Sociology (French sociologie, Latin Societas - society and Greek - Logos - the science of society) is the science of society, individual social institutions (state, law, morality, etc.), processes and public social communities of people.

Modern sociology is a variety of movements and scientific schools that explain its subject and role in different ways and answer the question of what sociology is in different ways. There are various definitions of sociology as the science of society. “A Brief Dictionary of Sociology” defines sociology as the science of the laws of formation, functioning, and development of society, social relations and social communities. The “Sociological Dictionary” defines sociology as the science of the laws of development and functioning of social communities and social processes, of social relations as a mechanism of interrelation and interaction between society and people, between communities, between communities and individuals. The book “Introduction to Sociology” notes that sociology is a science that focuses on social communities, their genesis, interaction and development trends. Each of the definitions has a rational grain. Most scientists tend to believe that the subject of sociology is society or certain social phenomena.

Consequently, sociology is the science of the generic properties and basic patterns of social phenomena.

Sociology not only chooses empirical experience, that is, sensory perception as the only means of reliable knowledge and social change, but also theoretically generalizes it. With the advent of sociology, new opportunities have opened up to penetrate into the inner world of the individual, to understand his life goals, interests, and needs. However, sociology does not study a person in general, but his specific world - the social environment, the communities in which he is included, way of life, social connections, social actions. Without diminishing the importance of numerous branches of social science, sociology is still unique in its ability to see the world as an integral system. Moreover, the system is considered by sociology not only as functioning and developing, but also as experiencing a state of deep crisis. Modern sociology is trying to study the causes of the crisis and find ways out of the crisis of society. The main problems of modern sociology are the survival of humanity and the renewal of civilization, raising it to a higher level of development. Sociology seeks solutions to problems not only at the global level, but also at the level of social communities, specific social institutions and associations, and the social behavior of an individual. Sociology is a multi-level science, representing the unity of abstract and concrete forms, macro- and micro-theoretical approaches, theoretical and empirical knowledge.

Why does an economist need sociology?

One of the most important features of the development of modern natural and technical sciences is the increasingly deeper awareness by scientists of the inextricable connection of these sciences with the cultural and historical characteristics of society, its religion, state-political structure, mass psychology, etc. This explains the relevance of the chosen topic.

In this paper we will try to determine the importance of sociology and sociological research for economics.

Economy - This is not so much the interaction of numbers as the interaction of people, that is, it is completely social science. People produce goods and services, guided by expectations of profit, based on the general situation on the market (is there a crisis, what are the political moods, will a certain product or service be more or less in demand). Along with statistical data, sociological research also serves as necessary support for carrying out economic calculations and forecasts.

The common objects of economics and sociology are people, groups of people, communities and society as a whole, life activity in all forms. Their common subject is the consciousness and behavior of individuals and groups, rules and mechanisms, resources, intermediate and final results and the effectiveness of interactions.

The organically integrated combination of sociology and economics is widely known in science, which is reflected in the emergence of a special sociological theory - economic sociology.

It is economic sociology that has explicitly carried out and continues to carry out the function of connecting economic and sociological knowledge, acting as a representative, confidant of sociology and sociologists in economics.

It must be emphasized that modern economic theory is noticeably moving away from traditions, which began more than two and a half centuries ago by Adam Smith. It was he who can be considered the founder of economic sociology; Weber subsequently followed his ideas.

The basis of interest of traditional economic sciences is the behavior of any economic entities, subject to a system of postulates about rational choice, mutual independence (individuality), utility as a decreasing function of the volume of resources consumed, and free competition. They are the basis of an ideal idea, an ideal model of market economics.

The modern expansion of the interests of economics and sociology indicates a change in the nature of the actual object under study - the management process. New technologies in communications and management, the sharply increased participation of hired workers in the management of organizations and enterprises, the general turn of the market and production towards the buyer, user, purchaser of services, and finally, the active participation of the population in political life have transformed business in many countries from a way of extracting benefits for the owner of capital through social instruments into an instrument for creating comfortable social conditions. There has been a peculiar return to the slogans of pre-capitalist times “work to live” after the long dominance of the Protestant attitude “live to work”. The era of non-subjective economics is coming to its natural end.

Sociology is a science that studies relationships, processes, events that occur in society. It studies not only those social interactions that are taking place at this particular moment, but also those that took place tens, hundreds and thousands of years ago. In addition, sociology also has a forecasting function, that is, with its help a person can predict upcoming changes in social life.

Society is the environment in which a person lives. Society can affect any person, but not everyone in the same way, but each in its own way. A person, having studied the mechanisms of sociology, is able to control this impact and can manage it himself.

Sociology allows you to find answers to questions about society, about everyday life, about global problems of humanity. The normal development of any society is impossible without knowledge of the real state of affairs in society, without understanding the processes occurring in it.

Currently, the social component of the economy is manifested in the following. The first complex is associated with the economic subject (factor) and its motivation. From the perspective of economics, the motivation of an economic factor is always determined by rational choice and the desire to maximize utility or gain. Economic sociology deals with social factors, and therefore rationality and the desire to maximize benefits do not always determine the actions and behavior of people. It seeks answers to questions about how and why the rationality of choice is violated, what factors external to the economy form the criteria for the behavior of social actors in the economic space, etc. It studies not only the causes and consequences of violations of the rationality of choice of decisions, but offers new criteria for decision-making in the economic sphere, taking into account negative and positive consequences (externalities) both for directly interacting subjects, factors, agents, and for other fixed elements of society (society as a whole, parts of society, such as territorial communities, various subsystems, social groups etc.) at fixed time intervals. From these positions, certain elements of economic sociology turn into an instrumental part of socioeconomics. Socioeconomics as a method of economic management becomes rather not even the shell of the economy, but its leading core.

