Question number 1 The concept and main features of social institutions.
Social institutions (from Latin institutum - establishment, institution) are historically established stable forms of organization joint activities people performing socially significant functions. The term social institution is used in a wide variety of meanings: they talk about the institution of the family, the institution of education, the institution of the army, the institution of religion, etc. In all these cases, we mean relatively stable types and forms. social activities, ties and relationships through which social life is organized, the stability of ties and relationships is ensured.
The main purpose of social institutions is to ensure the satisfaction of the most important vital needs. Thus, the institution of the family satisfies the need for the reproduction of the human race and the upbringing of children, regulates relations between the sexes, generations, and so on. The need for security and social order is provided by political institutions, the most important of which is the institution of the state. The need for obtaining means of subsistence and distribution of values is provided by economic institutions. The need for the transfer of knowledge, the socialization of the younger generation, and the training of personnel are provided by educational institutions. The need for solving spiritual and, above all, meaningful problems is provided by the institution of religion.
Social institutions can be characterized from two sides: from the point of view of external, formal structure and from the point of view of internal, meaningful activity. From its outer side, a social institution is a set of persons and institutions that have certain material resources and perform a specific social function. According to its internal content, a social institution is a set of certain standardized patterns of behavior. Thus, a social institution is a mechanism that ensures the sustainability and stability of society, its normal reproduction and development.
M. Weber singled out two characteristic features of social institutions:
1. A social institution is a set of people in which they are enrolled on the basis of objective data - profession, level of education, availability of certain knowledge, skills, etc.
2. The presence in such an association of rational attitudes, rules, norms, which must be followed by all subjects that are part of this social institution.
As a result, a social institution can be defined as a highly organized system of social relations and interactions, characterized by a stable social structure, the integration of all elements into a single whole, the diversity and dynamism of functions, and the presence of certain standards of behavior.
A social institution in the process of its functioning reduces the diverse actions and actions of people into certain types of activities and social relations. Institutions are characterized by a clear distinction social statuses and roles, powers and responsibilities of each of the subjects of interaction, consistency, regulation of these actions and control over their execution. This ensures the predictability of people's behavior, the stability of social ties and the very social structure of society. The social institution acts as the leading element of the social structure of society. It integrates and coordinates many individual and group actions, streamlines social relations in certain areas of public life. Thus, political institutions carry out the socio-political integration of social groups and communities within the framework of the social system of society, cultural institutions perform the functions regulation behavior of people based on a system of values and ideals.
Social institutions are able to fulfill their purpose through streamlining, standardization and formalization. social activities, links and relationships. This process of ordering, standardization and formalization is called institutionalization. Institutionalization is nothing but the process of forming a social institution.
The process of institutionalization includes a number of points.
A prerequisite for the emergence of social institutions is the emergence of a need, the satisfaction of which requires joint organized action, as well as the conditions that ensure this satisfaction.
Another prerequisite for the process of institutionalization is the formation of common goals of a particular community. Man, as you know, is a social being, and people try to realize their needs by acting together. An important point in the process of institutionalization is the emergence of values, social norms and rules of conduct in the course of spontaneous interaction, carried out by trial and error.
A necessary step towards institutionalization is the consolidation of these patterns of behavior as binding norms, first on the basis of public opinion, and then sanctioned by formal authorities. On this basis, a system of sanctions is being developed.
Thus, institutionalization, first of all, is a process of defining and fixing social values, norms, patterns of behavior, statuses and roles, bringing them into a system that is able to act in the direction of meeting certain vital needs.
And the last important element of institutionalization is the organizational design of a social institution. Outwardly, a social institution is a collection of individuals, institutions, equipped with certain material resources and performing a certain social function.
Based on the foregoing, the following definition of a social institution can be given. Social institutions are organized associations of people who perform certain socially significant functions, which ensure the joint achievement of goals based on the roles performed, set by social values, norms and patterns of behavior.
Signs of social community
Generality of needs.
Types of social communities:
Class communities and layers.
Historical forms of community.
corporate communities.
AT the basis of the first
| sign | population | Contact | Membership | Structure | Connections in the process of work | Examples |
| Malaya | Dozens of people | real behavioral | Direct labor | |||
| Medium | Hundreds of people | functional | ||||
| Big | Thousands and millions of people | Lack of contact |
Second classification Third classification
Number of children in the family
small families - 1-2 children (not enough for natural growth)
Medium-sized families - 3-4 children (enough for small-scale reproduction, as well as for the emergence of intra-group dynamics)
large families - 5 or more children (much more than it is necessary to replace generations)
In a comprehensive study of the family structure, they are considered in a complex combination. From a demographic point of view, there are several types of families and their organization.
