From all of the above, it becomes obvious that culture plays an important role in the life of society, which consists primarily in the fact that culture acts as a means of accumulation, storage and transmission of human experience.
This role of culture is realized through a number of functions:
1. Educational and educational function. We can say that it is culture that makes a person a person. An individual becomes a member of society, a person as he socializes, i.e. masters knowledge, language, symbols, values, norms, customs, traditions of his people, his social group and all of humanity. The level of culture of the individual is determined by its socialization - familiarization with the cultural heritage, as well as the degree of development of individual abilities. The culture of personality is usually associated with developed creative abilities, erudition, understanding of works of art, fluency in native and foreign languages, accuracy, politeness, self-control, high morality, etc. All this is achieved in the process of upbringing and education.
2. Integrative and disintegrative functions of culture. E. Durkheim paid special attention to these functions in his studies. According to E. Durkheim, the development of culture creates in people - members of a particular community a sense of community, belonging to one nation, people, religion, group, etc. Thus, culture unites people, integrates them, ensures the integrity of the community. But uniting some on the basis of some subculture, it opposes them to others, and separates wider communities and communities. Within these broader communities and communities, cultural conflicts can arise. Thus, culture can and often performs a disintegrating function.
3. Regulatory function of culture. As noted earlier, in the course of socialization, values, ideals, norms and patterns of behavior become part of the self-consciousness of the individual. They shape and regulate her behavior. We can say that culture as a whole determines the framework within which a person can and should act. Culture regulates human behavior in the family, at school, at work, at home, etc., putting forward a system of prescriptions and prohibitions. Violation of these prescriptions and prohibitions triggers certain sanctions that are established by the community and supported by force. public opinion and various forms of institutional coercion.
4. The function of translation (transfer) of social experience is often called the function of historical continuity, or information. Culture, which is a complex sign system, transmits social experience from generation to generation, from era to era. In addition to culture, society has no other mechanisms for concentrating the entire wealth of experience that has been accumulated by people. Therefore, it is no coincidence that culture is considered the social memory of mankind.
5. The cognitive (epistemological) function is closely related to the function of transferring social experience and, in a certain sense, follows from it. Culture, concentrating the best social experience of many generations of people, acquires the ability to accumulate the richest knowledge about the world and thereby create favorable opportunities for its knowledge and development. It can be argued that a society is as intellectual as it fully uses the richest knowledge contained in the cultural gene pool of mankind. All types of society that live today on Earth differ significantly primarily on this basis.
6. Regulatory (normative) function is associated primarily with the definition (regulation) of various aspects, types of social and personal activities of people. In the sphere of work, life, interpersonal relationships culture in one way or another influences the behavior of people and regulates their actions and even the choice of certain material and spiritual values. The regulatory function of culture is supported by such normative systems as morality and law.
7. Sign function is the most important in the system of culture. Representing a certain sign system, culture implies knowledge, possession of it. It is impossible to master the achievements of culture without studying the corresponding sign systems. Thus, language (oral or written) is a means of communication between people. The literary language acts as the most important means of mastering the national culture. Specific languages are needed for understanding the world of music, painting, theater. Natural Sciences also have their own sign systems.
8. Value, or axiological, function reflects the most important qualitative state of culture. Culture as a certain system of values forms a person's well-defined value needs and orientations. By their level and quality, people most often judge the degree of culture of a person. Moral and intellectual content, as a rule, acts as a criterion for an appropriate assessment.
The social functions that culture performs allow people to carry out collective activities, optimal way satisfying your needs. The main functions of culture are:
* social integration - ensuring the unity of mankind, the commonality of the worldview (with the help of myth, religion, philosophy);
*organization and regulation of the joint life of people through law, politics, morality, customs, ideology, etc.;
*providing people's livelihoods (such as knowledge, communication, accumulation and transfer of knowledge, upbringing, education, stimulation of innovation, selection of values, etc.);
*regulation of individual spheres of human activity (culture of life, culture of recreation, culture of work, culture of food, etc.).
The current state of our society has led to the maturation in the mass public consciousness of an understanding of the vital need for the moral improvement of the social atmosphere. The problem of developing the value orientations of the individual inevitably arises at the turning points of the era, requiring a person to determine the attitude to the goals of life and the means to achieve them. Orientation of the personality to positive moral values is the most important regulator of its social behavior.
