Sociological concepts. Basic theories and concepts in modern foreign sociology

EE VITEBSK STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY IM.P.M. MASHEROVA

Essay

Topic: “Basic sociological concepts of personality”

Prepared by 5th year FFKiS student of group 55 Kremenevskaya O.V.

INTRODUCTION

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

The psychological direction in Russian sociology began to develop at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, being an expression of the general interest in the social sciences of that time in the problems of motivation and mechanisms of human behavior. The basic principle shared by all supporters of this trend is the desire to reduce social phenomena to mental ones, to look for the key to explaining social phenomena and processes in the psychology of individuals, groups and communities.

Scientists saw the main task of sociology in the study of personality in all its manifestations (biological, psychological, social) and on this basis - in establishing factors that contribute to the formation of its social appearance and ideal. They designated all this with the term “struggle for individuality.” Comprehensive scientific analysis personality problems led sociologists to the psychological foundation of sociology.

The formation of the views of scientists was influenced by the democratic ideas of Russian thinkers - revolutionary democrats of the 60s. Of the founders of positivism, G. Spencer is especially famous with his concept of personality and the doctrine of evolution. It was Spencer's ideas that influenced the development by sociologists of the psychological foundations of sociology.

1. SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS OF PERSONALITY

Personality in sociology is considered as the integrity of a person’s social properties. It is a product of social development and takes shape in the process of including an individual in the system of social relations. The inclusion of an individual in this system occurs through active communication. When a person does something, he always enters into some kind of relationship with other people. When communicating, a person always satisfies some needs and does something. In other words, in the process of activity, relationships always develop that require a person to demonstrate certain qualities. The totality of these qualities, which are social in nature, is defined as a person.

Thus, the qualities that make up a person reflect the structure of society. Some qualities reflect the social system as a whole. Other - class structure society, the place that a given individual occupies in this structure. Still others - the professional structure of society, etc.

Sociological analysis highlights what is socially typical in a person. In this case, three levels of such analysis can be distinguished.

Firstly, we can talk about the typical behavior of a particular person for some social group: a typical worker, a typical student, a typical Tatar, etc. Here the criterion for determining a person is the presence of qualities necessary for successful functioning from the point of view of the group (Soviet Human).

Secondly, sociologists are interested in the individual’s attitude to the group and its demands. The criterion for determining personality is already different: how a person decides for himself the question of the relationship between the individual and society. You can select normative type personality, always trying to do as it should, as expected, as accepted. Another type is a modal personality, acting according to circumstances, sometimes breaking the rules. There are deviant (deviant) individuals for whom breaking the rules social norms became an end in itself, allowing this individual to stand out, to show himself, contrasting himself with the “crowd”. The antisocial personality type is characterized by a sincere lack of understanding that, in order to live successfully among people, one must follow some norms. Such people do not seek to violate norms in order to prove something to others or themselves. But they do not violate the norms, justifying it as necessary. The antisocial type simply does not notice the existence of norms that reflect the structure of society, the group in which he lives. He is “above this.”

Thirdly, sociology pays a lot of attention to how a person builds his relationships with society. In this regard, we can distinguish an authoritarian type of personality, which is characterized by individualism and the desire to oppose oneself to the “crowd.” At the same time, communication and the desire to achieve your goals do not make it possible to ignore other people. Therefore, an authoritarian personality builds his relationships with society, with other people, according to the principle of “dominance - submission”. If she cannot suppress, then she submits, not missing the opportunity at the first opportunity to take revenge and suppress those who “suppressed” her. This type mainly includes those who rise from rags to riches. It would seem that the exact opposite type of personality is a conformist. A person of this type is prone to unquestioning submission. He agrees with everyone and on everything. It is clear that such an attitude to the problem of “me and society” rather implies a lack of faith in oneself, in one’s abilities and opportunities to defend one’s point of view, rather than a sincere desire to “live in harmony.” Therefore, an authoritarian who does not have the ability to suppress others often behaves like a conformist. And vice versa, a conformist often turns out to be an authoritarian, accustomed to failures, although he has not given up the dream of one day “getting even for everything.” Finally, there is the tolerant personality type. This is a person who willingly and effortlessly communicates with other people, but does not strive to please everyone and at any cost - which is characteristic of conformists - and does not strive for supremacy, to dominate others - which is characteristic of authoritarians. He communicates in pursuit of his goals and interests. But such a person does not impose them on other people, recognizing their right to have their own goals and interests. This involves both respect for others and respect for oneself; both the demand for self-respect from others, and the ability to respect others yourself, to take into account their opinions and interests, even when they are completely different from yours. Otherwise, using socio-political concepts, this type of personality can be called democratic.

These personality typologies do not coincide with each other. For example, in one society the normative personality type is most often both conformist or authoritarian, and in another – tolerant and democratic.

These typologies capture different aspects of the relationship between an individual and society, a group, in the process of which the result represented by one or another type of personality is achieved. The individual is “made” by the group, society. It is not a person who chooses which type of personality he is closer to, but society that “raises” a certain type of personality. Much is determined by the position a person occupies in society.

The palette of developments of human problems in sociology is quite diverse. These are, first of all, theories of social action, dating back to M. Weber, and their further development by T. Parsons and other scientists. Considering individual human action as a self-organizing system, T. Parsons revealed its specificity, how

a) symbolic, i.e. having symbolic mechanisms of regulation - language, value, etc.;

b) normative, i.e. dependent on generally accepted norms and values;

c) voluntaristic, i.e., independent to some extent from environmental conditions, although dependent on subjective “definitions of the situation.”

The study of the mechanisms of social action and interaction allowed T. Parsons and his followers to identify the structure of the so-called “need dispositions” of the subject of action or his motivational structure (cognitive, cathectic - the ability to distinguish between positive and negative meanings for the individual in a situation). Also evaluative and value orientation as an area not of internal, but of external symbols that regulate the actions of all subjects of interaction. This, in turn, made it possible to show the inconsistency of ideas about the individual as completely independent of society or as rigidly culturally programmed.

T. Parsons also distinguished between the concepts of personality as an integral biotechnological system, on the one hand, and a social figure as an abstract complex of social roles, on the other hand. Thus, he formulated a model of an action system that includes cultural, social, personal and organic subsystems located in relationships of mutual exchange, which was one of the main theoretical achievements of T. Parsons.

CONCLUSION

The concept of personality is determined by a set of socially significant qualities that are formed during interaction with other people.

In sociology, the concept of personality means a stable system of socially significant traits that determine the biosocial nature of a person and characterize the individual as a member of a particular community. It shows the transitions from the individual to the social and from social structure to interpersonal relationships and individual behavior.

Sociological approaches consist in considering the problem of personality with different points view, in particular, how human socialization occurs under the influence of society.

Sociological concepts of personality unite a number of different theories that recognize the human personality as a specific formation, directly derived from certain social factors.

Psychological theories of personality in modern sociology are based on the psychological aspects of a person’s assimilation of social roles, used in American humanistic psychology, especially in the psychotherapy section, for example:

1) transactional analysis (especially popular), which highlighted the structural analysis of personality, the theory of games and scenarios: E. Bern, K. Steiner;

2) psychosynthesis (a combination of classical philosophy and psychological knowledge, including the provisions of existentialism, Freudianism, psychoanalysis, the teachings of Buddhism, yoga, Christianity).

3) rational-emotive therapy (A. Ellis) is based on the classical formula: a person is upset not so much by a given event as by an idea about it, and it is argued that a person’s emotional reactions and life style are associated with basic ideas.

The role theory of personality enjoys significant influence in the sociology of personality. The main provisions of this theory were formulated by G. Cooley, J. Mead, R. Linton, T. Parsons, R. Merton. The role theory of personality describes its social behavior with two main concepts: “social status” and “social role”. Ya.L. Moreno, T. Parsons define personality as a function of the totality of social roles that an individual performs in society.

The concept of distribution of roles by T. Parsons is dividing them into ascriptive ones, i.e. prescribed by nature (determined by birth, gender, age, social class, etc.) and achievement, i.e. depending on the personal efforts of the individual. Since roles are associated with a person’s presence in social groups, personality is a derivative of the conditions accepted in the groups in which the individual is included. In the process of socialization, he learns ways of playing roles and thereby becomes a person. What is common to the concept of role theory is that personality is the result of mastering the rules of life and behavior in society.

This excursion into history allows us to conclude that the concept of personality does not always play a central, but very important role in sociology. Regardless of whether we consider society as primary in relation to man or, on the contrary, we see in man the “builder” of social reality, we cannot deny the fact that the obligatory substrate of the social is the individual as the bearer of biological and psychological characteristics.

behavior personality

LIST OF REFERENCES USED

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8. Kon I.S. People and roles // New World. - 1970. -No. 12.

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10. Cooley C. Primary groups // American sociological thought: R. Merton, J. Mead, T. Parsons, A. Schutz: Texts / Comp. E.I. Kravchenko: Ed. V.I. Dobrenkova. - M.: Publishing house Mosk. University, 1994.

Inkels A. Personality and social structure. // Sociology today: problems and prospects. M., 1965

Dushatsky A.E. Value-normative; dominant Russian entrepreneurs. // SotsIs., 1999. No. 7.

Kon I.S. People and roles // New world. - 1970. -No. 12

At the next stage of development of sociology, which is usually called classic, within sociology answers to these questions were given, and these answers turned out to be quite successful. So successful that it was this stage that became the main basis for theorizing in sociology up to the present day. We begin our acquaintance with the classical period in the development of sociology by presenting the concept of Emile Durkheim.

5.1. Sociology of Emile Durkheim

His sociological work begins in the 90s of the 19th century, and he, unlike all other sociologists - his contemporaries, most of all deserved the title of the first professional sociologist. Like everyone else, he himself was a self-taught sociologist, but he devoted his entire life to sociology. In this life dedicated to sociology, he created the first department of sociology in Europe at the University of Bordeaux, and he was also the organizer of one of the first in the world and the most famous sociological journal at that time, “Sociological Yearbook”. In 1912, he created the Department of Sociology at the Sorbonne, one of the centers of European education. Durkheim actually became the organizer of the first professional sociological school in Europe: his students and followers dominated French sociology until the Second World War.

Durkheim took upon himself the mission of building sociology as an independent substantiated science, which would not be ashamed among the already recognized positive sciences, that is, in essence, the task of implementing the program of Auguste Comte. At the same time, he believed it was necessary to strictly follow the positive method common to all sciences, which the fathers-creators of positivism and sociology themselves - Comte, Spencer, Mill - did not follow methodologically strictly enough. Therefore, they failed to build a solid edifice of the science of society, as a result of which sociology almost lost the status of an independent science.

To begin to regain independence, it is necessary to clearly define the subject of sociology, what it should study, and it should study the phenomena of the collective life of people, what is characteristic of a person not only as an individual, but as a member of a group, association, society. All individuals are immersed in a variety of social phenomena, like fish in the sea-ocean, in this natural environment of their habitat, which is a special social reality, subject to its own internal laws. Hence the main slogan of his concept, called sociologism: “Explain the social to the social.” What does it mean?