The second complex is associated with the social structure of the economy and management. It includes sociostructural (status) aspects of production, distribution and consumption. From the perspective of economics in this aspect, we are dealing with management at various levels (micro-, meso-, macro-), different institutions and rules in regulating the market and market relations, state participation in management and restrictions on market processes. For the economy as a method of market management, the mechanism for establishing a balance between the supply and demand of goods is realized through prices under the condition of free competition. At the same time, other characteristics of agents and actors in the market, other than their ability to offer goods or the need for certain goods, do not play a role in the economy. Exchange transactions are mediated by money; money also turns out to be a commodity. Of decisive importance is the possession of capital, the ability to manage and dispose of it, the right and ability to appropriate economic results. But capital also turns into goods. Any movement in the market, like the markets themselves, all dynamics ultimately have a single and only goal - resource benefit, i.e., an expanded renewal of funds spent on this dynamics.

Thus, we can say that the need to study sociology exists today and will exist in the future, because the need to know the intricacies of interaction between people will never fade away.

Bibliography

G., I., N., V. Sociology: textbook. – M.: Higher School, 2009. T. Sociology, General course. - M.: Prometheus, 2009. P. Sociology: Textbook for universities, 3rd ed. - M.: Logos, 2010.

Introduction. Why is sociology needed?

Sociology can be imagined in different ways. The easiest way is to imagine a long row of library shelves filled to capacity with books. The word “sociology” appears in the title or in the subtitle, or at least in the table of contents of all books (which is why the librarian placed them in one row). On the books are the names of authors who call themselves sociologists, i.e. are sociologists in their official capacity as teachers or researchers. Imagining these books and their authors, one can imagine a certain body of knowledge accumulated over many years of research and teaching of sociology. Thus, we can think of sociology as a connecting tradition - a certain body of information that every convert to this science must absorb, digest and assimilate, regardless of whether he wants to become a practicing sociologist or simply wants to get acquainted with what sociology has to offer. Better yet, you can imagine sociology as an endless supply of new converts - the shelves are constantly being replenished with new books. Then sociology is a continuous activity: inquisitive interest, constant testing of acquired knowledge in new experience, continuous replenishment of accumulated knowledge and its modification in this process.

This idea of ​​sociology seems quite natural and obvious. After all, this is how we tend to answer any question like, “What is X?” If, for example, we are asked: “What is a lion?”, then we will immediately point our finger at a cage with a certain animal in a zoo or at an image of a lion in a picture in a book. Or, when a foreigner asks: “What is a pencil?”, we take a certain object out of our pocket and show it. In both cases, we discover a connection between a certain word and an equally specific object and point to it. We use words that relate to objects as substitutes for these objects: each word refers us to a specific object, be it an animal or a writing instrument. Finding the object “represented” to us by the word being asked about (i.e. finding the referent of the word) is the correct and accurate answer to the question posed. As soon as I found such an answer, I know how to use a word that was still unknown to me: in relation to what, in what connection and under what conditions. An answer of the kind in question teaches me only one thing - how to use the word.

But what the answer to this kind of question does not give me is knowledge about the subject itself - about the subject that was pointed out to me as the referent of the word that interests me. I only know what an object looks like, so that later I recognize it as an object, instead of which a word now appears. Therefore, there are limits - and quite strict ones - to what the finger-pointing method can teach me. If I discover which particular object correlates with the named word, then I will probably immediately want to ask the following questions: “What is the peculiarity of this object?”, “How does it differ from other objects and to what extent, why does it require a special name?” - It's a lion, not a tiger. This is a pencil, not a fountain pen. If calling a given animal a lion is correct, but a tiger is incorrect, then there must be something that lions have that tigers do not (this is something that makes lions what tigers are not). There must be some difference separating lions from tigers. And only by exploring this difference can we find out who lions really are, and such knowledge is different from simple knowledge about the subject replaced by the word “lion”. This is why we cannot be completely satisfied with our initial answer to the question: “What is sociology?”

Let's continue our reasoning. Having been satisfied that behind the word “sociology” there is a certain body of knowledge and a certain kind of practice that uses and supplements this knowledge, we must now ask questions about this knowledge and practice themselves: “What is it about them that allows us to consider them specifically “sociological”? ”?”, “What distinguishes this body of knowledge from its other bodies and, accordingly, the practice that produces this knowledge from its other types?”

In fact, the first thing that catches your eye when you see library shelves with books on sociology is the mass of other shelves with books around them that are not on sociology. Probably, in every university library you can find that the closest neighbors of books on sociology are books united by the headings: “history”, “political science”, “law”, “social policy”, “economics”. And, probably, the librarians who placed these shelves nearby had in mind, first of all, the convenience and accessibility of books for readers. They seem to have believed that a reader browsing through books on sociology might accidentally discover the information he needed in a book on, say, history or political science. In any case, this is much more likely than if he came across books, for example, on physics or engineering. In other words, librarians assume that the subject of sociology is somewhat closer to the field of knowledge denoted by the words “political science” or “economics”; and they probably also think that the difference between books on sociology and those located in the immediate vicinity of them is somewhat less pronounced, not so clearly marked and not so significant, as the difference between sociology and, for example, chemistry or medicine .

