Signs and elements of social institutions. Small and large social groups

10.03.2020

sociology

AND METHODOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The meaning of “social” can be revealed only by drawing up a mechanism for its formation in the context of the structural logic of the forming elements and indicating social specifics.

The area of exclusively human existence;

interaction of people on the foundation certain needs;

· the formation and activation as a result of this interaction of social features, each of which, taking on different specific meanings, thus creates a positional hierarchy;

· formation on the site of each position of groups of people entering into meaningful relationships with each other;

The process of institutional organization of these groups as a way to meet the initial social needs and express and protect their interests in terms of regulation social activities;

· Creation and distribution of social objects as factors of social satisfaction.

The fundamentally binding role in this logic is played by social signs and the social groups formed by them.

A social attribute is a factor of social activity that functions exclusively in the process of social interaction between people and is capable of forming a hierarchy of social groups.

Examples: income, ownership of the means of production, ideology, ethnicity, religious belief, education. In addition to their specific applied functions, all social signs carry a fundamental load - taking on different meanings, they position the social hierarchy (social group inequality).

The typology of social features is taking place:

· by spheres of social activity: economic, political, religious, etc.;

By complexity - simple and complex as an integration of simple ones;

· according to the criterion of formation of the social-group hierarchy: quantitative, qualitative and mixed - quantitative-qualitative;

By philosophical criterion: subjective - components of social and group inequality, where human consciousness is a factor of positional change, and objective, in the vectors of which movement is either impossible (ethnos and gender), or does not depend on subjective thought (age).

Social groups are usually defined by the unity of social interests, which is not entirely accurate in the sense of the secondary nature of social interests in relation to a specific position of a social attribute. In addition, in many large social groups-communities, the formal unity of interests is so neutralized by interpersonal value-ideological differences that it is simply incorrect to talk about the goal-motivational integrativity of these groups.

Thus, a social group should primarily be interpreted as a set of people occupying the same position-location (status) in the social hierarchy formed by a certain social attribute. The typology of social groups takes place according to the spheres of social activity (economic, political, religious, etc.), number, composition (simple and complex), as well as according to the criterion of accessibility (closed and open - easy and hard to reach).

We note the presence of large social positional groups (it is their context that is present in the scientific definition), which in the sociological literature are often referred to as social communities - for example, classes and nations, and microgroups with relatively constant and universal interpersonal contact, where a narrow social interest is primary and the psychological factor acquires some significance.

The most important role property of social groups is their ability to organize to meet social needs and express and protect their interests in terms of regulating social activity. The legal forms of such organizations are called social institutions. Although institutions carry the highest organizational social quality, they are secondary in relation to social group activity both in terms of formation and in terms of instrumentality.

Certain social groups and corresponding institutions make up the active subjective core of each social sphere. Often this term denotes either the area of budget distribution, or the lower level of the economic hierarchy on the basis of income, requiring state support and protection. This rather everyday and applied understanding unduly reduces the category of the social sphere to a narrow, exclusively economic meaning. In this study, it is proposed to define the social sphere as all areas of social activity - economics, politics, religion, art, pedagogy, etc. What they have in common is the same mechanism of formation, and the fundamental difference lies in their specific content - each sphere arises on the basis of specific social needs, contains its own social characteristics and a group hierarchy of subjects, its own institutions and social objects as a factor of social satisfaction and the result of subjective organizational activity.

Consider in this logic the most important social spheres- economics and politics. It is in these areas that a significant part of the study will take place, and it is here that the fundamental elements that determine the quality of the entire sociality are located.

The concept of “man” has such a long history of study that scientists are still finding more and more of its components. In our article, we will try to briefly describe the main features of a person: biological, social, external, psychological, dominant and recessive.

Biological and social signs of a person

bodily features adapted to work
a highly developed enlarged brain capable of conceptually reflecting the surrounding world
consciousness, helping to cognize the world around
thinking and language, giving a person the ability to communicate and transfer the accumulated experience
upright mode of movement, freeing a person's hands
the structure of the teeth, which changed the shape of the skull.