Depending on the form of marriage:
1. monogamous family - consisting of two partners
2. polygamous family - one of the spouses has several marriage partners
Polygyny - the simultaneous state of a man married to several women. Moreover, marriage is concluded by a man with each of the women separately. For example, in Sharia there is a limit on the number of wives - no more than four
Polyandry - the simultaneous state of a woman married to several men. It is rare, for example, among the peoples of Tibet, the Hawaiian Islands.
Depending on the gender of the spouses:
same-sex family - two men or two women jointly raising adopted children, artificially conceived or children from previous (heterosexual) contacts.
Diverse family
Depending on the number of children:
a childless or infertile family;
one-child family
small family;
The average family
· the large family.
Depending on composition:
· simple or nuclear family - consists of one generation represented by parents (parent) with or without children. The nuclear family in modern society has become the most widespread. She may be:
elementary - a family of three members: husband, wife and child. Such a family can be, in turn:
complete - includes both parents and at least one child
incomplete - a family of only one parent with children, or a family consisting of only parents without children
Composite - a complete nuclear family in which several children are brought up. A composite nuclear family, where there are several children, should be considered as a conjunction of several elementary
complex family or patriarchal family - a large family of several generations. It may include grandparents, brothers and their wives, sisters and their husbands, nephews and nieces.
Depending on the place of the person in the family:
parental - this is the family in which a person is born
reproductive - a family that a person creates himself
Depending on the residence of the family:
matrilocal - a young family living with the wife's parents,
patrilocal - a family living together with the husband's parents;
neolocal - the family moves to a dwelling remote from the place of residence of the parents.
Family Functions:1. Reproductive function. One of the main tasks of any society is the reproduction of new generations of its members. At the same time, it is important that children are physically and mentally healthy and subsequently have the ability to learn and socialize. At the same time, an important condition for the existence of society is the regulation of the birth rate, the avoidance of demographic declines or explosions.
2. The function of socialization. Despite the large number of institutions involved in the socialization of the individual, the family occupies a central place in this process. This is primarily due to the fact that it is in the family that the primary socialization of the individual is carried out, the foundations of his formation as a personality are laid. The family for the child is the primary group, it is from it that the development of the personality begins.
3. The function of emotional satisfaction. Psychiatrists believe that the main cause of emotional and behavioral difficulties in communication and even physical illness is the lack of love, warmth in the primary group, and above all in the family. A huge amount of data indicates that serious crimes and other negative deviations occur much more often among those who were deprived of care in the family in childhood, that children brought up in orphanages without the love of mother and father are much more susceptible to diseases, mental disorders, increased mortality, etc. It has been proved that people's need for close confidential communication, emotional expression of feelings to close people is a vital element of existence.
4. Status function . Each person brought up in a family receives as a heritage some statuses close to the status of members of his family. This primarily applies to such important statuses for the individual as nationality, place in urban or rural culture, etc. In class societies, the family's belonging to a certain social stratum provides the child with the opportunities and rewards characteristic of this stratum, and in most cases determine his future life. Class status changes due to human efforts and favorable circumstances.
5. Protective function. In all societies, the institution of the family provides, to varying degrees, the physical, economic, and psychological protection of its members. In most cases, guilt or shame for a person is shared by all family members. They can also protect him.
6. Economic function. The maintenance of a common household by family members, when they all work, contributes to the formation of strong economic ties between them. The norms of family life include the obligatory help and support of each family member in case he has economic difficulties.
B.52 Personality socialization.
Socialization- development of a person throughout his life in interaction with environment in the process of assimilation and reproduction of social norms and values, as well as self-development and self-realization in the society to which he belongs. Socialization occurs in conditions of spontaneous interaction of a person with the environment. This process is directed by society, the state through the influence on certain age, social, professional groups of people. In addition, management and influence on the part of the state is carried out through targeted and socially controlled education (family, religious, social). These components have both private and significant differences throughout a person's life at various stages or stages of socialization.
Socialization performs in society three main tasks: 1) Integrates the individual into society, as well as into various types
social communities through their assimilation of elements of culture, norms and
values;
2) promotes the interaction of people due to their acceptance
social roles;
3) preserves society, produces and transmits the culture of generations
through persuasion and showing appropriate patterns of behavior.
