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7Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2016 9) 1035-1048
УДК 005.1
Sociocultural Approach to Administration and Alethiology
Olga F. Morozova*
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia
Received 19.10.2015, received in revised form 19.12.2015, accepted 18.02.2016
Alethiology" is a comparative analysis of scientific approaches to social administration research presented in modern academic literature. The objective of the article is to demonstrate the opportunities provided by fruitful and heuristically relevant synthesis of sociocultural approach to administration and alethiology principles. The central principle of the research is the principle of culture-centrism, combined with the requirements of historical, systematic, and structural-functional approaches. As a result, the research reveals the overlap between the object fields of administration philosophy, alethiology, culture studies, and management. The present article may interest specialists in the field of social administration theory, administration philosophy; practicing managers and everyone studying structural-functional connections between social administration and social management. Having studied the logical and conceptual evolution of social administration research methodology, the author arrives at the conclusion that alethiologicalfindings have been inherently adopted by theory of administration, but at the same time the opportunities of combining the efforts of administration philosophy and alethiology in its progressive forms still remain understudied.
Keywords: socio-cultural, alethiology, methods, culture, administration.
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-2016-9-4-1035-1048.
Research area: culture studies.
Logical and conceptual evolution of social administration research methodology has a long history and is remarkable for its complexity. Today's problematic situation is aggravated by the fact that, due to its multidimensionality, social administration process has become subject for multiple academic disciplines, which complicates integrating the obtained data into a whole picture. The "huge market of practical recommendations" is growing, but all the "remedies" still crash against the absence
of a single ideological and conceptual core of administrative activity.
Determination of such ideological and conceptual core is adjacent to the epistemological problem of search for the truth, as the first question the subject of administrative influence has to answer is whether his/her knowledge of the world and ways of transforming the world are true or false. It is right to notice that "the solution of the truth problem determines the 'certain contents of cultural templates'" [Koptseva, N.P.
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: ofmorozova@mail.ru
(2002)], including administration as a cultural phenomenon. That is how the unstudied, but rich in heuristic opportunities overlap between administration philosophy and alethiology appears. Regarding the truth as a form of modelling wholeness on the level of social being [Koptseva, N.P. (2002)], alethiology does not just reveal the peculiarities of modelling various social systems, but also resolves controversies in the perception of individual being and being of the society, incarnating Sh. Nutsubidze's idea of going beyond the subject-object opposition.
Conceptually, social administration methodology contains the roots of two polar tendencies: firstly, spontaneous Greek dialectics revealed the desire to grasp the Truth, understand it and enter the "space of the Unhidden", see the connections and interdependences of the "first" and "second" nature (culture) through the Absolute, find the pre-requisites for the development of social order; secondly, it led to the conclusion of the qualitative difference between natural and social orders. These tendencies were later developed both in religious and naturalistic concepts, where the Cosmos and nature served as an example for social order, and in sociologizating concepts targeted at finding the basis for administration nowhere but inside the society.
Further differentiation of knowledge, gap between religion and philosophy, mismatch of natural and social object fields have caused excessive separation and even opposition of the concepts, which made a negative impact on administration practice.