Under these conditions, the unshakable cultural values accumulated by the experience of previous generations can play a decisive role in the process of restoring lost moral, ethical, moral values in society. It is very important to create optimal psychological and pedagogical conditions for the formation of students' value orientations, because the successful solution of a wide range of ethical problems that inevitably have to be dealt with in the process of performing professional activities largely depends on the moral maturity of the future professional specialist.
The problem of values inevitably arose in the era of the depreciation of cultural tradition and the discrediting of the ideological foundations of human society at a certain stage of its development. The crisis of Athenian democracy forced Socrates to ask for the first time: "What is good?" Being the main issue of the general theory of values, axiology, it determined the further development of value characteristics in ancient and medieval philosophy. The whole tradition of philosophical teachings from Plato to Hegel is distinguished by the indivisibility of the concepts of being and value. At the same time, it is emphasized that value is the object of various human desires and aspirations. Kant attributed the concept of values to morality, and his followers extended this point of view to cultural phenomena as well. The Kantian tradition thus limited the concept of value to spiritual values.
The intersection of the theoretical views of philosophers and psychologists in the analysis of the category of value first occurs in the works of the German philosopher Max Scheler. The reality of the world of values, according to Scheler, is guaranteed by the "timeless axiological series about God", an imperfect reflection of which is the structure of the human personality. The type of personality is determined by its inherent hierarchy of values, which forms a kind of basis for personality.
The hierarchy of values, of course, changed depending on the level of cultural and socio-political development of society. The classical series of values looked like a kind of triad: truth, goodness, beauty.
The Renaissance makes a person the central point of the value system, its legitimate bearer. The next step in the formation of the hierarchy of values is associated with the socio-political development of human society. The classical series of spiritual values is supplemented during this period by the values of the socio-political order (the ideals of equality, individual freedom, justice as necessary components worthy human existence)
The emergence of a certain hierarchy of values at various stages of the development of human society marked the beginning of the allocation of the most important element of the internal structure of the personality - value orientations. Fixed by the life experience of the individual, they delimit the essential and important for a given person from the non-essential. The totality of already established value orientations forms, as it were, an axis of consciousness that ensures the stability of the individual, the continuity of a certain type of behavior and activity, expressed in the direction of needs and interests. Due to this circumstance, value orientations always act as an important factor that determines the motivation of actions and deeds.
The mechanism of action and development of value orientations is associated with the need to resolve contradictions and conflicts in the motivational sphere, the selection of aspirations of the individual. In the most general form, these contradictions can be represented as a struggle between duty and desire, moral and utilitarian motives.
Through special types of social and personal activities, the assimilation of social consciousness by the individual takes place, he is informed of a certain system of norms and rules that must be followed in socially significant behavior. In accordance with this, a person who enters social life, who is included in the labor process, already has a certain life and value orientation, has some conscious attitudes. The formation of socio-psychological attitudes occurs at the level of a person's volitional behavior.
Each person has some orientation - weak or strong, approved or condemned, intense or vague - to universally valid values. But only a developed, mature personality has stable value orientations as dominants of consciousness and behavior. A stable and consistent set of value orientations determines such personality traits as reliability, integrity, loyalty to certain ideals, and an active life position. Value-orientation activity appears as an awareness of the significance of an object in the life of an individual, the establishment of its value. A person cognizes the world, evaluates the usefulness of this entity, its ability to satisfy their needs and interests. At the same time, the need and activity are dialectical in nature. The need stimulates the activity, acting as the root cause and the general basis, but the activity itself becomes, in turn, the object of the need.
Thus, the main content of value orientations are political, moral, worldview convictions.
The world of values is, first of all, the world of culture in the broad sense of the word, it is the sphere of a person's spiritual activity, his moral consciousness, his attachments - those assessments that express the measure of the spiritual wealth of the individual. Human freedom is always liberation from the power of lower values, the choice of higher values and the struggle for their implementation.
Thus, the system of culture is not only complex and diverse, but also very mobile. Culture is an indispensable component of the life of both society as a whole and its closely interrelated subjects: individuals, social communities, social institutions.
The complex and multilevel structure of culture determines the diversity of its functions in the life of society and man.