According to Ch. Cooley, the person goes through the following stages of socialization:
1) imitation - children copying the behavior of adults;
2) play - children's behavior as the performance of a role with meaning;
3) group games - a role as expected behavior from it. In the process
socialization distinguish between its primary and secondary forms.
Primary(external) socialization means the adaptation of the individual to the role functions and social norms that take shape in various social institutions of society at various levels of human life. This happens through the awareness of one's belonging to this community. The agents here are family, school, peers or subcultures and compensators leading to desocialization.
Secondary socialization - means the process of including social roles in the inner world of a person. As a result, a system of internal regulators of the individual's behavior is formed, which ensures that the individual's behavior corresponds (or counteracts) to the patterns and attitudes set by the social system. This represents life experience, the ability to evaluate norms, while at the level of identification they were basically only assimilated.
The most important factors personality socialization phenomenon finding an individual in a group and self-realization through it, as well as the entry of an individual into more complex structures of society.
B. 54 Education as a social institution.
Education The formal process by which a society transfers values, skills and knowledge from one person or group to another. As its main elements, educational institutions can be distinguished as social organizations, social communities (teachers and students), the educational process as a type of socio-cultural activity.
social institution- it is an organized system of relations and social norms that combines significant social values and procedures that meet the basic needs of society. Any functional institution arises and functions, fulfilling this or that social need.
Each social institution has how specific features, as well as general signs with other institutions.
The features of the institute of education are:
1. attitudes and patterns of behavior - love of knowledge, attendance
2. symbolic cultural signs - school emblem, school songs
3. utilitarian cultural traits - classrooms, libraries, stadiums
4. oral and written code - student rules
5. ideology - academic freedom, progressive education, equality in education
Main types of education: Education system structured according to other principles, it includes a number of links: system of preschool education, general education school, vocational education, secondary specialized education, higher education, postgraduate education, advanced training and retraining system, hobby education .
Signs of social community
similarity of living conditions.
Generality of needs.
Availability of joint activities
Formation of own culture.
Social identification of community members, their very inclusion in this community
Social communities are distinguished by an unusual variety of specific forms and types. They may vary:
Quantitative composition: from a few individuals to numerous masses;
by duration of existence: from minutes and hours (for example, train passengers, theater audience) to centuries and millennia (for example, ethnic groups)
· according to the degree of connection between individuals: from relatively stable associations to very amorphous, random formations (for example, a queue, a crowd, an audience of listeners, fans of football teams), which are called quasi-groups or social aggregations. They are characterized by the fragility of relationships between contacting people.
Social communities are divided into stable (for example, a nation) and short-term (for example, passengers on a bus). Types of social communities:
Class communities and layers.
Historical forms of community.
Socio-demographic communities.
corporate communities.
Ethnic and territorial communities.
Communities that have developed depending on the interests of individuals.
Classifications of social groups:
AT the basis of the first classification is based on such a criterion (attribute) as the number, i.e. the number of people who are members of the group. Accordingly, there are three types of groups:
1) small group - a small community of people who are in direct personal contact and interaction with each other;
2) middle group- a relatively large community of ideas that are in indirect functional interaction.
3) a large group - a large community of people who are in social and structural dependence on each other.
| sign | population | Contact | Membership | Structure | Connections in the process of work | Examples |
| Malaya | Dozens of people | Personal: getting to know each other on a personal level | real behavioral | Developed internal informal | Direct labor | A team of workers, a classroom, a group of students, employees of the department |
| Medium | Hundreds of people | Status-role: acquaintance at the status level | functional | Legally formalized (lack of a developed informal structure) | Labor, mediated by the official structure of the organization | Organization of all employees of an enterprise, university, firm |
| Big | Thousands and millions of people | Lack of contact | Conditional socio-structural | Lack of internal structure | Labor, mediated by the social structure of society | Ethnic community, socio-demographic group, professional community, political party |
Second classification associated with such a criterion as the time of existence of the group. There are short-term and long-term groups. Small, medium and large groups can be both short-term and long-term. For example: an ethnic community is always a long-term group, and political parties can exist for centuries, or they can very quickly leave the historical stage. Such a small group, such as, for example, a team of workers, can be either short-term: people unite to perform one production task and, having completed it, part, or long-term - people work all their working lives at the same enterprise in the same team. Third classification relies on such a criterion as the structural integrity of the group. On this basis, primary and secondary groups are distinguished. The primary group is a structural subdivision of an official organization that cannot be further decomposed into its constituent parts, for example: a brigade, department, laboratory, department, etc. The primary group is always a small formal group. The secondary group is a set of primary small groups. An enterprise with several thousand employees, for example, Izhora Plants, is called secondary (or main, since it consists of smaller structural divisions shops, departments. The secondary group is almost always the middle group.