The social in a person is manifested, first of all, in the features of joint life activity and verbal communication of people. Social signs of a person are characterized by the following points:

attitude towards work and activity
awareness of nature
purposeful and planned social activity
reproduction and preservation of social and cultural values
the creation of the family as a social unit of society
upbringing and education of the younger generation
development of abilities and talents
support for their own kind with obvious deviations from the norm

External and psychological signs of a person

A person's personality is understood as a set of external signs that distinguish him from other people and confirm his belonging to the human race. There are many classifications of external signs of a person, we will consider the main ones:

own and related. Own signs belong to a person by his physical nature and include: general physical (height, age), demographic (sex, nationality, race), anatomical ( external structure head, limbs, torso), functional (gait, gestures, speech, habits, posture). Accompanying signs are those elements that form a personality (clothes, personal items, jewelry).
Group and individual. These are the cumulative external signs of a person that are characteristic either for a group of people or for one person.
Permanent and temporary. These signs can either be with a person from birth to death, or come and go (like hair, warts).
Natural and artificial. Such signs are either inherent in a person by nature (wrinkles), or appear as a result of a change in the signs of a person's appearance (tattoos, piercings).

In psychology, the main features of a person that characterize the mental appearance of a person are divided into 8 groups:

sensory-perceptual (sight, taste, smell, hearing, touch)
physiological (thirst, hunger, sexual desire, pain, need)
reactionary (trembling, palpitations, dizziness, nausea, weakness, horror, pallor)
emotional (fear, joy, anger, love, despair)
verbal (message, request, demand, abuse, complaint)
intellectual (imagination, thinking, faith)
physical (work, leisure)

Recessive and dominant traits of a person

Since a person is not only a biological, but also a social being, his genetics differs from the genetics of other living organisms. Genetics, which studies the inheritance of human traits, distinguishes recessive and dominant traits in people.

Dominant signs of a person carry the possibility of inheriting diseases in 50% of cases. That is, if one of the parents is healthy and the other is sick, then the probability of having a healthy or sick child is 50/50. Dominant traits include:

skin (dark, thick, piebald spotting and pigmented spots in the sacrum);
vision (nearsightedness, farsightedness, cataract, strabismus);
growth (dwarfism);
hands and feet (polydactyly, brachydactyly, left-handedness, thin, hard and flat nails, thick and flattened finger, elliptical patterns on the fingers, varicose veins, second toe longer than the thumb, increased mobility of the thumb);
facial features (freckles, round face and chin, dimples on the cheeks and chin, thick unconnected eyebrows, long eyelashes);
nose (round, straight and with a hump, round nostrils, high and narrow bridge of the nose);
mouth (ability to bend the tongue back, roll up, teeth at birth, protruding teeth and jaws, gap between the incisors, predisposition to caries, full lips, Habsburg lip);
ears (sharp ear tip, loose lobe);
blood (groups A, B, AB, the presence of the Rh factor).

Recessive traits of a person carry the possibility of inheriting diseases in 25% of cases. Usually, with this inheritance, both parents are considered healthy, but with a potential pathological gene, which is transmitted to their children according to the following scheme: 25% of the offspring will be healthy, 25% of the offspring will be sick, and 50% of the offspring will be latent carriers of the pathological gene like their parents. Recessive traits include:

skin (thin skin, albinism, fair skin);
vision (night blindness, color blindness);
hands and feet (right-handedness, circular patterns on the fingers, the second toe is shorter);
hearing (congenital deafness);
processes in the body (diabetes mellitus, hemophilia);
facial features (square face and chin, thin connected eyebrows, short eyelashes);
nose (pointed, snub-nosed, narrow nostrils, low, wide, straight and bent bridge of the nose);
mouth (thin lips);
ears (fused lobe);
blood (blood type O, no Rh factor).

Of all known diseases, 1000 are transmitted by a dominant trait, and 800 by a recessive one. These signs can explain the transmission of diseases from generation to generation, as well as the sudden manifestation of the disease after its long absence in the family.

AND METHODOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

sociology

Social signs, social groups and social spheres

The meaning of “social” can be revealed only by drawing up a mechanism for its formation in the context of the structural logic of the forming elements and indicating social specifics.

