The word “culture” is of Latin origin and originally had the meaning of cultivating and improving the land. Speaking about culture, we mean those phenomena, properties, elements of human life that distinguish man from nature.

According to E. Hall, despite the diversity of definitions of culture, there are three unifying provisions:

1) culture is not something innate, but acquired;

2) various manifestations of culture interconnected: touch one part of it and it will affect the rest;

3) to all members of society characteristic common cultural values, and it is culture that determines the boundaries of different social groups.

From all the definitions of culture known to us, we will extract provisions that characterize culture in the sense in which this term is used in this work:

Culture is a universal phenomenon of human life; there is no human society or social group without its inherent culture;

Culture is a product of the joint activity of people;

* culture is embodied in systems of social goals, values, rules, customs, standards;

* culture is not inherited genetically, but is acquired through learning;

Humanity is not a single social collective; different populations of people have created different national, ethnic, regional, social cultures;

* culture is dynamic, capable of self-development and self-renewal, constantly generating new forms and ways of satisfying the interests and needs of people, adapting culture to changing conditions of life; Therefore, it is much more important to learn how to assimilate culture and adapt to these changes than to learn the facts and rules that apply at the moment;

Although culture is a product of the collective life of people, its practical creators and performers are individuals;

Language and culture are closely related and interdependent;

culture is largely transmitted through language, cultural patterns are in turn reflected in language;

Culture functions as the basis for self-identification of society and its members, awareness by the collective and its subjects of their group and individual "I", distinguishing between “us” and “strangers”, it plays the role of a protective and limiting filter between its carriers and the external environment. During intercultural communication, one has to cross the borders of one’s own culture and enter into a system of other cultural values.

The term “culture” can be applied to a social group of any size that has developed its own understanding of itself, the world around it and its role in it, that is, a group with its own set of basic concepts. In a broad sense, "culture" is a civilization, such as Western or Eastern culture. In a narrower sense - countries or nations, for example, American or Russian culture. Within each country there are distinct ethnic cultures. Professional culture can also be specified. Any relatively stable social group that has a common experience of historical development creates its own culture. Therefore, culture is the environment of human existence: there is not a single aspect of human life that is not affected or influenced by culture. This applies to personal qualities, ways of self-expression, way of thinking, means of transportation, ways of solving problems, the planning and location of cities, as well as the functioning of economic and administrative systems. And to the same extent this applies to organizations: culture is the environment of existence and an integral part of any organization.

In modern humanities, the concept of “culture” is one of the fundamental ones. It is natural that it is central in the theory of intercultural communication. Among the huge number of scientific categories and terms, it is difficult to find another concept that would have such a variety of semantic shades and would be used in such different contexts. For us, such phrases as “culture of behavior”, “culture of communication” and “culture of feelings”, etc. sound quite familiar. In ordinary usage, the term “culture” serves evaluative concept and expresses a certain set of human personality traits, which would be more accurately called not culture, but culturality. In science we usually talk about “cultural systems”, “cultural dynamics”, “typology of cultures”, etc.

Modern research on definitions of culture shows an ever-increasing interest in this concept. Thus, according to the calculations of American cultural anthropologists A. Kroeber and K. Kluckhohn, from 1871 to 1919. various sciences gave seven definitions of culture, from 1920 to 1950 their number increased to 150. Currently, there are more than 500 different definitions of culture. Kroeber and Kluckhohn divided all these definitions into 6 classes (types).

1. Descriptive definitions that interpret culture as the sum of all types of human activities, customs, and beliefs.

2. Historical definitions that link culture to the traditions and social heritage of a society

3. Normative definitions that consider culture as a set of norms and rules that organize human behavior.

4. Psychological definitions, according to which culture is a set of forms of acquired behavior that arise as a result of adaptation and cultural adaptation of a person to the surrounding conditions of life.

5. Structural definitions that represent culture in the form of various types of models or a single system of interrelated phenomena.

6. Genetic definitions based on the understanding of culture as the result of adaptation of human groups to their environment.

Culture is studied by a number of sciences: semiotics, sociology, history, anthropology, axiology, linguistics, ethnology, etc. Each of the sciences singles out one of its sides or one of its parts as the subject of its study, and approaches its study with its own methods and methods , while formulating their understanding and definition of culture.

IN Everyday life The concept of “culture” is used in at least three meanings. Firstly, culture means a separate sphere of social life, which exists in the form of a system of institutions and organizations involved in the production and distribution of material and intangible values ​​(societies, clubs, theaters, museums, etc.). Secondly, culture is understood as a set of values ​​and norms inherent in a large social group, community, people or nation (elite culture, Russian culture, youth culture, etc.). Thirdly, culture is interpreted as an expression of a high level of human achievement in any activity (culture of life, a cultured person in the meaning of “well-mannered and educated”, etc.). Everyday ideas about culture often come down to its identification with artistic culture (art) or with a person’s education and upbringing. However, the most common everyday meaning of the concept of “culture” is its understanding as a set of material objects, objects, ideas, images created by man throughout his history. In this interpretation, culture appears as the sum of all the achievements of mankind, as a “second nature” created by man himself , forming the human world itself in contrast to wild nature.

It is this understanding of culture that was formulated by Kroeber and Kluckhohn, who believed that “culture consists of expressed and hidden patterns of thinking and behavior, which are the specific, isolating achievement of human communities, embodied in symbols, with the help of which they are perceived and transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation. It is also necessary to include here those achievements that are manifested in the material goods created by a cultural society. The core of any culture is ideas... and especially values ​​transmitted through tradition. Cultural systems can be considered, on the one hand, as the result of completed actions, on the other hand, as one of the foundations for action in the future” (Kroeber A., ​​Kluckhon S.; 161).

According to this definition, culture is a complex phenomenon that includes both material and social phenomena and various forms of individual behavior and organized activity.

With this methodological approach, culture as a subject of study of cultural anthropology appears in the form of a set of results of the activities of human society in all spheres of its life, constituting and determining the way of life of a nation, ethnic group, social group in any specific historical period of time. Cultural anthropology studies the development of culture in all its aspects: lifestyle, perception of the world, mentality, national character, everyday behavior, etc. On this basis, cultural anthropology also studies the human ability to develop culture through communication, through communication, and considers the entire diversity of human cultures, their interactions and contacts.

Cultural anthropology views culture as a product of the joint life activity of people, a system of agreed upon ways of their collective existence, ordered norms and rules for satisfying group and individual needs, etc. The long-term coexistence of groups of people in the same territory, their collective economic activities, defense against attacks form their common worldview, a common way of life, manner of communication, style of clothing, specifics of cooking, etc. As a result, an independent cultural system is formed, which is usually called ethnic culture of a given people. But this is not a mechanical sum of all acts of human life. Its core is a set of “rules of the game” adopted in the process of their collective existence. Unlike human biological properties, they are not inherited genetically, but are acquired only through learning. For this reason, the existence of a single universal culture that unites all people on Earth becomes impossible. Thus, despite its obvious reality, culture appears in a sense as an abstract concept, because in reality it exists only in the form of many cultures of different eras and regions, and within these eras - in the form of cultures of individual countries and peoples, which are also commonly called local And ethnic cultures.

The presence of local cultures is a natural form of existence of all human culture as a whole. Thanks to the interaction of local and ethnic cultures, a system of communication arises, various styles and types of behavior, value orientations are supported, and their ethnic identity is preserved. This communication proceeds both through mutual clarification of relationships, feuds, conflicts, and through mutual adaptation and understanding of the cultural identity of neighbors. As a rule, the nature of intercultural contacts is determined by the degree of proximity and relatedness of the interacting cultures. Some of the local cultures are similar to each other due to their genetic relatedness and the similarity of the conditions of their origin. Other cultures differ from each other as much as the living conditions of the peoples who gave birth to these cultures differ. In all the diversity of local cultures, there is not a single “nobody’s” culture. Each culture embodies the specific experience of the social practice of a specific historical community. And this experience gives each culture unique features and determines its originality.

Cultural originality can manifest itself in a variety of aspects of human life: in the satisfaction of biological needs, natural habits, behavior, types of clothing and housing, types of tools, methods of labor operations, etc. For example, ethnographers have long noticed that peoples living in similar conditions and next door to each other build houses differently. Russian northerners traditionally place their houses facing the street, while Russian southerners place it along the street. Balkars, Ossetians, and Karachais live in the Caucasus in close proximity to each other. But the first build stone one-story houses, the second - two-story, and the third - wooden houses. Previously, among the Uzbeks, it was possible to determine from just a skullcap what area a person came from, and from the clothes of a Russian peasant woman of the 19th century. it was possible to determine exactly in which area she was born.

Thus, human culture consists of various local cultures, the bearers of which are peoples. Each nation represents an independent form of ethnic communities, or, as is commonly called in ethnology, a separate ethnic group. Ethnic groups exist as stable intergenerational communities of people. People naturally unite into ethnic groups for a variety of reasons, including on the basis of a common historical destiny, common traditions, peculiarities of life, etc. However, the most important unifying factors are common territory and common language.

The uniqueness of any culture is completed in the cultural picture of the world, which is gradually formed in the process of the emergence and existence of the culture itself. The cultural picture of the world is the result of the fact that in different cultures people perceive, feel and experience the world in their own way and thereby create their own unique image of the world, an idea of ​​the world, called the “world picture”. The cultural picture of the world is a set of rational knowledge and ideas about the values, norms, morals, and mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples. This knowledge and ideas give the culture of each nation its originality, making it possible to distinguish one culture from another.

The cultural picture of the world finds its expression in different attitudes towards certain cultural phenomena. For example, in Madagascar, a funeral reflects an assessment of the status a person achieved during his lifetime and respect for the deceased. Therefore, thousands of people flock to say goodbye to some, while only a few come to others. For some peoples, farewell to the deceased lasts for whole weeks. And, on the contrary, in modern Russia or the USA, a funeral takes only a few hours. Different attitudes towards the same event among different peoples can only be explained by differences in their cultural pictures of the world, in which this event has different value and meaning.