Regardless of whether such thoughts crossed the librarians' minds or not, they did the right thing. The bodies of knowledge that they placed next to each other actually have a lot in common: they all relate to the man-made world, i.e. part of the world, or aspect of it, bearing the imprint of human activity, which would not exist at all without human action. History, law, economics, political science, sociology - they all look at human actions and their consequences. This is what is common to all of them, and therefore they can truly be considered together. However, if all of these bodies of knowledge explore the same “territory,” then what, if anything, separates them? What is the specificity that “makes them different”, defines the differences and separates the names? On what basis do we assert that, despite all the similarities and commonality of the field under study, history

Is this not sociology or political science?

Any of us can immediately give a simple answer to these questions. The division between bodies of knowledge should reflect different aspects of the world they study. Human actions or aspects of human actions differ from each other, and in dividing the totality of knowledge into separate aggregates we only take this fact into account. Thus, we would say that history is concerned with actions that happened in the past and do not take place now, and sociology is focused on present events and actions or on such general properties of actions as do not change with time; anthropology talks about human actions occurring in societies spatially distant and different from our own, and sociology pays attention to actions occurring in our society (whatever that is), or to those aspects of those actions that remain the same across different societies. In the case of other close relatives of sociology, the “self-evident” answer will be less “self-evident.” However, if you still try to answer our question in detail, it turns out that political science studies

mainly actions such as seizing power and ruling; economics deals with activities related to the use of resources and the production and distribution of goods; jurisprudence studies the norms governing human behavior, as well as how these norms are formulated, made mandatory and coercive... As we see, if we continue in the same spirit, we will have to conclude: sociology is a residual discipline, making its living with what remains outside fields of view of other disciplines. The more material other disciplines put under their microscopes, the less problems sociology has to discuss; as if “out there,” in the human world, there is a limited number of facts waiting to be collected and dissected according to their inherent properties by special branches of science. The problem with this “obvious” answer to our question is that, like most other beliefs that seem self-evident and unconditionally true to us, it remains obvious only as long as we refrain from looking more closely at all the assumptions that force us accept this answer. Let us therefore try to trace all the stages through which we arrived at such an obvious answer.

First of all, how do we know that human actions are divided into a certain number of different types? - From the fact that they were classified that way and that each unit in this classification received its own name (for example, we know when it comes to politics, when it comes to economics, when it comes to laws, and we know what to look for where ), and also because there are groups of reliable experts, knowledgeable and worthy people who claim to have a special right to investigate, express competent opinion, guide or advise about certain types of action and not others. But let's take our research one step further: how do we even know what the human world is like “in itself,” i.e. before it is subdivided into economics, politics or social sphere, and independently of such subdivision? It is quite obvious that we did not learn this from our own life experience. Man does not live first in economics and then in politics; one does not move from sociology to anthropology when one travels from England to South America, or from history to sociology when one becomes a year older. If we can subdivide these areas in our experience and can say that this action here and now relates to politics, while another is of an economic nature, it is only because we have already been taught in advance to make such distinctions. Therefore, what we really know is not the world itself, but what we do with it; we put into practice, so to speak, our image of the world, a model carefully assembled from bricks acquired in the process of learning and mastering the language.

So, it can be said that the differences between scientific disciplines are not a reflection of natural differences in the human world. On the contrary, it is the division of labor among scientists studying human action (a division that is supported and reinforced by the mutual division of spheres of competence and special rights to decide what falls within the sphere of competence of each group) that is projected onto the map of the human world that we store in our minds and then we use it in our activities. That is, the division of labor between scientists accordingly structures the world in which we live. This means that if we want to dispel this obsession and find the hidden place of that “true difference,” then we better look at the practice of the existence of self-valuable disciplines, which, as it seemed to us at first, reflect the natural structure of the world. Now we can assume that it is precisely this practice of different disciplines that makes the differences

first of all; that if there is any reflection, it is directed in the direction opposite to the one we thought about at the beginning.

How to distinguish different types of practice, or practical areas of different scientific disciplines, from each other? Apparently, we should start with their attitude towards what they have chosen as the subject of their study, and this attitude differs little or does not differ at all. They all claim to be subject to the same rules of conduct when pursuing their subject. They all make every effort to gather all the relevant facts. They all try to prove that the facts are obtained correctly, that they are checked and double-checked, and that the information about them is reliable. They all try to give their statements of fact a form in which they can be clearly and unambiguously understood and tested by experience relevant to them and by experience that will become available in the future. They all try to anticipate or eliminate contradictions between the statements they make or refute, so that there are no two statements that cannot be true at the same time. In short, they are all trying to keep their promises; obtain and present one's findings in a sound manner, using a sound method (i.e., the method used is assumed to lead to the truth). Finally, they are willing to accept criticism and even rethink their statements if they have not done so. In fact, there are no differences in how the task of experts and their “trademark” - scientific responsibility - is understood and practically implemented. We are unlikely to find any difference in most other aspects of scientific practice. Everyone who claims to be a scientific expert uses apparently similar strategies for collecting and processing their facts: they observe the objects they study in their natural environment (for example, people in their “normal” everyday life at home, in public places, at work, at leisure) or in specially designed and carefully controlled experimental settings (where, for example, human responses are observed in a purposefully designed environment or where people are asked to answer questions designed to prevent unwanted interference); or they use as facts data from similar observations obtained earlier (say, census data, police archives, church records). All scientists share common logical rules for drawing conclusions and justifying (or refuting) conclusions drawn from the facts they have collected and verified. However, it seems to us that our last hope of finding the desired “meaningful difference” lies in questions characteristic of any field of research, i.e. issues that define points of view (cognitive perspectives), with which are considered, studied and described by scientists belonging to various disciplines; as well as in the principles that organize the information received on these issues and transform it into a model of a given sphere or a given aspect of human life.