The area of exclusively human existence;

the interaction of people on the basis of certain needs;

· the formation and activation as a result of this interaction of social features, each of which, taking on different specific meanings, thus creates a positional hierarchy;

· formation on the site of each position of groups of people entering into meaningful relationships with each other;

· the process of institutional organization of these groups as a way to meet the initial social needs and to express and protect their interests in terms of regulating social activities;

· Creation and distribution of social objects as factors of social satisfaction.

The fundamentally binding role in this logic is played by social signs and the social groups formed by them.

A social attribute is a factor of social activity that functions exclusively in the process of social interaction between people and is capable of forming a hierarchy of social groups.

The typology of social features is taking place:

· by spheres of social activity: economic, political, religious, etc.;

By complexity - simple and complex as an integration of simple ones;

· according to the criterion of formation of the social-group hierarchy: quantitative, qualitative and mixed - quantitative-qualitative;

Consider in this logic the most important social spheres - economics and politics. It is in these areas that a significant part of the study will take place, and it is here that the fundamental elements that determine the quality of the entire sociality are located.

4. Applied sociology. General, selective population. Representativeness.

5. The main stages of sociological research.

6. Questioning as a method of sociological research.

7. Society as a system: definition, features. The most important subsystems of society.

8. Main methodological approaches to the analysis of society (systemic, functional, deterministic, individualistic).

9. Typology of societies. Characteristics of modern Belarusian society.

10. Characteristics of pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial types of societies.

11. Social structure and stratification. Social mobility, its varieties.

12. Historical types of social stratification.

13. Objective and subjective criteria of social stratification. Stratification profile of society. Stratification personality profile.

14. Profile of economic inequality. The value of the middle class for society. Social stratification of modern Belarusian society.

15. The concept of "social group". Signs of a social group. group processes.

16. Social communities: national-ethnic, socio-territorial.

17. Definition of the concepts "social class", "social group", "social stratum" (stratum), "social status".

18. Dynamic characteristics of society. The concept of social modernization. Social transformation, social evolution and revolution.

19. The concept of social development. Development and progress. Criteria of social progress.

20. Contradictions in the development of society. Personality and society facing the challenges of modernity.

21. Correlation of the concepts "man", "individual", "individuality", "personality". Man as a biosocial system. The concept of biological and cultural evolution.

22. Socialization: definition of the concept, stages. Directed and undirected socialization. Desocialization and resocialization.

23. Social conflict: definition, causes, types and methods of their settlement. Functions of social conflict.

24. Crisis as a stage in the development of social systems. The concept of dysfunction. Crisis signs. Crisis typology (systemic, structural, functional, etc.).

25. Deviant (deviant) behavior: definition, forms, main causes. What does "anomie" mean?

26. Social control as a mechanism for social regulation of people's behavior, its types.

27. Social management. The content of social policy in the Republic of Belarus.

30. Modern family: specifics, trends, problems of functioning. Problems of family and marriage in modern Belarusian society.

Functions of Religion

32. The concept of religiosity. Sociological characteristics of the religiosity of the population of Belarus.

15. The concept of "social group". Signs of a social group. group processes.

Social group - it is an objectively existing stable community, a set of individuals interacting in a certain way on the basis of several signs, in particular, the shared expectations of each member of the group regarding others.

The concept of a group as an independent one, along with the concepts of personality (individual) and society, is already found in Aristotle. In modern times, T. Hobbes was the first to define a group as "a certain number of people united by a common interest or common cause."

Under social group it is necessary to understand any objectively existing stable set of people connected by a system of relations regulated by formal or informal social institutions. Society in sociology is considered not as a monolithic entity, but as a set of many social groups that interact and are in a certain dependence on each other. Each person during his life belongs to many such groups, among which are a family, a friendly team, a student group, a nation, and so on. The creation of groups is facilitated by similar interests and goals of people, as well as the realization of the fact that when combining actions, you can achieve a significantly greater result than with individual action. At the same time, the social activity of each person is largely determined by the activities of the groups in which he is included, as well as the interaction within groups and between groups. It can be stated with full confidence that only in a group a person becomes a person and is able to find full self-expression.

signs

the presence of an internal organization;

general (group) purpose of activity;

group forms of social control;

samples (models) of group activity;

intense group interactions;

a sense of group belonging or membership;

role coordinated with each other participation of group members in common activities or complicity;

role expectations of group members relative to each other.

group processes. -

16. Social communities: national-ethnic, socio-territorial.

Society how an integral socio-cultural system consists of many subsystems with various backbone integral qualities. One of the most important types of social subsystems are social communities. Typically, in general unite people having similar interests, goals, functions and their resulting statuses, social roles, cultural needs.