The main features of culture are:

1. Self-sufficiency. Culture does not depend on individuals. It has a life of its own at the group level. Individuals come and go, but cultures remain. There is no single individual who has mastered the entire culture to which he belongs. No one person can know all the laws, political institutions and economic structures of the culture to which he belongs.

2. Integrity of culture. In every culture, some elements are balanced by others. For example, the customs of blood feud are found among peoples who are characterized by a certain temperament, excitability, and a mandatory norm of behavior is the willingness to stand up for their honor, pride, and independence. These features lead to a sharp increase in the likelihood of murder, including for minor reasons. It is necessary to take into account the low level of crime detection, elements of negligence, corruption, and lack of professionalism of law enforcement agencies, the prosecutor's office, and the court. As a result, it is discovered that the custom of blood feud is a strong deterrent against serious crimes, especially murder. The likelihood of imminent retribution is so great that the number of murders does not increase.

3. Internal and external manifestations of culture. External cultural phenomena are open and observable: everyday customs and behavior patterns. Internal phenomena are not observable from the outside and are often not realized by the individual himself. These include: grammar; rules of communication that govern interaction; standards of behavior; myths and rituals. In 1967, linguist Pike called the word emik culturally specific elements (from the word "fonvmika" ~ sounds characteristic of one particular language), and in a word ethicist - universal elements of culture (from the word "phonetics"-- sounds that are found in all languages).

All cultures have universal cultural elements such as greetings, hospitality, visiting, humor and jokes. The forms of manifestation of these cultural elements can be completely different. Rubbing noses, prostrating, shouting and other forms unusual for a European are greeting etiquette.

4. The concept of “culture” reflects, first of all, phenomena that arise in society and are not found in nature : making tools and sports, politics and its elements (state, parties), rules of politeness and etiquette, the custom of giving gifts, language, religion, science, art, clothing, transport, the wheel, humor, jewelry.

5. Properties of people not regulated by biological instincts . For example, the feeling of hunger is biological. Culture will be manifested in how the table is set, in the beauty and convenience of the dishes, in whether a person sits at the table or eats on the carpet. In Africa, loud slurping and burping is considered cultural and means that the food is delicious. Among the Arabs, it is considered polite to refuse a treat several times, accompanied by the exclamation “I swear by Allah!”

6. Control behind behavior is the most important sign of culture. The forms of such control are specific in different cultures.

7. Mentality: culture and consciousness. Human supra-instinctive behavior becomes possible thanks to consciousness. Any cultural element is associated with knowledge, skills, values, preferences, traditions - in other words - mentality.

8. Culture and activity: patterns of behavior. Representatives of different nations act differently in similar situations. First of all, we are talking about stable, repeating patterns of activity. Culture is embodied in various products of activity: thing-objective(cars, buildings) and symbolically significant(literature, paintings).

The main elements of culture are:

1. Language. The fundamental basis of any culture is the conceptual and logical apparatus. People make sense of the world in their own way. Among the small peoples of the North, who live by picking berries, each stage of cranberry ripeness has a special name. Peoples who live by fishing have numerous names for fish depending on their fatness and age. Among some peoples, the word “who” refers only to a person, and everything else refers to “what.” For others, “who” also refers to the animal world.

2. Knowledge, beliefs. Beliefs contain what guides people in their daily activities.

3. Values. Beliefs come in a variety of specific forms. Among them are values, social attitudes, norms of behavior and motives for actions.

Values ​​are the defining element of culture, its core. What is good and what is evil? What is useful and what is harmful? When answering such “eternal” questions, a person must be guided by certain criteria. They are called values. The values ​​of each culture are system. The system of values ​​inherent in a given culture is called mentality.

Within one society, the values ​​are the same. But even within the same culture, contradictions and even conflicts between values ​​are possible. For example, artistic values ​​when building a house often come into conflict with economic feasibility; the political value of stability - with the economic values ​​of competition. The values ​​of social strata, classes, and groups of society differ. There are sociocultural differences between generations, counter- and subcultures.

4. Ideology. Values ​​exist in two forms: 1) in the form of a strict, logically substantiated doctrine - this is ideology. 2) in the form of spontaneously formed ideas and opinions - these are customs, traditions, rituals. Ideology has three layers; 1) universal humanistic values, 2) national values, 3) social group, class, party values.

Culture's resistance to internally alien elements manifests itself in two main forms.

1) Filling forms borrowed from outside with content that is traditional for a given sociocultural environment. As a result, the institution of the presidency is perceived as an institution of a leader - a leader with unquestioned lifelong authority. Political parties are built on the principle of community, clans, being tribal organizations. Parliament is essentially a council of leaders and elders of tribes and peoples. Thus, culture continues to live and reproduce traditional political institutions, but in bizarre borrowed forms.

3) Active cultural resistance as a manifestation of social immunity. While painlessly updating its peripheral elements, culture exhibits a strong reaction of rejection when they try to change its core (values). For protection, the entire arsenal of sanctions is used, including ostracism and isolation.

Functions of culture.

The term function in social sciences denotes the purpose, the purpose of existence of any element of the social system. Culture as an integral phenomenon performs certain functions in relation to society.

A. Adaptive function– culture ensures human adaptation to the environment. The term adaptation means adaptation. Animals and plants develop adaptation mechanisms in the process of biological evolution. The mechanism of human adaptation is fundamentally different; it does not adapt to the environment, but adapts the environment to itself, creating a new artificial environment. Man as a biological species remains the same in a very wide range of conditions, and culture (forms of economy, customs, social institutions) vary depending on what nature requires in each particular region. A significant part of cultural traditions has rational grounds associated with some useful adaptive effect. Another side of the adaptive functions of culture is that its development increasingly provides people with safety and comfort, labor efficiency increases, new opportunities for spiritual self-realization appear, culture allows a person to reveal himself to the fullest.

B. Communication function– culture shapes the conditions and means of human communication. Culture is created by people together; it is the condition and result of people’s communication. The condition is because only through the assimilation of culture are truly human forms of communication established between people; culture gives them means of communication - sign systems, languages. The result is because only through communication can people create, preserve and develop culture; In communication, people learn to use sign systems, record their thoughts in them and assimilate the thoughts of other people recorded in them. Thus, culture connects and unites people.

B. Integrative function– culture unites the peoples of the social groups of the state. Any social community that develops its own culture is held together by this culture. Because a single set of views, beliefs, values, and ideals characteristic of a given culture is spreading among members of a community. These phenomena determine the consciousness and behavior of people, they develop a sense of belonging to one culture. Preserving the cultural heritage of national traditions and historical memory creates a connection between generations. The historical unity of the nation and the self-awareness of the people as a community of people that has existed for a long time are built on this. A broad framework of cultural community is created by world religions. A single faith closely binds representatives of various nations that make up the world of Islam or the Christian world.

D. Socialization function– culture is the most important means of including individuals into social life, their assimilation of social experience, knowledge of values, norms of behavior that correspond to a given society’s social group and social role. The process of socialization allows an individual to become a full-fledged member of society, take a certain position in it and live as required by customs and traditions. At the same time, this process ensures the preservation of society, its structure and the forms of life that have developed within it. Culture determines the content of the medium and methods of socialization. During socialization, people master behavioral programs stored in culture, learn to live, think and act in accordance with them.

D. Information function of culture– with the emergence of culture, people have a special “suprabiological” form of transmission and storage of information, different from animals. In culture, information is encoded by structures external to a person. Information acquires its own life and the ability to develop on its own. Unlike biological information, social information does not disappear with the death of the individual who obtained it. Thanks to this, it is possible in society to do something that will never be possible in the animal world - the historical multiplication and accumulation of information at the disposal of man as a species being.

What is culture? Why has this phenomenon given rise to so many contradictory definitions? Why does culture as a certain property appear to be an integral feature of various aspects of our social existence? Is it possible to identify the specifics of this anthropological and social phenomenon?

The concept of culture is one of the fundamental ones in modern social science. It is difficult to name another word that would have such a variety of semantic shades. For us, such phrases as “culture of mind”, “culture of feelings”, “culture of behavior”, “physical culture” sound quite familiar. In everyday consciousness, culture serves as an evaluative concept and refers to personality traits that would be more accurately called not culture, but culturality.

American cultural scientists Alfred Kroeber and Clyge Kluckhohn, in their joint study devoted to a critical review of the concepts and definitions of culture, noted the enormous and growing interest in this concept. So, if, according to their calculations, from 1871 to 1919 only 7 definitions of culture were given, then from 1920 to 1950 they counted 157 definitions of this concept. Later, the number of definitions increased significantly. L.E.Kertman counted more than 400 definitions. This diversity is explained primarily by the fact that culture expresses the depth and immeasurability of human existence.

When asked what culture is, V.S. Soloviev answered in bewilderment: “Here are Voltaire, Bossuet, Madonna, the Pope, Alfred Musset, and Filaret. How can we lump it all into one pile and put it instead of God?”

1. MAIN CONTENT OF THE CONCEPT OF “CULTURE” and its place in the system of human activity

The term “culture” (from the Latin cultura - cultivation, processing) has long been used to refer to what is made by man. In such a broad sense, this term is used as a synonym for social, artificial, as opposed to natural, natural. However, this meaning is too broad, vague and therefore needs clarification. This clarification in itself is a rather complex undertaking. Indeed, in modern scientific literature there are more than 250 definitions of culture. Cultural theorists A. Kroeber and K. Kluckhohn analyzed over a hundred basic definitions and grouped them as follows.

1. Descriptive definitions, which basically go back to the concept of the founder of cultural anthropology E. Taylor. The essence of these definitions: culture is the sum of all activities, customs, beliefs; it, as a treasury of everything created by people, includes books, paintings, etc., knowledge of ways to adapt to the social and natural environment, language, custom, etiquette system, ethics, religion, which have developed over centuries.