To a very first approximation, economics, for example, is primarily interested in the relationship between costs and the efficiency of human action. In all likelihood, she views this action from the point of view of disposing of limited resources that the participants in the action strive for and want to use them to their greatest advantage. Consequently, in economics, relations between acting individuals (actors) act as aspects of the production and exchange of goods and services, regulated by supply and demand. Obviously, this science summarizes its findings and discoveries into a model of the process by which resources are created, extracted and distributed depending on demand.

For its part, political science is most often interested in another aspect of human action, namely, that which changes (or itself changes) the real or expected behavior of other actors (this influence is usually called power or influence). Political science will consider human actions from the point of view of asymmetries of power and influence: the behavior of some actors in the course of such interaction changes much more significantly than the behavior of others - their partners. She apparently organizes her knowledge around such concepts as “power”, “dominance”, “authority”, etc., which belong to the class of concepts with the help of which the differentiation of the chances of obtaining something about which the parties enter into certain agreements is studied. relationships and what they are fighting for.

However, the subject of interest of economics and political science (as well as other humanities) is in no way alien to sociology. You will discover this as soon as you look at any list of recommended literature for students of sociology: it will probably contain at least several works by scientists who call themselves historians, political scientists, or anthropologists. And yet sociology, like other branches of social research, has its own cognitive perspective, i.e. its own angle of view and set of questions for the study of human actions, as well as its own set of principles for interpreting facts.

To sum up the first and rough results, we can say: what distinguishes sociology and gives it a special character is the habit of considering human actions as elements of broader structures, i.e. not at all random collections of actors locked in a network of mutual dependence (dependence is a state in which the probability that an action will be taken, as well as the probability of the success of this action, change in accordance with what other actors represent, what they do or can do). Sociologists would ask what the consequences of this isolation, the limitation of people within the framework of relationships of mutual dependence, might be for their actual and possible actions. These kinds of questions form the objects of study of sociology, which is most interested in structures, networks of relationships, the interdependence of action and the increase or decrease in the degrees of freedom of actors. Single actors, like me or you, come under the lens of sociological research as units, members or partners in a network of interdependencies. We can say that the main questions of sociology are the following: in what sense is this dependence of some people on others significant, no matter what they do; In what sense is it significant that they always live (and cannot do otherwise) in a community, in interconnection, exchanging, competing and cooperating with other people? All this, covered by questions of this kind (and not some separate set of people or events selected for the purpose of research, and not a certain set of human actions rejected by other areas of research), constitutes a special field of sociological analysis and allows us to define sociology as a relatively independent branch of the humanities and social sciences. So we can conclude that sociology is the first and main way of thinking human world; in principle, it can be conceptualized in other ways.

Among these other methods from which we have separated sociology, the so-called common sense occupies a special place. Probably, sociology, more than other branches of science, reveals its connection with common sense (with this rich, albeit unorganized, unsystematic, often inexpressible knowledge that we use in our everyday life), fraught with problems that are significant for its existence and practice .

Indeed, few sciences are concerned with expressing their relation to common sense; many do not even notice its existence, let alone see it as a problem. Most sciences are defined in terms of the boundaries that separate them from other sciences, or the “bridges” that connect them, through lines of inquiry that are as robust and systematic as they are. They do not feel sufficiently in touch with common sense to bother drawing boundaries or building bridges with it. And their indifference, it must be admitted, is quite justified: common sense has nothing to say about the subjects that occupy physics, chemistry, astronomy or geology (and if it undertakes to judge them, then only with the kind permission of these sciences themselves and only to the extent that how they manage to make their intricate discoveries understandable to ordinary people). The subject of study of physics or astronomy is unlikely to ever come into the field of view of ordinary people - within, so to speak, your and my everyday experience. And therefore, we, being not experts, but ordinary people, cannot form our own opinion about these subjects without the help of scientists. Objects studied by these sciences reveal themselves only under very specific circumstances that are inaccessible to ordinary people: on the screen of an accelerator worth millions of dollars, through the lenses of a giant telescope, at the bottom of a mine several thousand meters deep - only scientists can observe them and experiment with them. them. These objects and events are the monopoly of a particular branch of science (or even of a select few of its experimenters), property not shared with anyone who does not belong to that profession. As full owners of the expertise that produces research data, scientists have complete control over the processing, analysis, and interpretation of that data. The results of such processing should be subject to careful critical examination by other scientists - but only scientists. They should not compete with public opinion, common sense, or any other form of lay opinion for one simple reason: there is no public opinion or common sense view on the issues they study.

