Almost simultaneously with diffusionism, a sociological school was formed in European ethnology, which turned out to be creatively more fruitful. If the founders of evolutionism saw the main subject of ethnology in man, and diffusionists - in culture, then the representatives of the sociological school turned primarily to human society. They proceeded from the fact that human society cannot be reduced to a simple sum of individuals. They considered society as a system of moral (moral) ties between people, which, as it were, were imposed on them and had coercive power.
The birthplace of the sociological school in ethnology is France, and its largest representative and founder is Emile Durkgsim (1858-1917).
In contrast to the evolutionists, Durksheim understood human societies not as successive stages of adaptation of people to conditions environment, but as closed static systems, the study of which should be carried out using the method of studying social facts. The latter are methods of action, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which also have coercive power and are imposed on him by the external environment. At the same time, he especially insists that the social facts themselves should be studied as "things" 3 not our understanding of these facts. Otherwise, Durksheim notes, this is not a science, but an ideology, fraught with all sorts of prejudices and subjectivism.
The stability of society, in his opinion, is ensured by the social solidarity of its members. All elements of the social system are in a state of stable balance, otherwise such a system is pathological, doomed to inevitable decay. Classifying societies according to the level of development, Durksheim introduces the concept of "social type" or " social type". He takes the simplest society as the basis of his classification: the primitive "horde", which has outlived its usefulness. Developing into a more complex social structure, the "horde" becomes a clan (i.e. clan). In turn, various associations and combinations of clans form a tribe, curia, phratry, from which complex social organisms are already arising up to the empire. Thus, according to Durkheim, any society is only a complication of the same primitive society.
Another important component of Durksheim's ethno-sociological theory is the doctrine of collective representations. Human consciousness, in his opinion, is heterogeneous, since it exists in two different forms: as an individual and as a collective. The first is specific to each individual and is entirely determined by the characteristics of his psyche: the second is the same for the entire group and not only does not depend on individual people, but, on the contrary, has a force that is coercive towards them. Collective consciousness finds expression in collective ideas - religious beliefs, myths, morality and law. They are rooted in social life and are developed by the entire social group as a whole, representing, in essence, various aspects of its self. acceptance.
Developing his doctrine of collective ideas, Durksheim naturally comes to the question of the essence of religion and its role in society. Rejecting the usual definition of religion as belief in supernatural beings, he believes that its main feature is the sharp division of the whole world into two halves - the sacred (sacred) world and the everyday (profane) world. The peculiarity of this division is that these two halves are considered as absolutely heterogeneous, i.e. in no way reducible to one another. The difference between them is not in hierarchy, but simply in the fact that these worlds are usually separated by an impenetrable border. Crossing this border is possible only in religious rituals, thanks to which the gap between the sacred and the profane is overcome. Religion, in his opinion, is purely functional, as it is designed to strengthen the social solidarity of the group. And since any religion corresponds to the social conditions that gave rise to it, it cannot be considered a false reproduction of reality.] The content of religion, in the final analysis, is society itself, its structure.
Durkheim's ideas were developed to varying degrees by his students and followers, among whom should be mentioned M. Most, K. Levy -5 Strauss, M. Granet, L. Levy-Bruhl.
Of particular interest are the ideas of Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857-1939). The starting point of all Levy-Bruhl's research is his commitment to the doctrine of collective ideas, by which he also understood those ideas that are not formed in a person on the basis of his own life experience, but are introduced into his consciousness through the social environment - education,! public opinion and customs. Developing these ideas, Levy-Bruhl became interested in the question of the laws governing these collective representations. Starting from the views of Durkheim, he developed his theory of the prelogical thinking of primitive peoples, which he outlined in the book "Primitive Thinking"] (1930).

