Authentication is an authentication procedure, for example: verifying the authenticity of a user by comparing the password he entered with the password in the user database; confirming the authenticity of an email by checking the digital signature of the letter using the sender’s signature verification key; checking the checksum of a file for compliance with the amount declared by the author of this file.
Authorization - granting a certain person or group of persons the rights to perform certain actions; as well as the process of checking (confirming) these rights when attempting to perform these actions. You can often hear the expression that a person is “authorized” to perform a given operation - this means that he has the right to do it.
Identification is a procedure, as a result of which, for the subject of identification, his identifier is revealed, which uniquely identifies this subject in the information system. To perform the identification procedure in the information system, the subject must first be assigned an appropriate identifier (i.e., the subject has been registered in the information system).
Sciences about society and man.
Sciences studying man and society.
Human: psychology, physiology, hygiene.
Society: sociology, cultural studies, socionics, social science, jurisprudence, ergonomics.
Sociology is the science of society, the systems that make it up, the patterns of its functioning and development, social institutions, relationships and communities. Sociology. Sociology is a discipline whose main object is society itself, studied as an integral phenomenon.
Culturology is a science that studies culture, the most general patterns of its development. The subject of culturology is the study of the phenomenon of culture as the historical and social experience of people, which is embodied in specific norms, laws and features of their activities, passed down from generation to generation in the form of value guidelines and ideals.
Socionics is a science that studies the process of information exchange between a person and the outside world.
Social science is a general name for sciences that study society as a whole and social processes.
Physiology is a science that studies the basic quality of living things - its vital activity.
Ethnology. Closely related to anthropology is ethnology, which examines the structure, history and development of ethnic groups. Here the main object of study is not only “primitive societies”, but also other social forms created by ethnic groups at different stages of development.
Story. History examines the progressive development of societies, giving a description of the phases of their development, structure, structure, features and characteristics.
Philosophy. Philosophy studies society from the point of view of its essence: structure, ideological foundations, the relationship between spiritual and material factors in it.
Hygiene is a field of science, in particular medicine, that studies the influence of living and working conditions on humans and develops the prevention of various diseases; providing optimal conditions for existence; maintaining health and prolonging life.
Jurisprudence is a science whose subject of study is law. Law is inextricably linked with the state; it is a universal regulator of social relations.
Political science. Political science studies society in its political dimension, exploring the development and change of power systems and institutions of society, the transformation of the political system of states, and the change of political ideologies.
Culturology. Culturology views society as a cultural phenomenon. In this perspective, social content manifests itself through culture generated and developed by society. Society in cultural studies acts as a subject of culture and at the same time as the field on which cultural creativity unfolds and in which cultural phenomena are interpreted. Culture, understood in a broad sense, covers the entire set of social values that create a collective portrait of the identity of each specific society.
Jurisprudence. Jurisprudence primarily examines social relations in the legal aspect, which they acquire when fixed in legislative acts. Legal systems and institutions reflect the prevailing trends in social development and combine ideological, political, historical, cultural and value attitudes of society. The study of legal norms and laws, usually enshrined in documentary regulations, helps to more fully understand the structures of societies. It is often legal documents that are preserved from ancient societies, which has led to the creation of a widespread practice of historical reconstruction of social systems and institutions on the basis of surviving legal and legislative acts.
Economy. Economics studies the economic structure of various societies, examines the impact of economic activity on social institutions, structures and relationships. The Marxist method of political economy makes economic analysis the main tool in the study of society, reducing social research to clarifying its economic background.
Society (as well as a person) can be studied from different positions, and therefore a number of scientific disciplines are allocated to the category of “social sciences” and “sciences about society”. Society is an object of study for philosophy, history, anthropology, ethnology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, law and economics, which, from the standpoint of their characteristic general scientific and special methods, study certain aspects of it that form the subject of study of these scientific disciplines.
Philosophy. Philosophy studies society from the point of view of its essence: structure, ideological foundations, the relationship between spiritual and material factors in it. Since it is society that generates, develops and transmits meanings, philosophy that studies meanings pays central attention to society and its problems. Any philosophical study necessarily touches on the topic of society, since human thought always unfolds in a social context that predetermines its structure.
The philosophical approach to society depends on the positions of a particular philosopher: in accordance with these positions, the definition of society, its typology, and methods of studying it change.
Philosophy provides the deepest knowledge about society related to the comprehension of its nature, patterns, and foundations. These meaningful aspects of society as a phenomenon are called "philosophical aspects of social science".
Story. History examines the progressive development of societies, giving a description of the phases of their development, structure, structure, features and characteristics. Different schools of historical knowledge place emphasis on different aspects of history. The focus of the classical historical school is religion, culture, worldview, the social and political structure of society, a description of the periods of its development and the most important events and characters in social history.
Anthropology. Anthropology – literally, “the science of man” – typically studies archaic societies, in which it seeks to find the key to understanding more developed cultures.
The anthropological method of studying society consists of a thorough study of myths, legends, rituals, everyday behavior, habits, gestures and even prejudices of its members, as well as the most ancient social institutions.