Culture is multifunctional system. Let us briefly characterize the main functions of culture. The main function of culture is human-creative, or humanistic. All the rest are somehow connected with it and even follow from it.
The most important function broadcasts(transmissions) social experience. It is often called the function of historical continuity, or information. Culture, which is a complex sign system, is the only mechanism for the transfer of social experience from generation to generation, from era to era, from one country to another. Indeed, besides culture, society does not have any other mechanism for transmitting all the richest experience accumulated by man. Therefore, it is no coincidence that culture is considered the social memory of mankind. The break in cultural continuity dooms new generations to the loss of social memory (the phenomenon of mankurtism) with all the ensuing consequences.
Another leading function is cognitive (gnoseological). It is closely connected with the first and, in a certain sense, follows from it. Culture, concentrating in itself the best social experience of many generations of people, immanently acquires the ability to accumulate the richest knowledge about the world and thereby create favorable opportunities for its knowledge and development.
It can be argued that a society is as intellectual as it uses the richest knowledge contained in the cultural gene pool of a person. The maturity of a culture is largely determined by the measure of mastering the cultural values of the past. All types of society differ significantly primarily on this basis. Some of them demonstrate an amazing ability through culture, through culture, to take the best that people have accumulated and put it at their service. Such societies (in Japan, for example) demonstrate tremendous dynamism in many areas of science, technology, and production. Others, unable to use the cognitive function of culture, are still reinventing the wheel and thereby dooming themselves to backwardness.
Regulatory (normative) the function of culture is primarily connected with the definition (regulation) of various aspects, types of social and personal activities of people. In the sphere of work, everyday life, interpersonal relations, culture in one way or another influences the behavior of people and regulates their actions, actions, and even the choice of certain material and spiritual values. The regulatory function of culture is based on such normative systems as morality and law.
semiotic, or iconic(from the Greek. semeion - sign) function - the most important in the system of culture. Representing a certain sign system, culture implies knowledge, possession of it. It is impossible to master the achievements of culture without studying the corresponding sign systems. So, the language (oral and written) is a means of communication between people, the literary language is the most important means of mastering the national culture. Specific languages are needed for knowing the special world of music, painting, theater. The natural sciences (physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology) also have their own sign systems.
valuable, or axiological(from the Greek axia - value) function reflects the most important qualitative state of culture. Culture as a system of values forms a person's well-defined value needs and orientations. By their level and quality, people most often judge the degree of culture of a person. Moral and intellectual content, as a rule, acts as a criterion for an appropriate assessment.
Communicative the function of culture is that culture does not exist outside of society, it is formed through communication. This communication can be direct, direct (communication between people of the same profession, for example) or indirect (with the help of the works of writers, we learn the life of past generations). Pushkin's poetry works of art and journalism L.N. Tolstoy, the music of Tchaikovsky, the scientific works of Vernadsky, Tsiolkovsky provide an opportunity not only to look back at the past, but also to reflect on the present and future.
Function socialization performs the task of entering a person into society. To make a rational person out of a primitive individual, which would distinguish him from the animal world and contribute to his life precisely in human society.
The process of socialization consists in the assimilation by a person of a certain system of knowledge, norms, values that allow a person to become one.
I would especially like to point out adaptive(adaptive: from lat. adaptio - adaptation; it is also sometimes called protective) and creative(creative: from lat. creatio - creation) functions of culture.
The adaptive function consists in the fact that with the help of artificially created tools and devices - tools, medicines, weapons, vehicles, energy sources - a person has incredibly increased his ability to adapt to the world around him, to subjugate the forces of nature. He is not afraid of hunger, floods, epidemics. But some unfavorable factors, eliminated by technological progress, are being replaced by others generated by it. Famine and plague are defeated, but the soil is depleted, forests are being cut down, water is being poisoned, the environment is deteriorating, and new diseases are appearing. And not only of natural origin (for example, AIDS), but also of artificial origin (for example, radiation sickness). Thus, material culture, technical progress, on the one hand, reduce the threat to human life and health, and on the other hand, increase it. The function is accompanied by dysfunction.
