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Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 1-2 (2017)"^^« Philosophy
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- ISSN 2310-5593 (Print) / ISSN 2519-1209 (Online) -
UDC 008 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20534/AJH-17-1.2-92-97
N. S. Chernyakova 1
1 Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Russia
ABOUT CONTENT OF THE NOTIONS 'SOCIETY', 'CULTURE' AND 'CIVILIZATION'
Abstract
Objective: to demonstrate methodological importance for social and humanitarian studies to differentiate content of the notions "society", "culture" and "civilization".
Methods: content and logical analysis, interpretation, comparison, generalization, theoretical deduction. Results: It is asserted that the notions "society", "culture" and "civilization" have different but connected contents. The notion "society" reflects sociality as the unity of universal attributes, such as producing activity, consciousness and social norms. Society is considered as the process and the result of joint activity of individuals engaged in socio-cultural mastering of the world. The notion "culture" distinguishes the abstract attributes of sociality from the concrete historical forms of their existence and manifestation in real space-time conditions. In the sense of "stage" the notion "civilization" refers to that period of human history when social structure, state and laws emerged. In the sense of "level" it marks different degrees in the universal process of improving the attributes of sociality, obtained by particular subject of culture. Civilization is considered as the actual level of development and the continuous process of improvement of the universal attributes of sociality in any particular form of cultural specificity.
Scientific novelty: for the first time content of the notions "society", "culture" and "civilization" is considered as different but linked together by the attributes of sociality.
Practical significance: the main conclusions of the article can be used in social and humanitarian studies of socio-cultural reality.
Keywords: Society; Culture; Civilization; Attributes of Sociality.
INTRODUCTION
Despite the intensive development of social and humanitarian knowledge in recent decades, neither objects nor fundamental notions of this knowledge obtain common interpretations.
Culture continues to be considered in the public consciousness, mass media, journalism and official documents as a "segment" or "sector" of society, which includes social institutions for creating, storing and broadcasting of art-works. Contrary to the intentions and expectations of those who identifies culture with art or opposes culture as a sphere of spiritual creativity to all the other human activities, culture appears to be in this interpretation not crucial and significant phenomenon, but some excess or addition to the "normal" social life.
Even an unacceptability of such views would be enough to encourage humanitarians to refer to theoretical and methodological issues of culturelogical knowledge. But taking into account the different interpreta-
tions of the terms "society" and "civilization" that exist in modern humanitarian literature, one cannot help to consider clarifying of the content of the notions "society", "culture" and "civilization" as an urgent matter.
It is obvious that we are in need of these different notions in order to describe different aspects of human life. Just the fact of the ambiguity of the terms reflects not only the difference between theoretical approaches and concepts, but the complexity of those social and cultural phenomena, which are tend to be reflected in the notions "society", "culture" and "civilization".
But what kind of phenomena do we really mean or ought to mean under the names of "society", "culture" and "civilization"? An attempt to answer this question is the objective of the article.
atcributes of sociality as the essence of society and culture
In the field of social and humanitarian knowledge the term "sociality" and definition "social" are referred to un-biological features of human activity exclusively — to
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(social) norms, (social) quality, (social) relations, (social) institutions, etc. [1; 2]. But what exactly is meant by unbiological features? What is the nature of sociality as a special quality inherent in beings of the species Homo sapiens? What are the attributes of sociality or the properties that are inseparable from its nature? Without answering these questions it is impossible to create a solid basis of the entire socio-cultural knowledge.
Even after some attempts to interpret society on the base of the concept of information [3], most ofhumani-tarians using the term "society" continue to mean that a group or community of human individuals form just a society but not herd, because they (1) have consciousness, can thinking and realize in their activities a certain sense; (2) can transform natural conditions in accordance with their objectives and create material and spiritual means of their own existence; (3) base their relationships not on instincts but on unbiological norms. It is these universal, invariant features inherent in the essence of people as social beings we call the attributes of sociality.