According to Levy-Bruhl, prelogical thinking fundamentally distinguishes a person of a primitive era from a modern one, since there are no distinctions between cause and effect, subject and object. Pre-logical thinking is not non-logical thinking, it does not seek, like ours, to avoid contradictions. We are talking about a special type of thinking that obeys its own sie- i cific laws. These laws governing the collective ideas of backward peoples are not at all like our logical laws of thought. They are not separated from emotions and are not aimed at explaining the phenomena of reality. When performing religious rites, they act on nervous system) sharply, excitingly, infecting a person with the emotions of fear, religious horror, passionate desire, hope, etc. At the same time, primitive man does not seek an explanation for the phenomena of the surrounding reality, because he perceives these phenomena not in their pure form, but in combination with a whole complex of emotions , ideas about secret forces, about the magical properties of objects.
In connection with this, the perception of the world by primitive man is oriented in a completely different way than ours: we strive for the objectivity of knowledge, while subjectivism prevails in it. Therefore, primitive people confuse real objects with ideas about them, do not distinguish between dreams and reality, a person and his image, a person and his name, etc. For the same reason, primitive thinking is irrelevant to experience. Experienced knowledge does not dissuade primitive man in belief in witchcraft, in mysterious forces, in fetishes. His thinking is "impenetrable" to experience: instead of the basic logical laws, the "law of participation" becomes decisive, in the words of Levy-Bruhl. According to this law, an object can be itself and at the same time something else, it can be here and at the same time in another place. This type of thinking Levy-Bruhl and designated as pre-logical.
According to Levy-Bruhl, collective ideas are also present in the thinking of a modern European. This is caused by the natural human need for direct communication with the outside world, which is not provided by scientific knowledge. Science objectifies the world and thereby distances it from humanity. 1 [Therefore, a person strives for living communication with nature through religion, morality, customs, where collective ideas are fundamental. Levy-Bruhl believes that pre-logical thinking exists and will exist along with logical thinking, that the “law of participation” and mystical disposition are a natural property of the thinking of modern man.
The main ideas of the sociological school are as follows.
Every society has a set of "collective beliefs" that ensure its stability.
The function of culture is to solidify society, to bring people together.
R> each society has its own morality, it is dynamic and changeable.
The transition from one society to another is a difficult process and is not carried out smoothly, but in jerks.

Schools of sociology

Definition 1

The school in sociology is a system of scientific sociological views, as well as a scientific sociological community that adheres to these views. The sociological school is formed by a certain leader who defends theoretical and methodological positions in the current academic community.

In modern scientific discourse, the following schools of sociology stand out:

• Austro-German School of Sociology;
• French School of Sociology;
• Italian School of Sociology;
• American School of Sociology.

The Austro-German school is represented by such scholars as Ludwig Gumplovich, Gustav Ratzenhover, Ferdinand Tennis, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Werner Sombart, Leopold von Wiese and Sigmund Freud.

The French school of sociology was represented by such scholars as Gabriel Tarde, Gustave Lbon and Emile Durkheim

The Italian school of sociology was represented by Vilfredo Pareto.

The American School of Sociology was represented by such scholars as William Sumner, Lester Frank Ward, Franklin Henry Giddings and George Meade.

The main directions of schools of sociology

The Astro-Germanic school focused its attention on the theory of conflict. Thus, Ludwig Gumplovich studied the theory of social conflict, based on the idea that the object of sociological science is social groups, and the subject of sociology is a certain system of movements of these social groups.

Gustav Ratzenhover, based on the theory of social conflict, focused his attention on the conflict of interests of social groups in society, as well as on the conflict of interests of individuals. Thus, Gustav Ratzenhver proposed the law of rapprochement discovered by him in order to match individual interests and the interests of social groups as the basic law of sociological science.

Ferdinand Tennis singled out the community and society as the basic concepts of sociology, where the community is the primary historical formation, and society is secondary. The community is customs and religion, traditional ties, and society is an agreement, public opinion, relations based on rational ties.

Georg Simmel founded the so-called formal sociology, and Max Weber founded the understanding sociology, as well as the theory of social action.

Werner Sombart founded the theory of organized capitalism, and Leopold von Wiese contributed to the organization and systematization of sociology. Sigmund Freud influenced the understanding of interpersonal interaction, where the experience learned in childhood and the conflicts experienced during this period play a significant role.

