Ôèëîñîôèÿ / 2. Ñîöèàëüíàÿ ôèëîñîôèÿ
Prof.
Danilyàn O., prof. Dzîban À.
Yaroslav
the Wise
THE PROBLEMS OF
CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN
TRANSITIVE SOCIETY
We know that the culture of any society,
including the transitive, is
a complicated system of elements (subsystems) that has got both of
traditional and innovative cultural forms, subcultures of different social
communities and groups, ethnic groups, religious denominations. In this
system specific levels can be also distinguished,
they are: elite culture, popular culture, mass culture.
All socio-cultural elements are combined into a single system based on
universally valid values for the society, at the same time these values are the
foundation of a certain cultural diversity. The most important principles of
consolidation, which unite the actors of society into a
single socio-cultural system, are: their
common history, common economic life, mental qualities, shared language, religious and moral values, and so
on. Various socio-cultural systems can also have universally valid values. These dozens of common features
and cultural characteristics of various peoples
and ethnic groups, which enable to conclude the
globalization of all mankind culture, are called
cultural universals (by J. Murdoch).
Additionally specified elements of unity of
the socio-cultural system and the various cultures
in general there are some differences between
them. These differences may act in various situations in the process of
interaction between social actors and cultures: from a
state of harmony to conflict.
The most typical kinds of conflict in the cultural sphere
are: the collision between traditional and
innovative forms of culture, anomie, cultural lag
(cultural gap), the clash of socio-cultural systems and sub-cultures, conflict between
civilizations (an intercultural conflict) and so
on. Cultural development is a complicated and
contradictory process. In this process, there are both traditional forms related with the earlier
achieved values of culture and innovation, developing forms. Traditional
and innovative forms of culture are dialectically interconnected phenomena,
which mainly determine the process of their
development.
There are all reasons to
believe that mobile, innovative aspect in the
culture associated with problems and conflicts in
cultural development and it is determined by the actual contradictions of
social life. When you change
the socio-economic basis of society, the old cultural
traditions are no able to perform their
regulatory function longer, which leads to cultural
innovation. Innovative and traditional cultural values coexist for some
time usually, during that time the old cultural
forms are gradually replaced or transformed by new. The new conflict between the
opposing cultural values are experienced by people keenly, because the change
of the old tradition to a new is associated with
a breaking of cultural stereotypes.
The cultural anomie appears
in the situations of socio-political and economic crises of society, as well as
in transitional periods of its development, when the destruction of the old,
traditional culture is far ahead of the generation of innovative cultural form. It is means anomie
as a violation of unity of the cultural process,
the state of values vacuum in society, as a result
the traditional cultural norms and values are no longer
working and innovation are missing or have not been fully established (following
E. Durkheim). The cultural anomie leads to moral degradation of society, the
offensive of an inspirituality, consumerism and the spread of
template pseudo-culture. The spiritual culture is an important
part of culture, it plays a special role in the process of transformation of
society. The society of totalitarian and authoritarian
types used method of suppressing undesirable values and interests, and
the method of unification of the main components of spiritual culture to
maintain homogeneity of the social system and increase its stability and
controllability. Contrary to them transitive
social systems lose their artificial monism of values and interests, which is
replaced by pluralism of new orientations.
However, this
pseudo pluralism is not based on a consensus of basic, vital for society values
and interests, so it does not lead to the improvement of society and its
consolidation, but to its development on the most
dramatic way. One part of the society tends to return to its previous
unity, homogeneity,
other wishes a
greater pluralism in the sphere of spiritual culture, values and
interests, denying
the moral control and evaluation, considering the existence of pluralism as the
highest good. Therefore, it is natural that in addition to social, economic and
political contradictions in such system the contradictions in the sphere of
spiritual culture are aggravated.
A special feature of the
formation of spiritual culture in the transitional social systems is the fact
that it reproduces struggling forms of social
consciousness, each of which is typical for a particular historical period. These forms are: authoritarian and liberal-democratic,
communist and anti-communist, atheist and religious, statist and anarchist
forms of social consciousness. It leads to a
dangerous of polarization of the spiritual culture of
the society, the emergence of extremist movements in its diverse sense; it
actualizes conflicts in other areas of society and complicates
their resolution.
Another conflict of culture, which can not be resolved in modern conditions, is the conflict between its main parts,
between the material and spiritual culture. This conflict
is called «cultural lag» (cultural gap). The most prominent representatives of
the concept of «socio-cultural lag» sociologists W. Ogburn, L.White, A.
Firkandt noted that the accumulation of innovative
forms of culture happens in a constantly increasing rate, the different spheres
of modern culture develop at different speeds. For example, the material culture
develops relatively quickly, and the spiritual ("adaptive") more
slowly. For this reason, the significant cultural gap in the spiritual life of
society becomes, so there is a conflict in a cultural sphere. It should be also
noted that the reverse phenomenon is fixed in some cases,
when the spiritual culture is ahead of material
at some time interval.
Summing up we can say that social transformations logically
exacerbate contradictions in all spheres of
social life, including culture. Therefore, the
complicated social processes in the modern world can not be explained
rationally, especially
managed effectively without understanding the role of various social
contradictions in the social dynamics.