2. Historical definitions emphasizing the role of traditions and social heritage inherited by the modern era from previous stages of human development. They are also accompanied by genetic definitions that assert that culture is the result of historical development. It includes everything that is artificial, that people have produced and that is passed on from generation to generation - tools, symbols, organizations, general activities, views, beliefs.

3. Regulatory definitions that emphasize the importance of accepted rules and regulations. Culture is the way of life of an individual, determined by the social environment.

4. Value definitions: culture is the material and social values ​​of a group of people, their institutions, customs, behavioral reactions.

5. Psychological definitions based on a person’s solution to certain problems at the psychological level. Here, culture is a special adaptation of people to the natural environment and economic needs and consists of all the results of such adaptation.

6. Definitions based on learning theories: culture is behavior that a person has learned and not received as a biological inheritance.

7. Structural definitions highlighting the importance of organizing or modeling aspects. Here culture is a system of certain characteristics interconnected in various ways. Tangible and intangible cultural characteristics, organized around basic needs, form social institutions that are the core (model) of culture.

8. Ideological definitions: culture is the flow of ideas passing from individual to individual through special actions, that is, through words or imitation.

9. Symbolic definitions: culture is the organization of various phenomena (material objects, actions, ideas, feelings), consisting in the use of symbols or depending on it.

Each of the listed groups of definitions captures some important features of culture. However, in general, as a complex social phenomenon, it eludes definition. Indeed, it is the result of human behavior and the activities of society, it is historical, includes ideas, models and values, selective, studied, based on symbols, that is, it does not include the biological components of a person and is transmitted by mechanisms other than biological heredity, it is emotionally perceived or rejected by individuals. And yet, this list of properties does not give us a sufficiently complete understanding of the complex phenomena that are meant when it comes to the cultures of the Mayans or Aztecs, Kievan Rus or Novgorod.

History can be viewed as the purposeful activity of people. It is this activity approach that allows us to answer the question of what is culture? Speaking and thinking about culture, we imagine not only the products of human activity, but also this activity itself: masons erecting pyramids or building the Acropolis, modern automated production with its high technical culture. It is clear that the activity carried out with the help of a stone hammer or an ordinary saw is significantly different from the activity of a worker setting up an automatic line that includes computer-controlled machines.

In accordance with what has been said, you can consider culture as the totality of all types of transformative activities of man and society, as well as the results of this activity, embodied in material and spiritual values.

2. CULTURE AS A SYMBOL OF THE SURROUNDING REALITY

Values ​​are understood as material and ideal objects that can satisfy any needs of a person, class, society, and serve their interests and goals. The world of values ​​is diverse; it includes natural, ethical, aesthetic and other systems.

Value systems are historical and, as a rule, hierarchical. One of the highest levels of such a hierarchy is occupied by universal human values.

Emphasizing the difference between material and spiritual values, many researchers distinguish between material and spiritual culture. Material culture is understood as the totality of material goods, means and forms of their production and methods of mastering them. Spiritual culture is defined as the totality of all knowledge, forms of thinking, spheres of ideology (philosophy, ethics, law, politics, etc.) and methods of activity to create spiritual values.

There is a rational grain in this distinction, but it cannot be absolute. Here we must always remember the relativity of the boundaries of material and spiritual cultures. It is even possible that it is more accurate to talk about the material and spiritual aspects of a single cultural phenomenon. In fact, the machine is material, but it would only be a pile of scrap metal if it did not embody the designer’s thoughts, talents, and skills of the workers who made it.

Finally, let us pay attention to another very important point - the social nature of culture. Culture is an integral aspect of the life of society; it is inseparable from man as a social being. There can be no society without culture, just as there can be no culture without society. Therefore, the everyday understanding of culture, which we often encounter when we say: “This is an uncultured person, he does not know what culture is,” is incorrect philosophical point vision. When we say this, we usually mean that the person in question is poorly brought up or insufficiently educated. However, from a philosophical point of view, a person is always cultured, because he is a social being, and society without culture does not exist. No matter how poorly developed a particular society is, it always creates a corresponding culture, that is, a set of material and spiritual values ​​and methods of their production. Another thing is that the degree of development of culture can be different - strong or weak, high or low. This degree depends on the specific historical stage of development of society, on the conditions in which humanity develops, on the opportunities it has. But here we move on to a group of questions about the typology of cultures and the patterns of their development.

Both in the definitions of the phenomenon of culture itself, and in the classifications of various cultures and the identification of patterns of their development, today there is significant discrepancy. Some culturologists understand culture as the fruit of people’s spiritual creativity and therefore reduce it to spiritual culture. Others, relying on traditions established in anthropology and ethnography, include in the concept of culture all aspects of social life, except for those that are completely beyond the scope of conscious activity (for example, population density). But what is typology (classification)? Typology in modern scientific literature is understood as a method of dividing systems of studied objects and grouping them using a generalized model. This method is used for the purpose of comparative study of essential features, connections, functions, relationships, levels of organization of objects.

Culture is a unique characteristic of human life and therefore is unusually diverse in its specific manifestations. Since the early 1980s, the specifics of specific manifestations of culture have attracted serious attention from researchers. Since that time, such concepts as “communicative culture”, “culture of human relations”, “culture of communication”, “culture of working conditions”, “culture of working and free time”, “culture of management”, “information culture” have been actively developed. Without going into an analysis of existing definitions, it should be noted that some researchers associate culture with information and sign systems in which it is encoded. For others, it appears as a unique technology of human activity. Still others see it as an extra-biological system of human adaptation. Fourth - the degree of freedom in human activity. Finally, everyone, almost from school, knows the understanding of culture as a set of material and spiritual values ​​created by man. Such diversity is not accidental. The universality of the generic concept (culture) is also manifested in each of its types.

But culture not only introduces a person to the achievements of previous generations accumulated in experience. At the same time, it relatively strictly limits all types of his social and personal activities, regulating them accordingly, which is where its regulatory function is manifested. Culture always presupposes certain boundaries of behavior, thereby limiting human freedom. Z. Freud defined it as “all the institutions necessary for the ordering of human relationships” and argued that all people feel the sacrifices required of them by culture for the sake of opportunities for living together 1 . There is hardly any point in arguing with this, because culture is normative. In the noble environment of the last century, it was the norm to respond to a friend’s message that he was getting married with the question: “And what kind of dowry do you take for the bride?” But the same question asked in a similar situation today can be regarded as an insult. The norms have changed, and we should not forget about it.

However, culture not only limits human freedom, but also provides this freedom. Having abandoned the anarchist understanding of freedom as complete and unrestricted permissiveness, Marxist literature for a long time simplistically interpreted it as a “conscious necessity.” Meanwhile, one rhetorical question is enough (is a person falling out of a window free in flight if he realizes the necessity of the law of gravity?) to show that the knowledge of necessity is only a condition of freedom, but not yet freedom itself. The latter appears where and when the subject has the opportunity choice between different behavior options. At the same time, the knowledge of necessity determines the boundaries within which free choice can be exercised.

Culture can provide a person with truly limitless opportunities for choice, i.e. to realize his freedom. In terms of an individual, the number of activities to which he can devote himself is practically limitless. But each professional type of activity is a differentiated experience of previous generations, i.e. culture.

Mastering general and professional culture is a necessary condition for a person’s transition from reproductive to creative activity. Creativity is a process of free self-realization of the individual

The next function of culture is symbolic. Humanity records and transmits accumulated experience in the form of certain signs. Thus, for physics, chemistry, mathematics, specific sign systems are formulas, for music - notes, for language - words, letters and hieroglyphs. Mastering a culture is impossible without mastering its sign systems. Culture, in turn, cannot transmit social experience without putting it into specific sign systems, be it the colors of traffic lights or national spoken languages.

And finally, the last of the main functions of culture is value. It is closely related to the regulatory one, because it forms in a person certain attitudes and value orientations, according to which he either accepts or rejects what he has learned, seen and heard. It is the value function of culture that gives a person the opportunity to independently evaluate everything that he encounters in life, that is, it makes his personality unique.

Of course, all these functions of culture do not exist side by side. They actively interact, and there is no more erroneous idea of ​​culture than its presentation as static and unchangeable. Culture is always a process. It is in eternal change, in dynamics, in development. This is the difficulty of studying it, and this is its great vitality.

The language of culture is a “set of cultural objects” that has an internal structure (a set of stable relationships that are invariant under any transformations), explicit (formalized) or implicit rules for the formation, comprehension and use of its elements, and serves for the implementation of communicative and translational processes (production of cultural texts). The language of culture is formed and exists only in the interaction of people, within a community that has accepted the rules of this language. Mastering the language of a culture is a key element of socialization and acculturation. The study of the language of culture is carried out by semiotics (analysis of the symbolic representation of the language of culture), linguistics (analysis of natural languages), cultural semantics (study of the language of culture as a means of expressing meaning).

The set of signs (alphabet, vocabulary) and rules for their combination (grammar, syntax) in a cultural language is always finite, and therefore limited in relation to the diversity of phenomena of reality and meanings. Therefore, fixing meaning in language, its meaning presupposes not only formalization, but also metaphorization, a certain distortion; the signifier gravitates over the signified. This situation is aggravated when “translating” information from one language to another, and the distortion is more significant the more the principles of meaning (reference) differ in these languages. The diversity of expressive means of a cultural language, and therefore the principles of their meaning, makes the issues of their “translatability” (the ability to express meaning in different languages) and “priority” (the choice of a particular language in a specific communicative situation) very complex.

Another important aspect of the functioning of a cultural language is understanding. When communicating (exchanging signs), there is inevitably a certain inadequacy of understanding (due to differences in individual experience, degree of familiarity with the language, etc.), a moment of interpretation (reinterpretation), distorting the original meaning. The understander always has a certain idea of ​​what he understands, expects a certain meaning and interprets signs in accordance with this idea (this issue is considered in ethnomethodology and hermeneutics).