The creative function of culture is to transform and master the world. Investigating and cataloging plant and animal species, systematizing the types of elementary particles, experimenting on natural phenomena, mastering outer space, a person expands the habitat. His curiosity is manifested, and not the desire to defend himself. The mastery of the forces of external nature goes hand in hand with the mastery of the inner forces of the psyche. In the East, complex systems of psychotechnics, meditation, martial arts and concentration of the will, non-traditional methods of medicine, techniques for controlling one's body and consciousness have been developed.
Together, the adaptive and creative functions of culture ensure the creation of a "second nature" (Hegel) - a special artificial world in which and through which a person makes socialization and becomes a cultural member of society.
Of course, the role of culture is not limited to these functions. There is no complete unanimity among scientists on this issue. In the relevant literature, one can find the allocation of a number of other functions. There are many of them, because we have already said that culture is a multifunctional system.
Literature
1. Cultural studies. History of world culture [Text] / ed. A.N. Markov. - M.: UNITI, 2001. - 326 p.
2. Introduction to cultural studies [Text] / ed. V.A. Saprykin. Part 1. - M .: MGIEM (TU), 1995. -210 p.
Culturology or the theory of culture is a complex humanitarian discipline, the purpose of which is the integration of scientific knowledge about culture. Culturology arose at the intersection of philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethnography, art history, linguistics and a number of other disciplines. Culturology is a system of knowledge about the essence of the laws of existence and development of human meaning and ways of comprehending culture.
The structure of culturology, its methods and relation to certain scientific disciplines will remain the subject of discussion. Some authors consider cultural studies as a set of relatively independent scientific disciplines. The complexity of cultural studies as a scientific discipline is determined by the ambiguity of culture as an object of analysis, it is too multifaceted, internally contradictory, and complex.
Currently, culturology is clearly divided into two areas that differ in their goals, content and methodology. On the one hand, there is humanitarian cultural studies based on understanding the internal patterns and structures of culture in its various, representative versions: literature, art, language, mythology, religion, ideology, morality, science.
Social culturology offers a different model of attitude towards culture. It is based on an objective and analytical not immersed, but detached attitude to the cultural life of society, the subject of research here is the driving motives of the real behavior of individuals and groups, as well as the principles of spiritual regulation of various spheres of human existence. This provides an opportunity to identify the social significance of cultural phenomena in their correlation with other areas of social life, e.g. economics, social relations and politics.
The method of cultural studies is the unity of explanation and understanding. Each culture is a system of meanings that has its own internal logic, which is comprehended through rational explanation. A rational explanation is a mental reconstruction of the cultural-historical process, proceeding from its universal essence, singled out and fixed in the forms of thinking. This involves the use of ideas and methods of philosophy, which is the general methodological basis of cultural studies. But as a humanitarian discipline, culturology also implies an element of human subjectivity, so the explanation is not enough to comprehend the essence of culture. The highest achievement of cultural studies is the completeness of understanding, which allows one to penetrate into the life world of other cultures and to better understand one's own.
Culturology studies not only culture as a whole, but also separate, often quite specific areas of cultural life of interaction and even interpenetration into other disciplines involved in the study of various aspects of human society. Culturology can study any subject under the condition, even a natural phenomenon, that it carries a certain meaning that is significant for a person, and somehow realizes the creative energy of the human spirit. The problems of modern cultural studies are primarily related to the problems of the perspectives of a person who discovers through culture, including foreign culture, the meaning of one's own existence, its spiritual infinity and higher meaning.
The ratio of the philosophy of culture and cultural studies is the same as that of other forms of specific knowledge from the corresponding philosophical disciplines (for example, natural philosophy and natural science). Cultural studies considering culture as
The philosophy of culture is distinguished by an organic connection between the epistemological, axeological and metaphysical angles of looking at the problem.
The term culture began to be used as an independent concept only from the 18th century, before that it was used in phrases, denoting the quality of a phenomenon related to the non-natural sphere. For example, the German jurist and historian Pufendorf called a cultured person, a person exposed to civilization, in contrast to a natural, natural person, that is, a savage proper. This term also denoted those forms of civilization that were created by individual peoples, and we still use the term culture in this sense, speaking of national culture.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of culture entered the everyday life of sociologists and psychologists, publicists, politicians, and even the general population. V late XIX century, a tradition characteristic of Western cultural studies has developed to explore cultural studies in the complex of anthropological disciplines. This approach to culture was laid down by E. Tylor, who defined it as: an integral complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, the art of belief, morals, law, customs and all other abilities, characteristics and habits acquired by a person as a member of society. Currently, there are about 500 definitions of culture. Currently, there are about 500 fixed approaches to defining the essence of culture. Attempts were made to systematize this diverse methodological apparatus. Separate, for example:
- Descriptive methods of comprehending culture - they simply list, obviously incompletely, individual elements and manifestations of culture (for example, customs of belief, activities).