Firstly, there is a ban in sociology on naturalistic and psychological explanations. Social phenomena cannot be explained by reducing them to natural or psychological phenomena. Regarding psychologism, Durkheim states quite unapologetically: “Whenever a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychic phenomenon, one can be sure that the explanation is false.” The intransigence is understandable: in sociology at that time there was a dominance of psychologism, and its main opponent was the older and much more popular creator of the “imitation theory” at that time, Gabriel Tarde.

Secondly, the explanation of a certain social phenomenon (fact) consists of searching for another social phenomenon (fact), which is the cause of the phenomenon under study. Durkheim insists that one phenomenon always has one cause that causes it. Moreover, just as in the natural sciences, “the same effect always corresponds to the same cause.” A causal explanation can be supplemented by a functional one, that is, by establishing the social usefulness of the phenomenon under study, what social need it meets, but a purely functional explanation cannot be a full-fledged replacement for a causal explanation. It is here that it is quite obvious that Durkheim does not doubt the impeccability of the classical positivist approach for sociology, and essentially does not pay attention to the criticism of the Badenians or Dilthey.

Thirdly, methodologically pure adherence to the positive method requires considering in all cases social facts (phenomena) as things, that is, externally. The main requirement for sociological science sounds like this: “Instead of indulging in metaphysical reflections about social phenomena, the sociologist must take as the object of his research clearly defined groups of facts to which one could point, as they say, with a finger, in which one could accurately mark the beginning and the end - and let him step onto this ground with complete determination.” Comte and Spencer, not to mention the others, did not follow this requirement decisively enough, and as a result, social facts in their reasoning and explanations were obscured by the metaphysical and everyday concepts and ideas already existing in their heads. Objective social reality is always shrouded in a veil, woven from opinions, assessments, preferences surrounding the researcher, and stitched with invisible metaphysical and subjective prerequisites. The requirement to consider social facts externally, as things, presupposes a decisive throwing away of this veil, a rejection of all explanations and interpretations already available in advance, so that the facts under study appear in the purity of obscurity, obscurity and force the researcher to look for a truly scientific explanation, that is, an objective external cause.

The social facts that a sociologist must investigate and explain are, first of all, human actions, actions, and to look for their causes among such objective social facts that have a coercive force in relation to these actions, such facts that express the pressure of society as a collective force, the pressure of the social environment, that is, in essence, “the pressure of everyone on everyone,” and this is what, firstly, forms a stable “substrate of collective life,” the anatomy and morphology of society. Durkheim indicates some of the most important components of this substrate: the number and distribution of the population, types of settlements, the number and nature of communication routes, forms of housing, but does not at all care about the completeness of the list. For him, much more important are facts of another kind that make up the physiology of society, namely: “patterns of action,” collective ideas about socially correct and functional behavior. More important simply because they are primary in nature, since materialized “forms of being are only strengthened modes of action.” The anatomy of society, its skeleton, the forms of its existence are molded into actions that, due to incessant repetition, have become ordinary, traditional. Durkheim explains: “The type of our buildings represents only the way in which everyone around us and partly previous generations are accustomed to build houses. The routes of communication are only the channel that has been dug by the flow of exchange and migration that regularly takes place in the same direction.”

So, sociology must consider society as a separate reality, although connected with nature, but independent. To explain social phenomena, and human actions are important for sociology, we need to highlight social facts, that is, real phenomena that force, push people to commit these actions. With this approach, human actions are the point of application of social forces, the interweaving of which is the environment that embraces us, which forces us to act in a certain way, but this environment itself, in turn, is the actions, actions of people, which have become images and patterns of action.

Durkheim justifies the independence of the science of sociology by the autonomy of its subject, social reality itself. The main and essentially the only support of this reality are human actions, actions, from which everything social in man and humanity comes. Since Durkheim's unique and omnipotent god is society, human actions are the soil in which this god is born and lives.

Now briefly about the methods by which sociology should act. Firstly, it must always and everywhere follow the general requirements of the positive method, formulated by Comte and Spencer. In accordance with it, consider a social fact as a thing, that is, objectively, and use methods generally accepted in other natural sciences for studying phenomena. The first of these methods is observation. Direct for most morphological facts and indirect for collective representations. It is clear that one can directly observe the quantity and distribution of the population, the shape of settlements, while honor, dignity, and morality are not directly observable, they are manifested only in the behavior of people, in their actions. Statistical methods are indispensable for studying collective representations. Durkheim was the first in sociology to use the method of statistical correlations as the main method to find patterns that determine human actions, patterns that establish either a causal relationship between phenomena or a functional one.

The search for patterns is carried out by the method of comparative study of similar phenomena in different societies. Comparative analysis, says Durkheim, also makes it possible to assess the prevalence of the phenomena under study and determine normal parameters for them. He understood the norm of prevalence of a certain phenomenon as follows: “This fact occurs in the majority of societies belonging to this type, taken in the corresponding phase of their evolution.” Thanks to this definition of the norm, it makes sense to talk in quantitative terms about the norm of the crime rate, the number of suicides, marriages, divorces, etc. for a given society. In principle, it is simple to determine the norm: you need to take similar societies, compare them with each other according to the characteristics of interest to the researcher and determine the quantitative parameters, the interval characteristic of the majority. This is the norm; everything that goes beyond its boundaries is evidence of pathology, a disease of society.

He demonstrates his approach to the study of society in constructing a theory of the evolution of society, in creating a sociological theory of a certain class of social phenomena - suicide, and explores the emergence of forms of primitive religions in order to understand the mechanism of the formation of collective ideas in society.

He published his main works, which set out his concept, in the 90s. XIX century. The first book was called “On the Division of Social Labor”, published in 1893, and it presents the concept of the evolution of society. His second classic book was Rules of Sociological Method, published two years later. Here the basic principles of building the science of sociology are formulated. And two years later the book “Suicide. Sociological study" is the first sociological theory of suicide. Much later, in 1912, he published his last classic work, “Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” These four books make Durkheim one of the main pillars of sociology. He set himself the task of implementing Comte's program for the creation of sociology as a science and was the first of the sociologists to succeed so much that he had every right to say, if he wanted to: “Let others try to do better.”

Let's start with his concept of the evolution of society. Quite following Comte, we can say that this evolution consists of limiting and eradicating natural human egoism and spreading and strengthening social solidarity. You remember well that Comte’s ever-present tools for such limitation and eradication of egoism are three social institutions: family, state and religion, and progress itself, determined by the development of intelligence, inevitably pushes humanity towards the triumph of altruism and solidarity over selfishness and disunity. Durkheim strives to consider this triumphant solidarity as a thing, that is, objectively - this means to show how the mechanism for ensuring solidarity works, and he discovers essentially two different mechanisms, methods, types of solidarity in society. One is based on the similarity of individuals and groups with each other, planes people under a common unified standard, considering any dissimilarity, peculiarity as a loophole for the spread of this very selfishness and disunity in society, in fact, forces a person to completely dissolve in the social whole, to become its simple atom. The other, on the contrary, is based on the increasingly complex diversity of society, on the differentiation and specialization of its parts, which leads to the interdependence of these parts, their intertwining, and the combination of the diverse into a unity. In the first case, society lives and acts in harmony because it is a mechanical unity of identical elements and parts, in the second - because it is an organic unity of various organs performing different but coordinated functions. The first type of solidarity Durkheim calls mechanical, second - organic.

The general direction of evolution is the gradual weakening of the dominance of mechanical solidarity and the spread, accordingly, of organic solidarity. This is true both for human society as a whole and for any specific society or civilization. That is, any new society inevitably begins with the obvious dominance of mechanical solidarity and also inevitably, in the process of its development, moves towards the dominance of organic solidarity. If we compare earlier societies with later ones at the same stages of their existence, for example, early ancient society with medieval Western European society, then, Durkheim believes, it is obvious that all human history evolves in a similar way.

Durkheim generally moves along the path indicated by Spencer's organismic model, but he ends up in the wrong place. Durkheim is by no means an organicist. Despite the term “organic”, analogies with an organism are secondary for it. His types of solidarity differ primarily in the nature of collective ideas and the degree of their dominance over human behavior.

The mechanical type of solidarity is characterized by the total domination of collective ideas over the actions and lives of people in general, which means the total religiosity of society (“everything that is social is religious; both words are synonyms”), the regulation of behavior is specific and detailed in what needs to be done in each case fixed in customs, traditions, habits, regulations, law essentially comes down to a system of punishments for wrong actions. The similarity of individuals with each other is also supported by the fact that the division of labor is insignificant, the types of labor are quite simple, and people are relatively easily able to replace each other in the labor process; anatomically, society is a space of adjacent autonomous segments. The era of almost complete dominance of this type of solidarity is the dawn of any society, but especially the beginning of human history, the era of the dominance of the “horde,” that is, the original human society, and the “clan society.”

In contrast to the mechanical, the organic type of solidarity presupposes the loss of a mandatory, prescriptive character by the collective consciousness. It is decisively reduced in volume, becomes normative, value-based, gives scope to individual initiative and thereby encourages the mass appearance of the individual. The area of ​​religious consciousness is shrinking, and rationalism and reflection are taking its place. In place of punishment and punishment for misdeeds comes compensation for them. In this society a mass individual appears, which does not and cannot exist under the dominance of mechanical solidarity. It is rationalistic and harmonious in the normal period of its development. The similarity of people in the labor process is replaced by the organic unity of various professional corporations, and the complication of this unity, in principle, has no limits. He considered the harmonious unity of professional corporations to be the highest level of organic development.

The transition from one type to another does not occur by leaps or revolutions; on the contrary, the dominance of the second takes shape gradually under the influence of a growing population, which no longer fits into closed segments, spills out beyond their boundaries, transforms their autonomy into interdependence and unity, and the main point here is is the gradual deepening of the division of labor in society. It is the expanding variety of interdependent and complementary activities that is now the main pillar of social solidarity in society. In place of people who are similar to each other in their work and lifestyle are professionals who are excellently “tailored” to their specialty, but this makes society even stronger and more harmonious. This becomes possible, according to Durkheim, if a person chooses a profession freely, in accordance with his natural abilities, and not based on hereditary privileges of various kinds, that is, in order to be strong, stable, an organic society must be fair.

He was an opponent of Marxist socialism and the Marxist path to socialism and believed that although modern capitalism produces pathological forms of division of labor and is therefore a sick society, these are growing pains that must and will be corrected gradually through limiting class contradictions and ensuring conditions for equalizing opportunities, namely this will make a person's success in society the result of his abilities and efforts. In other words, the correction of modern society is the result of gradual efforts to rationalize this society, and he assigned the most important role to sociology in this matter, since it provides reliable knowledge about all social problems ah and diseases of society, and therefore the very possibility of taking measures to correct them.