Another thing is sociology. The sociological study does not use giant accelerators or radio telescopes. The experience that supplies data for sociological discoveries, which then form the basis of sociological knowledge, is the experience of ordinary people in their ordinary, everyday life; experience available in principle (though not always in practice) to everyone; an experience that, before entering the sociologist's magic crystal, had already been experienced by someone - a non-sociologist, a person not trained in sociological language and not able to look at things from a sociological point of view. After all, we all live surrounded by other people and interact with each other. We have all learned well that our benefits also depend on the actions of other people. All of us, and more than once, have gone through the terrible experience of breaking up relationships with friends and strangers. Whatever sociology talks about, it all has already happened in our lives. This is how it should be, otherwise we would not be able to control the course of our lives. In order to live in community with other people, we need to know many things; “common sense” is the name of this knowledge.

Deeply immersed in everyday routine, we hardly ever stop to reflect on what we have gone through; Even less often do we have the opportunity to compare our personal experience with the fate of other people, to see

the social in the individual, the general in the particular; this is what sociologists do for us. We need them to show how our individual biographies are intertwined with history, which we share with other people. And it doesn’t matter whether sociologists manage to advance so far or not, they still don’t have another

points of reference other than the everyday experience they share with you and me, i.e. in addition to the “raw material” that saturates the daily life of each of us. For this reason alone, sociologists, no matter how hard they try to follow the example of physicists or biologists and distance themselves from the objects they study (i.e., look at your and my life experience as an “external object”, from the point of view of an impartial and distant observer) , cannot completely escape the inner knowledge of the experience they are trying to understand. And no matter how hard they try, they are destined to be on both sides of the experience that they seek to interpret, i.e. to be outside and inside it at the same time. (Note how often sociologists use the personal pronoun “we” when reporting their discoveries and formulating their general statements. They say “we” instead of naming the “object”, which includes both those who research and those who is being studied. Can you imagine a physicist who speaks of himself and the molecules as “we”? Or an astronomer who calls himself and the stars in one word -

But the relationship between sociology and common sense is even more specific. The phenomena that physicists and astronomers observe and generalize are revealed to them in an innocent, primordial form, unprocessed, free from labels, ready-made definitions and preliminary interpretations (except for those cases when physicists, being the first to conduct some experiments, cause with their interpretations the very appearance of these phenomena). They wait until the physicist or astronomer gives them a name, determines their place among other phenomena and places them in an orderly whole; in short, until he identifies them, gives them meaning. But there are very few, if any, sociological equivalents (analogues) similar to pure and unknown phenomena that would not have received some significance even earlier. The human actions and interactions studied by sociologists had already been named and thought through, albeit insufficiently coherently and intelligibly, by the actors themselves: even before the sociologist began to study them, they were objects of ordinary knowledge and common sense. The family, the organization, the kinship ties, the neighborhood communities, towns and villages, nations and churches, any other collection of people based on regular interaction, have long been endowed with meaning and meaning by other actors, so that the actors now consciously refer to them in their actions as carriers of the meanings given to them. Ordinary people and professional sociologists, when describing these objects, can use the same names and the same language. Whatever sociological concept we take, it will always be burdened with the meanings given to it by the ordinary knowledge and common sense of “ordinary” people, like you and me.

It is clear that sociology is too closely connected with common sense to allow itself to treat it as impartially and arrogantly as, for example, chemistry or geology do. And we, ordinary people, are also allowed to think about the interdependence of people, about their interactions, and reason knowledgeably. Don't we ourselves experience this interdependence and interaction? Sociological discussion is widely accessible, and while not every one of us is invited to join, there are no clearly defined barriers or prohibitions. Here you can always challenge barely outlined boundaries, the reliability of which is not guaranteed in advance (unlike the sciences that study objects inaccessible to everyday experience), as well as the independence of sociology within the framework of social knowledge, its right to make authoritative conclusions about the subject. That is why it is so important for sociology (if it wants to feel like a science) as an ordered body of knowledge to draw the line between sociological knowledge proper and common sense,

We can note at least four initial differences between sociology and common sense (our “raw” knowledge of life) in their relation to their common sphere - human experience.

Let's start with the fact that, unlike common sense, sociology tries to obey strict rules responsible statements, which are considered an attribute of science (as opposed to other, by all accounts, freer and less vigilantly self-policing forms of knowledge). This means that sociologists are required to distinguish very clearly between statements that can be verified by available experience, and statements that can only claim the status of conditional and untested opinion, and to make this distinction in such a way that it is understandable to everyone. Sociologists are more likely to refrain from misrepresenting ideas based only on their own convictions (even the most passionate and profound ones) as proven discoveries bearing the stamp of widespread acceptance and authority in science. The rules of responsible statements require that the researcher’s “kitchen”, i.e. the entire set of procedures that led to the final conclusions and acted as a guarantor of their reliability was widely open to unlimited public review; the invitation to repeat the test, reproduce the experiment, and even possibly disprove the findings should be extended to everyone. Such responsible statements must be correlated with other judgments on the topic; they cannot simply reject or remain silent about other points of view already expressed, no matter how contradictory these points of view may be to them and, therefore, no matter how inconvenient they may be. It is assumed that, as soon as the rules of responsible statements are honestly and scrupulously followed, the reliability, validity and, ultimately, the practical significance of statements is thereby dramatically increased (or almost completely guaranteed). Much of our general confidence in the reliability of beliefs certified by science rests on the expectation that scientists actually follow the rules of responsible speech and that science as a profession encourages every scientist to follow these rules in all cases. As for the scientists themselves, they point to the merits of responsible statements as an argument in favor of the superiority of the knowledge they offer.