In a broad sense, “anthropology” can be called any field of study that takes man as its main object of study.
Ethnology. Closely related to anthropology is ethnology, which examines the structure, history and development of ethnic groups. Here the main object of study is not only “primitive societies”, but also other social forms created by ethnic groups at different stages of development.
Ethnology describes value systems, origins, phases of historical formation, linguistic identity, economic structure and systems of religious and mythological views of ethnic groups.
Sociology. Sociology is a discipline whose main object is society itself, studied as an integral phenomenon.
Society in sociology is considered the authority where the type of rationality, the idea of a person, and the worldview are formed.
In a broad sense, sociology strives to study society as an independent object and is closely related to philosophy.
Political science. Political science studies society in its political dimension, exploring the development and change of power systems and institutions of society, the transformation of the political system of states, and the change of political ideologies.
Culturology. Culturology views society as a cultural phenomenon. In this perspective, social content manifests itself through culture generated and developed by society. Society in cultural studies acts as a subject of culture and at the same time as the field on which cultural creativity unfolds and in which cultural phenomena are interpreted. Culture, understood in a broad sense, covers the entire set of social values that create a collective portrait of the identity of each particular society.
Jurisprudence. Jurisprudence primarily examines social relations in the legal aspect, which they acquire when fixed in legislative acts. Legal systems and institutions reflect the prevailing trends in social development and combine ideological, political, historical, cultural and value attitudes of society. The study of legal norms and laws, usually enshrined in documentary regulations, helps to more fully understand the structures of societies. It is often legal documents that are preserved from ancient societies, which has led to the creation of a widespread practice of historical reconstruction of social systems and institutions on the basis of surviving legal and legislative acts.
Economy. Economics studies the economic structure of various societies, examines the impact of economic activity on social institutions, structures and relationships.
Social studies generalizes the approaches of all social disciplines. The discipline “Social Science” contains elements of all the above-described scientific disciplines that help to understand and correctly interpret basic social meanings, processes and institutions. Philosophy, history, political science, cultural studies, jurisprudence, economics, and ethnology participate in “Social Studies” as a discipline. They all view society from different points of view, and the totality
Society is an incredibly interesting subject to study because understanding how it works helps ordinary people greatly improve their lives and have a positive impact on the world. To begin to consider society as a historically and culturally established phenomenon, it is necessary to understand what sciences study society. And to get an answer to this question, it is necessary to turn to such a complex of sciences as social science, which includes at least six main scientific disciplines.
This is all that is usually studied in universities: philosophy, social psychology, political science, economics, jurisprudence, and sociology. Everything is from one side or another. Here are the sciences that representatives of socionomic professions (related to people) study! Social science is a large-scale discipline, the purpose of which is not to consider individual social phenomena, but as a whole, from the perspective of different sciences.
But it is important to understand that studying aspects of social life of this kind will be superficial, since many of them, upon closer examination, turn out to be contradictory. But you can get a general education through the study of social studies, and then amaze poorly educated people with your erudition. Moreover, this discipline allows you to know the direction of searching for an answer to the question of what sciences study society.
What are the specifics of cognition of social phenomena?
In general, the features of a person’s knowledge of the world around him are always the same. But when studying a certain object (it is society in our case), a number of features should be taken into account that will help or, perhaps, hinder delving into any topic considered by science. And therefore, it is important to understand the specifics of cognition of social phenomena, which lies in the fact that the object and subject of study are one.
After all, everything is provoked by people who can influence them even by the very fact of studying these events and properties. For example, a failed experiment shook the public so much that the conditions for confirming or disproving the hypothesis disappeared completely. The problem of studying social phenomena is that regardless of what sciences study society, the personal factor operates. Consequently, it is difficult for an object to look at many phenomena reliably. And such subjectivity does not allow us to put everything together into a whole picture, even within the framework of one science. And as for social science as a complex of disciplines, even more so. That is, the personal experience and worldview of the researcher significantly affects the results of the experiments, which distorts objective reality.
Philosophy
What sciences study society and man? One of them is philosophy, which considers the universal laws of development of the world as an integrity. There are other definitions. Thus, philosophy is a special kind of world that studies the most general properties and phenomena of the surrounding reality. Modern researchers do not like to call philosophy a science, since it often contains completely contradictory provisions that researchers do not even try to reconcile or find out which of them is correct. Just as in physics they try to reconcile the general theory of relativity with quantum field theory, with varying degrees of success.
But within the framework of philosophy, both atheistic materialism and agnostic idealism can exist simultaneously. That is, philosophy can be called the answer to the question “what sciences study society” only conditionally. This form of knowledge of the world poses such questions.
- Do we know the world? Those who believe that it is possible to consider all of reality in its entirety are called Gnostics. And those who deny are agnostics.
- What is truth? Here philosophy approached quite scientifically. Thus, full-fledged ones were developed within the framework of epistemology - the science of knowledge.
- What is good? This question is directly related to human values, and therefore refers to such as axiology.
In general, philosophy is an excellent discipline, but in answer to the question “what sciences study society” there are others. These should also be considered.