Durkheim can also be considered one of the founders of applied sociology, since he tried to implement Comte’s behest about the usefulness of sociological science. He was the first to formulate painful problems of society that sociology should study and thereby help resolve. This is one of the most important functions of sociology. Using the example of one type of human behavior, namely suicide, he proposed a method of sociological research to study this problem, and he formulated this approach in a book with the same title. As a theory of suicide, the book may already be outdated, but as a study of the social roots of people's tendency to commit suicide, it represents one of the first examples of empirical research, to which, in general, all current ones are similar.

He believed that since suicide is considered a completely non-sociological object, not subject to sociological study, it is on it that the possibilities of sociology can be impressively demonstrated. What and how should sociology study in society? First, what is the subject of a sociologist when he studies suicide: statistics on the number of suicides and the dynamics of their change according to place and time. That is, the sociologist must explain why in this region there is such a number of suicides, and in another there is twice as much or less, why in certain years the number increased, and in others it decreased, and decreased significantly or, on the contrary, insignificantly, but this is not the case at all sociologist to explain why Sidor Petrovich hanged himself in his room. This is the job of an investigator, a writer, a psychologist, but not a sociologist. A sociologist deals with a person as a representative of society, a social group, and his job is to explain the behavior of people in this group in comparison with other groups, or in the same group, but in different periods of time. Durkheim considered suicide to be a good object for demonstrating his method of explanation also because there were statistics of suicides in a number of European countries for many decades.

So, what should be the goal of sociological study? of this subject? He says that a sociologist must explain the causality of this particular level of suicide in a given place and at a given time. The method to be used for this he calls the "method of concomitant change." There is evidence of certain factors that can be considered as possible causes of the behavior under study. Statistical correlations are established between changes in these factors and the behaviors being studied, in in this case number of suicides. And if uniformity of correspondences is observed for certain changes, these factors can be considered very likely causes of the behavior under study. Conversely, if the expected uniformity is not observed, the factors in question must be excluded from among the causes of the behavior being studied.

At his time, such factors were considered:

Firstly, mental illness. That is, people who were considered susceptible to suicide were either truly mentally ill, or the tendency to commit suicide accompanies a mental illness.

Other reasons that were brought in for explanation were inherent in the geographical direction: location, climate, its changes, even lunar eclipses.

Racial reasons have also been suggested. At the same time, races were not considered anthropologically, but rather like Gumplowicz and Le Bon, that is, different peoples in to varying degrees are prone to suicide, and this lies in their mental nature, character.

And finally, the most fashionable explanation in France at that time was Tarde’s, according to which suicides spread in waves of imitation, scattering from certain points and cases. Tarde offered statistical justification for this.

Durkheim in his book consistently and convincingly - as it seems to him - refutes all generally accepted explanations of suicide. An analysis of suicide statistics, he believes, provides clear evidence that all these factors do not have any unique influence on the dynamics of suicide in space and time. For example, statistics show that in the 19th century, the number of suicides in many countries increased three to five times, while the number of people with mental illness did not change significantly. In general, an increase in suicides was recorded among people who did not have mental illnesses.

He further rejected the “racial” factor, pointing out that the increase in suicides primarily affected young people and middle-aged people, and the factor of belonging to a particular nation should affect people of all ages equally. Similarly, based on the analysis of statistical data, he refuted the influence of other factors.

As a result of this “cleansing of the field,” he was left with factors that can be considered as causes of suicide. He formulated them as partial correlations with the dynamics of suicide: “men commit suicide more often than women; city ​​dwellers more often than villager; people are single more often than married people; Protestants more often than Catholics; Catholics more often than Jews..." and so on. Thus, he formulated a number of particular correlations, all of which are social in nature, therefore, the causes of suicide must be of a social nature. Further, a comparative analysis of these partial correlations allowed him to draw the following conclusion: “The number of suicides is inversely proportional to the degree of integration of the social groups to which the individual belongs.” Therefore, in contemporary society, having a family, children, living in rural areas, and belonging to a religious denomination that unites people are socially integrating factors and reduce the number of suicides.

For Durkheim, modern capitalism was a sick society, and the rise in suicide rates is a demonstration of its sickness. It identifies the types of suicides characteristic of this society. This is “egoistic” suicide, the basis of which is the breakdown of social ties in society, the extreme individualism of its members, and the spread of loneliness. It is also characterized by an “anomic” type of suicide. It was Durkheim who introduced the concept of “anomie” into sociology, and it subsequently occupied an extremely important place in sociology. The increase in suicides of this type occurs due to the destruction of the system of norms and values ​​in a given society that regulate human behavior, hence the person has a feeling of constant “wrongness” of his behavior, the infidelity of the actions he commits, and this state increases his tendency to commit suicide.

He argues that in the current capitalist society, which is at a turning point, these two types of suicide are responsible for the entire increase in the number of suicides. To these types he contrasts one more (sometimes he speaks of two different types) type of suicide, which, on the contrary, is happening less and less in this society. It is more typical for a traditional society, where the mechanical solidarity of a collectivist society predominates. This is “altruistic” suicide, which indicates that the individual is completely absorbed by society and unquestioningly fulfills its norms and requirements. He himself gave an example of such suicide, pointing to Indian society, where a woman ascends to the funeral pyre after her dead husband. For traditional societies, characterized by the dominance of collective ideas, such behavior is normal, but in modern society it is typical only in exceptional cases, during natural disasters, wars, etc.

Another type that Durkheim identifies with less certainty is “fatalistic” suicide. Sometimes he considers it a kind of altruistic suicide. It occurs as a result of an excess of regulation of human behavior, which is perceived by him as unbearable. The difference with altruistic suicide is still quite obvious here. In altruistic suicide, a person sacrifices himself to a certain whole that is common to many people: say, his homeland, religious principles, traditions of the people, etc. But fatalistic suicide is committed rather in protest against this whole, these traditions, customs, norms. A person cannot resist them, but he can no longer endure them - suicide itself is an act of protest.

An example can be given from the recent Soviet past. In the 80s, a wave of self-immolations swept across the Central Asian republics; mothers of families burned themselves in protest against family slavery, expressed in endless work in cotton fields. They, together with their children, lived for many months in these fields and worked, while the men took on the most “heavy” jobs at home in the village: teahouse owner, cotton receiver, accountant, chairman, etc. Without virtually free female and child labor, there would be no large Uzbek or Turkmen cotton production. These suicides, in fact, served as one of the main reasons for the sharp reduction in the cotton field in the republics.

The general conclusion is this: the level of suicide in society is influenced by objectively existing collective forces and ideas. It is they that underlie either the increase or decrease in the number of suicides, and individual psychological inclinations, so to speak, choose the victim. The rate of suicide is determined by social reasons, and to whom exactly it happens depends on psychological characteristics or simply chance.

Durkheim believed it was his merit that through his study of suicide he had irrefutably demonstrated the social conditioning of human behavior. This book, moreover, represents the first attempt to write a theoretical sociological concept in the guise of research, that is, it is externally structured as a sociological study. True, only externally: he first formulated the problem, then presented existing factors that explain this problem, and then carried out an analysis of these and other factors based on available empirical data. In fact empirical research he did not succeed: the analysis of factors, discarding some and accepting others as causes of behavior was carried out on the basis of philosophical reasoning, usual for sociology of the 19th century, where empirical data are then appropriately used to illustrate statements that were already obvious to the author.

But still, this was the first swing, an application for the construction of a sociological theory to explain a certain type of human behavior as a theory based on reliable and completely comprehensive empirical data. In this sense, the book "Suicide" was the first prototype of modern sociology, the sociology that it became after the First World War and in which you intend to work and earn money. At least many of you do.

Now regarding his study of religion. Durkheim can be called the father-creator of the sociology of religion, although not its only father. He clearly articulated a radical sociological view of religion. In what sense is a sociologist interested in religion? Only as a regulator of social behavior. Religion is the space where moral norms and values ​​are created, traditions that regulate human behavior. Based on this, the main thing in religion is not doctrine, not gods, but religious activity, in which collective ideas are created, and thanks to them, society gains unity and integrity. They play an integrative role in society, uniting people with a unified understanding of what is good and bad, possible and impossible, fair and unfair. This happens due to the division through religion of people’s lives into the sacred part and the everyday, ordinary part. Participation in sacred rituals and ceremonies makes religious principles and ideas sacred and also determine everyday human activity. In turn, religious ideas are determined by the level of development of society and the social environment. In other words, religion is what a given society requires it to be. Moreover, in essence, religious ideas express the irresistible power of society’s influence on people’s behavior, so religions without God may well exist, since, according to Durkheim, the only true god of any religion is society: “Society is God,” - the true God.

For a sociologist, all religions are a fantastic reflection of omnipotence, the irresistible power of society as a whole over human behavior and human destiny. Hence the extreme importance for any religion of common rituals, festivals, ceremonies that give rise to a feeling of unity, wholeness, joint ecstasy, thanks to which religious principles and ideas acquire holiness, omnipotence, and the right to subordinate human actions to their requirements. In his opinion, during crisis periods of the destruction of old values ​​and religions, humanity is capable of creating new ones that meet its new needs, which are born in new collective ecstatic actions, rituals, and celebrations.

By Durkheim's yardstick, Soviet socialism was a religion. It fits perfectly into his definition of religion, there are sacred ritual actions and objects. For example, party meetings with a table covered with red cloth, at which the presidium sits, a person broadcasting, to whom everyone must listen or demonstrate attention by raising their hands in a friendly manner at the command of the chairman “for” or “against”. The holiday “November 7th is the red day of the calendar,” when “everything on the street is red” and everyone needs to go to a ritual procession in front of the stands with their beloved leaders with ritual objects in their hands and ritual shouts in front of these stands. Such ritual actions are strictly regulated, as it should be in religions; there are also ritual characters, like, say, the general party secretary, who embodies the wisdom of all the previous ones and adds his own, therefore everyone is obliged to study his creations. Maybe in the madness of modern concerts and discos a new religion is born, who knows?

In conclusion, we can say that Durkheim was a model of integrity in sociology. A classical positivist, a successor to the work of Comte, Spencer, and Mill in creating sociology as an objective and reliable science. A social optimist who firmly believes that society is gradually improving in an evolutionary manner, and sociology is the most important tool for this improvement. A moralist who believes that moral standards are the most important way to regulate social life. He can be called the perfect embodiment of Auguste Comte, a sociologist who, according to Comte's behests, developed his project of a science of society.

Sociology as a science of society dates back to the middle of the 19th century. The foundations of sociology were laid in the works of authors such as Marx, Spencer, Weber and Durkheim. Classic theories of sociological thought emerged towards the end of the First World War.

Marxism
Many of the ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883) are fundamental in sociology. Main goal social progress, in his opinion, is to create conditions for the formation of a multidimensional person, a rich personality. The reason for social differentiation, social confrontation in society, according to Marx, is private property. Marx's main achievement in social science is that he applied Hegel's dialectics to analyze historical development, characterizing society as a structure dynamically developing in historical time. He showed the causes of social inequality, social conflicts in social development.