The language of culture can be differentiated by its relevance to a certain area of ​​reality or human activity (the language of art, the slang of mathematics); by belonging to a certain (ethnic, professional, historical-typological, etc.) subculture, language community (English, hippie language); by symbolic representation, its types (verbal, gestural, graphic, iconic, figurative, formalized languages) and types - cultural orders (language of hairstyles, language of costume); according to the specifics of semantic expressiveness (informationally meaningful, emotionally expressive, expressively significant) and orientation towards a certain way of perception (rational cognition, intuitive understanding, associative conjugation, aesthetic feeling, traditional reference); according to the specifics of internal grammatical, syntactic and semantic rules (semantically open and closed languages, languages ​​with complete and incomplete syntax, etc.); by orientation towards certain communicative and broadcast situations (the language of political speeches, the language of official documents); from the point of view of priority and popularity at one or another level of culture, in one or another specialized form, in one or another subculture.

The language of culture in the broad sense of this concept refers to those means, signs, forms, symbols, texts that allow people to enter into communicative connections with each other and navigate the sociocultural space. Culture appears as a world of meaning that determines the way of being and worldview of people, expressed in signs and symbols. A sign is a materialized image carrier. A symbol is a sign that has no objective meaning, through which the deep meaning of the

object. With the help of a symbol, man has found a way to transmit information by means that exceed the capabilities of language. For example, coats of arms, emblems, banners, images - “three bird”, “dove of peace” - in addition to the visual figurative form, convey abstract concepts and ideas. Of particular importance are figurative and symbolic systems in religion and art (“artistic languages”), and each type of art introduces its own figurative and symbolic language: the language of music, dance, painting, cinema or theater, etc.

Culture expresses itself through a world of symbolic forms passed on from generation to generation. Symbolic forms themselves are only the external side of culture. Only thanks to human creative activity is the symbolic world filled with deep content. Therefore, define the concept of culture only through symbols, i.e. It is impossible to identify culture and the world of symbols. Understanding the language of culture and mastering it gives a person the opportunity to communicate, store and broadcast culture, opens the way to cultural space, therefore language can be called the core of the cultural system, its main structural element. The language of culture is a kind of universal form of understanding reality that contributes to the organization of new and existing concepts, images, and ideas.

CONCLUSION

Culture is a spiritual component of human activity as an integral part and condition of the entire system of activities that provide various aspects of human life. This means that culture is omnipresent, but at the same time, in each specific type of activity it represents only its own spiritual side - in all the variety of socially significant manifestations.

At the same time, culture is also a process and a result of spiritual production, which makes it an essential part of total social production and social regulation, along with economics, politics and social structure. Spiritual production ensures the formation, maintenance, dissemination and implementation of cultural norms, values, meanings and knowledge embodied in various components of culture (myths, religion, artistic culture, ideology, science, etc.). As an important component of total production, culture is not reduced to non-productive consumption or service. It is an indispensable prerequisite for any effective production.

The human world is the world of culture. Culture is the mastered and embodied experience of human life. Any historical type of culture in its concreteness represents the inextricable unity of two components - actual culture and accumulated culture, or cultural memory. A person seeks an answer to all the questions that arise in front of him in the culture he has adopted. Culture is a unique characteristic of human life and therefore is unusually diverse in its specific manifestations. Culture is a complexly organized system, the elements of which are not just multiple, but closely intertwined and interconnected. Culture reveals its content through a system of norms, values, meanings, ideas and knowledge, which are expressed in the system of morality and law, religion, art and science. Culture also exists in a practically effective form, in the form of events and processes in which the attitudes and orientations of the participants, that is, various layers, groups and individuals, were manifested. These processes and events, included in general history or associated with some manifestations of economic, social and political life, also have a cultural background and turn out to be facts and factors of the cultural history and cultural heritage of a given society.

Cultural development presupposes the identification of a cultural standard (model) and consists in following it to the maximum.

These standards exist in the field of politics, economics, social relations, etc. It depends on the person whether he will choose the path of development in accordance with the cultural standard of his era or simply adapt to life circumstances. But he cannot avoid the choice itself. Familiarity with economic culture will help you make a more informed choice in a field of activity such as economics.

The economic culture of a society is a system of values ​​and motives for economic activity, the level and quality of economic knowledge, assessments and human actions, as well as the content of traditions and norms governing economic relations and behavior. The economic culture of an individual is an organic unity of consciousness and practical activity. It determines the creative direction of human economic activity in the process of production, distribution and consumption. The economic culture of an individual can correspond to the economic culture of society, be ahead of it, but it can also lag behind it and hinder its development.

In structure economic culture the most important elements can be identified: knowledge and practical skills, economic orientation, ways of organizing activities, norms governing relationships and human behavior in it.

The basis of an individual’s economic culture is consciousness, and economic knowledge is its important component. This knowledge represents a set of economic ideas about the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of material goods, the influence economic life on the development of society, about ways and forms, methods that contribute to the sustainable development of society. Modern production and economic relations require a large and constantly increasing amount of knowledge from the employee. Economic knowledge forms an idea of ​​economic relationships in the surrounding world, patterns of development of the economic life of society. On their basis, economic thinking and practical skills of economically literate, morally sound behavior and economic personality traits that are significant in modern conditions are developed.

A person actively uses the accumulated knowledge in everyday activities, therefore an important component of his economic culture is economic thinking. It allows you to understand the essence of economic phenomena and processes, operate with acquired economic concepts, and analyze specific economic situations. Knowledge of modern economic reality is an analysis of economic laws (for example, the operation of the laws of supply and demand), the essence of various economic phenomena (for example, the causes and consequences of inflation, unemployment, etc.), economic relations (for example, employer and employee, creditor and the borrower), connections of economic life with other spheres of social life.

The choice of standards of behavior in the economy and the effectiveness of solving economic problems largely depend on the socio-psychological qualities of participants in economic activity. Among them, it is necessary to highlight such an important element of economic culture as the economic orientation of the individual, the components of which are the needs, interests and motives of human activity in the economic sphere. The orientation of the individual includes a social attitude and socially significant values. Thus, in the reformed Russian society, social attitudes towards studying
modern economic theory (this is required by the transition to new, market economic conditions), on active participation in the management of production affairs (this is facilitated by the provision of economic freedom to business entities and the emergence of enterprises based on private ownership), on participation in solving various economic problems. The system of value orientations of the individual has also developed, including economic freedom, competition, respect for any form of property, and commercial success as a great social achievement.

Social attitudes play an important role in the development of an individual’s economic culture. A person who has, for example, developed an attitude towards creative work, participates in activities with great interest, supports innovative projects, introduces technical advances, etc. Such results will not be achieved by a formed attitude towards a formal attitude towards work. (Give examples known to you of the manifestation of different attitudes towards work, compare the results of their action.) If a person has formed a social attitude towards consuming more than producing, then he subordinates his activities only to hoarding, acquisition, etc.

The economic culture of a person can be traced through the totality of his personal properties and qualities, which are a certain result of his participation in activities. Such qualities include hard work, responsibility, prudence, the ability to rationally organize one’s work, enterprise, innovation, etc. Economic qualities of a person and norms of behavior can be both positive (frugality, discipline) and negative (wastefulness, mismanagement, greed, fraud ). Based on the totality of economic qualities, one can assess the level of economic culture of an individual.

ECONOMIC RELATIONS AND INTERESTS

An important manifestation of economic culture is economic relations. Not only the development of production, but also the social balance in society and its stability depend on the nature of economic relations between people (property relations, exchange of activities and distribution of goods and services). Their content is directly related to the solution to the problem of social justice, when every person and social group has the opportunity to enjoy social benefits depending on the social usefulness of their activities, their necessity for other people and society.

The economic interests of people act as a reflection of their economic relations. Thus, the economic interests of the entrepreneur (obtaining maximum profit) and the employee (selling their labor services at a higher price and receiving a higher salary) are determined by their place in the system of economic relations. (Think how the economic interests of a doctor, scientist, farmer are determined by the content and place in existing economic relations.) Economic interest is a person’s desire to obtain the benefits he needs to provide for his life and family. Interests express ways and means of meeting people's needs. For example, making a profit (which is the economic interest of the entrepreneur) is a way to satisfy a person’s personal needs and production needs. Interest turns out to be the direct cause of human actions.

The need to resolve the contradiction between man's natural desire to save his own strength and satisfying growing needs forced people to organize the economy in such a way that it encouraged them to work intensively and through labor to achieve an increase in their well-being. History shows us two levers of influence on people in order to achieve greater labor productivity (and, accordingly, greater satisfaction of their needs) - this is violence and economic interest. Centuries-old practice has convinced humanity that violence is not the best way to economic cooperation and increase productivity. At the same time, we need such ways of organizing life together that would guarantee the right of everyone to act according to their own benefit, realizing their own interests, but at the same time their actions would contribute to the growth of the well-being of everyone and would not infringe on the rights of other people.

One of the ways of economic cooperation between people, the main means of fighting against human selfishness, has become the mechanism of a market economy. This mechanism has made it possible for humanity to introduce its own desire for profit into a framework that allows people to constantly cooperate with each other on mutually beneficial terms. (Remember how the “invisible hand” of the market works.)

In the search for ways to harmonize the economic interests of the individual and society, various forms of influence on people’s consciousness were also used: philosophical teachings, moral norms, art, religion. They played a big role in the formation of a special element of economics - business ethics, which reveals the norms and rules of behavior in economic activity. These norms are an important element of economic culture; their observance facilitates the conduct of business, cooperation of people, reducing mistrust and hostility.

If we turn to history, we will see that, for example, the Russian school of economic thought was characterized by the recognition of the priority of the common good over individual interest, the role of spiritual and moral principles in the development of initiative and entrepreneurial ethics. Thus, Russian scientist-economist, professor d.i. Fir is one of the production factors influencing economic development, called the cultural and historical forces of the people. He considered the most important of these forces to be morals and customs, morality, education, the spirit of enterprise, legislation, government and social order life. Academician I. I. Yanzhul, who published the book “The Economic Significance of Honesty (The Forgotten Factor of Production)” in 1912, wrote in it that “none of the virtues that create the greatest wealth in the country is as important as honesty. .. Therefore, all civilized states consider it their duty to ensure the existence of this virtue by the strictest laws and to demand their execution. Here, of course: 1) honesty
as the fulfillment of a promise; 2) honesty as respect for other people's property; 3) honesty as respect for the rights of others; 4) honesty as respect for existing laws and moral rules.”