- Anthropological - proceed from the fact that culture is a set of products of human activity, a world of things opposed to nature.
- Value - interpret nature as a set of spiritual and material assets.
- Normative - proceed from the fact that the content of culture is the norms and rules governing people's lives.
- Adaptive - interpret culture as a way of satisfying needs inherent in people, as a special type of activity through which they adapt to natural conditions.
- Historical emphasize that culture is a product of the history of society and develop by transferring the experience acquired by a person from generation to generation.
- The functional characterizes culture through the functions that it performs in society, and considers, first of all, the unity and interconnectedness of these functions in it.
- Semiotic - consider culture as a system of signs used by society.
- Symbolic - focus on the use of symbols in culture.
- Hermeneutical - see the main way of studying culture in a variety of texts that are interpreted and comprehended by people.
- Ideational - define culture as the spiritual life of society, as a flow of ideas and other products of spiritual creativity that accumulate in social memory.
- Psychological - point to the connection of culture with the psychology of human behavior and see in it the socially determined features of the human psyche. Didactic - consider culture as something that a person has learned, and not inherited genetically.
- Sociological - they propose to study culture as a factor in the organization of social life, as a set of ideas, principles, social institutions that ensure the collective activity of people.
There are quite exotic definitions, for example, W. Ostwald defines culture as the transformation of natural energy into humanly useful energy. Johan Huizenga suggests considering culture as a game. Authors who give this or that definition, as a rule, do not deny the definitions given by other researchers. Some even propose to consider all the above definitions as one detailed definition, each separate part of which characterizes one of the aspects of the integral phenomenon of culture.
The term function in social sciences designate the purpose, the purpose of the existence of any element of the social system. Culture as an integral phenomenon performs certain functions in relation to society.
A. Adaptive function - culture ensures that a person adapts to environment. The term adaptation means adaptation. Animals and plants develop adaptation mechanisms in the process of biological evolution. The mechanism of human adaptation is fundamentally different; it does not adapt to the environment, but adapts the environment to itself, creating a new artificial environment. Man like species remains the same in a very wide range of conditions, while culture (forms of economy, customs, social institutions) differ depending on what nature requires in each particular region. A significant part of cultural traditions has rational grounds associated with some useful adaptive effect. The other side of the adaptive functions of culture is that its development increasingly provides people with safety and comfort, labor efficiency increases, new opportunities for spiritual self-realization of a person appear, culture allows a person to fully reveal himself.
B. Communicative function - culture forms the conditions and means of human communication. Culture is created by people together; it is the condition and result of people's communication. The condition is because only through the assimilation of culture between people are established truly human forms of communication, culture gives them the means of communication - sign systems, languages. The result is because only through communication can people create, store and develop culture; in communication, people learn to use sign systems, fix their thoughts in them and assimilate the thoughts of other people fixed in them. Thus, culture connects and unites people.
B. Integrative function - culture unites the peoples of the social groups of the state. Any social community that develops its own culture is held together by this culture. Because among the members of the community, a single set of views, beliefs, values, ideals characteristic of a given culture is spreading. These phenomena determine the consciousness and behavior of people, they form a sense of belonging to one culture. The preservation of the cultural heritage of national traditions, historical memory creates a link between generations. This is the basis for the historical unity of the nation and the self-consciousness of the people as a community of people that has existed for a long time. A broad framework of cultural community is created by world religions. One faith closely binds representatives of various peoples that make up the world of Islam or the Christian world.
D. The function of socialization - culture is the most important means of including individuals in social life, their assimilation of social experience, knowledge of values, norms of behavior appropriate to a given society social group and social role. The process of socialization allows the individual to become a full-fledged member of society, take a certain position in it and live as required by customs and traditions. At the same time, this process ensures the preservation of society, its structure, the forms of life that have developed in it. Culture determines the content of the means and methods of socialization. In the course of socialization, people master the programs of behavior stored in culture, learn to live, think and act in accordance with them.