Structural functionalism
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) left a noticeable mark in the direction of structural-functional analysis in sociology. Spencer put forward three main ideas of structural-functional analysis: the functional unity of society, that is, the consistency of functioning; universal functionalism, that is, the utility of all social phenomena, and functional necessity. Society, from his point of view, is an evolving living organism. Societies can organize and control adaptation processes, then they develop into militaristic regimes; adaptation can also be free and flexible - and then societies turn into industrialized states. One of the main tenets of Spencer's social philosophy is this: “Every man is free to do what he wishes, provided he does not violate the equal freedom of every other person.”

Sopial Darwinism
The main representatives of social Darwinism are considered to be A. Gumplowicz, L. Small and W. Sumner. According to this doctrine, the laws of the animal and plant worlds operate in society and therefore conflicts between social groups are natural.
Albion Small (1854–1926) argued that social life is the result of the interaction of the natural interests of people.

Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) viewed history as a “natural process” and social laws as a type of natural law. He considered economic motives and people’s desire to satisfy material needs to be the main causes of social conflicts.

William Sumner (1840–1910) proceeded from two basic principles: 1) natural selection and the struggle for existence are of decisive and universal importance in the development of society, therefore social inequality - normal condition; 2) social evolution is automatic and steady.

Psychologism
Psychologism is a set of sociological concepts based on the recognition of the primacy of the role of the individual psyche in the development of social processes. The main representatives of psychologism are G. Tarde, L. Ward and F. Giddings.

Franklin Giddings (1855–1931) viewed society as a physical-psychic organism with a “social mind.” According to Giddings, “all ... social facts are psychic in nature,” therefore society is “a psychic phenomenon conditioned by a physical process.”

Lester Ward (1841–1913) put forward a thesis about the active nature of social evolution and the determining influence on it of various mental forces, primarily volitional impulses associated with the need to satisfy hunger and thirst (to maintain life) and sexual needs (to procreate).

The French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) saw the main task of sociology in the study of the laws of imitation, the psychology of the crowd, and the mechanisms of group suggestion. Tarde compared society to a brain, the cell of which is the consciousness of an individual. In contrast to Durkheim, Tarde considered society to be a product of the interaction of individual consciousnesses. He saw the task of sociological science in the study of the laws of imitation, thanks to which society, on the one hand, maintains its existence as an integrity, and on the other, develops as inventions arise and spread in various areas of social reality. According to Tarde, publicity is closely related to imitation. The fundamental law of all things is universal repetition, which takes the form of wave-like movement in inorganic nature, heredity in the organic world, and imitation in the life of society.

Durkheim's "Sociologism"
Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), the founder of the French sociological school, believed that the existence and patterns of development of society do not depend on the actions of individuals. From his point of view, every social unit must perform a certain function necessary for the existence of society as a whole. By uniting in social groups, people obey general rules and norms - “collective consciousness”.

According to Durkheim, the basis of sociology is social facts. Their main features are an objective existence independent of the individual and the ability to exert pressure on the individual. Durkheim divided social facts into morphological (population density, frequency of contacts or intensity of communication between individuals; the presence of communication routes; the nature of settlements, etc.) and spiritual (collective ideas that together constitute collective consciousness). Social facts must be studied by objective methods, i.e., follow the principles of the natural (positive) sciences.

Durkheim substantiated the idea of ​​solidarity among societies. There are two types of solidarity: mechanical, which dominated archaic society and was based on the underdevelopment and similarity of individuals and their societies and functions, and organic, which is characteristic of modern societies and is based on the division of labor.

Weber's "Understanding Sociology"
The name of Max Weber (1864–1920) is associated with the creation of the methodology of social cognition. One of the main provisions of Weber's theory is the identification of the elementary particle behavior of an individual in a society of social action, which forms a system of relationships between people. Society itself is a collection of acting individuals, each of whom strives to achieve their own goals.

The social philosophy underlying Weber's historical sociology is most clearly embodied in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Here the idea of ​​economic rationality of modern capitalist society is expressed with its rational religion (Protestantism), rational law and management (rational bureaucracy), rational monetary circulation, etc., providing the possibility of the most rational behavior in the economic sphere and allowing to achieve maximum economic efficiency. The main methodological requirements in Weber's theory are “attribution to values” and “freedom from evaluation.”

Empiricism
Empirical sociology is a complex of sociological research focused on the collection and analysis of social data using methods, techniques and techniques of sociological research. Empirically oriented schools emerged in the 1920s-1960s. Among them, the most prominent is the Chicago School (F. Znaniecki, R. Park), within which an approach called symbolic interactionism developed.

Florian Znaniecki (1882–1958) put forward the requirement that sociologists take into account the “human coefficient” - the requirement to take into account the point of view of individuals participating in a social situation, their understanding of the situation, and also to consider social phenomena as a result conscious activity of people. Znaniecki first used empirical method personal documents (biographical method).

Robert Park (1864–1944) believed that sociology should study patterns of collective behavior that are formed during the evolution of society as an organism and a “deeply biological phenomenon.” According to Park, society, in addition to the social (cultural) level, has a biotic level, which underlies all social development. The driving force behind this development is competition. Society is “control” and “consent,” and social change is associated with changes in moral norms, individual attitudes, consciousness, and “human nature” as a whole.

Despite its relatively young age, it is a complexly structured area of ​​scientific knowledge and includes three levels:

• general sociological theory (general sociology);
• private sociological theories(middle level theories);
• specific (empirical) sociological research.

General sociological theory is aimed at clarifying the general patterns of functioning and development of society. At this level, the analysis of the main categories, concepts and laws of sociology is carried out.

Particular sociological theories (middle level theories) occupy an intermediate position between fundamental theories and specific sociological research. Term "middle-range theories" introduced into science by an American sociologist Robert Merton(1910-2003). Such theories deal with the study of certain areas of social life. They can be roughly divided into three sections:

• studies of social institutions (sociology of family, education, culture, politics, religion, etc.);
• studies of social communities (sociology of small groups, crowds, territorial entities, etc.):
• research of social processes (sociology of conflicts, processes of mobility and migration, mass communications etc.).

Specific (empirical) sociological studies determine and generalize social facts by recording some accomplished events. Systems of facts obtained as a result of concrete sociological research ultimately constitute the empirical basis of sociological knowledge.

According to the degree of complexity of the analysis of social processes, macro- and microsociology are also distinguished.

Macrosociology studies behavior in the processes of interaction of large-scale social communities - ethnic groups, nations, social institutions, states, etc. Macro-sociological problems were considered mainly in the theories of structural functionalism and social conflict.

Microsociology focuses on individuals, establishes behavioral characteristics in interactions between people, mainly in small groups (family, work team, peer group, etc.). This direction of sociology includes the theory of symbolic interactionism, exchange theory, etc.

According to the purpose of the study, sociology can be divided into two levels - fundamental and applied.

Fundamental Sociology answers the questions: “what is known?” (definition of an object, subject of science) and “how is it known?” (basic methods of sociology). The purpose of fundamental research is to obtain new knowledge, enrich methodological foundations science itself.

Applied sociology deals with issues of transforming social life, developing practical recommendations for social management, formation of social policy, forecasting, design.

General sociological theories of sociology

General sociological theories are intended to provide a description and explanation of the development of society as a whole, to reveal the main trends in the development of social relations as an integral system.

General sociological theories concern, as a rule, the deep, essential moments of the development of society and the historical process as a whole. At the level of general sociological theories, generalizations and conclusions are made about the most profound causes of the emergence and functioning of social phenomena, the driving forces of social development, etc. These include, for example, the theory of socio-economic formations of K. Marx, the theory of social action substantiated by M. Weber, the theory of social mobility proposed by P. Sorokin, concepts created by G. Spencer, E. Durkheim, G. Simmel, T Parsons, A. Schutz, D. Mead, D. Homans and others.

At this level, the relationships and interdependencies of the economic, political, spiritual and other spheres of society are explored and revealed.

Particular theories of sociology

Particular (special) theories in each discipline there are tens and hundreds. Dividing theories into general and sectoral will make it possible to identify the difference between general and sectoral sociology by object (“society as a whole” and its “parts”) or by type of theories - general ones serve as the basis for the formation of a sociological paradigm, and special ones form a transitional bridge between sociology and other sciences.

Developing, special sociological theories, which the American sociologist Robert Merton characterizes as “middle-range theories,” meaning that they occupy an intermediate position between specific studies and general sociological theories, make it possible to substantively analyze various areas and spheres of life of people, social groups and institutions.

Middle-level theories are relatively independent and at the same time closely related to both empirical research (which supplies the necessary “raw” material for their creation and development) and general sociological theoretical constructs, which make it possible to use the most general theoretical developments, models and research methods . This intermediate position of middle-level theories allows them to play the role of a bridge between “high” theory and empirical data obtained as a result of the study of specific phenomena and processes.

All middle-level theories can be divided into three groups.

Theories of social institutions, studying complex social dependencies and relationships. Examples of such theories are the sociology of the family, the sociology of the army, the sociology of politics, the sociology of labor, etc.

Social community theories, considering structural units society - from a small group to a social class. For example, the sociology of small groups, the sociology of classes, the sociology of organizations, the sociology of crowds, etc.

Theories of special social processes, studying social change and processes. This includes the sociology of conflicts, the sociology of communication processes, the sociology of urbanization, etc.

The emergence and development of middle-level theories were greeted with satisfaction by sociologists. They believe that the identification of middle-level theories creates a number of undeniable conveniences and advantages, the main of which are:

• the possibility of creating a solid and convenient theoretical basis for research into specific areas of human activity and individual components of social structures without using the cumbersome and overly abstract conceptual apparatus of fundamental theories;
• close interaction with the real life of people, which is always in the field of view of middle-level theories that reflect the practical problems of society;
• demonstrating the capabilities and credibility of sociological research in the eyes of managers, scientists and specialists in sociological fields of knowledge.

In addition, middle-level theories substantiate the methods of direct practical influence of people on various structures of their lives, industrial, political and other activities, their social, family and personal life. They also justify ways to improve the activities of various social institutions. In other words, middle-range theories are aimed at solving practical problems today and the near future.

The theories that complement them are formed at the intersection of sociology with other sciences - economics, political science, law, etc. They are called industry-specific.

Each of the special and sectoral sociological theories is not just an application of general sociological theory and research techniques to obtain empirically based information about certain social processes and phenomena, but also a specific theoretical interpretation of the main features, essence and development trends of these processes and phenomena.

In all these cases, the object of sociological research is certain areas public life, differing from each other both in the content of the social relations dominant in them, and in the acting subjects, which are classes, nations, youth groups, urban and rural populations, political parties and movements, etc.

The objectives of the study are to, based on the use of statistical materials, sociological research data and other information, obtain a comprehensive understanding of various areas of social life or all individual aspects, as well as draw scientifically based conclusions and develop forecasts for the development of socio-economic processes and their optimal management . Here, goals determined by the characteristics of specific processes occurring in various spheres of social life are also taken into account.