Today, in countries with developed market economies, serious attention is paid to the moral aspects of economic activity. Ethics is taught in most business schools, and many corporations adopt codes of ethics. Interest in ethics stems from an understanding of the harm that unethical, dishonest business behavior causes to society. The civilized understanding of entrepreneurial success today is also associated primarily with moral and ethical, and then with financial aspects. But what makes an entrepreneur, seemingly only interested in making a profit, think about morality and the good of the whole society? A partial answer can be found in the American auto industrialist, entrepreneur H. Ford, who put the idea of ​​serving society at the forefront of business activity: “Doing business on the basis of pure profit is an extremely risky enterprise... The task of an enterprise is to produce for consumption, and not for profit and speculation... Once the people realize that the producer does not serve them, and his end is not far off.” Favorable prospects for every entrepreneur open up when the basis of his activity is not just the desire to “earn big money”, but to earn it, focusing on the needs of people, and the more specific such orientation is, the greater success this activity will bring.

An entrepreneur must remember that an unscrupulous business will receive an appropriate reaction from society. His personal prestige and the authority of the company will fall, which, in turn, will call into question the quality of the goods and services he offers. His profits will ultimately be at risk. For these reasons, the slogan “It pays to be honest” is becoming increasingly popular in a market economy. The practice of management itself educates a person, focusing on the choice of a standard of behavior. Entrepreneurship develops such economically and morally valuable personality traits as responsibility, independence, prudence (the ability to navigate the environment, relate one’s desires to the desires of other people, goals to the means of achieving them), high efficiency, a creative approach to business, etc.

However, the social conditions that developed in Russia in the 1990s - economic, political, social instability, the lack of experience of amateur economic activity among the majority of the population - made it difficult to develop a civilized type of economic activity. Real moral and psychological relations in entrepreneurship and other forms of economic activity today are still far from ideal. The desire for easy money, indifference to public interests, dishonesty, and unscrupulousness in means are quite often associated in the minds of Russians with the moral character of modern business people. There is reason to hope that the new generation, raised in conditions of economic freedom, will form new values ​​associated not only with material well-being, but also with ethical principles of activity.

ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

The word “freedom”, already familiar to you, can be viewed from different positions: the protection of a person from unwanted influence, violence; the ability to act of one’s own will and in accordance with perceived necessity; availability of alternatives, choice, pluralism. What is economic freedom?

Economic freedom includes freedom to make economic decisions and freedom of economic action. An individual (and only he) has the right to decide what type of activity is preferable for him (hired labor, entrepreneurship, etc.), what form of ownership participation seems more appropriate to him, in what area and in what region of the country he will show his activity. The market, as is known, is based on the principle of economic freedom. The consumer is free to choose a product, manufacturer, and forms of consumption. The manufacturer is free to choose the type of activity, its volume and forms.

A market economy is often called a free enterprise economy. What does the word “Free” mean? The economic freedom of an entrepreneur, as scientists believe, presupposes that he has a certain set of rights that guarantee autonomy, independent decision-making on the search and choice of the type, form and scope of economic activity, methods of its implementation, use of the product produced and the profit received.

Human economic freedom has gone through an evolutionary path. Throughout history, its ebbs and flows have occurred, different aspects of human bondage in production have been exposed: personal dependence, material dependence (including the debtor from the creditor), the pressure of external circumstances (crop failure, unfavorable economic situation on the market, etc.). Social development seems to be balancing between, on the one hand, greater personal freedom, but with a high degree of economic risk, and, on the other, greater economic security, but with vassal dependence.

Experience shows that the principle of “nothing in excess” is applicable to the relationship between different aspects of economic freedom. Otherwise, neither freedom of creativity nor guaranteed well-being is achieved. Economic freedom without regulation of property rights by law or tradition turns into chaos, in which the rule of force triumphs. At the same time, for example, a command-administrative economy that claims to be liberated from the power of chance and limits economic initiative is doomed to stagnation in development.

The limits within which economic freedom serves production efficiency are determined by specific historical circumstances. Thus, a modern market economy, as a rule, does not need systematic, brutal violence, which is its advantage. However, restriction of market freedom for the sake of strengthening the economic situation is still practiced in our time. For example, government regulation of a market economy often acts as a tool to accelerate its development. (Remember what methods of regulation the state uses.) The growth of production ensured in this way can become the basis for strengthening the sovereignty of the individual. After all, freedom also needs a material basis: for a hungry person, self-expression means first of all the satisfaction of hunger, and only then its other possibilities.

The economic freedom of the individual is inseparable from his social responsibility. Theorists and practitioners of economics initially paid attention to the inherent contradiction in the nature of economic activity. On the one hand, the desire for maximum profit and selfish protection of private interests, and on the other, the need to take into account the interests and values ​​of society, i.e., to show social responsibility.

Responsibility is a special social and moral-legal attitude of an individual to society as a whole and to other people, which is characterized by the fulfillment of one’s moral duty and legal norms. The idea of ​​social responsibility of business, for example, became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s in the USA, and then in other countries. It assumes that an entrepreneur should be guided not only by personal economic interests, but also by the interests of society as a whole. At first, social responsibility was associated primarily with compliance with laws. Then anticipation of the future became its necessary feature. Specifically, this could be expressed in the formation of a consumer (American manufacturers set the business goal of creating “tomorrow’s consumer”) and ensuring environmental safety. Social and political stability of society, increasing the level of education and culture.

The ability of participants in economic activity to consciously fulfill the moral and legal requirements of society and bear responsibility for their activities today increases immeasurably due to the breakthrough of science and technology into the deep levels of the universe (the use of intra-atomic and other energies, the discovery of molecular biology, genetic engineering). Here, every careless step can become dangerous for humanity. Remember what catastrophic consequences the human invasion of the natural environment led to with the help of science.

For many years, industrial activity in most countries was characterized mainly by irrational use of raw materials and high levels of pollution environment. There was a widespread belief around the world that business and environmental protection were incompatible. Making a profit was linked to the merciless exploitation and destruction of natural resources, and the improvement of the environmental situation led to a decrease in the income of entrepreneurs and an increase in prices for consumer goods. It is therefore not surprising that the response of businesses to demands to comply with environmental standards has often been negative, and compliance with these requirements has not been voluntary (through laws, administrative control). However, the strengthening of the global environmental movement and the development of the concept and principles of sustainable development have contributed to a change in the attitude of entrepreneurs towards the environment. Sustainable development is the development of society that allows us to meet the needs of the present generation without causing harm to future generations to meet their needs. An important step in this direction was the creation of the Business Council on Sustainable Development at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, which included representatives of many of the world's largest transnational companies. These companies and individual entrepreneurs, who have adopted the principles of sustainable development, effectively use more advanced production processes, strive to meet environmental requirements (pollution prevention, production waste reduction, etc.) and make the best use of market opportunities. Such companies and businessmen gain advantages over competitors who do not use new approaches to business. As world experience shows, a combination of entrepreneurial activity, economic growth and environmental safety is possible.

In modern Russia, the level of environmental awareness in the business environment is still quite low. Thus, by mid-1995, according to the Ministry of Environment Protection and Natural Resources, only about 18 thousand out of 800 thousand registered small and medium-sized enterprises included environmental protection activities in their charters. And only 20% of them act in this direction. Improving the quality of life of Russians largely depends on how the economy and the environment complement each other. To do this, it is necessary to combine legal and regulatory methods with economic mechanisms and self-control of entrepreneurs, increasing their social responsibility. Using global experience, Russian entrepreneurs need to develop standards of conduct for national firms in the field of environmental protection and the transition to a sustainable development model.

CONNECTION OF ECONOMIC CULTURE AND ACTIVITY

Practice proves the close relationship and interdependence of economic culture and economic activity. The ways of organizing activities, the fulfillment by an individual of such basic social roles as producer, consumer, owner, influence the formation and development of all elements of economic culture. In turn, the level of economic culture of an individual undoubtedly affects the effectiveness of economic activity and the success of fulfilling social roles.

One of the most important social roles of an individual is the role of a producer. In the conditions of transition to a new, information-computer, technological method of production, workers are required not only to have a high level of educational and professional training, but also to have high morality and a high level of general culture. Modern work is increasingly filled with creative content, which requires not so much discipline supported from the outside (boss, foreman, product controller), but rather self-discipline and self-control. The main controller in this case is conscience, personal responsibility and other moral qualities.

The nature and effectiveness of economic activity, in turn, depends on the level of development of the basic elements of economic culture. An example of this is the Japanese market economy. There, systematic progress from selfish behavior toward rule-based behavior and concepts such as duty, loyalty, and good will proved essential to the achievement of individual and group effectiveness and played a significant role in industrial progress.

In Russian society in the 1990s. the changes taking place led to the abandonment of the social and ethical values ​​that had developed under the command-administrative system and the destruction of past experience. Creative work has often begun to be replaced by consumer aspirations and the struggle for survival. Understanding the experience of the transition period shows that the liberal thinking dominant in economic policy contributed to the development of a market economy, but at the same time caused unjustified social stratification, an increase in poverty, and a decrease in the quality of life. Many experts believe that this process of liberalization was accompanied by the formation of a new value system, where “only money decides everything.”

This shift in values ​​is confirmed by the fact that during the transition to a market in our country, fraud took on a large scale. This phenomenon has many faces, but the basis of any of its varieties (theft, embezzlement, forgery, forgery of documents, deception, etc.) is the malicious appropriation of someone else’s property, regardless of the form in which it appears: money (for example, the activities of financial pyramids ), other material assets, intellectual developments, etc. In 1998 alone, about 150 thousand economic crimes were detected in Russia. The state is forced to take measures to ensure favorable changes in legal economic conditions for business, to establish public control over the activities of business entities within the boundaries of the “legal field,” to look for ways to protect the population from financial fraudsters, to protect savings, and to protect the institution of private property itself.

