Social culture is a system of social norms and rules, knowledge and values, with the help of which people exist in society. Although it does not cover a wide range of human life, it perfectly combines both spiritual and moral values. It is also interpreted as creative activity, which is aimed at their creation. Such a concept is necessary for a person to designate the primary function of the culture of society.
Social orientation
Culture as a whole and social are concepts that differ in their breadth of application. The general term is applicable to many spheres of human activity - philosophy, history, social anthropology, language and other things. The social culture of society is primarily a combination of words, meaning that the term has a social nature, and without it it cannot exist in principle. This approach, ensuring the interaction of individuals in society, is important.
Social culture is a structured system that consists of people's knowledge, their values, living standards and traditions. It is with the help of such elements that a person lives, organizes himself, gives the right mind. The role of this concept is very important, since it is able to regulate the life of people all the time.
Functions
The fundamentals of social culture are, first of all, functions that are quite diverse in their application and the meaning inherent in them:
- Humanistic - it is responsible for ensuring that a person’s creative abilities are always in development.
- Socially informative - all the experience gained by generations is stored, accumulated and ultimately transferred to the next.
- Communicative - is responsible for communication between individuals.
- Educational - the personality is socialized, followed by its familiarization with traditions and culture.
- Regulatory - human behavior is controlled by the necessary norms and values.
- Integrating - aimed at uniting society as a whole or a single country.
Side functions of a person’s social culture are the determination of a way of life, the formation of certain guidelines and priorities. The concept is also aimed at ensuring that a person constructs throughout his life in his mind some kind of system, a program with settings that will put pressure on him if the act is not considered normal. This has been proven by many researchers, so social culture is an important aspect of life in society. It educates a person in the same way that animals in the wild are raised by their program of behavior, which was laid down at their genetic level.
Stages of formation
Like everything that exists on earth, social culture has its own history of development, which is conventionally divided into specific stages:
- The primitive community - representatives of this period have similar ideas and capabilities, they have no technological tools, only basic ones needed in everyday life. The role of the term in this case is not decisive, it is simply responsible for the organization of actions.
- The division of labor, the emergence of tribes - all the activities of individual units of the tribe are aimed at achieving common goals, maintaining vitality, as well as protecting against hostile neighbors.
- Agrarian civilizations - social and physical culture were aimed at providing the military units and the highest nobility with benefits, for which the working classes were forced to work.
- The industrial period, the emergence of class society - the concept in this case helped to achieve interdependence between classes, which encouraged people to work.
- Post-industrial development - a period characterized by the fact that the main product is information, not things or objects. In this period, the concept has a whole series of tasks: the mutual responsibility between people from different industries, the elimination of increased migration of the population, the solution of environmental problems.
Aspects
The development of social culture made it possible to distinguish between two aspects - statics and dynamics. The first is aimed at studying the structural units of the science we are considering, and the second at the development of all its processes as a whole.
Also in this concept there are smaller units that sociologists have identified through long research, namely the original units, which are also called cultural elements. Such small components also have their classes - they can be tangible or intangible. They form the appropriate division of culture into two segments.
The material class is all objects, knowledge and skills that in the process of human life take on a material form. The spiritual class consists of languages, codes and symbols, beliefs, norms and values, and there is no need for subsequent materialization, since concepts remain in the human mind and regulate his life.
Heritage
Social heritage - this is a special, significant for society parts of culture that are passed on to subsequent generations. Moreover, it is important that this information is accepted and understood by them. Only in this case can we talk about heritage. The fundamental function of heritage is the expression of cultural universals described in the works of J.P. Murdoch. There are about 70 universals that are the same in all of civilization. For example, language, religion, funeral rituals, games, and more.
Universals, although common to all, but they allow the existence of many different currents that have their own traditions, manner of communication, ideas, stereotypes, outlooks on life. It is against this background that a well-known problem emerges - the perception and understanding of a foreign culture. The familiarization with the values of other peoples, their understanding occurs through two trends - ethnocentrism and relativism.
Ethnocentrism
The phenomenon of ethnocentrism is very common among many civilizations. It is expressed by the fact that other cultures are perceived as something lower. To solve the problem, many try to impose their own views in a foreign country. This, according to some, allows you to make the culture supposedly better. In the future, such a view of things can give rise to terrible consequences in the form of wars, nationalism, and the destruction of power. Today, this concept is expressed in tolerance. That is why you can find in it and positive aspects such as patriotism, self-awareness and solidarity.
Relativism
Relativism is a concept related to the fact that any culture has its own history and reasons for being such. Therefore, when evaluating it is important to take these factors into account. A beautiful thought was visited by the American Ruth Benedict, a professor at Columbia University, whose meaning is that it is impossible to understand culture, if we consider its current situation. It must be evaluated in diachronic space. Relativism, as a rule, is a consequence of ethnocentrism, and the first helps to move from negative to tolerance, mutual understanding, since any civilization basically has reasons to be what it is now.