The triumph of natural science led to final establishment of requirement for nature-focus in administration. This requirement has been playing a positive role in determining the relevance of social administration until present time, connecting society administration laws to the laws of cosmic evolution. Cybernetics, and later, synergy, have
become a peak of the natural-science approach that adopted the said principle. The emergence of cybernetics caused realization of the profound integrity of laws underlying administration of various levels' systems, such as: nature, living organisms and society. The temptation to use cybernetic achievements and focus on the general was so great that some researchers made a serious methodological mistake, equalling qualitatively different kinds of administration to each other. A reasonable and justified opinion was expressed by V.G. Afanas'ev, who formulated the merits of cybernetics in administration research as follows: "administration does not take place in any system; it only occurs in highly organized, mobile and integral systems" [Afanas'ev, V.G, (1980), 207]. However, the further contemplations bring us to the conclusion that it is not so easy to define such terms as "highly organized", "mobile", and "integral". Today, V.I. Arshinov comes up with a new paradigm he calls "the constructive and communicative paradigm of complexity", which is formed in line with synergy: "the synergistically realized problem is how to stimulate the process of convergent expansion of various technocultural, anthropologically oriented mediation practices that recursively generate the hybrid cognitive interfaces between the convergent levels of reality. At that, complexity as irreducible integrity is the potential context where this "double" technocultural convergence may occur to its full" [Filosofiia upravleniia, (2010), 65]. That is how the disciplinary limitedness of cybernetics brought the synergetic administration model to life. The demand for human-sizedness articulated by cybernetics eliminates some certain mechanicalism typical of cybernetics as an administration science; the synergetic approach to administration strives to "bring... the self-development study program into compliance with a more complicated structure of anthroposociocultural systems", referring
to the systematic-generic and historical self-development of the society. Nature-centrism gets gradually complemented with the requirement to spotlight the human as the subject and object of administration. The synergetic administration paradigm gives an answer to the question how to administer without administering, how to push a system to one of its unique ways of development, beneficial to its subjects, with a little but resonant influence; how to ensure self-governing and sustainable development" [Sinergeticheskaia paradigm, (2003), 249]. At the same time, alethiology contributes the idea that the true basis for an administration subject activity "may be nothing but power developed from... spiritual activity" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 310]. Practice shows that an administering structure may make more than just direct administering influence on the administered one; it is capable of forming an internal self-regulation mechanism for a sociocultural system, not only to construct, but also to activate, and lead it to the desired way of development. This circumstance proves the relation between synergy and alethiology which, according to Sh.I. Nutsubidze, seeks for the conditions of cognition in the object, not in the subject.
The ideas of synergy are getting actively adopted by culture experts. For example, L.I. Mikhailova writes that self-regulation of artistic culture "occurs a) due to the self-sufficiency and presence of internal resources, retention of the regulative function in everyday life; b) due to the commitment of social strata to the ethnic traditions, original culture, and using its values in their behaviour and activity; c) as a process of self-reflection, a change of the subject's sociocultural commitments and picture of the world, which determines the mutable elements in artistic culture" [Lapina, T.S., (2009), 35].
At the same time, the crisis condition of administrative thought would be fair to explain
by the fact that previously administration used to be defined within the natural science paradigm, which is limited through the extrapolation of generalizations and natural self-regulation hypotheses to the society; the underestimation of the values accumulated by the administration culture, civilized means of influencing the administration object, though the potential of creating and implementing artificial means of social life organization is measurelessly growing [Sotsiologiia upravleniia (2010)]. "The principal impossibility to allow for all future paths of a system at the bifurcation points makes the subject face the problem of choice each time over again. It is important not to get on the paths catastrophic for a human, cutting off all the adverse system development scenarios. The milestones for this are not only the knowledge of the possible scenarios, but, first of all, the values and moral mindsets that warn people against hasty and dangerous deeds" [Razum i ekzistentsiia, (1999), 31]. Let us take a look at the NBIC initiative proposed in the USA; it outlines two focus attractors. The first one emphasizes the synergetic integration of achievements of the scientific, technological, social and humanitarian knowledge, while the second one highlights the "human improvement problem", "human functionality" [Filosofiia upravleniia, (2010), 64-65]. It obliges us to regard culture as a phenomenon, focusing the whole diversity of the "human-world" relations.
With the development of social science and administration culture, the administration knowledge system gets rationalized; its practical focus becomes more evident, sociologizing approaches to administration appear, aspiring to create the idea of society as a "self-sufficient", "goal-oriented" and "goal-achieving" system which, with the help of highly qualified managers, may be led to the desired goals. A distinctive feature of these approaches is the aspiration to outline the social elements determining the
society development. Politics and economics are the first to be named among such.