15. The concept of "social group". Signs of a social group. group processes.
Social group - it is an objectively existing stable community, a set of individuals interacting in a certain way on the basis of several signs, in particular, the shared expectations of each member of the group regarding others.
The concept of a group as an independent one, along with the concepts of personality (individual) and society, is already found in Aristotle. In modern times, T. Hobbes was the first to define a group as "a certain number of people united by a common interest or common cause."
Under social group it is necessary to understand any objectively existing stable set of people connected by a system of relations regulated by formal or informal social institutions. Society in sociology is considered not as a monolithic entity, but as a set of many social groups that interact and are in a certain dependence on each other. Each person during his life belongs to many such groups, among which are a family, a friendly team, a student group, a nation, and so on. The creation of groups is facilitated by similar interests and goals of people, as well as the realization of the fact that when combining actions, you can achieve a significantly greater result than with individual action. At the same time, the social activity of each person is largely determined by the activities of the groups in which he is included, as well as the interaction within groups and between groups. It can be stated with full confidence that only in a group a person becomes a person and is able to find full self-expression.
signs
the presence of an internal organization;
general (group) purpose of activity;
group forms of social control;
samples (models) of group activity;
intense group interactions;
a sense of group belonging or membership;
role coordinated with each other participation of group members in common activities or complicity;
role expectations of group members relative to each other.
group processes. -
16. Social communities: national-ethnic, socio-territorial.
Society how an integral socio-cultural system consists of many subsystems with various backbone integral qualities. One of the most important types of social subsystems are social communities. Typically, in general unite people having similar interests, goals, functions and statuses caused by them, social roles, cultural inquiries.
Classification of social communities
Systematization of the views of modern sociologists on this issue allows us to identify a number of potential and real, necessary and sufficient grounds for identifying commonality:
similarity, closeness of living conditions people (as a potential prerequisite for the emergence of an association);
community of human needs, their subjective awareness similarities their interests (a real prerequisite for the emergence of solidarity);
the presence of interaction, joint activities, interconnected exchange of activities (direct in the community, mediated in modern society);
the formation of one's own culture: a system of internal norms of relationships, ideas about the goals of community, morality, etc.;
strengthening the organization of the community, creating a system of governance and self-government;
social identification of community members, their self-assignment to this community.
social community - is a collection of individuals united the same living conditions, values, interests, norms, social connection and awareness of social identity, acting in as a subject of social life.
Mass social communities include:
ethnic communities (races, nations, nationalities, tribes);
socio-territorial communities are aggregates of people permanently residing in a certain territory, formed on the basis of socio-territorial differences, having a similar way of life,
social classes and social strata(these are aggregates of people who have common social characteristics and perform similar functions in the system of social division of labor). Classes are distinguished in connection with the attitude to the ownership of the means of production and the nature of the appropriation of goods.
Social strata (or strata) are distinguished on the basis of differences in the nature of work and lifestyle (differences in lifestyle are the most obvious).
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sociology
AND METHODOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
The meaning of “social” can be revealed only by drawing up a mechanism for its formation in the context of the structural logic of the forming elements and indicating social specifics.
The area of exclusively human existence;
the interaction of people on the basis of certain needs;
· the formation and activation as a result of this interaction of social features, each of which, taking on different specific meanings, thus creates a positional hierarchy;
· formation on the site of each position of groups of people entering into meaningful relationships with each other;
· the process of institutional organization of these groups as a way to meet the initial social needs and to express and protect their interests in terms of regulating social activities;
· Creation and distribution of social objects as factors of social satisfaction.
The fundamentally binding role in this logic is played by social signs and the social groups.
A social attribute is a factor of social activity that functions exclusively in the process of social interaction people and able to form a hierarchy of social groups.
Examples: income, ownership of the means of production, ideology, ethnicity, religious belief, education. In addition to their specific applied functions, all social features carry a fundamental load - taking various meanings, they position the social hierarchy (social-group inequality).
The typology of social features is taking place:
· by spheres of social activity: economic, political, religious, etc.;
By complexity - simple and complex as an integration of simple ones;
· according to the criterion of formation of the social-group hierarchy: quantitative, qualitative and mixed - quantitative-qualitative;
According to the philosophical criterion: subjective - components of social and group inequality, where human consciousness is a factor of positional change, and objective, in the vectors of which movement is either impossible (ethnos and gender), or does not depend on subjective thought (age).