Each of the groups we have identified contains big number middle-level theories, which increases with the degree of deepening and development of the study of society, but with the development of sociology as a science. Sociologists engaged in narrow fields of study develop a specific conceptual apparatus, conduct empirical research on their group of problems, generalize the data obtained, make theoretical generalizations and, finally, combine them into a theory within their narrow field. As a result of these activities, middle-range sociologists are in close contact with basic research sociologists, providing valuable theoretical input that can be seen as component fundamental theoretical developments.

Each of the above branches of sociology has been developed to a certain extent by the efforts of scientists different countries. In particular, these are the theories of functionalism and social action of American sociologists T. Parsons and R. Merton, based largely on the concepts of E. Durkheim, M. Vsbsr and P. Sorokin, as well as social psychological research, starting, say, with the works of G. Tarda and L.F. Ward, right up to the work of modern scientists in this field, primarily in the USA and Western Europe. This also includes research in the field of political and spiritual culture conducted by G. Almond, P. Sorokin and other prominent modern sociologists of the West.

Today, these theories are firmly established in scientific practice. At the same time, they gave rise to a rather narrow specialization of sociologists, for example, sociologists appeared who work only in the field of sociology of culture, or the sociology of education, or the sociology of the family, collect empirical data, generalize them and develop theoretical conclusions and models only within these areas of sociological knowledge.

At the same time, with the introduction of middle-level theories into scientific practice, the effectiveness of the activities of sociologists engaged in fundamental research increased, since they began to receive rich theoretical developments in certain areas of sociology and generalize them without constantly turning directly to empirical data.

Thus, by developing middle-level theories, we get the opportunity to substantively analyze various areas of social life, people’s activities and the functioning of social institutions. As a result, you can obtain data that has important theoretical and practical significance. The specificity of these theories lies precisely in the fact that they are organically connected with practice.

Types of sociological theories

In the methodological literature, theories and methods, categories and concepts that are not philosophical are called special scientific.

It should be noted that the distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical knowledge and corresponding theories does not mean their absolute opposition, in in a certain sense it is relative. The field of philosophical knowledge is expanding in accordance with the general growth of specialized scientific knowledge, which does not at all exclude philosophical comprehension. Philosophy in research is based on specialized scientific knowledge, which, in turn, has its own ideological and methodological basis in philosophy.

As for sociological theories, there are several possible reasons for dividing them into different types.

General, special and branch theories

First of all, it is necessary to highlight general sociological theories, claiming to describe and explain the life of society as a whole. In sociology, as in other sciences, for example in physics, biology, psychology, there are many competing general theories. This is a theory social formations Marx, Weber’s theory of social action, Parsons’ structural-functional theory, Blau’s theory of exchange, Alexander’s theory of multidimensional sociology, etc. In terms of their status, they are close to one or another sociological paradigm.

Next you should highlight special sociological theories, studying social laws and patterns of functioning and development of social communities, i.e. that which directly forms the subject of sociology and is associated with the categories “social”, “social relations”, “social interaction”, “social sphere”.

Complementary their theories are formed at the intersection of sociology with other sciences - economics, political science, ethnography, scientific studies, etc. They are called industry ones. These theories study the forms of manifestations and mechanisms of action of social laws and patterns in various spheres of social life. Their object, unlike general theories, is not society as a whole, but its individual “parts”: economics, politics, law, etc. They mediate the connection between sociology and other sciences. The basis for their distinction is the object of study, which is reflected in the name of the sociological discipline to which they belong: “economic sociology”, “political sociology”, “legal sociology”. These theories are studied various areas social life from the point of view of the social relations existing in them, using specific sociological categories: “social group”, “ social institution", "social organization", etc. The term "sociology" in the names of these disciplines reflects special approach to the study of relevant spheres of social life, determined by the subject and method of sociology.

Special sociological theories are characterized by a higher level of abstraction than sectoral ones, and allow one to consider the same object, one or another social community from a certain angle of view, to highlight one or another “section” of the object being studied that is of interest to the sociologist, its “level”, “side” "

Special sociological theories, mediating the connection between general and sectoral theories, form the conceptual core of sociological knowledge. Firstly, they actually develop sociological categories themselves, forming a kind of matrix of the categorical-conceptual apparatus of sociology. Secondly, as a consequence of this, in special theories the subject of sociology is formed, which has a no less complex structure than the subject of such sciences as physics, biology, economics, etc. Finally, thirdly, as a consequence of the two previous points, in special theories reflects the specificity of sociological knowledge as a special type of knowledge, irreducible to any other. In this regard, special sociological theories (similar to the categorical-conceptual apparatus) link into a single whole all branches of sociological knowledge, regardless of its object, function and level, and the relationship between general, special and sectoral theories is built according to the type of feedback.

Any industrial theory uses the conceptual apparatus of special sociological theories and can describe its object as a group, activity or institution. For example, the sphere of everyday life can be studied either as a set various types activities, or as a set various groups people - carriers of the corresponding types of activities, or as a set of various institutions that organize the corresponding types of activities. Such a “one-sided” description of an object is conditional and seems to be a certain abstraction, but it is not only acceptable, but also necessary in science, since it serves as one of the means of scientific research and a prerequisite for a multilateral description of the object being studied as a single whole. In the sociology of the family, for example, the latter is considered as a small social group, characterized by its special structure of statuses and roles (group approach), a certain set of activities (activity approach) and a specific set of norms and values ​​that regulate (organize) its functioning and development (institutional approach). an approach).

The division of theories into general and sectoral makes it possible to distinguish between general and sectoral sociology, either by object (“society as a whole” and its “parts”), or by type of theories (general serve as the basis for the formation of a sociological paradigm (as well as special - indirectly through them), and the sectoral ones form a “border zone” at the intersection of sociology with other sciences). To the concept of general sociology we apply the characteristics of fundamental and theoretical sociology, although sectoral sociology, of course, does not exclude a scientific orientation and theoretical level, but most often has an empirical and applied nature. Thus, structure of sociological knowledge appears to be multidimensional and can be described in three dimensions: by the object of knowledge (general and sectoral sociology), by the function of knowledge (fundamental and applied), by the level of knowledge (theoretical and empirical).

A special layer of theoretical sociological knowledge is formed by the theory of social development, the theory social systems, theory of social determinism, etc. The basis for the division of such theories is a number of general scientific categories: “development”, “system”, “determinism”, etc., i.e. those that are applicable not only in social science, but also in natural science and in at the level of abstraction they approach the philosophical categories “matter”, “consciousness”, etc. These theories can claim general status.

Fundamental and applied theories

One can also distinguish sociological theories according to their primary orientation: fundamental And applied. The first are focused on solving scientific problems and are associated with the formation of sociological knowledge, the conceptual apparatus of sociology, and methods of sociological research. They answer two questions: “What is being known?” (object) and “How is it known?” (method), i.e., associated with solving cognitive problems. The latter are focused on solving current social problems, are associated with the transformation of the object being studied and answer the question: “Why is it being cognized?” The theories here differ not by object or method, but by the goal that the sociologist sets for himself, he decides cognitive tasks or practical.

Applied theories are focused on finding means to achieve the practical goals outlined by society, ways and means of using the laws and patterns known by fundamental theories. Applied theories directly relate to certain practical branches of human activity and directly answer the question: “For what?” (for social development, improvement of social relations, etc.). The applied (practical) nature of sociological theories is determined by the contribution they make to theories directly related to solving problems of social development.

The sign of “fundamentality” does not coincide with the sign of “theoreticality,” and vice versa, although the second term is often used as a synonym for the first: theoretical physics, theoretical psychology, theoretical biology. Here “theoretical” means not only the theoretical level of scientific knowledge, as opposed to empirical, but also its theoretical, fundamental orientation, as opposed to practical, applied.

Theoretical knowledge acts as fundamental in comparison with applied, rather than empirical knowledge and does not exclude practical orientation. Characteristics such as “practical aspect”, “applied function” are quite applicable to the theoretical level of knowledge. Its antithesis is not applied knowledge, but empirical knowledge.

Thus, the division of theories by orientation into fundamental and applied is quite arbitrary, since any of them directly or indirectly makes a certain contribution to the solution of both scientific and practical problems. In a strict sense, we should only talk about the predominant orientation of a particular theory: scientific, fundamental or practical, applied, which gives grounds for classifying it into a certain category. The same applies to empirical sociological research: they can be focused on solving scientific problems, for example, the formation of a special sociological theory, or practical ones, related, for example, to improving the social structure of society. In fact, these two aspects of sociological knowledge are inextricably linked and, being related to sociology as a whole, ultimately form two of all functions: cognitive and practical.

So, the terms “fundamental” and “applied” denote the aspect, the direction of sociological knowledge as a whole and are not identical to the terms “theoretical” and “empirical”, denoting its levels. In the first case, the basis of division is the target setting, in the second - the level of abstraction.

One significant circumstance should be noted here. The division of sociological theories into levels and types on various grounds (by object, level of abstraction, sociological category, approach, method, target setting, etc.), i.e., the construction of their typology, and ultimately their justified hierarchy, one way or another reflects the complex structure of the subject of sociology, the way it is depicted, divided into “levels”, “sides”, “aspects”, “spheres”. In other words, issues of structure are closely interconnected, and this, in turn, means that an adequate depiction of the subject of sociology requires constant improvement of methodological concepts related to the description of the structure of the knowledge that reflects it.

Other types of theories

Difference between dynamic And stochastic(from Greek stochasis- a guess) theories consist in the nature of the laws and processes that underlie them. Dynamic theories characterize the behavior of a system or object in a strictly unambiguous manner. Stochastic theories are based on statistical laws. These theories describe or explain the behavior of a system or object with a certain degree of probability. A stochastic (or statistical) explanation reveals the content of a system (object) in the form of certain statistical dependencies, which act as forms of manifestation of patterns that determine the behavior of a given system (object). This type of explanation always involves a greater or lesser degree of probability. This is the first thing. And secondly, the stochastic explanation depends largely on theoretical analysis the object being studied. Otherwise, the statistical explanation will be divorced from the general trends in the development of a given object, from the mechanism that is described in statistical dependencies.

Theories that describe changes in the structure of the object under study belong to the category development theories, and theories describing the factors stabilizing its structure constitute a class theories of functioning.

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1. The concept of sociology of the French thinkerE. Durkheim

At the end of the 19th century, the influence of Comtean positivism noticeably increased in various areas of the spiritual culture of France. In the circles of social reformers, the idea of ​​sociology as an independent science that could develop the foundations for the scientific reorganization of society gradually began to find support.

In Durkheim's understanding, sociology is the study mainly of social facts, as well as their scientific explanation. The scientist sought to prove that sociology can and should exist as an objective science, the subject of which is social reality, which has special qualities inherent only to it. The elements of this social reality, according to Durkheim, are social facts, the totality of which makes up society. The sociologist gives the following definition: “a social fact is any method of action, established or not, capable of exerting external coercion on an individual.”