Explosive development of economy during a certain period of time predetermined the attention of Karl Marx to the method of material commodity production as a basis for the development of a social and economic formation; the emergence of management, which became the science of administration, brought the economy-centrism principles to power for many years. The transformation of a social system's cultural space by means of management begins with the economic culture of business, but, unfortunately, that is also where it ends. Regardless of their qualification and competence, managers can only control a limited field of activity perceived in isolation from other spheres; the main problem of modern management is that "management ideologists... are more occupied with the establishment of personal contacts between bosses and subordinates than the other, more common tendencies hidden under such contacts" [Bogachek, I.A. (1999), 22-23].
Administration concepts remain "too engineering", "too psychological", and too little attention has always been paid to administration as a sociocultural phenomenon which cannot be reduced to subject-object relations, and administration as a phenomenon of culture remains neglected [Upravlenie (2005)]. At the same time, for example, in modern Russia mechanical extrapolation of management methods to the whole society caused unprecedented commercialization of social and cultural spheres. But if in the economic sphere such methods bring the desired result, in the social one (public health, education) it only creates some ugly monsters that put money before people.
With the emergence of sociology, attention to the social functions of culture increases, because administration sociology is not interested in genetically hereditary social interaction
milestones, developed for supporting and reforming certain structures of the society. That is the origin for different opinions of assessing the conditions for the integrity of society. If the history of society is regarded, predominantly, as a history of struggle and counteraction of social groups pursuing antagonistic interests, and if its integrity is ephemeral, then social administration is also seen as focused preservation of integrity with different methods through to the creation of "mechanical integrity". But if the emphasis is put on the fact that "the presence of distinctive controversies and opposites in the society does not prevent it from being regarded as real, not nominal integrity with fairly common interests and goals [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 307], then we need to take the challenge to study reflective and spiritual processes that solidify the unity of the society.
The research of social integrity modelling from the alethiological point of view is a way of looking at social administration from a different angle. From the alethiological point of view, the epicentre is formed by "reflective and spiritual processes, where the unity of the society is developed as a way to the Absolute, a form of which the society seeks for and finally finds inside itself" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 307]. In this situation it is possible to overcome the "lost unity situation" by combining visual commitment to the single guiding power (here we speak of the authority and law), and, specifically, the internal aspiration of "each and every creature to the union with the alike", the understanding that "unity with other individuals is the compulsory condition for achieving one's individual integrity" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 308].
More and more often it is said that the answer to such challenge-problems to be resolved by sociology is culture and its varieties. Studying the manageability of social processes and the whole system of internal and external connections
together with it, A.V. Tikhonov remarks that administration "does not only influence the achievement of productive goals, but also depends on institutional and sociocultural factors itself" [Sotsiologiia upravleniia, (2010), 6]. Difficulties in getting some pro-active knowledge occur as soon as we realize that "human and society are connected, though different entities" [ibid, 24], that human is a biosociocultural creature. We cannot debate with the postulate that "Reduction of the social to merely human qualities is a phenomenon which is widely spread in sociological theories. Here reality is reduced to human as a single substantial principium. This is where such multiple images of human, as: wise, acting, symbolic, faithful, economic, living, playing etc. come from, though genealogically it is all of the mentioned, combined together" [ibid]. We believe it right to add: everything said about human above has a common denominator, which is Homo Kulturalis.
Assessing the efficiency of culture-centrism in sociology, it is rational to remark the insufficiency of the qualitative objectifying methods of researching the pre-requisites that bring order to the everyday life of people, the "background expectations" that create the context for communications in the sociocultural system [Sotsial'nye znaniia, (2001), 160]. This is why for the research of multiple dimensions of social life and the mechanisms of bringing order into it some other methods are needed, including "case study", socio-humanitarian expertise, ethnographical descriptions, method of involved observation, speech record analysis etc." [ibid]. These methods are aimed at integrating all possible dimensions of the humankind under the so-called sociocultural approach. The established "differentiation of academic disciplines calls for wider studies of culture, correlation between the spiritual factors (norms, values, concepts and ideas) with the social regulation and social action
in various cultural and historical types, existing in human history and still making impact on social processes" [Erasov, B.S., (1994), 6].