The second difference concerns the size of the field in which material for judgments is collected. For most of us laymen, such a field is limited to our own life-world: what we do; the people we communicate with; goals that we set for ourselves and that we believe other people also set for themselves. We very rarely, if at all, try to rise above the level of our daily interests, to expand the horizon of our experience, because this requires time and resources that most of us cannot afford to expend in such an attempt. And despite the incredible variety of living conditions, every experience drawn only from the individual life world is always fragmentary and for the most part one-sided. These shortcomings can only be eliminated in one way: to combine together and then compare with each other experiences from countless life worlds. And then the incompleteness of any individual experience is revealed, as well as the complex set of interrelations and interdependencies in which it exists - a set that extends far beyond the limits visible from the convenient positions of an individual biography. As a result of this expansion of horizons, it becomes possible to reveal the close connection between individual biography and more general social processes,

the nature of everyday life, which “informs” our common sense and is in turn “informed” by it. As long as we make the usual, habitual moves that fill most of our daily lives, we do not need to engage in self-examination and introspection. If something is repeated quite often, then it becomes familiar, and familiarity has the property of self-explanation; it creates no difficulty or arouses curiosity and thus remains invisible, indistinguishable. Nobody asks questions, because everyone is satisfied that “things are the way they are,” “people are the way they are,” and there’s hardly anything you can do about it. Recognizability and familiarity are the worst enemy of curiosity and criticality, and therefore of everything new, readiness for change. Confronted with this familiar world of habit and mutually confirming beliefs, sociology acts as an intrusive and irritating stranger. She disturbs the comfortable and calm life with her questions, none of the “locals” remember ever asking them, let alone answering these questions. Such questions turn obvious things into puzzles: they “alienate” the familiar. Suddenly everyday life becomes the subject of intense scrutiny. And then it turns out that it is just one of the possible ways of life, and not the only and not the “natural” way.

Not everyone may like such questions and intrusions into everyday life; many would prefer to reject this transformation of the known into the unknown, since it presupposes a rational analysis of things that have hitherto simply “run their course.” (You can recall Kipling’s centipede, which easily rearranged all its hundred legs, until the insidious flatterer began to extol its exceptional memory, thanks to which it would never place the thirty-seventh leg before the thirty-fifth, the fifty-second before the nineteenth... Believing in this, the unfortunate the centipede could not take another step...) Someone may feel shocked and even humiliated: what was so familiar and of which he was proud is now devalued, exposed as worthless and ridiculous, and his resistance is quite understandable. Yet the transformation in question has its benefits, and the most important thing about it is that it can open up new, hitherto unknown possibilities for living with greater self-awareness and understanding, and even with greater freedom and self-control.

For those who believe that living a conscious life is worth the effort, sociology will be a welcome aid. Remaining in continuous and close interaction with common sense, it strives to overcome its limitations and reveal possibilities that common sense naturally tries to hide. By turning to our common knowledge and questioning it, sociology can push us to re-evaluate our experience, discover many more ways to interpret it, and as a result help us become more critical, less satisfied with the state of things as it is today or as we are. imagine (or rather, will help us never consider these problems to be non-existent).

The art of thinking sociologically can provide each of us with the most important service, namely: to make us more empathetic; sharpen our senses, open our eyes wider, and then we will be able to explore human situations that have hitherto remained invisible to us. Once we have begun to better understand how, through the use of power and human resources, aspects of our life that seem at first glance to be natural, inevitable, irremovable, eternal are realized, we can hardly agree that they are beyond the reach of human action, including and our own. Sociological thinking in itself, one might say, rightfully has its own power, namely anti-fixing by force. It returns

Inset

If you ask first-year students at the university’s sociology department about this, they will answer without hesitation: we are studying our future profession.

Three-quarters of American sociology graduates find jobs in science and private business, in government agencies and consulting firms, and work in their specialty. They work in the field of academic and applied sociology. But where do the remaining quarter of graduates go to work? Many sociologists break with their profession, go into business, government, publishing, party work, i.e. do not work in their specialty. Sociologists become managers, businessmen and party functionaries. They often cope with this work more successfully than those who have received specialized education. Why? Apparently, the science of society allows us to learn something that other fields of knowledge do not provide.

Namely:

Sociology makes people experts in social and human issues.

It creates a special style of thinking and makes it possible to look at events from a broad perspective.

Sociological training leads to the fact that in any matter a person sees several alternative solutions to the same problem at once, and this is obviously a more economically profitable path.

Sociology helps to avoid or skillfully resolve interpersonal conflicts, and to be an effective mediator.

It teaches optimism and the ability to overcome personal difficulties.

Botok most often appear in America. Nowadays in the New World there are hundreds, if not thousands of organizations (large and small, public and private) engaged in research, the results of which are formalized into social engineering projects, management decision systems and practical recommendations. This field of activity is constantly expanding. New organizations are emerging alongside older and well-established firms independent of universities that attract highly qualified specialists. They also require substantial investment and serious support. Some large institutions employ more Ph.D.s than any Boston university.

Often applied research becomes a form of underground business. There are many “front” companies in the country that enter into an official contract for research, develop a scientific program, apply standard procedures, etc. Legislators, financiers, and unscrupulous politicians are pushing for large cash loans, supposedly to solve important social problems. However, nothing but deception and deception comes from this. Often unskilled workers and people who call themselves “social scientists” find shelter in such companies. According to P. Rossi, this is the flip side of the rapid growth of applied research in the United States, which does not at all contribute to increasing their prestige in the scientific community 2 .