Sociology
What sciences study society, man, social relations and institutions? That's right, disciplines related to sociology. These include not only the science discussed in this subsection, but also, for example, social work. But sociology is the science of society, social institutions (historically established forms of its self-regulation), which sets as its task the explanation and prediction of certain social phenomena.
Jurisprudence
One aspect of the study of most socionomic sciences (the study of society) is the system of social norms. They are religious, moral, group. And there is a special category of them - legal norms, which are a means of expressing the will of the state. Actually, jurisprudence is a science that studies legal norms and the peculiarities of their functioning in relation to a particular state or as a whole. This discipline has the closest connections with social psychology, social work and sociology.
Economy
Economics is a science that studies the economic activities of society, relations associated with money and property, production, distribution, exchange and consumption. This discipline is a mechanism that regulates the material side of life of each member of society.
Political science
Political science is the science of a special form of human activity associated with power relations, as well as possible political systems, institutions and norms. This science also studies the relationship between the state and its individual citizens.
Under science It is customary to understand systematically organized knowledge based on facts obtained through empirical research methods based on the measurement of real phenomena. There is no consensus on which disciplines belong to the social sciences. There are various classifications of these social sciences.
Depending on their connection with practice, sciences are divided into:
1) fundamental (they find out the objective laws of the surrounding world);
2) applied (solve the problems of applying these laws to solve practical problems in the industrial and social fields).
If we adhere to this classification, the boundaries of these groups of sciences are conditional and fluid.
The generally accepted classification is based on the subject of research (those connections and dependencies that each science directly studies). In accordance with this, the following groups of social sciences are distinguished.
| Classification of social sciences and humanities Social Sciences Group | Social sciencies | Subject of study |
| Historical Sciences | Domestic history, general history, archeology, ethnography, historiography, etc. | History is the science of the past of mankind, a way of systematizing and classifying it. It is the basis of humanitarian education, its fundamental principle. But, as A. Herzen noted, “the last day of history is modernity.” Only on the basis of past experience can a person understand modern society and even predict its future. In this sense, we can talk about the predictive function of history in social science. Ethnography - the science of the origin, composition, settlement, ethnic and national relations of peoples |
| Economic Sciences | Economic theory, economics and economic management, accounting, statistics, etc. | Economics establishes the nature of the laws operating in the sphere of production and the market, regulating the measure and form of distribution of labor and its results. According to V. Belinsky, it is placed in the position of a final science, revealing the effect of knowledge and transformation of society, economics and law, etc. |
| Philosophical Sciences | History of philosophy, logic, ethics, aesthetics, etc. | Philosophy is the most ancient and fundamental science, establishing the most general patterns of development of nature and society. Philosophy performs a cognitive function in society - knowledge. Ethics is the theory of morality, its essence and impact on the development of society and people's lives. Morality and morality play a big role in motivating human behavior, his ideas about nobility, honesty, and courage. Aesthetics- the doctrine of the development of art and artistic creativity, the way of embodying the ideals of humanity in painting, music, architecture and other areas of culture |
| Philological sciences | Literary studies, linguistics, journalism, etc. | These sciences study language. Language is a set of signs used by members of society for communication, as well as within the framework of secondary modeling systems (fiction, poetry, texts, etc.) |
| Legal sciences | Theory and history of state and law, history of legal doctrines, constitutional law, etc. | Jurisprudence records and explains state norms, rights and obligations of citizens arising from the country's fundamental law - the Constitution, and develops on this basis the legislative framework of society |
| Pedagogical Sciences | General pedagogy, history of pedagogy and education, theory and methods of teaching and education, etc. | Analyze individual personal processes, the correlation of physiological, mental and socio-psychological characteristics characteristic of a person of a certain age |
| Psychological Sciences | General psychology, personality psychology, social and political psychology, etc. | Social psychology is a borderline discipline. It was formed at the intersection of sociology and psychology. It examines human behavior, feelings and motivation in a group situation. She studies the social basis of personality formation. Political psychology studies the subjective mechanisms of political behavior, the influence on it of consciousness and the subconscious, emotions and will of a person, his beliefs, value orientations and attitudes |
| Sociological sciences | Theory, methodology and history of sociology, economic sociology and demography, etc. | Sociology studies the relationships between the main social groups of modern society, the motives and patterns of human behavior |
| Political science | Theory of politics, history and methodology of political science, political conflictology, political technologies, etc. | Political science studies the political system of society, identifies connections between parties and public organizations with state governance institutions. The development of political science characterizes the degree of maturity of civil society |
| Cultural studies | Theory and history of culture, musicology, etc. | Culturology is one of the young scientific disciplines emerging at the intersection of many sciences. It synthesizes the knowledge about culture accumulated by humanity into an integral system, forming ideas about the essence, functions, structure and dynamics of the development of culture as such. |
So, we found out that there is no consensus on the question of which disciplines belong to the social sciences. However, to social sciences it is customary to attribute sociology, psychology, social psychology, economics, political science and anthropology. These sciences have much in common, they are closely related to each other and form a kind of scientific union.
Adjacent to them is a group of related sciences, which are classified as humanitarian. This philosophy, language, art history, literary criticism.