And though sociocultural approach to administration has become traditional for Russian social studies, unfortunately, the term "sociocultural" itself remains extremely wide and hard to specify. Sociocultural approach is defined as multifactored; it is described as a branch belonging to the methodology of humanitarian knowledge, based on the necessity for comprehensive research of the social factors, thereby integrating sociological and culturological kinds of analysis. The precondition for administration in sociocultural approach is the conviction that the axiomatic starting point for all administrative programs is the search for ways for focused development of sociality and culture's integrity. A.V. Tikhonov writes: "Sociocultural analysis regards administration as a phenomenon of civilization (as a reason for accelerated technological and social development) and as a phenomenon of culture (value-orientation aspect like knowledge in administration)" [Sotsiologiia upravleniia, (2010), 73]. The link which focuses the social and spiritual diversity is the human as the creator and creation of culture, while "the guides that bring spirituality into individual and social lives of people are social and spiritual values" [Kul'turnoe mnogoobrazie, (2008), 250]. Administration then looks, first of all, like a "social, ... civilizational invention that originated on the basis of rational regulation, coordination of purposeful actions" [Nesterov, A.V., (2003), 88-89], civilization "is always a conceptually, structurally and functionally determined and localized in a certain space and time objective form of ... being, which means incarnation of culture through the "artificial", natural and social (natural and human) unity of life, created (constructed) by itself. In other words, civilization is, first of all, a culture-induced,
nature-socio-cultural body of the lives of the humankind and spatial-temporal human communities (ethnic and interethnic)" [Zaks, L.A., (2001),15-16]. Furthermore, culturological-civilizational approach is seen as a quite promising one, as "social shifts are often caused by cultural and civilizational circumstances and spiritual processes" [Fedotova, G.V., (2000), 21].
Alethiology is a way to overcome the narrow interpretations of culture-centrism. Of course, as proved by S. Frank in his article "The Frustration of Idols", it is inappropriate to present culture as an almighty factor of social development. The presence of high cultural achievements by itself could not prevent the collapse and disappearance of the ancient civilizations, turned incapable of ensuring the progress of their social systems. On the other hand, the culture-centric position is the one the researchers are guided with when setting the postulate on the "correctness" of their own culture, presenting the elements of other cultures as "strange" or underdeveloped. Their own culture is seen then as the hub of the universe, and the mechanisms of its administration are considered to be the most efficient of all.
Our position, however, is different. By introducing the principle of culture-centrism, dominating in the sociocultural approach, we mean that in the centre of attention of a researcher analysing social administration process and a practical administrator there should be culture; that administration "occurs within culture, performed by cultural individuals and in respect with cultural individuals" [Filosofiia upravleniia, (2010),43].
The problem of applying culture-centrism to administration originates from the ambiguous definition of culture that reflects the integrity and diversity of human being. According to T.A. Kuzmina, "the term of 'culture' is now. not that appropriately applied to all, including non-
secular, forms of human activity. Now, culture is everything, nothing can be imagined outside culture, in other words, everything comes from culture and everything is culture" [Kul'turnye transformatsii, (2009), 8]. That is why it turns challenging to find the meaning of culture transformed into a quasi-absolute, embracing and generating 'all and everything'" [ibid]. The theses that "the world of culture is society in its diversity", "the substrate of culture is society" [Lapina, T.S. (2009)], "the product and creator of culture is human in all integrity of its being", are true in their core, though still do not clarify everything.