The French school of sociology focused its attention on the study of group, mass behavior, where psychological and social mechanisms play a significant role.

Gabriel Tarde founded social psychology introduced the law of imitation.

Gustave Lebon defended the idea of ​​increasing inequality between people as a result of the development of civilization, considering its achievements as the result of the activities of the elite of society.

Emile Durkheim laid the theoretical foundation of sociology, developed structural functionalism.

The Italian school of sociology focused on the principles of the formation of sociological knowledge.

Thus, Vilfredo Pareto developed the principles for constructing such knowledge, which are provided by such qualities of scientific information as reliability, reliability and validity.

The American school of sociology developed during the transition from theoretical to empirical sociology.

William Sumner was the first to present a systematic course of lectures in sociology for students.

Franklin Henry Giddings tried to highlight the main problems of sociology as a science, highlighting its mental side.

George Mead founded the direction of symbolic interactionism.

sociological school

Great Soviet Encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .

See what the "Sociological School" is in other dictionaries:

Sociological jurisprudence, one of the main directions of bourgeois jurisprudence of the 20th century. In contrast to legal positivism, which reduced the tasks of legal science only to formally logical study current law, S. sh. P.… … Great Soviet Encyclopedia

One of the directions of the science of law of the XX century. Supporters of the S. sh. believe that the current legal acts are not always adequate to the economic and social conditions. In this regard, they give great importance freedom of judicial discretion, i.e. smaller ... ... Law Dictionary

One of the main trends in the science of criminal law, emerged in late XIX early 20th century Leading theorists of the N.W.S.P. were the German criminologist F. List, the Belgian A. Prince and the Dutch J. Van Hamel. With a variety of approaches in common ... ... Law Dictionary

Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

One of the directions of the science of law of the 20th century. Supporters of the sociological school of law believed that the current legal acts are not always adequate to economic and social conditions. In this regard, they attached great importance to judicial discretion ... Political science. Dictionary.

Direction in the science of criminal law. It arose in con. 19 early 20th century Representatives of the school F. List (Austria), C. Lombroso, E. Ferri (Italy), Russian scientists I. Ya. Foinitsky, S. V. Poznyshev, recognizing the social conditioning of the criminal ... ... Political science. Dictionary.

SOCIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF CRIMINAL LAW- direction in the science of criminal law. Happened at the end XIX early XX centuries Representatives of the school F. List (Austria), E. Ferry (Italy), Russian scientists I. Ya. Foinitsky, S. V. Poznyshev, recognizing the social conditioning of criminal behavior ... ... Legal Encyclopedia

One of the directions of the science of law of the XX century. Supporters of the sociological school of law believed that the current legal acts are not always adequate to economic and social conditions. In this regard, they attached great importance to judicial discretion ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Direction in the science of criminal law. It emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Representatives of the school F. List (Austria), C. Lombroso, E. Ferri (Italy), Russian scientists I. Ya. Foinitsky, S. V. Poznyshev, recognizing the social conditioning of the criminal ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Culturology

sociological school

Sorokin Weber's sociological school

Introduction

1. The founders of the sociological school, its essence

1.1. Thomas Stearns Eliot concept

1.2. Concept by Max and Alfred Weber

1.3. Talcott Parsons concept

1.4. The concept of Pitirim Sorokin

Bibliography

Introduction

Culturology (lat. cultura - cultivation, farming, education, veneration; other Greek λόγος - thought, reason) is a science that studies culture, the most general patterns of its development. The tasks of cultural studies include understanding culture as an integral phenomenon, determining the most general laws of its functioning, as well as analyzing the phenomenon of culture as a system. Cultural studies took shape as an independent discipline in the 20th century.

The term "culturology" was proposed in 1949 by the famous American anthropologist Leslie White (1900-1975) to designate a new scientific discipline as an independent science in the complex social sciences. Culturology is an integrative field of knowledge born at the intersection of philosophy, history, psychology, linguistics, ethnography, religion, sociology, culture and art history. However, in the foreign scientific classification, cultural studies are not distinguished as a separate science. The phenomenon of culture in Europe and America is understood mainly in the socio-ethnographic sense, therefore, cultural anthropology is considered the main science.