Social sciences operate quantitative(mathematical and statistical) methods, and humanitarian - quality(descriptive-evaluative).
From history of the formation of social sciences and humanities
Previously, subject areas known as political science, law, ethics, psychology and economics fell under the purview of philosophy. The classics of ancient philosophy Plato, Socrates and Aristotle were confident that all the diversity of the surrounding person and the world he perceives can be subjected to scientific research.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) declared that all people are by nature inclined to knowledge. Some of the first things people want to know about are questions like: why PEOPLE behave the way they do, where social institutions come from and how they function. The current social sciences appeared only thanks to the enviable tenacity of the ancient Greeks in their desire to analyze everything and think rationally. Since ancient thinkers were philosophers, the result of their reflections was considered part of philosophy, not social sciences.
If ancient thought was philosophical in nature, then medieval thought was theological. While the natural sciences freed themselves from the tutelage of philosophy and received their own name at the end of the Middle Ages, the social sciences remained for a long time in the sphere of influence of philosophy and theology. The main reason was, apparently, that the subject of the social sciences - human behavior - was closely connected with divine Providence and therefore was under the jurisdiction of the church.
The Renaissance, which revived interest in knowledge and learning, did not mark the beginning of the independent development of the social sciences. Renaissance scholars studied more Greek and Latin texts, especially the works of Plato and Aristotle. Their own writings often amounted to conscientious commentaries on the ancient classics.
The turn occurred only in the 17th-18th centuries, when a galaxy of outstanding philosophers appeared in Europe: the Frenchman Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the Englishmen Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704) , German Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). They, as well as the French educators Charles Louis Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), studied the functions of government (political science) and the nature of society (sociology). English philosophers David Hume (1711-1776) and George Berkeley (1685-1753), as well as Kant and Locke, tried to figure out the laws of the action of reason (psychology), and Adam Smith created the first great treatise on economics, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” (1776).
The era in which they worked is called the Enlightenment. It looked at man and human society differently, freeing our ideas from religious shackles. The Enlightenment posed the traditional question differently: not how God created man, but how people create gods, society, institutions. Philosophers continued to think about these questions until the 19th century.
The emergence of social sciences was greatly influenced by the dramatic changes in society that occurred in the 18th century.
The dynamism of social life favored the liberation of the social sciences from the shackles of philosophy. Another condition for the liberation of social knowledge was the development of natural sciences, primarily physics, which changed the way people think. If the material world can be the subject of precise measurement and analysis, then why cannot the social world be so? The French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was the first to try to answer this question. In his “Course of Positive Philosophy” (1830-1842), he proclaimed the emergence of a “science of man,” calling it sociology.
According to Comte, the science of society should be on a par with the sciences of nature. His views at that time were shared by the English philosopher, sociologist and lawyer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), who saw in morality and legislation the art of guiding the actions of people, the English philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who developed the mechanistic doctrine of universal evolution, the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx (1818-1883), founder of the theory of classes and social conflict, and English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who wrote fundamental works on inductive logic and political economy. They believed that a single society should be studied by a single science. Meanwhile, at the end of the 19th century. the study of society has split into many disciplines and specialties. A similar thing happened a little earlier in physics.
Specialization of knowledge is an inevitable and objective process.
The first among the social sciences to stand out economy. Although the term “economics” was used as early as 1790, the subject of this science was called political economy until the end of the 19th century. The founder of classical economics was the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790). In his “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), he examined the theory of value and distribution of income, capital and its accumulation, the economic history of Western Europe, views on economic policy, and state finances. A. Smith approached economics as a system in which objective laws that are amenable to knowledge operate. Classics of economic thought also include David Ricardo (“Principles of Political Economy and Taxation”, 1817), John Stuart Mill (“Principles of Political Economy”, 1848), Alfred Marshall (“Principles of Economics”, 1890), Karl Marx (“Capital” , 1867).
Economics studies the behavior of large masses of people in a market situation. In small and large - in public and private life - people cannot take a single step without affecting economic relations. When negotiating a job, buying goods on the market, counting our income and expenses, demanding payment of wages, and even going on a visit, we - directly or indirectly - take into account the principles of economy.
Like sociology, economics deals with large masses. The global market covers 5 billion people. A crisis in Russia or Indonesia is immediately reflected on the stock exchanges of Japan, America and Europe. When manufacturers are preparing the next batch of new products for sale, they are interested not in the opinion of an individual Petrov or Vasechkin, or even a small group, but in large masses of people. This is understandable, because the law of profit requires producing more and at a lower price, receiving maximum revenue from turnover, and not from one piece.
Without studying the behavior of people in a market situation, economics risks remaining simply a technique of calculation - profit, capital, interest, interconnected by abstract theoretical constructs.
Political science refers to the academic discipline that studies forms of government and the political life of society. The foundations of political science were laid by the ideas of Plato (“Republic”) and Aristotle (“Politics”), who lived in the 4th century. BC e. Political phenomena were also analyzed by the Roman senator Cicero. During the Renaissance, the most famous thinker was Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince, 1513). Hugo Grozi published On the Laws of War and Peace in 1625. During the Enlightenment, questions about the nature of the state and the functioning of government were addressed by thinkers. Among them were Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Political science became an independent discipline thanks to the works of the French philosophers Comte and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825).