Determining the status of the culture-centrism principle in administration, one should not forget that the researcher does his work on a certain level of analysis and within a certain system of speculation. In theories developed by European thinkers, culture is interpreted as "a demiurgic element of the humankind creating this real, mundane world" [Fedotova, G.V., (200), 21], and the crisis of modern society is associated with the loss of the cultural context of modern civilization, due to the dominance of technology and technics. N. Berdiaev was right, when he called to describe the epoch contemporary to him with the terms that, in the new round, were about to revive the traditions revealing spiritual determinants of culture, not in the terms specific for the European style speculation of the modern age and contemporary history. It was a call for the European culture to find a "strong, and, therefore, transcendent absolute ground, which was lost in the Renaissance with its orientation to creating an autonomous self-sufficient culture" [Kul'turnye transformatsii, (2009), 5-6]. In a certain way, culture cannot be presented as a self-sufficient, ontological ground "we cannot move further in our analysis. In this sense, it is derivative. it is a sort of objectivization, among the aspects of which there are symbolization and alienation"
[ibid, 12]. Then administrative task-setting is transferred from the sphere of objectivization and alienation into primary reality, neither objectified nor alienated, and therefore, the primary one. However, such ground is only possible under dialectic understanding of the integrity of being and presence, essence and existence, specific for Russian thinking; otherwise, transcendence leads us too far, depriving the administration ideology of the opportunity to set and solve some certain tasks. It is the only time when one more "axis of stress, contributed by transpersonality into the human life: dominance (power) - subordination (dependence)" [Reznik, Iu.M., (2009), 118] can be seen and adequately assessed. If cultural symbols are interpreted only as a structure, created to satisfy current practical social transformation tasks, then, for real, there is a need for a break "through the symbols to primary reality"; and, agreeing with the idea that "culture is only alive through the supercultural in it, a human is only alive through the superhuman in it (the divine image, the spirit) [Kul'turnye transformatsii, (2009), 13], and avoiding excessive abstraction from vital tasks, we, following Iu.M. Reznik, must "regard culture as a derivative.from three roots: anthropic (subjective-personal aspect of culture), social (intersubjective and conventional aspect) and transcendent (meta- and supercultural aspect). [Reznik, Iu.M., (2009),110]. We agree that from this angle, culture "simultaneously 'lives' in every person', 'lies between people' and is inconceivable in its eternity as it goes into the depth of space. There is something otherworldly and divine about it ("the vital spark") that fills us with the mystic sense of awe and amusement" [ibid]. But at the same time, an administrator, understanding the underlying philosophical meaning of administration, does not "work" for an abstract culture, but forms a cultural person who creates a culture to perform the socio-creative function.
The level of culture development is determined by the correct answer to the question, "whether the laws of earthly administration have been invented only by people, or they are something more" [Bogachek, I.A., (1999), 29]. The notion 'administration' requires corrections. "There is no doubt", writes A.V. Nesterov, "that coordination, correlation, self-regulation of elements and self-organized order are present in nature. Is this order established from the above? We do not know the answer... The answer cannot be found within the limits of human abilities and visible time, therefore the question goes beyond the limits of socio-philosophical analysis of administration" [Nesterov, A.V., (2003), 88]. The world of culture (i.e. society) created in the process of administration is "a phenomenon created by incompleteness, openness of the human nature, development of the creative activities of the human looking for the sacral meaning of being" [Guseinov, A.A., (2009),38].
Accepting the alethiological paradigm, we choose "religion and philosophy as the models of social unity ..., the method of spiritual modelling of social integrity" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 311] and thus we close the gap between the ontological present and future, temporality and eternity, needed and existing, spiritual and material, essence and its forms. Otherwise, the connection of times ceases to exist and culture either falls out of evolution, loses its existential meaning and becomes an accidental phenomenon and the cultural man gets "lost", concentrates on the ontological present and up-to-the-minute worries, missing the "golden era", and then administration is the realization of outrage, or the administrator turns into a dreamer with a wonderful soul with plans reaching for infinity and thus impossible to be fulfilled today.
The axis of the socio-cultural dynamics is the intentionally formed desire of the man to reproduce genetically inherited meanings and
values. Administration turns into the moving force of culture, while culture is a continuum of meanings making it possible for the social system to organize itself.