In order to distinguish and consider sociology as a special science, it is necessary, according to Durkheim, to meet at least two conditions: a) it must have a special subject, different from the subjects of other sciences; b) this subject must be observable and explainable in the same way and to the extent that the facts with which other sciences deal are observable and explainable.

From this peculiar double “sociological imperative” follow two famous formulas of Durkheim’s teaching: social facts should be considered as things; these facts have such a basic hallmark as a coercive influence on an individual.

Speaking about social facts, Durkheim distinguishes two groups. On the one hand, these are morphological facts that act as forms of social existence. On the other hand, he talks about the facts of collective consciousness, i.e. collective ideas that are the essence of morality, religion, and law.

Sociology appears in Durkheim as a complex structural formation, including three main parts: social morphology, social physiology and general sociology. The task of the first is to study the structure of society and its material form (the social organization of peoples, the geographical basis of their life, population, its distribution across territories, etc.). The second task is characterized as the study of specific manifestations of social life (religion, morality, law, economics, etc.). As for the third - general sociology, it, according to Durkheim, should establish, reveal the most general laws of social life and synthesize them into a single whole.

In the concept of the French scientist, a special place is occupied by the question of the relationship between sociology and other social sciences, primarily philosophy. Sociology occupies a central place in his system, since it equips all other social sciences with a method and theory on the basis of which research can and should be conducted in various areas of social life. The task of sociology is to unite representatives of various social and humanitarian disciplines using a common point of view on the nature of social facts, coinciding criteria for their assessment, and a unified research method. Only in this case will sociology cease to be an abstract, metaphysical science, and other social disciplines will become unique branches, sections of sociological knowledge that study collective ideas in their specific form - moral, religious, economic, legal, etc.

On the question of the relationship between sociology and other social sciences special meaning has its relationship with philosophy. Durkheim proceeds from the fact that the influence of sociology on philosophy should be no less than that of philosophy on sociology. This influence has a purely positive direction, since it is aimed at liberating philosophy from its speculative and speculative nature and giving it certain specificity, i.e. the quality that is inherent in sociology as a science. However, one cannot help but detect another demand of the French scientist - to separate sociology from philosophy and give it the status of a completely independent science.

The central methodological place in his work is occupied by the theory of society, called “sociologism”. Two main provisions characterize Durkheim's “sociologism”. Firstly, this is the primacy of the public over the individual. Society is seen as a richer and more meaningful reality than the individual. It acts as a factor determining human activity, and social facts with this approach should be “located” outside their individual manifestations.

The concept of society was so significant for Durkheim that he literally deified it - not only figuratively, but also in literally words.

He called society God, used the concepts of God and society as synonyms in order to establish new ones in place of dilapidated religious ideas, supposedly meeting the criteria of rationality and secularism. On the one hand, Durkheim emphasized the sacredness of society, endowing it with features of spirituality; on the other hand, he emphasized the earthly, social roots of religion. Durkheim wanted to express the idea of ​​the moral superiority of society over individuals. But at the same time he painted it in traditional religious colors.

In accordance with his interpretation of the relationship between the social and the individual, Durkheim made a clear distinction between collective and individual consciousness. “The totality of beliefs and feelings common to members of the same society,” he wrote, “forms a certain system having its own life; it can be called collective or general consciousness.” He called collective, or general, consciousness a mental type of society and considered the conditions of its existence and the method of development, irreducible to a material basis. To designate emotionally charged beliefs and ideas, Durkheim coined the term “collective representations.” In an effort to express the dynamic aspect of collective consciousness, its spontaneous, unregulated nature, he coined the term “collective ideas” to denote emotionally charged, shared ideas and beliefs.

The second main position of “sociologism” is formulated as the principle of objective scientific approach to social facts, associated with the requirement to explain some of them by others, but not to reduce them to biological or psychological phenomena and processes. In this sense, we can talk about Durkheim's criticism of biological and psychological reductionism.

The main features of a social fact are their independent, objective existence and their forced nature, i.e. the ability to exert external pressure on an individual; these are collective ideas or facts of collective consciousness. Durkheim contrasted the latter with facts, which he understood as forms of social existence or so-called social morphology, which studies the structure and form of individual “material” parts of society, its “anatomical structure.”

Durkheim called facts of a morphological order, along with collective ideas, the “internal social environment,” emphasizing the ability of collective consciousness to produce other social facts and even create society; the sociologist gave it a self-sufficient autonomous character, never raising the question of the boundaries of this autonomy or its relative nature. The concept of the “material substrate” of society he used was embodied in environmental, demographic and technological material.

The first rule, which, according to Durkheim, was supposed to provide an objective approach to social reality, was expressed in the principle: “Social facts must be considered as things.”

To interpret social phenomena as “things,” the sociologist explained, means to recognize their existence independent of the subject and to study them objectively, just as one studies one’s subject. natural Sciences. The goal of sociological science is not limited to describing and ordering social facts through observable objective manifestations. With the help of the latter, deeper causal connections and laws are established. The presence of a law in the social world testifies to the scientific character of sociology, which this law reveals, and to its kinship with other sciences.

2. Concepts of German classical sociology.

2.1 Byimportant sociologyM. Weber

sociological weber durkheim tennis

M. Weber (1864-1920) organically continues the great traditions of German philosophy. M. Weber defines his sociology as understanding. The German sociologist's idea is that when explaining natural phenomena, people resort to judgments confirmed by human experience in order to have a feeling that they understand them. Here, understanding is achieved through defining concepts and establishing connections between them, so to speak, in an “indirect” way. Moreover, these natural phenomena themselves, as such, have no meaning.

Another thing is human behavior. Here the understanding is immediate: the professor understands the behavior of students listening to lectures; the passenger understands why the taxi driver does not run the red light. Human behavior, in contrast to the "behavior" of nature, is an outwardly manifested meaningfulness associated with the fact that people are endowed with reason. Social behavior (social action) contains a meaningful construct that sociological science is able to understand and study.

The principle of understanding turns out to be a criterion by which an area that is important for a sociologist is separated from one that cannot be the subject of his research. A sociologist understands the behavior of an individual, but not the “behavior” of a cell. IN equally According to Weber, the sociologist does not understand the “actions” of a people or a national economy, although he may well understand the actions of the individuals who make up the people. In other words, the scope of sociological understanding is limited to the actions and behavior of individuals.

The point is that Weber proclaims that the specific object of understanding sociology is not the internal state or external attitude a person as such, taken in itself, but his action. Action is always an understandable (or understandable) relationship to certain objects, a relationship that is characterized by the fact that it presupposes the presence of a certain subjective meaning.

Revealing the main features of understanding sociology, Weber dwells on three of them, characterizing the presence of explainable human behavior and the meaning attached to it.

Understanding in pure form takes place where there is a goal-oriented action. In a goal-oriented action, for Weber, the meaning of the action and the actor himself coincides: to understand the meaning of an action means in this case to understand the acting individual, and to understand him means to understand the meaning of his action. Weber considered such a coincidence to be the ideal case in which sociology as a science should begin. In Weber's understanding sociology, the problem of value and evaluation occupies an important place. In this matter, he was significantly influenced by neo-Kantians, primarily G. Rickert. Weber distinguishes between two acts - attribution to value and evaluation. Evaluation is subjective in nature, while value turns our individual opinion into an objective and generally valid judgment. Science, according to Weber, should be free from value judgments. But does this mean that a sociologist (or other scientist) should completely abandon his own assessments and judgments? No, it doesn’t mean that, but they should not “invade” his own scientific analysis, and he can express them only as a private person (and not as a scientist).

This is where Weber came up with the concept of value as the interest of the era. By distinguishing between evaluative (value) judgment and reference to value, Weber meant that the first is a subjective statement of a moral or life order, while the second is the content of objective science. In this distinction one can see the difference between political and scientific activity and at the same time - the common interests of the politician and the scientist. On an individual-personal level, within the framework of his own life destiny, Weber wanted to be a scientist, but at the same time he also strived for political activity.

Since the key category of understanding sociology is understanding, Weber’s interpretation of it is of interest. It distinguishes between direct understanding and explanatory understanding. The first means a rational, direct understanding of thoughts and the intended meaning of an action. We directly understand the action of a woodcutter chopping down a forest, or a hunter taking aim to shoot an animal. Explanatory understanding means identifying the motivational meaning of actions. We understand the actions of someone who chops wood or takes aim before firing, not only directly, but also motivationally, explaining why a person does this and not that, does it this way and not otherwise, etc.

Understanding interpreted in this way, Weber believes, means interpretive comprehension of: a) what is actually assumed in in some cases(if we are talking about historical analysis of events); b) expected, bribes in average and approximate values ​​(if we are talking about a sociological consideration of mass phenomena); c) meaning or semantic connection in a scientifically constructed pure type of some frequently recurring phenomenon.

Essentially, M. Weber laid the foundation of modern sociology. Sociology must strive above all to understand not just human behavior, but its meaning. A sociologist is called upon to understand the meaning of a person’s actions and what meaning the person himself gives to his actions, what purpose and meaning he puts into them.

2.2 Processes and formsinteractionsG. Simmel

The sociology of G. Simmel is usually called formal. Formal sociology studies and classifies forms - universal ways of embodying historically changing contents. The identification of pure forms, separated from content, is followed by their ordering, systematization and psychological description in historical time. Simmel emphasizes that form (as matter) cannot be lost; only its only possibility of realization can be lost. Formal sociology isolates pure forms from the totality of social phenomena.

Thus, the main thing in his work was the concept of form, although he realized that it arises on the basis of the content associated with it, which, however, cannot exist without form. For Simmel, form acted as a universal way of embodying and realizing content, which was historically determined motives, goals, and motivations for human interactions.

The problem of the relationship between form and content could not help but worry him. He understood their dialectic well, special role forms in it when it is able to break the isolation of parts of the whole. In some cases, he contrasts form with content, while in others he sees a close connection between them, each time resorting to comparison with geometric shapes due to their contradictions, correspondence to certain bodies, which can be considered as holding these forms.

One of the basic concepts in Simmel’s sociological theory was the concept of interaction. The German sociologist considered it the main “cell” of society. He wrote that “society in general is the interaction of individuals. Interaction always develops as a result of certain drives or for the sake of certain goals. Erotic instincts, business interest, religious impulses, defense or attack, play or entrepreneurship, the desire to help, learn, as well as many other motives encourage a person to act for another, to combine and harmonize internal states, i.e. to the provision of influences and, in turn, their perception. These mutual influences mean that a unity, a “society,” is formed from individual carriers of motivational impulses and goals.

Emphasizing the key role of interaction in Simmel's sociological concept, it is enough to say that the central category of sociology - society - was considered by him as a set of interactions of form and content. In this regard, the following position of the sociologist, which has essentially become textbook, acquires great importance: “Society,” in whatever sense this word is now used, becomes society, obviously, only thanks to the indicated types of interaction. A certain number of people form a society not because in each of them there lives some specifically defined or individually moving life content; only if the vitality of these contents takes the form mutual influences“If one of them influences the other - directly or through the third - society is born from a purely spatial neighborhood or temporary change of people.”