The subject of cultural studies is the study of the phenomenon of culture as a historical and social experience of people, which is embodied in specific norms, laws and features of their activities, transmitted from generation to generation in the form of value orientations and ideals, interpreted in the "cultural texts" of philosophy, religion, art, law . The meaning of cultural studies today is to teach a person at the level of culture, as its creator. Depending on the goals and subject areas, the level of knowledge and generalization, fundamental and applied cultural studies are distinguished. Fundamental studies culture with the aim of theoretical and historical knowledge of this phenomenon, develops a categorical apparatus and research methods; at this level one can single out the philosophy of culture. Applied, relying on fundamental knowledge about culture, studies its individual subsystems - economic, political, religious, artistic - in order to predict, design and regulate actual cultural processes.

The main directions and schools in cultural studies of the XX century. formed on the basis of all previous knowledge, enriched by the achievements of new sciences. In an effort to discover the most intimate sources of culture, to determine its essence, to reveal the most general laws development, many prominent representatives of new branches of knowledge began to claim to create general theory culture, their own culturologists. Thus, various schools appeared with a certain scientific "dominant", reflecting a specific research interest.

The diversity of points of view on culture reflects the multidimensionality and complexity of this concept, which includes all the material and spiritual wealth of the world created by man. Culturology, along with other sciences, seeks to create a kind of unified theory of culture that would contain integrative knowledge based on the achievements of the most various sciences XX century., Which one way or another explore culture from their specific sides.

Of course, it should be borne in mind that the division into schools is very arbitrary and the boundaries between them are often blurred, since each school often uses the views and achievements of its predecessors. Nevertheless, the main directions in cultural studies can be distinguished:

1. Socio-historical;

2. Naturalistic;

3. Sociological;

4. Structural and functional;

5. Symbolic.

Consider the sociological school.

1. The founders of the sociological school, its essence

The sociological school unites those scientists who seek the origins and explanation of culture not in the historical or "natural" development of the human spirit. Not in the psyche and not in the biological prehistory of mankind, but in its social nature and organization. The focus of this direction is the society itself, its structure and social institutions(Eliot, P. Sorokin, Weber, Parsons). A feature of the worldview of P. Sorokin, T. Eliot, A. Weber and others is the belief that all ways of human existence are imposed on the individual by society - therefore, the options for explaining the activities of a “reasonable person” simply must lie in the plane of studying the mechanisms of the hostel of large groups of people. Questions of the development of the human spirit or divine intervention in the course of history only hinder a clear understanding of the nature of culture. The specific appearance of a country, Weber, for example, associated with cultural factors, and not with civilizational ones, which are of a universal nature. Parsons believes that all spiritual and material achievements, united by the concept of "culture", are the result of socially determined actions at the level of two systems - social and cultural. This school N.A. Berdyaev described it as follows: “Sociology claims that a person is an animal that has undergone drill, discipline and development on the part of society. Everything valuable in a person is not inherent in him, but received from society, which he is forced to revere as a deity. Naturally, the sociological school is not fenced off by the Chinese wall from the other directions we are considering, and the concepts of its individual representatives often intersect and complement each other, as part of a common effort to create a unified theory of culture.

One of the representatives of the sociological school is T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965), Anglo-American poet and critic of modernism, author of Notes on the Definition of Culture (1948).

1.1 Thomas Stearns Eliot concept

“By culture,” Eliot wrote in Notes on the Definition of Culture, “I mean, first of all, what anthropologists mean: the way of life of a given people living in one place. We see manifestations of this culture in his art, his social system, his habits and customs, his religion. But all these things taken together do not constitute a culture, although we often, for the sake of convenience, express ourselves as if this were the case. These things are only parts into which a culture can be dissected - like the human body in an anatomical theater. But just as a person is something more than a collection of various constituent parts his body, so culture is more than a collection of arts, customs and religious beliefs.