E. The information function of culture - with the emergence of culture, people have a special “suprabiological” form of information transmission and storage that differs from animals. In culture, information is encoded by structures external to the person. Information acquires its own life and the ability to develop on its own. Unlike biological information, social information does not disappear with the death of the individual who obtained it. Thanks to this, in society, it is possible that something that will never be possible in the animal world is the historical multiplication and accumulation of information that is at the disposal of man as a generic being.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 Theoretical understanding of culture
1.1 The concept of culture
1.2 The essence and meaning of culture
CHAPTER 2 Place and functions of culture in society
2.1 Place of culture in society
2.2 Functions of culture in society
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
This topic is relevant because many researchers believe that culture arose primarily under the influence of social demands and needs. First of all, society needed to consolidate and transfer spiritual values that are beyond public forms human life could perish along with the author of these values.
Society, thus, gave a stable and successive character to the process of creating values. In society, the accumulation of values became possible, culture began to acquire a cumulative character of development. In addition, society has created opportunities for the public creation and use of values, which has led to the possibility of their faster understanding and testing by other members of society.
First of all, it is necessary to emphasize the idea that the concept of "culture" is one of those general historical categories that are valid for all eras. Culture arises together with the appearance of mankind on earth, and each step of a person along the path of social progress was at the same time a step forward in the development of culture, each historical epoch, each special shape society had its own, unique culture.
The purpose of the work is to find out the place of culture in society and to study the main functions.
Work tasks:
Define the concept of "culture";
Reveal the essence and meaning of culture;
Find out the place of culture in society;
Consider the functions of culture in society.
CHAPTER 1 Theoretical understanding of culture
1.1 The concept of culture
The term culture began to be used as an independent concept only from the 18th century, before that it was used in phrases, denoting the quality of a phenomenon related to the non-natural sphere. For example, the German jurist and historian Pufendorf called a cultured person, a person exposed to civilization, in contrast to a natural, natural person, that is, a savage proper. This term also denoted those forms of civilization that were created by individual peoples, we still use the term culture, in this sense, speaking of national culture.
The word "culture" comes from the Latin word colere, which means to cultivate, or cultivate the soil. In the Middle Ages, this word began to denote a progressive method of cultivating grain, thus the term agriculture or the art of farming arose. But in the 18th and 19th centuries it began to be used in relation to people, therefore, if a person was distinguished by the elegance of manners and erudition, he was considered "cultured". Then this term was applied mainly to aristocrats in order to separate them from the "uncivilized" common people. German, the word Kultur also meant a high level of civilization. In our life today, the word "culture" is still associated with the opera house, fine literature, good education.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of culture entered the everyday life of sociologists and psychologists, publicists, politicians, and even the general population. At the end of the 19th century, a tradition characteristic of Western culturology to study culturology in the complex of anthropological disciplines developed. This approach to culture was laid down by E. Tylor, who defined it as: an integral complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, the art of belief, morals, law, customs and all other abilities, characteristics and habits acquired by a person as a member of society. Currently, there are about 500 definitions of culture. Currently, there are about 500 fixed approaches to defining the essence of culture. Attempts were made to systematize this diverse methodological apparatus. Separate, for example:
1. Descriptive methods of comprehension of culture - they simply list, obviously incompletely, individual elements and manifestations of culture (for example, customs of belief, activities).
2. Anthropological - proceed from the fact that culture is a set of products of human activity, the world of things opposed to nature.
3. Value - interpret nature as a combination of spiritual and material values.
4. Regulatory - proceed from the fact that the content of culture is the norms and rules governing people's lives.
5. Adaptive - they interpret culture as a way of satisfying needs inherent in people, as a special type of activity through which they adapt to natural conditions.
6. Historical emphasize that culture is a product of the history of society and develop by transferring the experience acquired by a person from generation to generation.
7. Functional characterize culture through the functions that it performs in society, and consider, first of all, the unity and interconnectedness of these functions in it.