Social groups are usually defined by the unity of social interests, which is not entirely accurate in the sense of the secondary nature of social interests in relation to a specific position of a social attribute. In addition, in many large social groups-communities, the formal unity of interests is so neutralized by interpersonal value-ideological differences that it is simply incorrect to talk about the goal-motivational integrativity of these groups.
Thus, a social group should primarily be interpreted as a set of people occupying the same position-location (status) in the social hierarchy formed by a certain social attribute. The typology of social groups takes place according to the spheres of social activity (economic, political, religious, etc.), number, composition (simple and complex), as well as according to the criterion of accessibility (closed and open - easy and hard to reach).
We note the presence of large social positional groups (it is their context that is present in the scientific definition), which in the sociological literature are often referred to as social communities - for example, classes and nations, and microgroups with relatively constant and universal interpersonal contact, where a narrow social interest is primary and the psychological factor acquires some significance.
The most important role property of social groups is their ability to organize to meet social needs and express and protect their interests in terms of regulating social activity. Legal Forms such organizations are called social institutions. Although institutions carry the highest organizational social quality, they are secondary in relation to social group activity both in terms of formation and in terms of instrumentality.
Certain social groups and corresponding institutions make up the active subjective core of each social sphere. Often this term denotes either the area of the budget distribution, or the lower level of the economic hierarchy on the basis of income, requiring state support and protection. This rather everyday and applied understanding unduly reduces the category of the social sphere to a narrow, exclusively economic importance. In this study, it is proposed to define the social sphere as all areas of social activity - economics, politics, religion, art, pedagogy, etc. What they have in common is the same formation mechanism, and the fundamental difference lies in their specific content - each sphere arises on the basis of specific social needs, contains its own social characteristics and a group hierarchy of subjects, its own institutions and social objects as a factor of social satisfaction and the result of subjective organizational activity.
Consider in this logic the most important social spheres- economics and politics. It is in these areas that a significant part of the study will take place, and it is here that the fundamental elements that determine the quality of the entire sociality are located.
social signs human for social science - these are, first of all, social signs. From the point of view of biology, a person is not much different from monkeys, cats, bears and other mammals. Four limbs, circulatory, nervous, digestive systems - all these are not the signs that we will consider. We are interested in those that distinguish a person from an animal in the social sense.
Various philosophers, sociologists, psychologists have described various social signs of a person. In 2011, Charles Choi summarized all these parameters in the journal Live Science in his article "Top 10 features that make a person special." Let's summarize them briefly:
- Speech. 350 thousand years ago, articulation organs formed in humans. A low-lying larynx and hyoid bone that is not attached to any other bone. This allows you to pronounce clear, articulate sounds, which is not available to other mammals.
- Straight posture. The main value of this sign is that a person's hands are free for any activity.
- Nudity. The most interesting thing is that monkeys have the same number of hairs per square centimeter of skin as humans, but they are thicker, longer and tougher. Nudity made a person vulnerable to natural phenomena (rain, cold) and gave impetus to the development of sewing skills and construction.
- Arms. Human hands are unique, not a single animal can do with its brush and fingers everything that a person can do. Accordingly, a person is able to perform a wide variety of operations with his hands.
- Brain. Here comments are superfluous.
- Clothing. Wearing clothes also makes people unique in their own way. And much more important is not the very fact of wearing, but the fact that the person created these clothes himself.
- Fire. Fire has seriously affected our evolution. Fire is cooking, heating, lighting, blacksmith craft, protection from predators. Perhaps, without fire, man would not have become a man.
- Blush. The uniqueness of the ability to blush was noted by Darwin. He called it the most human feature. At the same time, scientists still do not know why people blush. Everyone understands that this blood rushes to the cheeks, but why - no one knows. Psychologists characterize blush as a positive element in the process of communication.
- Long childhood. Of all mammals, humans are the longest cared for by their parents. On the positive side, it gives more time for development and learning.
- Life after losing the ability to conceive. In animals, after the loss of the ability to self-reproduce, death usually occurs. For a person, the meaning of life is not only in the birth of children. Grandparents are revered by all nations, and they participate in the upbringing of grandchildren. It is also a unique feature of man.
The eleventh, no less important, sign I would call behavior. Human behavior it is also unique and its social character is most expressed in it.
In addition, humans differ from animals in the way they interact with the outside world. He is able not only to adapt passively, but also to actively influence the environment.