Classification of social communities

Systematization of the views of modern sociologists on this issue allows us to identify a number of potential and real, necessary and sufficient grounds for identifying commonality:

similarity, closeness of living conditions people (as a potential prerequisite for the emergence of an association);

community of human needs, their subjective awareness similarities their interests (a real prerequisite for the emergence of solidarity);

the presence of interaction joint activities, interconnected exchange of activities (direct in the community, mediated in modern society);

shaping your own culture: systems internal regulations relationships, ideas about the goals of community, morality, etc.;

strengthening the organization of the community, creating a system of governance and self-government;

social identification of community members, their self-assignment to this community.

social community - is a collection of individuals united the same living conditions, values, interests, norms, social connection and awareness of social identity, acting in as a subject of social life.

Mass social communities include:

ethnic communities (races, nations, nationalities, tribes);

socio-territorial communities are aggregates of people permanently residing in a certain territory, formed on the basis of socio-territorial differences, having a similar way of life,

social classes and social strata(these are aggregates of people who have common social characteristics and perform similar functions in the system of social division of labor). Classes are distinguished in connection with the attitude to the ownership of the means of production and the nature of the appropriation of goods.

Social strata (or strata) are distinguished on the basis of differences in the nature of work and lifestyle (differences in lifestyle are the most obvious).

Social signs of a person for social science - these are, first of all, social signs. From the point of view of biology, a person is not much different from monkeys, cats, bears and other mammals. Four limbs, circulatory, nervous, digestive systems - all these are not the signs that we will consider. We are interested in those that distinguish a person from an animal in the social sense.

Various philosophers, sociologists, psychologists have described various social signs of a person. In 2011, Charles Choi summarized all these parameters in the journal Live Science in his article "Top 10 features that make a person special." Let's summarize them briefly:

Speech. 350 thousand years ago, articulation organs formed in humans. A low-lying larynx and hyoid bone that is not attached to any other bone. This allows you to pronounce clear, articulate sounds, which is not available to other mammals.
Straight posture. The main value of this sign is that a person's hands are free for any activity.
Nudity. The most interesting thing is that monkeys have the same number of hairs per square centimeter of skin as humans, but they are thicker, longer and tougher. Nudity made a person vulnerable to natural phenomena (rain, cold) and gave impetus to the development of sewing skills and construction.
Arms. Human hands are unique, not a single animal can do with its brush and fingers everything that a person can do. Accordingly, a person is able to perform a wide variety of operations with his hands.
Brain. Here comments are superfluous.
Clothing. Wearing clothes also makes people unique in their own way. And much more important is not the very fact of wearing, but the fact that the person created these clothes himself.
Fire. Fire has seriously affected our evolution. Fire is cooking, heating, lighting, blacksmithing, protection from predators. Perhaps, without fire, man would not have become a man.
Blush. The uniqueness of the ability to blush was noted by Darwin. He called it the most human feature. At the same time, scientists still do not know why people blush. Everyone understands that this blood rushes to the cheeks, but why - no one knows. Psychologists characterize blush as a positive element in the process of communication.
Long childhood. Of all mammals, humans are the longest cared for by their parents. On the positive side, it gives more time for development and learning.
Life after losing the ability to conceive. In animals, after the loss of the ability to self-reproduce, death usually occurs. For a person, the meaning of life is not only in the birth of children. Grandparents are revered by all nations, and they participate in the upbringing of grandchildren. It is also a unique feature of man.

The eleventh, no less important, sign I would call behavior. Human behavior it is also unique and its social character is most expressed in it.

In addition, humans differ from animals in the way they interact with the outside world. He is able not only to adapt passively, but also to actively influence the environment.