciousness striving to substantiate its own significance and longing for immortality.
Holism is an intention that is realized in many philosophical, religious teachings, and scientific concepts. Probably, it is a kind of a priori psychological anticipation, intuition, an archetype, representing in each individual consciousness a certain "imperative" of the existence of the genus. It is, as it were, a “sense-knowledge” of a particle of the Whole, the meanings of which for the anthropological “atom” are both close and distant at the same time.
What determines objectivity, facelessness, life-affirmation - the main meanings, if any, of the socio-cultural whole? It seems that such a semantic originality of sociocultural dynamics is given by three main anthropological features:
- "atomic" multiplicity of the composition of mankind and the potential self-sufficiency of each unit;
- the gender and age split of mankind - into groups that are diverse in terms of the characteristics of their activity;
- short-term life of each human generation, reporting chronic incompleteness, infantilism to the whole Whole.
It is these features that determine the bizarre combination in the sociocultural dynamics of the terrifying monotony of the Great Repeat and, at the same time, the “cunning of the world mind”, when events often occur that no one expected or foresaw [Lapin 2000].
Probably, we should be more modest and admit that in the current anthropological situation, there are no special, lofty meanings for the existence of a socio-cultural whole, with the exception of ascribing such by idealistic people. They extrapolate their mentality to the universal or even to the universal state.
If we are not fascinated by these, no doubt, beautiful and sublime, but born only in a separate consciousness, goal-setting, then the human Whole lives mainly in the biological regime of expanded reproduction,
and vital values are always profile. This is largely due to the purely genus-biological specificity of both an individual human organism and individual populations (ethnic groups). Each person goes through successive age-related biological periods, in which half of the life span is devoted to mastering the skills of “being an effective part, function” of the Whole (socialization, profession, career) and searching for a sexual partner for self-duplication, replacing the “self-part” with the same one. For the majority, these efforts, which should still be recognized as at least "biosocial", in fact, determine the main spectrum in their life pattern. These efforts draw out, dry up. Further, as a rule, the curve of the life schedule freezes at the same level reached with a steady trend
to decline, apathy and loss of purpose. There are, of course, other people who are capable of developing in themselves other, idealistic motivations and, in accordance with them, self-equip themselves differently from those around them. They supply idealistic goals and life strategies to the spiritual market.
The real prosaic dominance of reproductive meanings in sociocultural dynamics is also due to the fact that we are short-lived creatures who just have time to multiply and earn a livelihood for ourselves and our children, just as our children rush into the Great Repetition with passion, thereby ensuring eternity. and inescapability of genus-biological values. The genus is a non-stop biological conveyor of self-reproduction: to live in order to live. Where, to what, for what purpose are we moving, through thousands of years and billions of bodies? As a matter of fact,
to an increase in its biomass and the comfort of the existence of the largest possible number of its units.
Sociocultural dynamics turns out to be rather a biosocial or specifically biological form of existence of a species. Homo sapiens. Of course, there is also art, science, religion, philosophy - really non-biological, actually sapient higher forms of existence. But they always make up precisely the creative minority, a kind of “metaphysical humanity” according to the criteria of the “axial time” [Yaspers 1991].
Otherwise, most areas of social activity, as well as the needs satisfied with their help, are not much different from the biological needs of any other subhuman population of living beings: for food, shelter-dwelling, protection of the territory of residence, providing favorable conditions for reproduction, satisfaction of other physiological needs and etc. All these needs, in contrast to prosaic animals, whose carriers cannot give them decency, receive a symbolic doubling in culture and, accordingly, their own independent ideal life. Language "dresses" not only thoughts, but also our prosaic features and needs. She didn’t blow her nose, as one of Gogol’s heroines used to say, but eased her nose with a handkerchief. In the same way, the symbolization of our genus-biological nature turns it, as it were, into a different quality: basically “social”, with the bashful addition of partly “biological”.
Man is a being that produces meanings in them, lives through them. And although it does the same thing as an animal, it perceives these actions meaningfully, through thought, meaning. And this ego cogito, ergo sum creates a strong impression, especially among people who love to think, that our being - both individual and, by extrapolation, species - is radically different from all other living existence.
According to the parameter of consciousness, this is undoubtedly true, in fact, this is our distinguishing feature, but a purely individual feature, at the level of an individual. Genus, humanity exists on its own, it does not have a universal ego. We distinguish an individual person from other living beings on the planet on the basis of reason. However, this cannot be done in relation to the superpopulation of people on the planet due to the absence of the substance of the "general human mind" and "self-consciousness". Moreover, "It" is unintelligent. Therefore, humanity as a super-organismic whole cannot yet be a biological entity as a whole, and socio-cultural dynamics is of a similar nature. Culture, on the other hand, is the ordering and comprehension of the environment and oneself by individual consciousnesses, which together create a secondary, symbolic reality, which, like the veil of Maya, changes the perception of the genus-biological world. Perhaps this is the main function of culture.
The objectivity, unpredictability of the socio-cultural dynamics of the Whole, its superhuman nature (fixed in designations that clearly bear the stamp of reverent horror: Leviathan, Moloch, etc.) are derived from the atomic, or rather, “monadic” plurality of humanity: individuals, groups, subcultures, etc.
G. Leibniz's model of the universe is, it seems, a metaphysical tracing-paper from the anthropological state of affairs: the social world is a set of self-sufficient "monad-worlds", or souls of people. But there is no Supreme Monad, or universal human consciousness (Ego), which makes the socio-cultural Whole an unreasonable, natural-biological formation in which there is no “pre-established harmony”. What will happen cannot be known in principle, precisely because sociocultural dynamics is an unpredictable, generally chaotic state of interaction of many forces acting independently. The average vectors of interaction, different from the "economy" - species life support, are declared by us as "social laws" precisely because of our short duration and speed of generational change.
And there is no hidden logic of socio-cultural dynamics, just as there is no universal or world mind. Socio-cultural dynamics, as well as world history, are unreasonable. Unreasonable from the point of view of sustained idealistic goal-setting and goal realization, because there is no its subject-substance. There is only what can be called natural rationality - the tasks of self-preservation and expansion of the species. The Stoics called this "natural reason": nature is originally dear to itself. This is a spontaneous, resulting vector proportionality (rationality), a spontaneously formed life order. And while no newly formed in the twentieth century. supranational organizations (League of Nations, UN) and global information systems (Internet) cannot even remotely resemble a general planetary mind. Thank God that we somehow saved ourselves from total self-destruction - what kind of mind is there, at best, the noosphere.
So, we have found out the main content "ingredients" of the concept of "sociocultural dynamics", its heuristic merits in humanitarian research. We defended the thesis that intentional meanings govern the content of concepts, their possible interpretations, which, being fundamental, in turn create the very content fabric and logic of research. One can hardly underestimate the methodological importance of philosophical reflection on such foundations of humanitarian research.
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