The term "political science" is used in Western countries to distinguish scientific theories, rigorous methods and statistical analysis that are applied to the study of the activities of the state and political parties and which are reflected in the term political philosophy. For example, Aristotle, although considered the father of political science, was actually a political philosopher. If political science answers the question of how the political life of society is really structured, then political philosophy answers the question of how this life should be structured, what should be done with the state, which political regimes are correct and which are incorrect.
In our country there is no distinction between political science and political philosophy. Instead of two terms, one is used - political science. Political science, in contrast to sociology, which concerns 95% of the population, affects only the tip of the iceberg - those who actually have power, participate in the struggle for it, manipulate public opinion, participate in the redistribution of public property, lobby parliament for favorable decisions, organize political parties etc. Basically, political scientists build speculative concepts, although in the second half of the 1990s. There has been some progress in this area as well. Some applied areas of political science have emerged as an independent area, in particular the technology of conducting political elections.
Cultural anthropology was a consequence of the discovery of the New World by Europeans. The unfamiliar American Indian tribes amazed the imagination with their customs and way of life. After this, the attention of scientists was attracted by the wild tribes of Africa, Oceania and Asia. Anthropology, which literally means “the science of man,” was primarily interested in primitive, or preliterate, societies. Cultural anthropology is the comparative study of human societies, In Europe it is also called ethnography and ethnology.
Among the outstanding ethnologists of the 19th century, that is, scientists involved in comparative studies of culture, are the English ethnographer, researcher of primitive culture Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), who developed the animistic theory of the origin of religion, the American historian and ethnographer Lewis Henry Morgan (1818- 1881), in the book “Ancient Society” (1877), the first to show the importance of the clan as the main unit of primitive society, the German ethnographer Adolf Bastian (1826-1905), who founded the Berlin Museum of Ethnic Studies (1868) and wrote the book “People of East Asia” (1866- 1871). The English historian of religion James George Fraser (1854-1941), who wrote the world-famous book “The Golden Bough” (1907-1915), although he worked already in the 20th century, is also one of the pioneers of cultural anthropology.
Occupies a special place among the social sciences sociology, which in translation (lat. society- society, Greek logos- knowledge, teaching, science) literally means knowledge about society. Sociology is the science of people’s lives, based on strict and verified facts, statistics and mathematical analysis, and facts are often taken from life itself - from mass surveys of the opinions of ordinary people. Sociology for Comte, who coined its name, meant the systematic study of people. At the beginning of the 19th century. O. Comte built a pyramid of scientific knowledge. He arranged all the then known fundamental fields of knowledge - mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology - in a hierarchical order so that the simplest and most abstract sciences were at the bottom. Above them were placed more specific and more complex ones. The most complex science turned out to be sociology - the science of society. O. Comte thought of sociology as a comprehensive field of knowledge that studies history, politics, economics, culture and the development of society.
However, European science, contrary to Comte's expectations, did not follow the path of synthesis, but, on the contrary, along the path of differentiation and splitting of knowledge. The economic sphere of society began to be studied by the independent science of economics, the political sphere - political science, the spiritual world of man - psychology, the traditions and customs of peoples - ethnography and cultural anthropology, and population dynamics - demography. And sociology became a narrow discipline that no longer covered the entire society, but studied in detail only one, the social sphere.
The formation of the subject of sociology was greatly influenced by the Frenchman Emile Durkheim (“Rules of the Sociological Method”, 1395), the Germans Ferdinand Tönnies (“Community and Society”, 1887), Georg Simmel (“Sociology”, 1908), Max Weber (“Protestant Ethics and spirit of capitalism”, 1904-1905), Italian Vilfredo Pareto (“Mind and Society”, 1916), Englishman Herbert Spencer (“Principles of Sociology”, 1876-1896), Americans Lester F. Ward (“Applied Sociology”, 1906) and William Graham Sumner (The Science of Society, 1927-1928).
Sociology arose as a response to the needs of an emerging civil society. Today, sociology is divided into many branches, including criminology and demography. It has become a science that helps society understand itself more deeply and more specifically. By widely using empirical methods - questionnaires and observation, document analysis and observation methods, experiment and generalization of statistics - sociology was able to overcome the limitations of social philosophy, which operates with overly generalized models.
Public opinion polls on the eve of elections, analysis of the distribution of political forces in the country, the value orientations of voters or participants in the strike movement, studying the level of social tension in a particular region - this is not a complete list of issues that are increasingly being resolved by means of sociology.
Social Psychology - This is a borderline discipline. She was formed at the intersection of sociology and psychology, taking on tasks that her parents were unable to solve. It turned out that a large society does not directly influence the individual, but through an intermediary - small groups. This world of friends, acquaintances and relatives closest to a person plays an exceptional role in our lives. In general, we live in small, not large worlds - in a specific house, in a specific family, in a specific company, etc. The small world sometimes influences us even more than the big one. That is why science appeared, which took it closely and very seriously.