The process of forming the values ​​of the new economy in Russia continues, as illustrated by the following two polar judgments regarding the market economy. The first of them says: “The principle of benefit destroys conscience and dries up a person’s moral feelings. Private property binds a person to itself in such a way that it separates him from other people. The market, with its deification of economic freedom, is incompatible with true equality, and therefore the entire market society is inherently anti-democratic and anti-people.” The second states: “Under civilized market relations, the apparent incompatibility of “interest” and “ideal”, material abundance and spirituality is overcome. It is privatized property that makes a person independent and serves as a reliable guarantor of his freedom. Market demands establish immutable standards of honesty, integrity and trust as prerequisites for the effectiveness of business relationships. Competition is a harsh thing, but it is a struggle according to rules, the observance of which is vigilantly monitored by public opinion. The essence of democracy lies primarily in freedom - economic, political and intellectual. And equality in poverty inevitably leads to a crisis of public morality.” Which of the judgments is more reasonable is up to you to decide.

The changes taking place in the country have confronted people and society with a choice of possible development options. This choice takes place not only in politics and economics, but also in the sociocultural sphere, on which the direction of life, its value guidelines, and the stability of any human community largely depend.

PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS

1 Getting involved in one or another practical economic activity, use economic knowledge and norms of economic culture to make the right choice and make decisions that are optimal for the success of your business.

2 Expand your economic horizons, follow the socio-economic changes taking place in society, which will help you fulfill your responsibilities as a citizen. As a voter, by participating in elections you will be able to influence the economic policy of the state.

3 Determine your position in relation to such negative phenomena as the cult of profit, money, deception and appropriation of other people's property, unfair competition.

4 Try to refuse uncivilized forms of participation in economic life, from “not playing by the rules.” When making a decision, not only weigh it on the scales of reason, but also listen to the natural judge - conscience.

5 Cultivate in yourself economically significant qualities that will help you gain greater resilience and competitiveness: efficiency and enterprise, initiative and independence, the need to achieve success and social responsibility, creative activity.

Document

From the work of a Russian public figure, doctor economic sciences E. S. Stroeva “state, society and reforms in Russia”.

At turning points like the current one, it is extremely dangerous to stop, to confine ourselves to... a landfill filled with various fragments of political-economic and previous socio-cultural accumulations.

Pitirim Sorokin drew attention to this phenomenon long ago: “...Any people, society or nation that cannot create a new socio-cultural order instead of the one that collapsed ceases to be a leading “historical” people or nation and simply turns into “economic human material” "that will be absorbed and used by other, more creative societies and peoples."

This situation is a warning for Russia and other countries within its area of ​​interests, since now science, culture, education, morality, and ideology here are increasingly reminiscent of a “historical dump” of heterogeneous, incompatible sociocultural types, and the energy of creative transformations to some extent resides in stagnation.

Questions and tasks for the document

1. What is the author warning Russian society about? What choice should it make and why?
2. Does Russia need a new sociocultural order?
3. What previous cultural accumulations associated with the command economy could be consigned to the “historical dustbin”?
4. Based on the text of the paragraph, propose the values ​​of the “new economy”, which would become significant elements of the economic culture of the 21st century.

SELF-TEST QUESTIONS

1. What are the main elements of economic culture?
2. What is the significance of the economic orientation and social attitudes of the individual?
3. Is self-interest the only basis for economic choice?
4. What determines a person’s choice of standard of economic behavior?
5. Should economic freedom be limited?
6. Is a “voluntary marriage” of economics and ecology possible?
7. What is the essence and significance of economically competent and morally valuable human behavior in the economy?
8. What difficulties is the new economy in Russia experiencing?

TASKS

1 What words do you associate with market relations in the Russian economy: anarchy, economic
efficiency, barbarism, honesty, social partnership, deception, stability, justice, legality, profit, rationality? Illustrate with examples and justify your choice.

2. These lines are from a letter from your peer to the editor of a newspaper: “Only intelligence, only sober calculation - that’s what you need in life. Rely only on yourself, then you will achieve everything. And trust less in so-called feelings, which also do not exist. Rationalism, dynamism - these are the ideals of our era.” What can you agree or argue with the author of the letter?

3. “Freedom can be preserved only where it is conscious and responsibility for it is felt,” says the German philosopher of the 20th century. K. Jaspers. Can you agree with the scientist? Give examples to support his idea. Name the three main values ​​of a free person, in your opinion.

4. International experts rank Russia 149th in the world in terms of investment reliability. Thus, according to domestic experts, more than 80% of Russian businessmen believe that it is better not to break the law. But in practice, more than 90% are faced with non-obligatory partners. At the same time, only 60% of them feel guilty. How do you feel about the existence of two moralities among participants in economic relations - for yourself and for your partner? Is it possible to create a system in a country to protect and support economic behavior that is reliable, predictable and trustworthy? What would you suggest doing about this?

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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal Agency for Education

State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "Ural State Technical University - UPI named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin"

TEST on the topic:

The culture of communication as a component of the general culture of the individual: essence, structure, forms of manifestation.

Teacher: Balandina T.Yu.

Ekaterinburg

Introduction

Culture is beginning to occupy an increasingly important place in the life of mankind. Not only culture in the broad sense of the word as the result of the creation of the human mind and soul.

Culture, as an integral system, is usually divided into two forms: material culture and spiritual culture, which corresponds to two main types of production - material and spiritual. Material culture covers the entire sphere of human material and production activity, and its results: tools, housing, everyday items, clothing, means of transport, etc. Spiritual culture includes the sphere of spiritual production and its results, i.e. sphere of consciousness - science, morality, education and enlightenment, law, philosophy, art, literature, folklore, religion, etc. This should also include the relationships of people with each other to themselves and to nature, which develop in the process of producing products of material and spiritual activity.

1 The essence of culture

Culture from the Latin cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education, development, veneration. The concept of culture exists in almost all languages ​​and is used in a variety of situations, often in different contexts. The concept of culture is extremely broad, since it reflects a complex, multifaceted phenomenon of human history. It is no coincidence that cultural experts have been struggling with its definition for a long time, but still cannot formulate a definition of culture that would satisfy, if not all, then at least the majority of scientists. Well-known American cultural scientists, scientists at Harvard University, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn counted almost 170 definitions of culture, extracted from the works of Western European and American researchers published from 1871 to 1950. They consider Edward Burnet Taylor, an outstanding English cultural historian, to be the first. His book "Primitive Culture" is widely known in Russia. Currently, according to experts, there are already over 500 definitions of culture. And according to some, this number is supposedly closer to a thousand. Some authors view culture as “a specific way of activity, as a specific function of the collective life of people” (Markarian), others focus on “the development of man himself as a social person.” (Mezhuev) It is very common to have spiritual values ​​or as a certain ideology. Finally, sometimes culture is interpreted only as art and literature. Within the framework of historical, philosophical, ethnographic, philological and other studies, one can discover a wide variety of ideas about culture. This is explained by the versatility of this phenomenon and the breadth of use of the term “culture” in specific disciplines, each of which approaches this concept in accordance with its own objectives. However, the theoretical complexity of this problem is not limited to the polysemy of the very concept of “culture”. Culture is a multifaceted problem of historical development. And although so far, both in domestic and foreign science, a unified definition of the phenomenon of culture has not been developed, there has nevertheless been some convergence of positions - many researchers have come to understand culture as a complex multi-component phenomenon associated with all the diversity of human life and activity. The word “cultura” itself has been known since the time of Cicero and translated from Latin means cultivation, processing, care, improvement.” It, unlike another concept - that is, “nature”, means in this context everything created, extra-natural. The world of culture, any of its objects or phenomena are perceived not as a consequence of the action of natural forces, but as a result of the efforts of people themselves aimed at improving, processing, transforming what is given directly by nature. The concept of culture means, in its essence, everything that is created by human labor, that is, tools and machines, technical means and scientific discoveries, monuments of literature and writing, religious systems, political theories, legal and ethical norms. Works of art, etc. The essence of culture can only be understood through the prism of human activity and the peoples inhabiting the planet. Culture does not exist outside of man. It is initially associated with a person and is generated by the fact that he constantly strives to search for the meaning of his life and activities, and, conversely, there is no society, no social group, no person without culture and outside culture. According to one of the founders of the Russian and American sociological schools, Sorokin: "... Any organized group inevitably has a culture. Moreover, neither a social group nor an individual (with the exception of a simply biological organism) can exist... without culture." Modern culturologists believe that all nations have culture, there are not and cannot be “uncultured” peoples, but each nation has its own, unique and inimitable culture, not identical to the cultures of other nations, but coinciding with them in many significant parameters. Cultural processes are complex and multifaceted phenomena. Since they can be studied by various methods, and therefore interpreted and understood in different ways, there is not one, but many concepts of culture, each of which explains and systematizes cultural processes in its own way. In modern cultural studies, among the many definitions of culture, the most common are technological, activity and value. From the point of view of the technological approach, culture is a certain level of production and reproduction of social life. In the activity concept of culture, it is considered as a way of human life, which determines the entire society. The value (axiological) concept of culture emphasizes the role and significance of the ideal model, the ought in the life of society, and in it culture is considered as the transformation of the ought into the existing, the real. All cultural scientists rightly believe that cultural processes are studied in the main spheres of human life. Material culture is production, its technology, tools, housing, clothing, weapons, and much more. The second sphere of people's lives is social, and culture is revealed in social relations, it shows the processes occurring in society, reveals its social structure, the organization of political power, existing legal and moral norms, types of management and leadership styles. And finally, an important area of ​​a person’s life is his spiritual life, which is revealed in the concept of spiritual culture, which includes all areas of spiritual production - science and art, literature and religion, myth and philosophy and based on a single language understandable to all members of a given community .