In our point of view, first of all, it is noteworthy that the administration of culture as the form of the social system existence significantly differs from the administration of separate culture elements. Therefore, "culture in a more precise meaning of this word does not completely fit the limits of activities of the Ministry of Culture, i.e. it is not an institutional problem" [14,18]. Secondly, such concepts as 'culture administration', 'administration of culture means' and 'culture policy' are often confused and then the issues of culture administration are substituted by the issues of the culture policy objectives. Thirdly, the notion of 'administration' is not the same as the notion of 'power', the phenomenon of administration "is somewhere in the middle between power (enforcement with the threat of violence) and self-administration" [26,188]. Cultural policy is an integral component in the administration system of any state changing its historical forms and status. It is not so much the dictation of power, though the latter is often represented by the financial dependence of cultural institutions on the state, by the established system of incentives of cultural workers, support of creative teams, cultural institutions, which respond to "political requests". Culture administration in modern Russia combines the dependence on state structures, management of private companies and firms that provide cultural workers with orders and sell the results of their work, as well as on the market conditions and demands of mass consumers. Herewith, the attempts to meet the market demands are fraught with lower quality of art pieces, "the aesthetic (quality) criteria in assessing art pieces are substituted by sociological (quantity) ones that consider not their creative
novelty and originality, but mass popularity" [14,22], and the substantial and aesthetic level of the created cultural products decreases [ibid, 2223].
Combination of alethiology and the principle of culturocentrism applied in administration, specifies the principle of systematicity. Culturocentrism obliges one to see the infinite amount of culture manifestations, to compare the main and functional objectives of the cultural world existence as a system. Yet there is no answer to the question, "why none of the institutional forms of culture has become a consolidating basis for the society pulled apart by contradictions, even when it came to the forefront at certain historical periods?" [13,250]. Neither world religions, moral regulations, art, law, economics, nor politics have become the basis for it, when perceived outside the system. N.P. Koptseva writes, "a holistic person possesses holistic experience including ontological, epistemological and axiological" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 7].
Achieving the main goal of the socio-cultural system, i.e. self-preservation and self-development, is associated with the resolution of external and internal contradictions in the object of administration. External contradictions can be overcome by means of formation of ecological culture, intercultural dialogues and polylogues, internal ones are associated with the 'social chaos - social order' relation, as well as with the cause-and-effect relations and functional dependences of the society.
Sociocultural dynamics is the result of spheres interaction. Supporters of the alethiological paradigm based on the theory of R. Steiner who determined three main spheres of life: economic, political-judicial and spiritual. At the same time, we cannot but agree with the fact that the spiritual sphere "covers all human actions that serve social integrity - from the highest spiritual attainment to the simplest
physical work performed in accordance with the specific physical human abilities. Everything that is happening in this sphere is included in the social organism in a very special way that is quite different from that of the organization of economic and public-legal relations" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 310]. J. Derrida also points at the way culture mediates socio-political models and technically organized space.
When justifying the application of the culturocentrism principle we noted that it is necessary to see the system-forming conceptual core of spheres transformation as we understand the culture, which brings some sense into economic transformations focusing the subject of administration on the question "Who is it for?", determines the conceptual trends of the social spheres, where the reproduction of the cultural individual takes place. In other words, the principle of culturocentrism in social administration requires to consider the system in which sociality presupposes the existence of culture, and culture develops in the bosom of sociality, as an object of administration. Social administration creates an organism, which is a state formation in the political aspect, and a socio-cultural world in the culturological aspect.
Alethiology points to the fact that the spiritual life is a special reality "which extends beyond the external material life", and in the spiritual sphere "art, science, religion, philosophy and everything connected herewith are interwined. However, it is possible to determine the central core, which is capable of not only organizing the spiritual life of the society, but also producing the energy for the whole society in its three spheres. It is the aspiration for the lost unity, which is implemented in the concept of 'the pursuit of the absolute', where the absolute takes the form of a single cemented society and where the self of an individual derives its strength in the truest 'we' of the society" [Koptseva, N.P., (2002), 310-311].