Producing activity as an attribute of sociality is inextricably linked to another attribute of sociality — consciousness, rationality of man. But today like a million years ago neither ability to producing activity nor consciousness by themselves give an individual any advantage in satisfaction of his/her biological instincts and ensure his/her survival in terms of natural selection and dominance [4-6]. The process of social evolution became possible only due to the shift from biological laws of survival to the relationships based on social norms. Adherence to social norms is a choice not between "good" and "bad" sociality, but between sociality and biological form of living, because social norms are the attribute of sociality without which the existence of producing activity or consciousness is impossible. It means that the emergence and development of social existence was possible only because unconditional biological instincts were restricted by social norms.
So the attributes of sociality distinguish human way of existence from natural, biological mode of being of all the other living organisms. Ultimately, society is the process and the result ofjoint activity of individuals engaged in socio-cultural mastering of the world.
However, the attributes of sociality do not imply and do not determine differences in worldview and value orientations, beliefs and customs, rules of etiquette and tastes, etc. If people differed from each other neither by their deeds and thoughts, nor by created things, it would
be quite enough to use only the notion "society" for describing human life and activity. But social life really exists in various forms generated by different subjects who are mastering the world by different ways in various natural and social conditions. All this differences are revealed in culture as a specific historical form of existence of sociality.
No matter how many new definitions of the term "culture" were added to the classical list of them [7; 8], the notion "culture" ought to be introduced in humanitarian knowledge to distinguish the abstract attributes of sociality from the concrete historical forms of their existence and manifestation in real space-time conditions. In other words, the notion "society" reflects sociality as a universal attribute, whenever the notion "culture" reflects sociality as a special historical type. The special function of the notion "culture" in ordinary consciousness as in humanitarian cognition is differentiation of individuals and human communities according to the special way of their existence [9].
As a system of relationships (economical, political, legal, moral, religious, etc.) between social places, roles and institutions, referred to as "class", "urban population", "farmer", "worker", or "state", "science", "religion", "art", etc., society exists and develops independently of the mind and the will of individuals that fill these places and perform corresponding social roles. Yet we can consider society as a special kind of subject, because the presence of many subjects of culture inside society does not destroy quality of society as a subject of a certain level of organization and type of culture. On the contrary, society may be treated as the subject of culture only as a system, whose way of existence is not a sum of those ways of existence that are characteristics of many subjects of culture included in its structure.
Particular attention should be paid to the fact that the identification of subjects of different types and levels of organization leads to representations that distort the essence of the culture, as there is no identity between culture of a person and culture of a group, between cultures of different social groups and culture of the society as a whole system, between cultures of different ethnic groups or different classes. The culture of a person, a group, or society is characterized by those and only those features which express the specificity of a subject of culture of a given level of organization in its unity and integrity, and the integrity of culture itself is derived from the integrity of its subject.
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As for the culture of such a system-subject as a society, describing of it requires theoretical analysis of the peculiarities of this kind of material systems, because, on the one hand, culture as a way of existence of society is not reducible to cultures of different subjects coexisting in the framework of this society, and, on the other hand, — is not identical to the structure and functions of the components of the social structure of society. Speaking about the culture of society as an integrated subject, we mean not the identity of the cultures of the various subjects, but the common cultural paradigm that underlies all cultures included in this integrity.
It is just the society of a certain type creates objective conditions for the formation of the basic characteristics of culture of all the subjects included into the structure of this society as a single organism and makes all kinds of culture, the bearers of which these subjects are, the embodiments of a single culture of a given society, or cultural paradigm of this society. For arbitrarily large deviations of the culture of any subject from the basic paradigm, these deviations cannot cross the limits prescribed by the specificity of the cultural paradigm of the society. The lack of common cultural paradigm would mean that the society is not the particular subject of cultural and that the conversation about "culture of the society" is devoid of base.
Such concepts as "ancient culture", "medieval culture", "European culture", etc. reflect cultural paradigms just of societies: ancient, medieval or European. Cultures of all the subjects, included into the structure of the respective societies as whole subjects of culture, are modifications of cultural paradigms of these societies. This means that, for example, individual performers of a social role "scientist" differ from each other by the fact that they are members of social groups within the structure of different societies: ancient, medieval or modern. The typological characteristic "ancient" or "medieval" indicates that the particular scientists are carriers not only of the same professional culture, if remain scientists, but also different cultural paradigms as they are the representatives of societies of different types.