Social psychology is the field of study of human behavior, feelings and motivation, in a group situation. She studies the social basis of personality formation. Social psychology emerged as an independent science at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1908, American psychologist William McDougal published the book “Introduction to Social Psychology,” which, thanks to its title, gave its name to the new discipline.
The term "" comes from the Latin word "societas" (community, group) and the Greek "logos" (word, doctrine) and therefore means "the science of communities." This term was first used (1798-1857) by a major French scientist in his work “Course of Positive Philosophy” (1842). The philosophy of that time was greatly influenced by the successes of the natural sciences, and therefore Comte considered the problems of society and social behavior by analogy with physics, seeking to use the acquired knowledge about society primarily to solve specific problems of human relations.
By the middle of the 19th century. a clear tendency towards differentiation of sciences, including social sciences. as a science has become a reflection of the real need for a deeper understanding and analysis of the role and place of man in the life of society, his social status, interaction with other people, as well as the relationship of various social communities. Sociology quite quickly entered scientific life, and sociologists began to study increasingly complex issues characterizing human behavior, his attitude and reaction to processes occurring in society. At the beginning of the 21st century. sociology has established itself as an independent, well-developed and vitally important discipline among the social sciences.
One of the greatest sociologists of the 20th century, R. Merton, once said: “ Sociology is a very young science about a very ancient subject of study" Indeed, the theoretical basis of sociology is philosophy, within the framework of which sociological problems were solved for 2.5 thousand years, until in the 19th century. did not become an independent science. History, ethics, and legal science have had and continue to have a great influence on sociology. At the same time, the subject area of sociology overlaps with economic sciences in some respects. It should be noted that sociology is closely connected with social psychology, which also studies the behavior and activities of people. Sociology is interested in the results of research by anthropologists, ethnographers, ethnologists, and cultural scientists. In addition, sociology has developed strong relationships with the exact and natural sciences, primarily with mathematics and statistics.
Today sociology is an independent science and academic discipline, which has its own object and subject of research, its own functions, and research methods. And it rightfully occupies its rightful place in the system of scientific knowledge.
Sociology as a science
Modern people often come across terms such as “sociology”, “survey”, “opinion”, “social status”, etc. Correspondents from radio, newspapers, television and news sites constantly report to him the results of public surveys on a variety of issues. Sociological services of the President, Parliament, and various research centers study public opinion, in particular the rating of the most influential persons in the state, problems of pricing policy, satisfaction with the standard of living, the population’s attitude to the dollar exchange rate, etc. In the cities of the country, sociological research is carried out in order to find out opinions about the work of transport and the service sector, determine the level of social tension, etc. All these searches created the image of sociology as an applied empirical science that serves to meet the current, immediate needs of society. However, this is only an external level of research, which does not exhaust the field of sociological knowledge.
Identifying its object and subject helps to understand the specifics of any science. From a philosophy course we know that object of any science is that part, the side of reality that is studied by this science. Subject science are the most significant properties and features of an object that are subject to direct research.
In the most general sense it is society. In this respect, the object of sociology coincides with the object of other social sciences - social philosophy, social psychology, history, political science, cultural studies, etc.
Let us note that in almost all sociological studies society appears in its own special form - as civil society. Sociology emerges against the backdrop of the emergence of civil society in Europe, positioning itself as a way of describing and understanding just such a society, and only in civil society can it be truly in demand and effective. Thus, when determining the main object of research, modern civil society to a large extent characterizes the specifics of sociology as a science.
Immature forms of civil society existed at all stages of history, but as an independent phenomenon it was formed during the period when a person in real life began to demonstrate fundamentally new features of his lifestyle and behavior, namely in the 18th century, when the concepts of “state” and “ society" were separated. Historically, this was associated with the process of formation and development of bourgeois society, in which people received more opportunities to act as an independent social force.
- this is a set of organized, historically established forms of joint life activity, developed universal and group values and interests that guide people and each person in their public and private life. In civil society:
- the state and public organizations have equal rights and bear mutual responsibility for their actions;
- private life is separated from public life and removed from state control;
- individual rights and freedoms are guaranteed and protected by law;
- opportunities for self-government are constantly expanding;
- the interests of all stakeholders are in a state of constant coordination.
In Russia, elements of civil society began to emerge at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. However, in the 1930-1950s, under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, the formation of civil society was interrupted, and with it the development of sociology in the country stopped. Only with the “thaw” of the early 1960s. A gradual revival of domestic sociology began, and it developed particularly rapidly in the last decade of the 20th century. and in the first decade of the 21st century, when many original and translated monographs devoted to various problems of sociology, textbooks and teaching aids appeared.
Thus, we can state the impact of trends in the development of civil society on the researchers themselves.
From the point of view of many researchers, the object of sociology is not just society, but a set of social properties, connections and relationships. In this case, the following characteristic features are highlighted, which constitute the specificity social:
- the social expresses the mutual conditioned by social relations position individuals. This means that the character and relationships between individuals and their groups depend on the place they occupy in the structures of society and the role they perform;
- social is common property, inherent in different groups of individuals;
- social is manifested in relationships individuals and groups to each other, to the phenomena and processes of social life;
- social is the result of joint activities individuals, manifested in society.