Applied sociology in the United States has become a rapidly growing sector of the economy. In contrast, academic sociology experienced periodic crises in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Subsidies allocated for the needs of applied science by the government and private companies pay off quite quickly and exceed allocations for fundamental developments. However, the forms of labor organization for applied workers, the distribution and training of specialists for this industry in universities and colleges do not meet today's requirements. Serious contradictions are observed between the scientific ideal of research and the social role that a sociologist has to fulfill, between the authority of applied sociology and the imperfect organizational forms of its current development.

In the book, which is an official report of the American Sociological Association, prepared by 34 authors (18 professors from California, Harvard, Washington, Texas, Missouri, Massachusetts and other universities, sociological departments, 7 directors of research firms and institutes, the rest are managers, consultants and others, one author is an employee of the General Motors research laboratory), includes an interesting article by R. Sorensen 3, who writes that corporations, despite the objective need for this kind of services, rarely have the position of “applied sociologist” on their staff " There is not even a clear description of the circle of his responsibilities.

2 Rossi P.H. The Presidential Address: Challenges and Opportunities of Applied Social Research // Amer. Sociol. Rev., 1980. Vol. 45.No. 6. P. 901-902.

3 Applied sociology: roles and activities of sociologists in diverse settings / Ed. by H.E. Freeman, Dynes R.R., Rossi P.H. and Whyte W.F. San Francisco etc.: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1983. P. 176-179.

news Applied sociologists call themselves by the name of the position for which they manage to get a job in a corporation. No one explains to the recruiting agents sent by top management the responsibilities, capabilities, and role of an applied sociologist. Not understanding the capabilities of a sociologist, management denies them employment and career advancement. The absence of the position “sociologist” in the list of professions of corporations is also explained by the persistent prejudice that such a specialist is only capable of studying society as a whole, and not specific phenomena and relationships affecting people. Very few companies initiate sociological research; the administration often submits scientific reports to an archive or library. Businessmen often mistake a sociologist for a person whose responsibilities include caring for the well-being of staff. But for such purposes, they prefer specialists with more narrow and focused training, for example, psychologists or personnel training specialists.

An applied sociologist does not have such wide creative contacts with fellow sociologists as a university teacher who constantly meets with them at seminars, conferences, round tables, etc. An applied scientist who spends every day working for an automobile corporation or a bank that employs him full-time is not only deprived of contacts and support from the professional community, but also deprived of the opportunity for self-realization on the pages of academic publications.

Low quality is a characteristic of most research in sociology, regardless of whether it is applied or basic. “For example, more than 3/4 of all articles sent to ASR, writes P. Rossi, are returned. It is very problematic that applied research is of lower quality than basic research” 4 . The criteria for articles presented in ASR and AJS, such as a good sample, tools, program and analysis methods, are optional for applied scientists. Although an article in an academic journal is of interest to a small circle of professionals and only affects the author’s career without causing practical consequences, the activities of the applied scientist are reflected in the formation of social policy, public opinion, and the position of organizations and foundations. It is a known fact that in recent decades applied research has been represented, at best, by lay social scientists, most of whom were unable to conduct reliable verification of the empirical data obtained 5 .

Rossi P.H. The Presidential Address: Challenges and Opportunities of Applied Social Research//Amer. Sociol. Rev., 1980. Vol. 45.No. 6. P. 893. 5 Ibid. P. 897.

According to D. Spain, unlike an academic sociologist, an applied scientist most often has to communicate with a contingent of people who do not master sociological thinking and therefore do not share his views on the world. Without special training in this area, they

we have to constantly convince of the usefulness and necessity of the sociological approach to solving practical issues. Applied scientists have to do something that is not required of an academic sociologist - constantly prove their right to exist. But by teaching businessmen, industrialists or civil servants, who act as customers of research, the basics of sociological science, an applied scientist is forced to do the same thing that a university sociologist does all his life - educate people 7 .

When a university announces a competition to fill a vacant position in the sociology department, they look for a specialist. However, when the company

ALL sorts of graphs, tables with numbers and percentages - such results of sociological research can be found today at important scientific conferences, in glossy magazines, and on the World Wide Web. Who spends more on groceries, who will win the elections, and who will break the birth rate record? Who is interested in these questions, who is looking for answers to them and who is being interviewed for this? Personally, sociologists have never approached me, so I, like, I think, many readers, asked myself these questions.

I came to the director of the Center for Sociological and Political Research of BSU, David ROTMAN, for answers.

— David Genrikhovich, why do we need sociological research, what practical benefit does it have for ordinary people?

I will explain with specific examples. If a study is conducted, for example, on health and healthy lifestyle issues, it reveals how the health care system in the country works, its advantages and disadvantages. This can also be determined by how people themselves understand what a healthy lifestyle is, how they behave when faced with an illness, and whether they see a doctor. Therefore, all this is necessary, first of all, in order to make our life more comfortable. I want people to understand how important this is so they answer honestly. This is a kind of civic responsibility, because we are all part of society, and a lot depends on ourselves. Based on the results of such surveys, government agencies and public organizations can make certain decisions to improve our lives. How can this be done if there is no information about what is happening in society and what worries it? Sociological research allows us to obtain such information. You can write complaints about the clinic as much as you like. But if such information is collected from thousands of people and transferred to a high government body, the chances of resolving the issue are much greater. Many other problems are also being studied. The results of sociologists' research are very important both for people and for sociological science itself.