8. Semiotic - consider culture as a system of signs used by society.
9. Symbolic - focus on the use of symbols in culture.
10. Hermeneutical - see the main way of studying culture in a variety of texts that are interpreted and comprehended by people.
11. Ideational - define culture as the spiritual life of society, as a flow of ideas and other products of spiritual creativity that accumulate in social memory.
12. Psychological - indicate the relationship of culture with the psychology of people's behavior and see in it socially determined features of the human psyche.
13. Didactic - consider culture as something that a person has learned, and not inherited genetically.
14. Sociological - they propose to study culture as a factor in the organization of social life, as a set of ideas, principles, social institutions that ensure the collective activity of people.
There are quite exotic definitions, for example, W. Ostwald defines culture as the transformation of natural energy into humanly useful energy. Johan Huizenga suggests considering culture as a game. Authors who give this or that definition, as a rule, do not deny the definitions given by other researchers. Some even suggest that all of the above definitions be considered as one detailed definition, each separate part of which characterizes one of the aspects of a holistic cultural phenomenon.
Prominent Polish scientist J. Shchepansky directly writes that “it is difficult to imagine a term more ambiguous and more widespread than “culture”. This term appears in many meanings not only in everyday language, but also in various sciences, and in cultural studies, where it is given very different content and different meanings.
According to A.I. Kravchenko, in everyday life the concept of culture is used in at least three meanings:
Culture is understood as a certain sphere of society's life that has received institutional consolidation (ministries of culture with an extensive apparatus of officials, secondary specialized and higher institutions that train specialists in culture, magazines, societies, clubs, theaters, museums, etc., engaged in the production and dissemination of spiritual values).
Secondly, culture is understood as a set of spiritual values and norms inherent in a large social group, community, people or nation (elite culture, Russian culture, Russian foreign culture, youth culture, etc.).
Thirdly, culture expresses a high level of qualitative development of spiritual achievements (“cultured” person in the sense of an educated person, “workplace culture” in the sense of “neatly tidy, clean functional space”).
“Culture is a sociological designation for learned behavior, that is, behavior that is not given to a person from birth, is not predetermined in his germ cells like wasps or social ants, but must be assimilated by each new generation anew through learning from adults” (anthropologist R .Benedict).
"Culture is the norms of habitual behavior common to a group, community or society. It consists of material and non-material elements" (sociologist K. Young).
"By culture we will understand the totality of all sublimations, all substitutions or resulting reactions, in short, everything in society that suppresses impulses or creates the possibility of their perverse realization" (psychoanalyst G. Roheim).
Definitions given by anthropologist R. Linton:
"a) ... - Cultures are, ultimately, nothing more than organized repetitive reactions of members of a society,
b) Culture is a combination of learned behavior and behavioral outcomes, the components of which are shared and inherited by the members of a given society."
"In the broadest sense of the word, culture means the totality of everything that is created or modified by the conscious or unconscious activity of two or more individuals interacting with each other or influencing each other's behavior" (sociologist P. Sorokin).
Therefore, culture is, first of all, the process of rising above biological (i.e. natural) forms of life.
1.2 The essence and meaning of culture
The essence of culture lies in the fact that it constitutes a fundamental, defining dimension of human life, embodies the proper human way of existence.
In the mass consciousness, the idea of culture as a special sphere of society, which is, as it were, separated from everyday life and is actually identical to art and literature, has been established. This view is enshrined in expressions such as "worker of culture", "workers of culture", which means poets and writers, musicians and artists.
Culturology: Textbook for universities Apresyan Ruben Grantovich
3.4. Functions of culture
3.4. Functions of culture
The complexity, diversity of manifestations of culture, its multidimensionality determine the diversity of its functions. Culture is multifunctional.
"The functions of culture are the totality of roles that culture performs in relation to the community of people." Not in science consensus about which functions of culture should be considered the main ones, on the basis of what principle their hierarchy should be built. But all researchers of culture are unanimous in the opinion that the functions of culture are social, that is, they ensure the joint life of people.
Based on our understanding of the nature and essence of the phenomenon of culture, considering the functions that it performs in relation to the human community, let's start with the main, in our opinion, its functions– humanistic. The purpose of culture is to make a person a Human. Thanks to culture, man emerged from the animal world. Culture has been created and is being created by man for his own benefit and the benefit of other people. It makes it possible to facilitate work, develop the mind and feelings. The comprehension of culture is a condition for self-improvement and self-development of the individual. And if what people do does not meet this purpose, does not fulfill this function, it belongs to culture only by definition.