2 Culture structure

Culture is a very complex, multi-level system. The structure of culture is considered to be one of the most complex in the world. On the one hand, these are material and spiritual values ​​already accumulated by society, a layering of eras, times and peoples fused together. On the other hand, this is “living” (i.e. momentary, today’s) human activity, relying on the left heritage of 1200 generations of our kind, fertilizing and transmitting this heritage to those who will replace those currently living. It is in this continuously evolving exchange of knowledge, skills, and abilities that the meaning of the cultural process lies. So, despite the difficulties, structuring culture is possible. Today it is customary to subdivide culture according to its bearer. Depending on this, it is quite legitimate, first of all, to distinguish between world and national culture.

1. World culture is a synthesis of the best achievements of all national cultures of the various peoples inhabiting our planet.

2. National culture, in turn, is a synthesis of the cultures of various social strata and groups of the corresponding society (i.e. subethnic groups, for example, Cossacks, youth, etc.). The uniqueness of the national culture, its well-known uniqueness and originality are manifested both in the spiritual (language, literature, music, painting, religion) and material (features of the economic structure, farming, traditions of labor and production) spheres of life and activity. Further, in accordance with specific media, there are also

3 cultures of social communities (class - noble, urban, rural, professional, youth), families, individuals. All this is the structure of culture according to its bearer. In addition, the culture is divided into certain species and genera. The basis for such a division is to take into account the diversity of human activity. From here material culture and spiritual culture are distinguished. However, it must be borne in mind that their division is often conditional, since in real life they are closely interconnected and interpenetrate each other. Material culture includes:

1. culture of work and material production;

2. culture of life;

3. culture of topos, that is, place of residence (home, houses, villages, cities);

4. culture of attitude towards own body;

5. physical culture. Spiritual culture is a multi-layered formation and excludes:

1. cognitive (intellectual) culture;

2. moral;

3. artistic;

4. legal;

5. pedagogical;

6. religious;

Artistic culture is a special area of ​​culture formed due to the concentration around art of a number of forms of activity associated with it: artistic perception, thinking, creativity, experience, etc. Artistic culture has special forms of material embodiment, is spiritual in its core, and, as a rule, has a figurative character. This is a special holistic structure in which the material and spiritual are organically united. This organic nature is unknown to other forms of spiritual activity and makes it possible to distinguish artistic culture as a special independent and central layer of culture. It comes close, on the one hand, to the layer of material culture (the proximity, for example, of literature to science). The internal structure of artistic culture has not yet been sufficiently studied. Most often, artistic culture is reduced to the communicative scheme “artist-art-public”. The elements of this self-governing system are “artistic production - artistic values ​​- artistic consumption”. In artistic culture, human activity is represented by all its types, which merge and are identified in art itself, and also, being specifically refracted, enter into the artistic culture that surrounds art with its institutions.
So. cognitive activity is introduced into artistic culture in the form of artistic production. Communicative activity is included in it in the form of consumption of works of art, since the perception of works of art is a kind of communication between the public and the author or his work. Value-oriented activities as part of artistic culture specialize in evaluating works of art. Cognitive activity, for its part, manifests itself in the form of a specific interest in art, studied within the framework of art history sciences. Central link artistic culture is art as a set of activities within the framework of the artistic creativity of the subject and its results. Artistic culture is a relatively autonomous and self-governing system for the circulation of specific, non-recodable aesthetic information, all links of which are connected by a network of direct and feedback . There are a number of types of culture that cannot be attributed only to material or spiritual culture. They represent a “vertical” cross-section of culture, “permeating” its entire system. These are economic, political, environmental, aesthetic. Based on content and influence, culture is divided into progressive and reactionary. This division is quite legitimate, since it follows from its corresponding impact on man and society. Culture as a human-informing phenomenon can educate not only a moral person, but also an immoral one. Throughout the history of mankind there is a contrast between “culture” and “non-culture” (what the ancient Greeks called “barbarism”, meaning the highly organized nature of their society). Today we understand that the “barbarism” of that time was only a different type of culture, that it was not for nothing that modern “barbarism” paid such keen attention to culture and tried to introduce “its own type” of culture as the only possible one. True, the famous words were born in Hitler’s circle: “When I hear the word “culture,” I want to immediately grab a gun.” There is no contradiction here: the type of culture is not only a scientific concept, not only a phenomenon that is formed organically in the process of historical development. A type of culture can become a positive or negative ideal, but culture itself is in any society in a very false relationship with ideology, with politics, with economics, with the entire system of social relations. And any social force cannot be indifferent to an existing or emerging, especially a forcibly formed type of culture. So and even more so for a forcibly formed type of culture. Likewise, fascism, and any other form of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, any absolute power, certainly strives to introduce strict regulation into the cultural system, to subordinate culture to its influence, control, to “remove” from culture as memory and from culture as a process what is “not desired” , "harmful". And the more acute the social, political and other confrontations in society, the more acute the conflicts within the culture, the more acute the conflict of a culture that defends humanistic ideals with society and with the authorities. In connection with the social revolutionary explosions of the late 19th century - the first decades of the 20th century, ideas and practical attempts were born to grow, as if in a flask, a “pure” culture, not spoiled by tradition and corresponding to the “tasks of the proletariat” (proletkult in the USSR, “cultural revolution” in China ) or “national tasks” (“soil” culture of the Nazis in Germany). Culture began to be cut to the quick, which ended in Hitler's and Stalin's bonfires of books, Stalin's "purges." Characteristically, such a “witch hunt” inevitably engulfed the entire culture in the USSR: the class-alien Mandelstam was destroyed along with cybernetics, the socially hostile Yesenin - along with genetics. Hitler anathematized Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and Bertolt Brecht. The more clearly the collapse of totalitarian attempts to create universal happiness and the “final solution” to social problems was indicated, the more tragic the anti-cultural nature of such attempts was revealed, their destructiveness, burdened by dangerous, long-term consequences of impact on culture.

As for scientific and technological progress, technology, and material culture in general, there is no need for explanation: isolationism, refusal of interactions, of world connections lead to lag, to degradation. And the same thing happens in spiritual culture. Ecology in general, “ecology of culture” in particular, imply interactions in the name of universal survival. Culture is becoming an increasingly real force in modern society, the voice of culture, receiving a worldwide resonance, turns into a word of freedom and democracy, uniting people and warning them about the true and false paths of development of each nation and humanity. The substantial block constitutes the “body” of culture, its substantial basis. It includes the values ​​of culture - its works that objectify the cultures of a given era, as well as the norms of culture, its requirements for each member of society. This includes rules of law, religion and morality. norms of everyday behavior and communication of people (norms of etiquette). Only strict compliance with these norms and regulations gives a person the right to claim the title of cultured person. Functional block. Reveals the process of cultural movement. In this regard, the substantial result of this process. The functional block includes: o traditions, rites, customs, rituals, taboos (prohibitions) that ensure the functioning of culture. In folk culture these means were the main ones; o with the advent of professional culture, special institutions arise that are designed for its production, preservation and consumption (for example, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.). Thus, the structure of culture is a false, multifaceted formation. At the same time, all its elements interact with each other, forming a single system of such a unique phenomenon as culture appears before us.

3 Forms of manifestation of culture

Culture plays a very contradictory role in human life. On the one hand, it helps to consolidate the most valuable and useful patterns of behavior and transfer them to subsequent generations as well as other groups. Culture elevates man above the animal world, creating a spiritual world; it promotes human communication. On the other hand, culture is capable of perpetuating injustice, superstition, and inhuman behavior with the help of moral norms. In addition, everything created within the framework of culture to conquer nature can be used to destroy people. Therefore, it is important to study individual manifestations of culture in order to be able to reduce tension in the interaction of a person with the culture generated by him.

Ethnocentrism. There is a well-known truth that for every person the earth's axis passes through the center of his hometown or village. American sociologist William Summer (211, p. 13) called ethnocentrism such a view of society in which a certain group is considered central, and all other groups are measured and correlated with it.

Without a doubt we admit that monogamous marriages are better than polygamous ones; that young people should choose their own partners and this is the best way to form married couples; that our art is the most humane and noble, while the art belonging to another culture is provocative and tasteless.

To some extent, ethnocentrism is inherent in all societies, and even backward peoples feel somehow superior to everyone else. They, for example, may consider the culture of highly developed countries stupid and absurd. Not only societies, but most social groups (if not all) in society are ethnocentric. Numerous studies of organizations conducted by sociologists from different countries show that people tend to overestimate their own organizations and at the same time underestimate all others. Ethnocentrism is a universal human reaction that affects all groups in society and almost all individuals. True, there may be exceptions to this issue, for example: anti-Semitic Jews, aristocratic revolutionaries, blacks who oppose blacks on issues of eliminating racism. It is obvious, however, that such phenomena can already be considered forms of deviant behavior.

A natural question arises: is ethnocentrism a negative or positive phenomenon in the life of society? It is difficult to answer this question clearly and unambiguously. Let's try to determine the positive and negative aspects of such a complex cultural phenomenon as ethnocentrism. First of all, it should be noted that groups in which there are clearly expressed manifestations of ethnocentrism are, as a rule, more viable than groups that are completely tolerant of other cultures or subcultures. Ethnocentrism holds the group together and justifies sacrifice and martyrdom for its well-being; Without it, the manifestation of patriotism is impossible. Ethnocentrism is a necessary condition for the emergence of national identity and even ordinary group loyalty. Of course, extreme manifestations of ethnocentrism are also possible, for example, nationalism and contempt for the cultures of other societies. However, in most cases, ethnocentrism manifests itself in more tolerant forms, and its basic attitude is this: I prefer my customs, although I admit that some customs and mores of other cultures may be in some way better. So, we encounter the phenomenon of ethnocentrism almost every day when we compare ourselves with people of a different gender, age, representatives of other organizations or other regions, in all cases where there are differences in the cultural patterns of representatives of social groups. Every time we put ourselves at the center of culture and consider its other manifestations as if trying them on ourselves.