Noting the crisis of the traditional values ​​of Western society in the middle of the 20th century, the loss of its moral and intellectual wealth as a result of universal standardization and a narrowly utilitarian approach to life - features characteristic of modern mass culture - Eliot comes to the conclusion that this leads to suppression in a person creative start. Eliot believed that humanity could preserve the creative energy only by overcoming "massification" and supporting the cultural "elite".

Eliot emphasized the importance of the elitist approach not only in the sphere of politics, but also in the sphere of culture. Like his contemporary and compatriot Toynbee, Eliot divided society into a spiritual elite and an unenlightened mass, and only the first is capable of cultural creation. The creative elite, according to Eliot, does not belong to any particular class and must be constantly replenished from the social "bottom". However, for its emergence and formation, wealth and belonging to a certain privileged stratum are necessary.

1.2 Concept by Max and Alfred Weber

Among the representatives of the sociological school, the names of the German sociologists Max Weber (1864-1920) and his brother Alfred Weber (1868-1958) should also be mentioned. Max Weber called the direction he developed "understanding sociology", its essence is to establish cultural meanings social activities of people. The most valuable work for the development of cultural thought is "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", in which M. Weber gives an example of the analysis of the influence of cultural values ​​and norms formed within a certain religious system on economic culture, on the choice of certain areas of social economic development.

Another valuable aspect of Weber's legacy was the concept of the ideal type. And although the German jurist G. Jellinek was the first to introduce this concept, this idea received a holistic embodiment precisely from M. Weber (for the first time in the work "Objectivity" of socio-scientific and socio-political knowledge). Researchers still use this methodology to analyze the phenomena of sociocultural life, as it allows developing conceptual constructions that contribute to the ordering, typology of the huge historical, cultural and any other material that every scientist deals with.

Alfred Weber - the author of the work "Principles of Sociology, History and Culture" (1951) put forward an original theory of dividing history into three interrelated, but proceeding according to different laws of processes: social (formation of social institutions), civilizational (progressive development of science and technology, leading to unification civilization) and cultural (creativity, art, religion and philosophy). It is possible to correctly determine the general level of a particular national culture only when considering it in these individual branches. The people of a country that has a well-established system of state-legal relations and is economically prosperous often find themselves at a relatively low level in terms of culture, especially spiritual and aesthetic. So, if we adhere to the concept of A. Weber, then over the past two centuries in the United States, for example, social and civilizational processes have prevailed to the detriment of cultural ones, and in Russia in the 19th century. on the contrary, the "golden age" of Russian culture appeared against the background of social conservatism and scientific and technological backwardness. The majority of European countries maintained a certain "balance" between the three processes, while in Japan and other economically developed "dragons" South-East Asia civilizational process has received rapid development only after the Second World War. Weber associated the specific appearance of a particular country or era primarily with cultural factors, and not with social or civilizational ones. The movement of culture, according to Weber, is irrational, and its creator is the spiritual and intellectual elite.

It unites those scientists who are looking for the origins and explanation of culture not in history and the spontaneous, "divine" development of the human spirit, not in the psyche and not in the biological prehistory of mankind, but in its social nature and organization. In the center of their culturological attention is society itself, its structure and social institutions. This school N.A. Berdyaev described it as follows: "Sociology claims that a person is an animal that has undergone drill, discipline and development on the part of society. Everything valuable in a person is not inherent in him, but received from society, which he is forced to revere as a deity." Naturally, the sociological school is not fenced off by the Chinese wall from other directions we are considering, and the concepts of its individual representatives often intersect and complement each other, as we have already shown with the example of B.K. Malinovsky, as part of a common effort to create a unified theory of culture.