The above statement appeals to us, because "the manager and the one that he manages are not abstract subjects and object of administration, but living people with cultural and historical traditions. Therefore. people in the system of administration have their own path, which may both coincide and not coincide with the objectives of the administration (in this case the ground for the 'unmanageability' phenomenon is formed). Moreover, the system of administration itself bears the features of the culture and history in the context of which it has been developed" [Filosofiia upravleniia, (2010), 42]. A. Hakamada applied an interesting metaphor, "in the West people are like bricks, one can make a society out of them; in Japan, in Asia people are like clay, they do not lose their shape; and in Russia people are like sand. If you remove the form, it falls to pieces" [Sotsial'nye znaniia, (2001), 24].
Some researchers, including the authors of this article, consider the failure of reforms in Russian administration system to be the result of the introduction of new social forms required in terms of socio-cultural polylogues (e.g. market relations, parliamentary democracy, development of the rule of law) which "are not culturally neutral technologies, and have a deep cultural ground, which should be identified before making the decision to transfer these forms to the "ground" of a certain culture" [Gorin, D.G., (2003), 182]. Moreover, historical experience shows that the process of macrointegration "stands on the cultural dictation with simultaneous imperative of broadening the space of the dominating culture" [Kul'turnoe mnogoobrazie, (2008), 482]. If the distinctive function of the dominating culture prevails, then there is an internal crisis of culture and the society integrated into this culture as a whole. Intercultural communications can destruct the core of the culture and lead to cultural disintegration [ibid]. "Unreasoned replacement of traditional sociocultural regulation mechanisms
typical for this culture can lead to a collapse of existing socio-cultural relations, archaization, localism and recourse. Ascriptive loyalties can be preserved or reproduced at other levels: family, ethnicity, caste, clan, up to the formation of the 'criminal brotherhood' groups" [Erasov, B.S., (1994)].
Is it possible for the culture "as a never-ending source of novelties" to become a controlling force itself? V.I. Polishchiuk writes, "culture is interpreted as a factor of organization and formation of life of a certain society. It is implied that in each society, there are some culture creating 'force' that set its life on an organized and not chaotic development track" [Polishchuk, V.I., (1999), 14]. Although culture is recognized as a means of self-organization of the joint human activity, the mutual production of the society and the culture through the activities of socio-cultural institutions and the administration system in general has not become the object of a proper study. Considering the cultural diversity in the context of the 'cultural' / 'social' relation problem, Professor L.A. Sachs speaking about socio-generating and socio-organizing role of culture, said that though modern culture experts often pay attention to the mental (spiritual and psychological) and information-semiotic aspects of culture, the diversity of "cultural forms of structuration (organization) of public and social relations as an expression of the cultural wealth of mankind's existence and the condition (basis) of such existence, as a rule, is not taken into consideration" [Kul'turnoe mnogoobrazie, (2008), 250]. It is true that current studies of the kind are not extrapolated to the theory of administration, though "the diversity of cultural mentalities is determined by the multiplicity of the socio-organizing culture components" [ibid]. Though accepting the presence of ontological unity and
functional interrelations we do not set a goal of purposeful development of socio-cultural unity.
Due to its ideological conceptual core and axis culture also contributes to the preservation and development of the social system structure, activity modes and preservation of quality specificity. According to V.S. Stepin, culture is the genome of social life. For the new type of society to appear, a new cultural matrix should develop. The culture type determines how life activities will be performed, the kind of the social organism. Culture becomes the 'body of the mankind's self-construction' (Iu.N. Davydov) determining the proportion of the natural and the social, the social and the biological in the human. The administration of the cultural world allows the human to turn culture into the means of their self-realization, activating "new inexhaustible impulses that can influence the historical process and the human as well" [Gurevich, P.S., (1994), 3]. Culture becomes a factor of creative ordering of life creating a system of symbols through which the meaning of life is formed. Culture operates as an objective force that defines the direction of development: "the cultural values are created by the society, but they then determine the development of this society, while its life gets increasingly dependent on the values it has generated. Such is the peculiarity of the social life: the man is often overruled by what he has once created" [Polishchuk, V.I., (1999), 14]. This does not exclude, but presupposes that a breakthrough in the search for 'the sacred meaning of life' takes place while mastering the ontological present, the 'alienated'. The culture system accumulates and stores the components, which are necessary for the administration process and "without which even highly spiritual values become ephemeral" [Erasov, B.S., (1994), 8]. Due to the information-regulatory and representing functions, culture appears as a socio-cognitive formation serving
"as a reflection and self-regulation tool for the subject. As such, it creates and reproduces for its social careers the axiological and spiritual imperatives of their vectors in the processes of structural and functional relationships of life" [Arzumanov, I., (2009), 22].