But, fulfilling its purpose, culture is constantly developing and progressing. People seek and find new, more perfect forms of activity, penetrate deeper into the secrets of nature, learn new things about themselves, their own nature. Thanks to culture, human feelings become thinner. The method of embodying what has been discovered and felt is being improved. Without constant development, without creativity, culture cannot exist. creative, heuristic function culture is its second defining function.
The need to create something new arises from dissatisfaction with what is already available, already achieved. But in order for there to be a need to create something new, to search for something more perfect, it is necessary that what is already available and existing is well mastered. An important function of culture function of historical continuity. Without knowledge and mastery of everything that has been achieved by mankind, the further development of culture is impossible (see Section IV "Continuity in the Development of Culture").
Man and humanity express themselves in culture and, mastering it, firstly, become people, and secondly, they gain knowledge about nature, about those living nearby and about other countries and peoples, about the past and the present. It implements cognitive function culture.
But, acquiring, thanks to culture, a holistic view of one's own and of other peoples and countries, of people in general, a person begins to better understand these people and other peoples: their customs, way of life, way of life, traditions. And this makes it possible to communicate. But without knowledge and understanding of other people, different from us, it is difficult. The function of communication is closely connected with the cognitive function of culture. communicative.
Communication can be direct, when people travel, see, meet a different culture and new people, and indirect - through works of art, scientific publications, special study of certain areas of culture.
The functions of culture are not separated from each other, but interpenetrate and complement one another. The knowledge given by culture helps people to communicate. Communication of people, in turn, brings new knowledge. B. Shaw said about this, as always, concretely and figuratively: “If you have an apple and I have it. We exchange, each has an apple. If each of us has an idea and we pass them on to each other, then the situation changes. Everyone immediately becomes richer, namely, the owner of two ideas.
But in order to reveal the content of culture, it is necessary to master its language, symbolism, sign system, through which culture conveys its content. These are the features of mores, customs, forms of human behavior, etc. And, of course, knowledge of the language that is spoken and written is very important. This semiotic, or sign function culture.
In each society, in the course of cultural and historical development, its own culture is formed, its own unwritten rules of behavior and communication are formed, it is determined what can and cannot be done, how it is customary to dress, etc. And people, in order to live in this society, obey these rules . This manifests itself normative function culture.
The norms of behavior and communication established by culture are changing. And if in traditional societies they are quite strictly regulated, then modern world allows greater freedom of behavior and communication of people. However, even now, the obvious violation of the norms (conscious or accidental) is perceived as a challenge.
But in order to function in society as its full member, it is not enough to master behavioral norms. It is necessary to master a certain system of knowledge, value orientations, social norms and rules. Required socialization personality. And this function is also performed by culture. The socialization of the individual is achieved through a targeted impact on the individual (upbringing, education), as well as spontaneously.
It has always been important, but now it has acquired a special significance. axiological function culture. Culture, asserting certain values, forms value orientations. They are different in different eras, among different peoples, in different social strata of society. Knightly prowess, noble code of honor, merchant's word of honor, professional pride of a specialist, scientific conscientiousness of a scientist, performance of military duty by the military: "I have the honor!"
The unwritten code of honor of the Russian intelligentsia, which has always lived quite poorly, is decency and neatness.
Cultural values are formed by traditions, by the whole way of life. Literature, art in general, and now the media, and mainly television, play a big role in this. What values it affirms is known to all. But to figure out what is really a cultural value, and everyone can and should make their choice.
There are many functions of culture, and all of them are important. But the functional interpretation of culture is not an all-encompassing characteristic of it.
Not everything in a culture can be explained in terms of "function". Culture cannot be considered only from the point of view of how it serves society, since it has an independent value. It arose as a mode of existence of life and turned into the essence of life's existence.
We have named far from all the functions of culture, but already from what has been said it is clear what an enormous role culture plays, how comprehensively it serves society and man. And if we agree with the opinion that the significance of culture does not come down to this (and I would like to agree with it), then the significance and necessity of culture both for a person and for society becomes even more obvious.
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