We can say that the social is always associated with the phenomena of interaction between people and their multilateral and multidimensional relationships, which constitute social life.
Thus, the most general object of sociology as a science is society, which historically acts in the form of civil society, and structurally - as a set of social properties, connections and relationships.
Are the most significant properties and features of the object. In this regard, it has a number of important characteristics:
Firstly (and this is the most important thing), sociology studies specific social processes - the structure of society, distribution relations, the status of a person, his interaction with other people and groups, his way of life; secondly, sociology is engaged in the study of processes occurring not only in social, but also in economic life, characterizing work, its conditions, organization and stimulation, problems of work collectives, regional problems, environmental and demographic situation; thirdly, sociology explores the essence political processes and phenomena related to the development of democracy, problems of power, voter participation in governance, activities of public organizations;
fourthly, sociology studies the life of society and the subjects of sociological research are problems of education, culture, science, literature, art, religion, morality, and law.
Consequently, the subject of sociology is not limited to the study of a narrow social sphere, and its area of interest includes a lot of problems related to the existence of man, social groups, layers and communities, institutions and processes. The focus of sociology is integrity, systemicity of the social organism. At the same time, in the course of researching social phenomena and processes, sociologists focus on person with his interests and relationships and, in particular, study his reactions to social changes. However, in this case, a person acts not so much as an individual, but as a member of a certain community - a group, layer, class, etc. Human behavior (individual and group) is necessarily analyzed in a real socio-economic situation, in specific relationships, within the framework of various socio-demographic, national, and professional structures. In this respect, the subject of sociology differs from the subject of other social sciences.
Let us note that the subject of sociology is not historically stable: like the process of social cognition itself, it is ambiguous, paradoxical and in constant development and movement. In classical sociology, the subject matter was the integrity of the social organism; later sociology focused on social communities, social activities, human behavior, real social consciousness, as well as social laws - stable, significant, repeating connections and relationships between phenomena identified by sociologists in the study of society and social relations based on data (facts) from the real world and their scientific explanation. These laws determine the collective behavior of people and are objective, i.e. do not depend on the consciousness and will of these people. They operate in all spheres of society, but differ in the scale of their distribution: some laws apply only to small groups and do not apply to large ones, others apply to the entire society, and still others only to its individual spheres.
All social laws have the following common features:
- the law comes into effect only under certain conditions, but under these conditions it is valid always and everywhere without any exceptions;
- the conditions under which the law operates are not fully implemented, but partially and approximately; much depends on the people themselves, on their motivation and actions.
For sociologists, identifying the main features of all laws without exception is very important. When analyzing the content of any law, the researcher should, if possible, discover the conditions and scope of its action. Therefore, a statement like “individuals always strive to realize their interests” is not a social law, since the conditions for their action are not specified here. At the same time, statements like “a state of anomie, i.e. the moral and psychological state of individual and social consciousness, characterized by the decomposition of the value system, caused by the crisis of society, the contradiction between the declared goals (wealth, power) and the impossibility of their implementation, is expressed in the alienation of a person from society, apathy, disappointment, crime, an increase suicide numbers" describe the operation of such a social law, where its conditions are quite clearly specified.
A person constantly faces manifestations of social laws, either obeying them or trying to avoid them (usually unsuccessfully). By describing such a law, the sociologist only records by sociological means what a person encounters in his everyday life. But the study of social laws is an extremely difficult matter, since connections and relationships in society are contradictory, non-linear, subject to change, mutual transitions, they are intertwined, overlapping each other, complicating the very field of research.
Therefore, when studying social laws, first of all they pay attention to the specific interests of individuals, social groups, society as a whole and try to identify their recurrence, determine the conditions in which the detected recurrence is observed, and on this basis formulate certain conclusions, knowledge of which will help in managing social processes. Social laws are not created consciously by members of society or groups, such as legal laws. Usually people, based on their interests, act unconsciously, intuitively, learning the “correct” behavior in the process of communication and interaction with others. The discovered predictability and repeatability of many aspects of human behavior allow scientists who, by studying society, discover social laws, determine the conditions for their action and, accordingly, predict the behavior of people in various social situations.
Thus, modern sociology - is a science that studies historically defined social systems, structures, elements and conditions of their existence, as well as social processes, mechanisms of action and forms of their manifestation in the activities of individuals, large and small social groups.
Sociology in the system of social sciences
Sociology is one of many social sciences that study the life of society, the functioning of public institutions, and human behavior. Although the subject of sociology differs from the subjects of other social sciences, it actively interacts with them, influencing them and being influenced in return. In the system of social and humanitarian disciplines, sociology interacts with almost all other sciences, enriching them with the results of its specific research and exchanging the necessary data. In this process, there is mutual enrichment and development of both sociology and the corresponding sciences.