It follows, that the distinction between notions "society" and "culture" lies in the plane of the relationship between essence and phenomenon which is fundamentally different than the relationship between the part and the whole, or between the ideal and the material. Sociality as the quality of belonging to society, or social form of existence, distinguishes man from animal absolutely,
while cultural differences distinguish one subject from another within the social world.
Civilization as the stage and the level of socio-cultural development
The term "civilization" was ambiguous from the very beginning of its introduction in historical studies in 18 th century [10]. Nevertheless, it would be possible to say that two main tendencies in its interpretation were opposition of civilization and culture as material and spiritual sides of human live, on the one hand, and consideration of civilization as the universal stage of social development — on the other.
Understanding of civilization as the stage of history, following the primitive one and associated with the formation of the social structure, state and regulation by laws, urban environment, etc., although never being out of use in historical knowledge, now remains generally on the periphery of sociological and culturelogical studies of the relationship between culture and civilization. Not in the last turn this circumstance is due to the denial both of universal laws of social development and evolutionary theories as the methodological basis of the study of history as one of the main characteristics of the humanitarian knowledge of the 20th century [11-13]. The consequence of this attitude has become not only a productive study of cultural diversity of mankind, but detrimental to humanitarian knowledge the negligence to universal features of social and cultural life.
But even denying universal laws of social development historians never ceased to link civilization with technical and technological basis of society and to show the contradictory effect of continuously accelerating (from the industrial revolution of 18th century) scientific and technological progress on the development of culture, identified either solely with the spiritual side of human life [14], or with unique and inimitable features of the existence of separate human communities. The logical conclusion in the development of the opposition of culture and civilization was the interpretation of Spengler, who believed that civilization is the last stage of cultural development that marks degeneration, disappearance, dying of all genuine characteristics of any culture [15, P. 264-266].
Nonetheless, in the interpretation of Spengler as in the historical sense civilization is associated with the development of the universal features of the social system: productive forces ensuring human survival in any natural environment; social relationships connecting individu-
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als in a social structure; political organization integrating all elements of the social structure within the state; regulation by laws giving the whole social system integrity, stability and handling.
So, strictly speaking, only that interpretation of the term "civilization", which was given by Samuel P. Huntington [16], might be considered as nontraditional, since never before civilization had been considered as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have" [17, P. 23-24]. No matter how actual, relevant and heuristic ideas of Huntington would be the result of the wide spreading of his interpretation of civilization is immensely increased ambiguity of the term.
It is true, that in ordinary as in scientific language there is a tendency to use the terms "society", "culture" and "civilization" as synonyms. But even now this tendency never goes beyond the boundaries of the main content of the notions: "unbiological way of living", "particular form of development" and "stage of social progress" [18]. We can introduce any terms with any sense in our studies. But it is impotent to understand, what purpose are we doing this introduction for?
It is difficult to deny that from the interpretation ofthe term "civilization" as "the broadest level of cultural identity" it follows that men, women or football-funs are just "civilizations", because for many people their self-identification as man, woman or football-fun is the broadest, highest and the most important. But what kind of information could we receive from such interpretation of civilization? It seems that two other senses ofthe term "civilization" are more useful, yet in need of some clarification.
In the first sense we speak about civilization as a stage of social progress and mean that period of human history when social structure, state and laws emerged [19; 20]. In the second sense we speak about civilization as a level of development of the attributes of sociality, the most significant features of which include: 1) high level ofproductive activity providing the basic material needs of all members of society; 2) developed social structure with a high level of integration and mobility; 3) highly developed and universal system of legislation serving as the guarantor of rights and freedoms of citizens on the entire territory of a state; 4) level of self-regulation of civil society so high as to ensure compliance with the universal norms of human coexistence.
The relationship between culture and civilization as different forms of sociality is complex. And those features
of this relationship that were disturbing Spengler will be disturbing any subject of a particular culture always. The basis of this disturbance is generated by the very essence of civilization as the progressive development of sociality as such.