One of the prominent representatives of the sociological school was Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), an Anglo-American poet and modernist critic, author of Notes on the Definition of Culture (1948). “By culture,” he wrote, “I understand, first of all, what anthropologists mean: the way of life of a given people living in one place. We see manifestations of this culture in its arts, its social system, its habits and customs "his religions. But all these things taken together do not constitute culture, although we often, for the sake of convenience, express ourselves as if they were. These things are only parts into which culture can be dissected - like the human body in an anatomical theater. But just as man is more than a collection of the various constituent parts of his body, so culture is more than a collection of arts, customs, and religious beliefs. Thomas Stearns Eliot, laureate Nobel Prize 1948, is a rather rare example of an organic fusion of artistic, mainly poetic, creativity and theoretical research in search of an answer to the question: what is culture and how is the essence of poetry related to this concept? From the conventional liberal-democratic point of view, Eliot should be considered a deeply conservative, even "reactionary" master of words, just as these definitions were applied to our Russian writer and culturologist K.N. Leontiev, which will be discussed below. Both of them defended the principles of elitism in society and art, both at the end of their lives came to a deeply religious worldview, and both sharply criticized their (and us) modern "leveling" civilization, because, in their opinion, it turned out to be fruitless and reached a dead end. In addition to the well-known poetic legacy of Eliot, he wrote the following books: The Purpose of Poetry and the Purpose of Criticism (1931), On Poets and Poetry (1957) and the program work we mentioned, Notes on the Definition of Culture.

Stating the general decline of European culture by the middle of the 20th century, the loss of its former moral and intellectual riches as a result of general standardization and a narrowly utilitarian approach to life - features characteristic of modern mass culture - Eliot comes to the conclusion that this leads to the suppression of creativity in a person. start. So, despite the fact that over the past four centuries the population of England has increased 12 times, such a quantitative growth has by no means led to the appearance of 12 Shakespeares today, rather, they have long disappeared altogether. In the same way, the peasant plowman of former centuries, in his moral and spiritual culture, was much higher than the present mercenary tractor driver. Eliot believes that mankind can preserve the creative energy only by overcoming "massification" and supporting the cultural elite. In general, the theory of the elite (primarily political) as the leading force in the historical process goes back to the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC). It was subsequently developed by such thinkers as the Italian N. Machiavelli, the Englishman T. Carlyle, the German F. Nietzsche, whom we will talk about later.

In the 20th century, its most striking apologist was the Italian Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), who viewed history as an arena for the constant struggle of elites for power. Eliot, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of the elitist approach not only in the sphere of politics, but also in the sphere of culture. Like his contemporary and compatriot Toynbee, Eliot divided society into a spiritual elite and an unenlightened mass, and only the first is capable of cultural creation. The creative elite, according to Eliot, does not belong to any particular class. It must be constantly replenished from the social "bottom". However, for its emergence and formation, wealth and belonging to a certain privileged stratum are necessary. The most intelligent and talented representatives of other strata are constantly pouring new creative energy into it, thus moving the cultural process forward.

A vivid example of such an enrichment of the world spiritual elite was the activity of an outstanding representative of the sociological school, our former compatriot, Russian-American sociologist and cultural historian Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968). Coming from the poorest sections of the Komi-Zyryan people, he only learned to read and write at the age of 14 and soon became a peasant revolutionary, joining the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Having gained fame even before the February Revolution of 1917, he was persecuted by tsarism, and soon became one of the leaders of his party. He actively collaborated in the State Duma, was at one time the secretary of the head of government - A.F. Kerensky, later - a professor at Petrograd University. After the October Revolution, which Sorokin met with hostility, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks on charges of attempting to assassinate Lenin, he hid in the forests of the Russian North, but then reconciled with the victory of the new government and wrote a sensational open letter announcing his break with the Social Revolutionaries. This letter was the reason for writing Lenin's famous article "Valuable Confessions of Pitirim Sorokin", which made him famous throughout Russia at that time. Returning to Petrograd in 1919, he organized the first sociological faculty in the country and became its dean, nevertheless remaining in opposition to Bolshevism. All this was one of the clearest manifestations of the ideological opposition of the Russian intelligentsia of that time to the Bolshevik "lawlessness". In 1922, again at the initiative of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, Sorokin, along with a large group of scientists and writers representing the flower of Russian social thought, was expelled from the country. After a short stay in Berlin and a year of work in Czechoslovakia, at the invitation of its president T. Masaryk, the scientist moved to the USA in 1923, where he quickly mastered English language and becomes one of the leading sociologists and culturologists. AT Harvard University Sorokin creates and heads the department of sociology and by the end of his life becomes one of the world-renowned authorities in this field. Being a true encyclopedist who mastered all the achievements of contemporary humanitarian knowledge, supporting the theory of the spiritual elite as the leading force in society, Sorokin emphasized the inextricable link between social processes and the development of culture. At the same time, following the ancient Greeks, he considered the innate desire of people for Truth, Goodness and Beauty, combined with a socially significant criterion of Benefit, to be the springs of cultural development.