It is necessary to note two main meanings of the concept of society. Firstly, society, as the sociologist emphasizes, is “a complex of socialized individuals”, “socially formed human material”. Secondly, it represents the sum of those forms of relations thanks to which society is formed from individuals in the above sense of the word. Society is continually generated by interaction. Individuals unite into society, i.e. "socialized". Thus, the German sociologist’s term “society” is closely related to another key term - “socialization”.

The task of sociology as a science is to study various forms of socialization, classify and analyze forms of social life. If there is a science whose subject is society and nothing else - and there is one, he believes, and this science is called sociology - then its only goal can only be the study of interactions, types and forms of socialization. The subject of sociology should be the study of the forms of social life, and not its content. According to Simmel, social content does not require special sociological consideration, because it is the subject of attention of many sciences about society. They do not study social forms. Since sociology arose later than most of these sciences, it was left (and inherited) precisely this subject field.

Socialization as a process is characterized by a number of features. One of them is the number of participants. Socialization is possible if two or more individuals participate in an interaction, if they relate to each other appropriately. Another sign of socialization is that it requires its localization in a certain space.

Analysis of the processes of socialization should lead, according to Simmel, to the identification of factors that are not observable in their pure form in social phenomena. These “pure forms of socialization” become the subject of sociology. The German scientist noted that the sociological method isolates the moment of socialization from social phenomena in the same way that grammar separates the pure forms of language from the content in which these forms live; sociology must not only identify these pure forms, but also systematize them, give their psychological justification and description in historical change and development. This is how sociology turns into understanding sociology.

Simmel considered understanding sociology as a sociological theory of knowledge, as a theory of historical understanding.

The German researcher distinguished between general and pure, or formal sociology. By general sociology he understood the application of the sociological method in various social sciences. As for formal sociology, it was considered as a description and systematization of pure forms of socialization. In addition, Simmel included the sociological theory of knowledge and social philosophy (he called it social metaphysics) into the system of sociological knowledge.

Being a prominent representative of formal sociology, G. Simmel in a number of works concretized his teaching about society with the help of classifications of social forms and their detailed consideration. He gives examples of such classification and analysis in Sociology. Researchers of the German sociologist’s creativity note that one of them includes social processes, social types and development models.

Simmel includes subordination, domination, reconciliation, competition, etc. as social processes. The second category of social forms covers social types, meaning the systematization of certain essential characteristic qualities a person who does not depend on interactions between people (aristocrat, poor man, cynic, coquette, merchant, woman, stranger, bourgeois, etc.). The third group of social forms includes development models and characterizes social differentiation, the relationship between the group and the individual. Simmel writes that the strengthening of individuality leads to the degradation of the group (the smaller the group, the less individual its members are and, conversely, as the group grows larger, its members become more different from each other).

Simmel defines sociology as the science of society: it studies the forms of social reality, which are a universal way of embodying historically changing contents. The latter is considered by him as historically determined goals, motives, motivations of human interactions. In the totality of interactions between the form and the content that fills it, society is realized.

2.3 Social forms and their evolutionF. Tennis

A significant contribution to the development of Western sociology of the classical period was made by one of the founders of professional sociology in Germany, the founder and first president of the German Sociological Society, Professor Ferdinand Tönnies.

Sociology, according to Tönnies, is the study of differences in relationships between people. Main type(or form) of differences is characterized by the presence or absence of connectedness between people.

Tennis says that sociology as a special science has its own specific subjects. These are “things” that occur only in social life. “They,” writes the sociologist, “are products of human thinking and exist only for human thinking, but first of all - for the thinking of the social connected people. This “connectedness” of people (i.e., various forms of social connections between them) is what sociology studies.

Essentially, it is about exploring the interdependence and interaction of people. As the simplest case of social connectedness, Tennis analyzes exchange.

But of course, social connections are not limited to just exchange. They are much more diverse, and their types and forms form the basis of the sociological concept of Tennis. He compares (and to a certain extent, contrasts) two types of connections and the corresponding types of society. He defines the first type of social connections as communal (community), the second - as public. Community ties are determined by such psychological characteristics as spiritual closeness, the inclination of people to each other, the presence of emotions, affection, and personal experiences. Social relations have the characteristics of a rational plan: exchange, trade, choice. The first type of relationship is characteristic primarily of patriarchal-feudal societies, the second - capitalist. Community (community) relations include family relations, neighborhood and friendship relations. Public relations have a material nature and are built within the framework of the principles and structures of rationality.

These two series of connections are communal (communal) and public. In a community (community), the social whole logically precedes the parts in society; on the contrary, the social whole is made up of parts. The difference between a community (community) and society is the difference between the organic and mechanical connection (solidarity) of the parts that make up the social whole. In the sociological concept of Tennis, two types of relationships, respectively, two types of organization of social life are closely related to two types of will - natural, instinctive and rational, rational. The first type of will is the foundation of communal (community) ties, the second - social ties. The German sociologist paid great attention to the problem of volition. Social connectedness between people is based on the fact that the will of one influences the will of another, either stimulating or constraining it.

Community and society appear in Tennis as the main criteria for classifying social forms. The forms of social life themselves are divided by sociologists into three types: a) social relations; b) groups, aggregates; c) corporations, or compounds, unions, associations, partnerships. The named types of forms of social life are characterized by historians of sociology as one of the very first attempts to consider the social structure of society.

Social relations are objective in nature. Tennis emphasizes that one should distinguish between social relations of the companionate type, social relations of the dominance type and mixed relations. Each of these types of relationships takes place both in the organization of a community and in a social organization.

The set of social relationships between more than two participants constitutes a “social circle.” This is the stage of transition from social relations to a group or aggregate. The totality is the second concept of form (after social relations); “The essence of a social aggregate is that natural and emotional relationships, which forms its foundation, are consciously accepted, and therefore, they are consciously wanted. This phenomenon is observed wherever folk life takes place, in diverse forms of communities, for example in language, way of life and customs, religion and superstitions...” A group (collection) is formed when the association of individuals is considered necessary by it to achieve some specific goal.

The third form considered by the scientist is the corporation. It arises when a social form has an internal organization, i.e. certain individuals perform certain functions in it. "Her (corporation) , - writes the sociologist, distinctive feature is the ability to unite volition and action - an ability that is most clearly represented in the ability to make decisions...” A corporation can arise from natural relationships (Tennis gives the example of blood relations), from general attitude to the land, from living together and interacting in both rural and urban areas. In relation to a corporation, the same procedure for considering human relations according to the criterion of “partnership - domination” takes place, with the subsequent division of types of social connections into communal (community) and public.

Based on the differences in social forms, Tönnies argues that as they develop from the original basis life together individualism arises, which is the harbinger of the transition from community to society. One of the options for describing such a transition associated with the emergence of individualism is as follows: “... not just social life is diminishing, but communal social life is developing, acquiring more and more power, and, finally, another, new interaction, arising from needs, gains dominance , interests, desires, decisions of acting individuals. These are the conditions of “civil society” as a radical form of various phenomena that are covered by the sociological concept of society and in their tendency are limitless, cosmopolitan and socialist. This society - essentially a capitalist society - is a collection of families and individuals of a predominantly economic nature.

Doctrine of social forms is the subject of pure, or theoretical, sociology. He distinguished between pure (theoretical), applied and empirical sociology. The first analyzes society in a state of statics, the second - dynamics, the third examines the facts of life in modern society on the basis of statistical data. Therefore, he called empirical sociology sociography.

Tennis himself conducted empirical (sociographic) studies concerning crime, suicide, industrial development, demographic changes, political parties etc. As you can see, the range of interests of the German sociologist to empirical problems was wide enough. Moreover, some of his research was very meticulous.

3. American sociological thought inachaleXX century

On the development of sociological thought at the beginning of the twentieth century. huge role provided by the Chicago School. It was the first institutional academic school in North American sociology. In fact, during the first third of the 20th century, the Chicago School was primarily US sociology.

The school arose from the first department of sociology in the United States, organized since the creation of the new university in Chicago in 1892.

American researcher Lester Kurtz distinguishes three generations in the development of the Chicago School of Sociology. First generation covers the period of development from the founding of the school to the first world war.

The founder and first dean of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago was Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926) - the first professor of sociology in the United States.

In 1825, he founded the American Journal of Sociology and served as its editor for three decades. As for Small's views, the basic raw material of the social process for him is the activity of the group. Group activity is based on elementary human interests, and the inevitable conflict of these interests gives dynamics to the social process. At the same time, he believed that conflicts could be resolved and anarchy avoided if they took place under the authoritative control of the state, which arbitrated decisions regarding group antagonisms.

In 1893, Small proposed an extensive diagram of human interests arising in comparable forms of group manifestations. While developing this scheme, he also used the ideas of Gustav Ratzenhofer, an Austrian social Darwinist.

It was the first generation of the Chicago School - Small, Vincent, Thomas, Henderson - that established liberalism as the main social and philosophical doctrine of the sociological school. Liberalism is understood in the United States as an ideological orientation based on a belief in the importance of individual freedom and well-being, as well as a belief in the possibility of social progress and an improvement in the quality of life through change and innovation in the social organization of society.

The five-volume work of this period of the Chicago School, “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America,” published by William Isaac Thomas and Florian Witold Znaniecki, has become a world sociological classic.

William Thomas formulated the concept of a social situation, which he divided into three important components: 1) objective conditions inherent in existing social theories and values; 2) attitudes of the individual and social group; 3) formulation of the essence of the situation by the acting individual.

In joint work with Znaniecki, Thomas studied in detail precisely the system social attitudes and showed that conflicts and social disintegration necessarily arise in cases where individual definitions situations by the individual do not coincide with group values.

Being a representative of the psychological trend in sociology, Thomas identified four groups of human motivational desires that play a leading role in determining his behavior: the need for new experience, ensuring security, stability of one’s lifestyle, the need for recognition of oneself from the environment and the thirst for domination over one’s environment. He associated the individual configuration of these desires with the innate characteristics of a person, primarily with his temperament.

One of the most significant innovations in The Polish Peasant is the typology of personalities in terms of their prevailing mechanisms of social adaptation.

The bourgeois type is characterized by the traditionality of its attitudes; bohemian is distinguished by unstable and poorly connected attitudes with an overall high degree of adaptation; the creative type is the most significant, although frivolous, for the fate of social progress, since only this type of personality is capable of generating inventions and innovations.

In the work of W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki, the method of studying personal documents was actively used. Data from Polish archives, press materials, documents from American social migration agencies, and so-called “in-depth” interviews were also intensively used.

By analyzing letters and diaries, Thomas and Znaniecki discovered a variety of motivational and behavioral responses to the social environment; reactions reflecting the emotional and eventual side of individual adaptation. Scientists have come to the conclusion that society is a universal series of social characters: philistine - bourgeois, bohemian - bohemian, creative - active, or creative.