- How are respondents selected for sociological surveys?

Previously, so-called quota selection was more often used. Nowadays, the so-called random sample is more popular among sociologists. At the first stage of selection, regions and settlements for the survey are randomly determined. This is done in different ways. For example, by lot. Then they also choose a street in the city, house and apartment number. Not every person is interviewed in the apartments, but only the one whose birthday is closest to the time our interviewer arrives. There are also principles developed by mathematicians. According to them, there should be at least a thousand respondents. Only in this case do the laws of probability work. The main rule of selection: each person should have an equal opportunity to be included in the sample population. Therefore, our interviewers must strictly adhere to the selection rules and follow the established route. For example, if he was not allowed into the 47th apartment in a certain building on a certain street or there was no one at home, he cannot enter the neighboring apartment, but must move further along the route to the next randomly selected address. At the same time, if someone was not at home somewhere, he is obliged to return to this apartment at least 4 more times until he finds the owner of the house. After processing the questionnaires, the percentage of respondents is divided into so-called demographic groups (men, women, youth, pensioners, with or without higher education, etc.), which are compared with the data of the latest population census - with a high-quality and correct survey, they should be approximately are the same, an error of +, - 5 percent is allowed (for example, if, according to the census data, men in our country make up about 47 percent, then they should make up approximately the same amount of the total number of respondents. - Note by Ya.M.). Then comes the quality control of information collection. To do this, we have a special group that checks from 10 to 20 percent of respondents using the “re-visit” method. They call and clarify whether the interviewer really came, what he asked about, and how long the conversation lasted. If violations are detected, the interviews are conducted again. The next step is checking the logic of the answers. There should be no contradictions here. For example, does the age of the respondent correlate with how many years ago he got married and the age of his children. In a word, it’s a very long and hard work, because our task is to obtain the most accurate information. We conduct research mainly on orders from interested organizations. Therefore, the data must be as accurate as possible. After all, they become the basis for making management decisions.

- How reliable is the information collected, because people can embellish something somewhere?

Of course, the truthfulness of the answers is up to the people themselves. But sociologists have their own approaches. For example, in questionnaires, in addition to direct questions, there are “trap questions” and “test questions.” It is immediately clear from them who is lying: if a person answered one way in one place, and in another one formulated differently, but, in fact, the same question gave a different answer, the questionnaire is rejected.

A person can find a lot of reasons to refuse a survey - I think there are enough of them. What do you do in this case?

Initially, we try to select suitable interviewers who can approach the person and explain the importance of their work. If someone is busy at that moment, then we politely ask when they can come in. If we still receive a refusal, then we simply move on to the address specified in the route. In general, failures occur for various reasons. For example, in some cities, sectarians are starting to follow on the heels of our specialists, introducing themselves as sociologists and offering their leaflets. Naturally, people don't want to let them in. Therefore, before starting the study, we inform people about this in the press. Plus, our employees always have their ID with them. But the opposite also happens, when our specialist comes to see an elderly grandmother, and she is bored, and she starts talking about everything in the world and does not let him go for hours.

David Genrikhovich, in your experience, how open are Belarusians for communication and how willing are they to take such interviews?

Most people make contact. In addition, various test questions show that, as a rule, they are telling the truth. Our people are open. Most often they greet our employees with a smile on their face. Therefore, interviewers have no complaints about people, they like the work, and they look forward to new assignments.

- Where do you get your research topics?

Sociological research is carried out in two cases: if there is an obvious problem situation or if some organization has ordered the study of a particular issue. When we get the result and see very important information, we provide it to someone who, in our opinion, may be interested in it. Sociologists have the same principle as doctors: the main thing is to do no harm. Therefore, if we notice a problem, we try to help solve it.

- Who usually orders such studies?

Anyone - various international organizations, government bodies, commercial firms, public organizations. For example, we are now conducting research at the border - looking at how long it takes for passport control when traveling to Poland and Lithuania. This is an order from the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In parallel, large-scale research is underway jointly with the University of Cambridge on “Mortality and Privatization.” British scientists have suggested that the higher the privatization in a country, the higher the mortality rate. We decided to take Russia and Belarus for the study - indeed, our level of privatization and mortality rate are lower than in Russia. We conduct a large number of different studies. These include international projects. We have represented and represent Belarus in studies of European and world values, in the study of electoral systems, in INTAS projects and the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. We work on orders from leading ministries and departments of our country, large firms and production organizations.

- David Genrikhovich, do you trust the research of other sociological centers?

If everything is done according to the rules, then there should be no mistakes, and you can trust. But just recently parliamentary elections took place in Great Britain and presidential elections in Poland. It turned out that pre-election polls in both countries gave erroneous results. In Britain they showed that Cameron's party would not win, but they did. In Poland they talked about Komorowski's victory in the first round, but he lost. Recently it became known that a similar mistake occurred in Spain during municipal elections. We are now looking closely at why the studies produced erroneous results. To do this, we turned to colleagues in different countries. The causes of errors are important to us. It’s not without reason that they say that you should learn from the mistakes of others. This allows you to avoid your own.

- David Genrikhovich, thank you for the interesting conversation!