In his numerous works (for example, "The Dynamics of Society and Culture" (1937-1941), "Society, Culture and Personality" (1947), "Power and Morality" (1959), etc.), he considered the history of mankind as a successive change of certain sociocultural supersystems cemented by a periodically changing unity of values, norms and meanings. Unlike Hegel, who considered the historical process as a direct progressive movement, he interpreted it as a "cyclic fluctuation", i.e. going in complete cycles, the change of types of cultural communities flowing into each other, each of which is based on its own attitude to reality and methods of its cognition.

Based on the dual psychobiological nature of man - a feeling and thinking being, Sorokin distinguished three types of culture:

• a) sensual (sensate), in which empirical-sensory perception and evaluation of reality predominate, mainly from a utilitarian and hedonistic point of view, i.e. the "truth of the senses" and the truth of pleasure prevail;
• b) ideational type (ideational), where supersensible, spiritual values ​​predominate, worship of some Absolute, God or Idea, i.e. the "truth of faith" and the truth of self-denial;
• c) idealistic type (idealistic), representing a synthesis of sensual and ideational types, where feeling is balanced by intellect, faith - by science, empirical perception - by intuition, i.e., according to Sorokin, "human minds will be guided by the truth of reason."

The originality of each of the proposed types of culture is embodied in law, art, philosophy, science, religion, structure public relations and certain personality types. Their radical transformation and change are usually accompanied by crises, wars and revolutions. Analyzing in detail the history of European culture, including statistical methods, P. Sorokin attributed to the heyday of "sensual" culture the Greco-Roman civilization of the III-IV centuries. AD, i.e. period of its decay and decline, and Western culture of the last five centuries, from the Renaissance to our time. To the ideational type of culture, in addition to the Russian type well known to Sorokin, he attributed the early medieval culture of the Christian West (from the 6th to the 13th century), and to the idealistic type - great culture the Renaissance. The crisis of modern culture, devoid of absolute ideals, i.e. faith in God, and aspiring to sensual pleasure and consumerism, P. Sorokin associated with the development of materialistic ideology and experimental science to the detriment of spiritual values, which is quite clearly felt by many people in today's "disenchanted" world. Being a believer, Sorokin saw the way out of the current crisis in the inevitable restoration of an "ideational" culture with its absolute religious ideals. P. Sorokin formulated his main prophecy regarding the future of mankind as follows: “We live, think, act at the end of a shining sensual day that lasted six centuries. The rays of the setting sun still illuminate the greatness of the passing era. it is more and more difficult to distinguish this greatness and look for reliable landmarks in the twilight that has come in. The night of this transitional era begins to descend on us, with its nightmares, frightening shadows, heartbreaking horrors.Beyond it, however, we discern the flowering of a new great ideational culture that welcomes a new generation - people future".