Since the birth of sociology, discussions began in the scientific world about the interaction of sociology with social philosophy. According to the first point of view, sociology is identified with social philosophy, i.e. sociology is understood as the science of the most general laws of social development. However, in this case, the status of specific, empirical microsociological research remains unclear.
In accordance with the second point of view, applied (specific sociological) research is absolutized. Here the situation was complicated by the fact that in the 1960-1970s. A number of domestic authors developed a view of sociology as an applied science, the task of which was only to develop practical recommendations for managing social processes. Now the situation is changing, but there are still attempts to reduce the functions of sociology to serving philosophy and other sciences.
The third point of view (the most adequate for describing modern sociology) reflects a more complex picture of the interaction of these sciences: sociology, in addition to general sociological theory, includes both specific sociological research and the study of various social communities.
Economy deals with the study of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of available resources. Economists study many problems that sociologists also face, including economic crises, unemployment, inflation, international trade, etc. Sociology helps economic sciences analyze the role of the human factor in production, its impact on the growth of labor productivity, product quality, and on technical and technological solutions. , management tasks of modern production.
Political spider explores the acquisition, use and distribution of power in society. Political scientists mainly study the activities of governments, political parties, groups connected by common interests, as well as the specific behavior of voters. Sociologists, keeping up with political scientists, and sometimes even ahead of them, are able to quickly respond to any events in society: by conducting pilot studies, they can in a short time collect information about the reaction of public consciousness to a particular decision of the government, parliament or president, about the attitude society to the adoption of a new law or the appointment of a new minister, etc. It is no coincidence that today a symbiosis of sociology and political science is being created - “sociology of politics”, or “political sociology”, knowledge of which is becoming an urgent necessity for a modern specialist.
Sociology can play a significant role in shaping spiritual culture, creating a positive moral atmosphere in society, developing values, moral standards, aesthetic taste, and also influencing the education of people. Sociology, in particular, is called upon to help Russian society, which is in a state of protracted transition, to restore and regain spiritual values, to remind it of the need to preserve a great spiritual culture, religious, moral, aesthetic, and also material values. This is especially significant in conditions when the processes of globalization are “eroding” the cultural and social identity of many peoples of the world.
Relationships in the family, in the team, and the state of morality in society can be “thoroughly” assessed only with the help of specific sociological methods. Spiritual culture is the focus of research in such sections of sociology and sociological disciplines as sociology of culture, sociology of morality, sociology of art, sociology of science, sociology of education, sociology of religion, etc.
Legal sciences They have also accumulated a wealth of experience in using sociological data to improve jurisprudence, in the application of legislative acts, compliance with legal norms, and in the process of forming a legal culture. Without sociology, it is difficult to determine the ways of establishing the rule of law, civil society, developing democracy, strengthening law and order, and regulating conflicts. In particular, specific methods of sociology in combination with available objective information make it possible to assess the state and trends in improving Russian legality, statehood, ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens, and the level of their legal culture. At the intersection of sociology and legal sciences, a discipline such as the sociology of law has emerged and is rapidly developing.
Historical science in interaction with sociology, it enriches the latter with the historical method of research. Therefore, sociologists widely use retrospective analysis in empirical research, which in turn influences historical science when studying the problems of the evolution of social consciousness, equipping it with quantitative and other methods. At the intersection of sociology and history there is a discipline called historical sociology.
Recently, problems related to the territorial distribution of human settlements have become more acute. It is known that ignoring the existing way of life of people, their traditions and inclinations led in Soviet times to such erroneous decisions as, for example, “dekulakization” or the liquidation of “unpromising” villages. Sociology can provide real assistance to society in studying the patterns of the spatial structure of settlement, population migration, interacting with social geography.
Russia is a country whose regions are characterized by a diversity of natural, cultural, economic and social conditions. Therefore, interest in problems of a regional nature has recently increased, and at the intersection of sociology and regiopology a new direction emerged - regional sociology.
Close collaboration between sociology and medical sciences in the field of population health research led to the birth and development of such disciplines as social medicine and sociology of health.
A complex of problems that intersect with the area of interest takes an increasing share in sociology ecology. Issues of nature conservation, relations between society and the environment cannot be fully assessed without analysis carried out using sociological research. At the intersection of ecology and sociology, a discipline called social ecology has now been formed, the subject of which is the interaction of society with the environment and relations within society related to nature conservation.
Recently, sociological data from empirical research has been processed using computer software (for example, the SPSS package), for the creation, development and effective use of which special knowledge from the field is actively used. mathematical sciences. In modern sociology, sociometric methods are also actively used, which, in order to measure interpersonal relationships, combine specific empirical methods with algorithms for mathematical data processing.
In addition to the above-mentioned disciplines, social psychology has emerged on an interdisciplinary basis, sociolinguistics is developing, sociopedagogy and other related fields of knowledge are in their infancy.
Thus, in sociology they are becoming increasingly important interdisciplinary connections as a stimulus for the development of not only science, but also all modern life. Scientists can achieve their greatest success by building bridges between different disciplines. Modern students who want to receive a high-quality education that will be in demand in the future must take into account not only the characteristics of “their own,” but also the latest achievements of “foreign” (and not even necessarily related) disciplines.
