A Sociocultural Paradigm: Basic Interpretations

The authors deal with the unsolved problem of explicating the sociocultural paradigm widely used in social and humanitarian studies in the form of various implementations of the sociocultural approach. The authors summarize the existing descriptions of the content of the sociocultural approach and identify two basic interpretations of a sociocultural paradigm. The founder of the first interpretation is P.A. Sorokin. The approach focuses on the description of various factors (economic, social, political, spiritual) that determine the sociocultural dynamics of separate, individual objects, which is why it is perceived as a non-novelty variation of exter-nalism. The most authoritative representatives of this interpretation of the sociocultural paradigm in post-Soviet social studies are A.S. Akhiezer and N.I. Lapin. This interpretation of the sociocultural approach draws on the axiological (information-semiotic) concept of culture. The authors see the origins of the second basic interpretation of the sociocultural paradigm in the intellectual heritage of C. Levi-Strauss. He solves the problem of correlation between society and culture, the social and the cultural in a different way. In his opinion, human society is a set of separate local cultures interacting with each other. In this case, culture is understood as a specific variant of social development. Interaction of cultures necessarily leads to cultural exchange and interpenetration, reflection of cultures. Therefore, each individual culture (or social organism) is an ensemble of cultures. In this ensemble, one of the cultures is the leading one, sublates the counterculture as an internal moment and determines the cultural specificity of an individual social organism. Thus, the development of society, from this point of view, is a product of interaction, reflection of cultures. Levi-Strauss formulates, in particular, the following law: any cultural progress is a function of the coalition of cultures. Thanks to this coalition, the chances that occur in each culture in its historical development become a common heritage. The more diverse cultures make up the coalition, the more fertile it is. Consideration of the existence and development of individual societies and the whole of humanity in the process of reflection of cultures gives the authors the basis to designate this interpretation of the sociocultural approach as reflective. In this interpretation, society is represented as an ensemble of cultures, and the sociocultural as the social in its cultural diversity. This image of society is paradigmatic and corresponds to the nonlinear models of social development widely represented in the philosophy of history.

Keywords

Authors

References