Like a sociologist looking in facts public life explaining many cultural phenomena, Sorokin was one of the creators of the theories of "social mobility" and "social stratification". According to the first, in a highly developed society there is a constant movement of individuals and groups from one layer to another, from the lowest social level to the highest, and vice versa. In this case, one speaks of upward or downward vertical mobility, but there is also horizontal mobility, i.e. the movement of individuals at the same social level, for example, when changing their place of residence or the nature of work. There are also intergenerational (between generations) and intragenerational (within a generation) mobility. The concept of social mobility characterizes the degree of civilization, openness or closedness, freedom and democracy of a particular society and is an important indicator of the level of its culture. As for the theory of social stratification, it considers society not as a rigid and antagonistic class structure, as Marxists do, but as a living system of numerous interpenetrating social strata, distinguished by education, wealth, psychology, living conditions, age, gender and being in a state not of struggle, but of balance and cooperation. It is easy to guess that both the theory of social stratification and the theory of social mobility, in essence, oppose the Marxist understanding of the processes taking place in modern society, and therefore are vehemently rejected by dogmatized historical materialism. Until recently, its adherents have no less fiercely rejected the one formulated by P. Sorokin in the 60s. the well-known theory of convergence between capitalism and socialism, as a result of which a new, more perfect society should appear. P.A. Sorokin belonged to that rather rare breed of thinkers and scientists of our century who objectively, without political, ideological and national preferences, relying on specific sociological and cultural criteria, comprehended the path of mankind to a better future.

Alfred Weber (1868-1958) - German economist and sociologist, author of the work "Principles of Sociology, History and Culture" (1951) put forward an original theory of dividing history into three interrelated, but proceeding according to different laws of processes: social (formation of social institutions), civilizational (progressive development of science and technology, leading to the unification of civilization) and cultural (creativity, art, religion and philosophy). It is possible to correctly determine the general level of a particular national culture only when considering it in these individual branches. The people of a country that has a well-established system of state-legal relations and is economically prosperous often finds itself at a relatively low level in terms of culture, especially spiritual and aesthetic. So, if we adhere to the concept of A. Weber, over the past two centuries in the United States, for example, social and civilizational processes have prevailed to the detriment of cultural ones, and in Russia the 19th century, on the contrary, was the "golden age" of Russian culture against the background of social conservatism and scientific and technical backwardness. Another example, which is very often given by culturologists: in the XVIII-XIX centuries, in the conditions feudal fragmentation and economic poverty, the German lands gave the world the greatest classical philosophy and unsurpassed models artistic creativity. Most European countries a certain balance was maintained between the three processes, and in Japan and other economically developed states of Southeast Asia, the civilizational process received an unheard-of rapid development only after the Second World War. A. Weber associated the specific appearance of a particular country or era, first of all, with cultural factors, and not with social or civilizational ones, which, in essence, are international. The movement of culture, according to Weber, is irrational, and its creator is the spiritual and intellectual elite.

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) - American sociologist, one of the founders of the so-called structural-functional trend in sociology. Simplified, his theory of culture boils down to the following: all the spiritual and material achievements of people, which we unite under the concept of "culture", are the result of socially determined actions at the level of two systems: social and cultural.

At the heart of the first and "lower" of them - social - are collaboration people driven not least by the goals of their biological self-preservation in a certain social environment.

Here, each individual seeks:

• a) to adapt (adapt) to it;
• b) achieve the tasks set for him;
• c) integrate, i.e. to unite with other individuals;
• d) reproduce already found social structures;
• e) relieve constantly arising nervous and physical tension.

According to Parsons, each of these goals in society corresponds to historically established social institutions: adaptation - economic, achievement of goals - political, integration - legal institutions and customs, reproduction of the structure - belief system, morality and socialization organs, stress relief - the recreation industry. For the second, higher - cultural - system, which is already devoid of biological conditioning and in relation to the social is guiding and regulating, its functioning is characterized by symbolism (the presence of mechanisms such as language and systems of other symbols), normativity (dependence of a person on generally accepted values and norms) and, finally, voluntarism, or the well-known irrationality and independence of human actions from the dictates of the environment. Culture thus appears to us as a complex system of symbols and norms that are constantly being improved. Even from this very schematic and incomplete exposition of Parsons' views, it is clear that he claimed to create some kind of comprehensive theory of society, the most important regulator of which is culture with its normativity and symbolism.