The answer to the given question is also associated with the problem of the subjective status of culture, which according to A.A. Pelipenko "demonstrates such obvious features of the subject as goal setting and self-reflection, not mentioning the ability of self-development" [Pelipenko, A.A., (2009), 101]. Herewith, the vector of subjectivity increases, reaching the stage "of the subject at the level of the system itself., and not only its specific careers" [ibid]. Iu.M. Reznik though doubts the implicitness of the above given opinion, while he thinks that "the only autonomous subject of culture as a local formation is the ethnic group or the socio-cultural group . it is not culture that is the subject, but the community (collective being)" [Reznik, Iu.M., (2009),113]. Joining the dialogue we would like to emphasize the reliability of the statement that "in culture itself there are several levels mediating the interaction of the human with the world" [ibid, 114], and this creates the desire to outline and compare the levels of subjectivity. Then "the human and not the culture becomes the foothold of further sociocultural transformations" (ibid), but the human as a microcosm and not an ontologically completed given. Therefore, culture controls not as a volitive subject, but in a different way, as a form of being integral with the content, i.e. acquiring the features of subjectivity of a
different kind if compared to homo sapiens. And the urgent question of the theory of administration whether the socio-cultural crisis can be resolved by means of socio-cultural tools [Kul'turnye transformatsii, (2009), 12] gets a new tint: how does culture fulfill socio-generating and socio-transforming functions?
The principle of culturocentrism in the theory of social administration is the provisions containing the requirement to consider administration as an element of culture, as a factor of cultural creation and culture as a semantic determinant of administration and a social transformation factor [Morozova, O.F., (2011)]. The socio-cultural approach to administration developed on the basis of culturocentrism allows to explore a new aspect of the unity of the social and the cultural, to understand administration as an impact on the socio-cultural system in order to preserve and develop culture as a form of social existence. Being immanent to the society as the creation of culture, administration itself is an equivalent achievement of the mankind experience, one of the values necessary for its continued existence and development.
Assessing the epistemological possibilities of the socio-cultural approach, we are aware that the application of the culturocentrism principle cannot be unequivocally announced as a panacea. Objectified cultural artifacts are essential. Culture becomes a socio-generating power through active actions of the subject, i.e. the cultural person. The specification of the last statement appears through self-concept, and methodological guidelines of alethiology are truly invaluable herewith.
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Социокультурный подход к управлению и алетология
О.Ф. Морозова
Сибирский федеральный университет Россия, 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Предметом статьи выступает сравнительный анализ имеющихся в современной литературе научных подходов к исследованию социального управления. Целью является демонстрация возможности плодотворного и эвристически значимого синтеза социокультурного подхода к управлению и принципов алетологии. Центральным принципом научного исследования является принцип культуроцентризма в сочетании с требованиями исторического, системного, структурно-функционального научных подходов. В результате исследования обнаруживается пересечение предметных полей философии управления, алетологии, культурологии, менеджмента. Материал статьи может заинтересовать специалистов, занимающихся теорией социального управления, философией управления, практиков-менеджеров и интересующихся изучением структурно-функциональных связей процесса социального управления и социального менеджмента. Рассмотрев логико-смысловую эволюцию методологии исследования социального управления, автор приходит к выводу о том, что наработки в области алетологии имманентно используются в теории управления, но в то же время не выявлены возможности объединения усилий философии управления и алетологии в её модернизированных формах.
Ключевые слова: социокультурное, алетология, методология, культура, управление. Научная специальность: 24.00.00 - культурология.