These three characters carry a single mechanism of adaptation, represented by steps: 1) Determination of character by innate temperament. Construction of the organization of personal life, which completes the process of objectification of various relationships that provide character; 2) Adaptation of character to the requirements of society and the immediate environment; 3) Adaptation of individual life organization to a specific social organization.

Having analyzed the process of personal adaptation, Znaniecki and Thomas came to a fundamental conclusion for sociologists: social evolution, on the one hand, tames the process, on the other, it requires more individualized reactions of consciousness and behavior from a person. It is in historical dictate that the reason for the formation and rule of social characters lies.

The first type of character - philistine - unites people who are oriented in consciousness and behavior towards stability. Their psyche finds it difficult to perceive the demands of a changing situation. The life of a Philistine is associated with traditional situations, and he is formed as a conformist. However, he shows the ability to resist the pressure of changes in the external environment.

Bohemian is characterized by spontaneity of behavioral reactions. People of this type are not capable of forming stable patterns of behavior. As Znaniecki and Thomas noted, the bohemian tends to demonstrate a certain degree of adaptability to new conditions, but it does not lead him to a new holistic model of the organization of life. The historical roots of this character are generated by the transitional state of society, during which no permanent social guidelines had time to take shape.

The third type - the creative one - is the most socially effective character, since he builds his life based on the tendency towards modification and diversity, while following his own goals. He constantly expands his control over the social environment and adapts his desires to it, i.e. adaptation occurs through a different mechanism - the mechanism of active activity. Creative people form the dynamic core of social systems. Although they constitute a minority in any society, their activities are the most productive.

Thus, all types of social character are the result of a fusion of temperament and socio-historical conditions for the formation of personalities.

Already in Znaniecki's early works, the focus was on the problem of values ​​- the key problem of philosophical discussions of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. It was the values ​​that became the basis for drawing the dividing line between the world of nature and the world of culture. For authors, value is any object that has definable content and meaning for members of a social group. Attitudes are the subjective orientation of group members in relation to values.

Znaniecki proceeds from the fact that values ​​by their nature are not subjective, they really exist, like natural things, which means that the sciences of culture have the same right to exist as the sciences of nature. Znaniecki associates the right to the existence of any science with the study of a certain aspect of reality, i.e. with the corresponding subject, which acts as a relatively closed system. Each of these systems consists of a limited and theoretically foreseeable number of elements, and also has a specific internal structure. Empirical reality itself, according to Znaniecki, is presented in the form of an inexhaustible variety of facts, and only as a result of research is revealed the method of their connection into a certain structure and system.

Znaniecki distinguished four types of basic social systems that form the basic concepts of sociology: a) social actions; b) social relations; c) social personalities; d) social groups

Among basic concepts Sociology has developed the most detailed category of social actions. Znaniecki dedicates his fundamental work “Social Action” to her. He refers to the category of social action only those individual and collective human actions that other human individuals have as main value. These human actions have the goal of causing certain changes in these core values ​​(social objects).

Znaniecki's basic ideas related to the interpretation of social actions are firmly entrenched in the foundation of modern sociological theory. F. Znaniecki conducted a detailed analysis and gave a classification possible types social action. He divides all types of social action into two categories: accommodation and opposition. The first includes those actions that cause the desired behavior of individuals or groups without threatening any values ​​or capabilities of the partner, the second includes those that are associated with threats and repression.

According to Znaniecki, in its own categorical definition, social action does not collide with human individuals or collectives as psychobiological realities. In this regard, people - objects of social action - are called social values ​​in order to distinguish them from aesthetic, technical, economic and other values. And it is social action that acts as the central subject of sociological research.

Znaniecki's other main category is the social personality system. A social personality is created in a certain environment and reproduces already created models, which express a real system of rights and responsibilities, and is a social value within the framework of social relations and interactions.

As one of the types of social systems, Znaniecki considers a social group in which a person performs appropriate roles, occupies one position or another, and also has the corresponding rights and responsibilities. The social life of an individual is not limited to the framework of a separate social group, just as the huge number of social actions of a person is not limited to one social group of which he is a member.

Unlike, for example, Durkheim, Znaniecki does not strictly depend the behavior of the individual on the group, and does not accept the unilinear determination of the individual by the group. He considers the relationship between a social group and an individual from the perspective of a middle path between sociological holism and individualism. His theory of social groups as a cultural system has as its foundation the well-known methodological principle- humanistic (human) coefficient. The introduction of this coefficient is due to the fact that each group, like a social personality, has the nature of social value, i.e., being an object, it is also a subject at the same time.

His sociological concept is contrasted with the sociologism of Durkheim, which neglects the role of the individual in the social process, as well as the formal sociology of Simmel. Based on his views, sociology should not follow the path of speculative search, nor the path of naked empiricism, nor the path of extreme holism, nor the path of extreme individualism, but look for a middle path between extreme methodological positions.

Emphasizing the role of the subject, taking into account the “humanistic coefficient” in the structure of social systems, Znaniecki at the same time considered sociology nomothetic, i.e. formulating laws based inductive method data collection. Thus, sociology for him is based on empirical social reality, on which only theoretical generalizations and the construction of a sociological theory are possible.

In full At least the leaders of the Chicago School, Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, showed themselves between the First World War and the mid-1930s. The main issues of their work are various aspects of urbanization, the sociology of the family, and social disorganization. The book “Introduction to the Science of Sociology” (1921) written by Park and Burgess, which for a long time was the main textbook for sociology students at US universities, became very famous. It is considered fundamental to the formation of modern empirical sociology.

Robert Ezra Park is considered the ideological creator of the Chicago School. His works “The Immigrant Press and Its Control” (1922), “The City” (1925) are widely known, in which various aspects of the influence of the social environment on human life are analyzed, biological and economic forces human life.

Among the important sociological concepts first introduced by Park, special mention should be made of the concept of social distance, as an indicator of the degree of closeness or alienation of individuals or social groups, as well as the concept of a marginal personality, characterizing an individual in social structure at the junction of social groups or on their periphery.

Much attention is paid to the development and use of various methods of empirical research. The attitudes and values ​​of various social groups are studied. For this purpose, a survey method is used - both oral (interview) and written (questionnaire), and the method itself is studied in detail. For the first time, the problems of its advantages and disadvantages are raised.

One of the main achievements of the Chicago School was work in the field of social ecology (closely related to the study of the city). Chicago School social ecology is sometimes called a theory of social change, the foundations of which were formulated by Park. It talks about the fact that society must be considered as an organism subject to evolution. The latter is a movement from one order to another, higher one. The Park names four of these orders: ecological (spatial-territorial), economic, political, socio-cultural.

The condition for the survival and development of society is the maintenance, first of all, of ecological, or territorial, order. It is a consequence of the spatial physical interaction individuals. On its basis, an economic order arises, which is the result of production, trade and exchange. Based on the achieved economic order, a political order, which can be implemented through political means, control and regulation of behavior. Finally, the most informal type of order in society becomes the socio-cultural order, which is most often influenced by traditions.

At the heart of each type of order, Park argues, is its own special type social interaction, allowing people to move from conflict to agreement.

There are also specific scientific research carried out under the direct supervision of Burgess. These studies were carried out in Chicago itself using, as mentioned above, methods, primarily the method of social mapping. A number of social maps of Chicago were developed - leisure places (dance floors, cinemas, theaters, etc.), locations of certain ethnic communities (Italians, Germans, blacks, mulattoes, Chinese, etc.). Moreover, students were involved in compiling such places (mapping). This made it possible, within the framework of the “City as a Social Laboratory” program, to define and present in a manual, systematized form a certain structure of the city.

There has been considerable interest in the use of qualitative non-formalized research methods, which is most characteristic of Burgess's work. In general, he was one of the first in sociology to use the case study method, aimed at a comprehensive description and explanation of a separate social fact (case). Sometimes this method is called monographic.

The work of Park and Burgess had a major influence on small-town research, particularly that carried out outside the Chicago School by Helen and Robert Lind. As classic as many of the Chicago School's works, these works explored community life and social inequality in a small American city. The impetus for the above-mentioned works of the Lind spouses was Park's study of the problems of blacks in America and race relations in general.

A description of the Chicago School will be incomplete without at least briefly touching on the views of its two famous representatives - W. Ogborn and L. Wirth. They also spent a lot of time studying the American city successfully. Ogborn, in contrast to school leaders Park and Burgess, who sought to organically combine quantitative and qualitative methods of urban research, insisted on the need for only the former. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the statistical methodology of research received the most noticeable expression in his works.

One of Ogborn's major works is Social Change. In it, he outlined his theory of cultural lag, or, as it is sometimes called, cultural lag. Its essence is that changes in material culture occur, as a rule, faster and more active than transformations in intangible (adaptive) culture. This means that developing technology, which primarily affects the state of material culture, determines all other social changes. He became one of the first representatives of technological determinism in sociology. However, the theory of cultural lag was criticized in the literature of that time and gave rise to discussions for contrasting two types of cultures - material and intangible.

If Ogborn's theory was not strictly related to the study of the city, then Wirth's concept was the most urbanistic and concerned the development of a theory of urban lifestyle. He was the first in sociology to introduce the concept of “urban lifestyle,” which he contrasted with the rural one.

Within the framework of the Chicago school, the prerequisites were created for the emergence of the urban concept of Louis Wirth, who developed the concept of an urban lifestyle. In his concept, Wirth linked together the characteristics of the spatial and social organization of a large city ( large number, high concentration, social heterogeneity of the population) with the characteristics of a special urban personality type that is formed in these conditions. According to Wirth, the size, density and heterogeneity of the population is characterized by: the predominance of anonymous, business, short-term, partial and superficial contacts in interpersonal communication; decrease in the importance of territorial communities; decreasing role of the family; diversity of cultural stereotypes; instability of the social status of a city dweller, increasing his social mobility; weakening the influence of traditions in regulating individual behavior .

WITHlist of used literature

1. Zborovsky, G.E. History of sociology: textbook / G.E. Zborovsky. - M.: Gardariki, 2007. - 608 p.

2. History of sociology in Western Europe and the USA. Textbook for universities. Executive editor - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences G.V. Osipov. - M.: Publishing group NORMA - INFRA. - M., 1999. - 576 p.

3. History of sociology. XIX-XX centuries: in 2 parts. Part 1. Western sociology: textbook. manual for students studying in the direction 540400 “Social and economic. education" / A.V. Vorontsov, I.D. Gromov. - M.: Humanitarian, ed. VLADOS Center, 2005. - 423 p.

4. History of sociology: Textbook. Manual / Elsukov A.N., Babosov E.M., Gritsanov A.A. and etc.; Under general ed. A.N. Elsukova and others - Mn.: Higher. school, 1993. - 319 p.

5. Kapitonov E.A. History and theory of sociology. Tutorial for universities - M.: PRIOR Publishing House, 2000. - 368 p.

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