Speaking about the significant role that ethnocentrism plays in the processes of group integration, in rallying group members around certain cultural models, it should also be noted its conservative role and negative impact on the development of culture. Indeed, if our culture is the best in the world, then why do we need to improve, change, and especially borrow from other cultures? Experience shows that such a point of view can significantly slow down the development processes occurring in a society with a very high level of ethnocentrism. An example is the experience of our country, when the high level of ethnocentrism in the pre-war period became a serious brake on the development of culture. Ethnocentrism can also be a tool that acts against changes in the internal structure of society. Also in Ancient Rome representatives of the poorer classes cultivated the opinion that, despite poverty, they were still citizens great empire and therefore superior to other nations. This opinion was specifically created by the privileged strata of Roman society.

In order to achieve understanding, to understand another culture, you need to connect its specific features with the situation and the characteristics of its development. Each cultural element must be related to the characteristics of the culture of which it is a part. The value and significance of this element can only be considered in the context of a particular culture. Warm clothing is fine in the Arctic, but ridiculous in the tropics. The same can be said about other, more complex cultural elements and the complexes that they make up. Cultural complexes regarding female beauty and the role of women in society vary from culture to culture. It is only important to approach these differences not from the point of view of the dominance of “our” culture, but from the point of view of cultural relativism, i.e. recognizing the possibility of other cultures interpreting cultural patterns differently from “ours” and recognizing the reasons for such modifications. This point of view, naturally, is not ethnocentric, but helps bring together and develop different cultures.

We need to understand the basic tenet of cultural relativism, according to which certain elements of a particular cultural system are correct and generally accepted because they have worked well in that particular system; others are considered incorrect and unnecessary because their use would give rise to painful and conflicting consequences only in a given social group or only in a given society. The most rational way of development and perception of culture in society is a combination of traits of both ethno-centrism and cultural relativism, when an individual, feeling a sense of pride in the culture of his group or society and expressing commitment to the main examples of this culture, is at the same time able to understand other cultures, behavior of members of other social groups, recognizing their right to exist.

Conclusion

List of sources used

1. Culture, Great Soviet Encyclopedia vol. 13, pp. 594-597 third edition, Moscow, publishing house "Soviet Encyclopedia", 1974.

2. Cultural studies. Edited by Radugin A.A., Moscow, "Center", 1997, p. 304.

3. Arnoldov A.I. Man and the world of culture. M., 1992

4. Buber M. I and You M., 1993.

5. Mezhuev V. M. Culture as a philosophical problem // Questions of philosophy. 1982 N 10.

6. Svasyan K. A. Man as a creator of culture // Questions of philosophy. 1987 N 6.

7. Philosophy of culture. Executive editor Mzhvenieradze V. V. M., 1987

8. Cultural studies. XX century Anthology. M., 1995

Culture is always all-human, universal, and in its depths it is of a generic nature. No matter what era a person lives in, no matter where his biography develops, for him grief will always remain grief, and joy will always remain joy. A unique creation is always different from mediocre fakes. Everywhere we can distinguish order from chaos, beauty from ugliness, love from hate.

But being united, culture is not monotonous. It is inexhaustibly diverse, changeable, and amazes with the unexpectedness of its accomplishments and the unpredictability of its twists and turns. Researchers of culture have recorded not only its universality, but also proposed a number of typological structures that make it possible to highlight spatial (synchronous) and temporal (diachronic) differences between certain cultures.

The most large-scale division of the world of culture is the identification of two regions - the West and the East. This division is not scrupulously territorial and not rigidly chronological - it is flexible. But in all cases we are talking about the general orientation of cultural achievements. The East-West dichotomy is associated with differences in sociocultural structures, discrepancies in the pace and paths of development, and differences in mentality (dominant attitudes of mass consciousness).

These two cultural worlds are based on divergent principles. The West is associated with private property activity, bringing commodity-market relations to the capitalist level, and the East did not know the all-encompassing use of private property relations (although they were observed), and did not rebuild the system of civil society.

These circumstances are reflected in the differences in the Spiritual world, the specificity of confessional religious constructs, and in the rules and customs of everyday life. The dynamism and productivity of the West and the “frozenness” and reproduction of the East left their mark on all manifestations of their cultural existence.

It is also possible to consider the typology of culture in time. Culture, taken globally, can be characterized as changing progressively (although not all cultural scientists agree with this). Of course, its eternal values ​​are enduring. Frescoes of Ajanta and Hellas, based on the universal essence of culture, isolated and recorded in the forms of thinking of the stanzas of Du Fu or the poems of A. S. Pushkin, the Bulgarian-Pomok “Vedas of the Slavs”, the Slavic-Russian “Book of Veles” or the Lotus Sutra, the scientific daring of G. Galileo or the experiences of Yu.A. Gagarin during his flight into space - will always be in the eyes of people the greatest cultural achievements of the human race.

At the same time, it is legitimate to talk about archaism, classics, modernity and postmodernity in culture. Modernity is a characteristic of the state of culture, which is inherent in industrialized capitalist countries and can be designated chronologically at the turn of the XIX century and XX century This type of culture has absorbed the contradictions and collisions of our century; it is opposed to the classics and is associated with the destruction, the destruction of those foundations of European culture that have their origins in antiquity.

Postmodernity, which developed in the 70s, is a modern cultural reality (mainly in Western countries). Its characteristics are still vague, just as postmodernism itself is vague and vague. We can only say that it reflects the crisis state of world civilization, the turning point of the events of the end of the century, the still undefined nature of the searches of modern humanity. The world today is unbalanced, out of harmony. And postmodernity is nothing more than a culturological fixation of this degraded state of the human world.

Culture structure

Culture is a complex, multi-level system. The structure of culture includes substantial elements that are objectified in its values ​​and norms, functional elements that characterize the process of cultural activity itself, its various sides and aspects.

Within the framework of cultural studies, such structural elements as world and national culture, class, urban, rural, professional, spiritual and material, etc. are studied. Each of the elements of culture can be divided into more fractional ones.

Culture according to its carrier is divided into world and national cultures.

World culture is a synthesis of the best achievements of all national cultures of the various peoples inhabiting our planet.

National culture is a synthesis of cultures of various classes, social strata and groups of the corresponding society, the uniqueness of national culture, its uniqueness and originality are manifested in the spiritual (language, literature, music, painting, religion) and material (features of the economic structure, farming, traditions labor and production) spheres of life and activity.

In accordance with specific carriers, the cultures of social communities (class, urban, rural, professional youth culture), families, and individuals are distinguished. There are also folk (non-professional) and professional culture.

In addition, material and spiritual culture are highlighted. Although this division is often conditional, since in real life they are closely interconnected and interpenetrated. Material culture is not identical either to the material life of society, or to material production, or to materially transformative activities.

Material culture includes physical objects created by human hands (artifacts). Artifacts are distinguished by the fact that they are created by man, have a certain symbolic meaning, perform a certain function and represent a certain value for a group or society (steam engine, book, temple, tool, house, decoration).

Material culture characterizes activity from the point of view of its influence on human development. Material culture is the culture of labor and material production, the culture of everyday life, the culture of topos (place of residence), the culture of attitude towards one’s own body, the culture of reproduction and formation of the human race. Physical Culture.

Intangible (or spiritual) culture is a multi-layered formation and includes cognitive and intellectual culture: philosophical, moral, artistic, legal, pedagogical, religious.

Spiritual culture is formed by norms, rules, patterns, models and norms of behavior, laws, values, ceremonies, rituals, symbols, myths, knowledge, ideas, customs, traditions, language. They, too (as in material culture) are the result of human activity, but they were created not by hands, but by the mind. Intangible objects cannot be heard, seen, touched, they exist in the mind and are supported by human communication.

The results of material culture (bridges, temples) last for a very long time, but ceremonies or rituals last only as long as they are observed. Any object of intangible culture needs a material intermediary. Knowledge is expressed through books, the custom of greeting is through a handshake or spoken words. Wearing a tie is a ritual or symbolic action, part of secular etiquette. It would be impossible if not for the participation of a material intermediary - a tie, which is an artifact.

Certain types of culture cannot be attributed only to material or spiritual. They represent a vertical cross-section of a culture, permeating its entire system. This is economic, political, environmental, aesthetic culture.

Culture as a phenomenon that shapes a person can educate a person, both moral and immoral. According to the content and influence of culture on a person, it is divided into progressive and reactionary.

There is a division based on relevance. Relevant is the culture that is in mass use. Each era creates its own current culture (it is illustrated by fashion in everything).

Thus, the structure of culture is complex and multifaceted. It includes the education system, science, art, literature, mythology, morality, politics, law, religion, coexisting and interacting with each other and constituting a single system of the concept of culture

Functions of culture

The complex and multi-level structure of culture also determines the diversity of its functions in the life of society.

In culture, as a multifunctional system, the main function is human-creative (or humanistic). This is the so-called creative function, since it consists in transforming and mastering the world. Mastery of powers external nature goes hand in hand with mastering the internal forces of the psyche.

In the East, complex systems of psychotechnics, meditation, techniques for mastering one’s body and consciousness have been developed. As a technology of activity, culture is a means of a) transforming the world, b) communication c) cognition d) management (behavior), e) assessing the value system. All other functions of culture are related to creative and follow from it.

Taking into account the time factor, culture performs the function of historical continuity, transmission (translation) of social experience from generation to generation. This is the so-called information or communication function. It includes the transmission of information in any form, oral and written communication, communication of people, groups, nations, the use of technical means of communication, etc.

Culture (which is a complex sign system) is the only mechanism for transmitting social experience from generation to generation, from era to era, from one country to another. Without communication with one’s own kind, neither society nor culture is possible. Information isolation from culture causes irreparable damage to the human being.

Culture began to perform the function of transmitting the wealth of social experience already in antiquity, when the logical, universal-conceptual way of transmitting experience carried out by professional teachers began to take center stage instead of the unconscious-intuitive one.

Thus, the cognitive (epistemological) function of culture is closely related to the 1st and follows from it. A culture that concentrates the best social experience of many generations of people immanently acquires the ability to accumulate the richest knowledge about the world and thereby create opportunities for its knowledge and development.