Development of civilization itself is associated with a change of social relations and social places that form society as a whole system. Each subsequent stage of this development is an integrated social system different from the previous one. And it is just this system determines the list of real subjects of culture and the functions that they perform in this system. Culture as a real way of existence of a specific subject is determined, first of all, by the place that the subject occupies in the whole system of social relations. This means that universal features in the culture of subjects occupying some place remain as long as the place itself, so a farmer is always and everywhere a farmer, a doctor is always and everywhere a doctor, a teacher is always and everywhere a teacher, etc. It would be possible to say that civilization as the quality of the social system is an expression of abstract sociality that has reached the level of rational order and absolute impersonality. Moreover, knowledge and technology as the application of the laws of nature to socio-cultural activities are always universal. Their using always brings an element of unification in any activity. And any technology is improving to the complete exhaustion of its design and surely gives way to a more perfect.
The fact that civilization as the level ofdevelopment of society is manifested primarily in the development of its material basis is due to the determining influence of the producing activity as an attribute of sociality. However, identification ofcivilization as the level ofdevelopment of technological means of satisfying material needs inherent to a particular subject of culture with mass consumption should be considered as the fundamental misconception of the era of globalization. Even as the indicator of economic development consumption of anything could be considered only in its functions ofthe necessary biological condition of human existence and the factor of the development of productive forces of society. But the consumption of both material and spiritual products in itself, without association with the development of the ability to rational, creative and regulated by social norms activity cannot be considered as one of the socio-cultural characteristics of the subject of culture at all.
We could say that now mankind is more civilized then 500 years ago, since IT-technologies, Declaration of hu-
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man rights and freedoms and developed system oflegisla-tion are the evidences ofthe higher level of development of human abilities to producing activity, thinking and regulation by unbiological norms. But simultaneously we ought to see that there are grate differences in the real level ofthe development of the attributes of sociality in cultures as special ways of existence ofparticular subjects — persons, groups, ethnos and communities. More over, it should be understood that the process ofdevelopment includes in it-selfnot only improvement ofsome social features but degradation of the others also. As a result some subjects of culture would be civilized in their ability to make material terms of live more comfortable and uncivilized in their ability to be aware of the ultimate objectives ofhuman live and universality of normative regulation.
As the stage of social progress civilization cannot be reduced to the producing activity and modernization in economics and technology. There is indissoluble connection between the attributes of sociality. So without the high level of development of consciousness, awareness of the ultimate objectives of human existence and the normative regulation material production and technologies of any level could not be considered as indication of civilization unless in comparison with the primitive societies only. As the stage of progressive development and really achieved level of culture civilization will manifest itself in increasing of the awareness and meaningful-ness of any kind of activity, improvement of methods
and means of practices, in the higher degree of moral responsibility and the level of fulfillment of persons or members of a social group as carriers of certain social roles and subjects of a given type of culture.
conclusions
As it could be drown from above reasoning, the notions "society", "culture" and "civilization" have different but connected contents.
The notion "society" reflects the sociality as a unity of universal attributes, such as producing activity, consciousness and social norms. Society is considered as the process and the result ofjoint activity of individuals engaged in socio-cultural mastering of the world.
The notion "culture" reflects the sociality as a special way of existence of particular subject. The notion "culture" distinguishes the abstract attributes of sociality from the concrete historical forms of their existence and manifestation in real space-time conditions.
In the sense of "stage" the notion "civilization" refers to that period of human history when social structure, state and laws emerged. In the sense of "level" it marks different degrees in the universal process of improving the attributes of sociality, obtained by particular subject of culture.
It follows, that civilization is the actual level of development and the continuous process of improvement of the universal attributes of sociality in any particular form of cultural specificity.
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Information about the author
Natalia S. Chernyakova, Doctor of philosophical sciences, Professor, Professor of Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Northern People Institute
Address: Dresdenskaya Str., 6/2-26, 194017, Saint Petersburg, Russia,
tel.: +7 (921) 788-42-35
E-mail: Cherns2011@yandex.ru
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6453-2418
