Social interaction. Concepts of society and system, social ties, social interaction, social relations Social interaction and social ties

social interaction

The starting point for the emergence of a social connection is the interaction of individuals or groups of individuals to meet certain needs.

Interaction - it is any behavior of an individual or a group of individuals that is significant for other individuals and groups of individuals or society as a whole at the present moment and in the future. The category "interaction" expresses the content and nature of the relationship between individuals and social groups as permanent carriers of quality various kinds activities that differ in social positions (statuses) and roles (functions). No matter in which sphere of the life of society (economic, political, etc.) interaction takes place, it is always social in nature, as it expresses the connections between individuals and groups of individuals, connections mediated by goals that each of the interacting parties haunts.

Social interaction has an objective and subjective side. The objective side of interaction- these are connections independent of individuals, but mediating and controlling the content and nature of their interaction. The subjective side of interaction - this is a conscious attitude of individuals to each other, based on mutual expectations (expectations) of the corresponding behavior. These are interpersonal (or, more broadly, socio-psychological) relations, which are direct connections and relationships between individuals that develop under specific conditions of place and time.

Mechanism of social interaction includes: individuals who perform certain actions; changes in the outside world caused by these actions; the impact of these changes on other individuals; feedback from affected individuals.

Under the influence of Simmel and especially Sorokin, interaction in his subjective interpretation was accepted as the initial concept of group theory, and then became the initial concept of American sociology. As Sorokin wrote: “The interaction of two or more individuals is a generic concept of a social phenomenon: it can serve as a model for the latter. By studying the structure of this model, we can also learn the structure of all social phenomena. Having decomposed the interaction into its component parts, we will thereby decompose the most complex social phenomena". “The subject of sociology,” says one of the American teaching aids according to sociology, is direct verbal and non-verbal interaction. The main task of sociology is to achieve a systematic knowledge of social rhetoric. The interview as a form of rhetoric is not just a sociological tool, but part of its subject matter.”

However, in and of itself, social interaction still explains absolutely nothing. To understand the interaction, it is necessary to clarify the properties of the interacting forces, and these properties cannot be explained in the fact of interactions, no matter how they change due to it. The very fact of interaction does not add knowledge. Everything depends on the individual and social properties and qualities of the interacting parties. That is why the main thing in social interaction is content side. In modern Western European and American sociology, this side of social interaction is considered mainly from the standpoint of symbolic interactionism and ethnomstodology. In the first case, any social phenomenon appears as a direct interaction of people, carried out on the basis of the perception and use of common symbols, meanings, etc.; as a result, the object of social cognition is considered as a set of symbols of the human environment included in a certain "behavioral situation". In the second case, social reality is seen as "a process of interaction based on everyday experience."

Everyday experience, the meanings and symbols that govern the interacting individuals, impart to their interaction, and it cannot be otherwise, a certain quality. But in this case, the main qualitative side of the interaction remains aside - those real social phenomena and processes that appear for people in the form of meanings, symbols, everyday experience.

As a result, social reality and its components social facilities act as a chaos of mutual actions based on the "interpreting role" of the individual in "defining the situation" or on ordinary consciousness. Without denying the semantic, symbolic and other aspects of the process of social interaction, it must be recognized that its genetic source is labor, material production, and the economy. In turn, everything derived from the basis can and does have an inverse effect on the basis.

Way of interaction

The way an individual interacts with other individuals and the social environment as a whole determines the “refraction” of social norms and values ​​through the consciousness of the individual and his real actions based on the comprehension of these norms and values.

The interaction method includes six aspects: 1) information transfer; 2) obtaining information; 3) reaction to the received information; 4) processed information; 5) receiving processed information; 6) reaction to this information.

social relations

Interaction leads to the establishment social relations. Social relations are relatively stable links between individuals (as a result of which they are institutionalized into social groups) and social groups as constant carriers of qualitatively different types of activities, differing in social status and roles in social structures.

Social communities

Social communities are characterized by: the presence of living conditions (socio-economic, social status, professional training and education, interests and needs, etc.) common to a given group of interacting individuals (social categories); the mode of interaction of a given set of individuals (nations, social classes, socio-professional groups, etc.), i.e., a social group; belonging to historically established territorial associations (city, village, settlement), i.e. territorial communities; the degree of limitation of the functioning of social groups by a strictly defined system of social norms and values, the belonging of the studied group of interacting individuals to certain social institutions (family, education, science, etc.).

Formation of social relations

Social interaction is an invariable and constant companion of a person who lives among people and is forced to constantly enter into a complex network of relationships with them. Gradually emerging connections take the form of permanent ones and turn into social relations- conscious and sensually perceived sets of repetitive interactions, correlated in their meaning with each other and characterized by appropriate behavior. Social relations are, as it were, refracted through the internal content (or state) of a person and are expressed in his activity as personal relations.

Social relations are extremely diverse in form and content. Each person in his own way personal experience knows that relationships with others develop differently, that this world of relationships contains a motley palette of feelings - from love and irresistible sympathy to hatred, contempt, hostility. Fiction, as a good assistant to the sociologist, reflects in its works the inexhaustible richness of the world of social relations.

Classifying social relations, they are primarily divided into unilateral and reciprocal. One-sided social relations exist when partners perceive and evaluate each other differently.

One-sided relationships are quite common. A person experiences a feeling of love for another and assumes that his partner also experiences a similar feeling, and orients his behavior towards this expectation. However, when, for example, a young man proposes to a girl, he may unexpectedly receive a refusal. A classic example of one-sided social relations is the relationship between Christ and the apostle Jude, who betrayed the teacher. World and domestic fiction will give us many examples of tragic situations associated with one-sided relationships: Othello - Iago, Mozart - Salieri, etc.

The social relations that arise and exist in human society are so diverse that it is advisable to consider any one of their aspects, based on a certain system of values ​​and the activity of individuals aimed at achieving it. Recall that in sociology values understand the views and beliefs shared by any community regarding the goals to which people aspire. Social interactions become social relationships precisely because of the values ​​that individuals and groups of people would like to achieve. Thus, values ​​are necessary condition social relations.

To determine the relationship of individuals, two indicators are used:

• value expectations (expectations), which characterize satisfaction with a value model;
• value requirements that an individual puts forward in the process of distributing values.

The real possibility of achieving one or another value position is value potential. Often it remains only a possibility, since the individual or group does not take active steps to occupy more value-attractive positions.

Conventionally, all values ​​are divided as follows:

• welfare values, which include material and spiritual benefits, without which it is impossible to maintain the normal life of individuals - wealth, health, safety, professional excellence;
• all others - power as the most universal value, since the possession of it allows you to acquire other values ​​(respect, status, prestige, fame, reputation), moral values(fairness, kindness, decency, etc.); love and friendship; also distinguish national values, ideological, etc.

Among the social relations are the relations social dependency, for they are present to varying degrees in every other respect. Social dependence is a social relationship in which the social system S1, (individual, group or social institution) cannot perform the social actions necessary for it d1 if the social system S 2 take no action d2. At the same time, the system S 2 is called dominant, and the system S 1 - dependent.

Suppose the mayor of the city of Los Angeles cannot pay wages public utilities until the money is allocated to him by the governor of California, who manages these funds. In this case, the mayor's office is a dependent system, and the governor's administration is seen as the dominant system. In practice, dual interdependence often occurs. Thus, the population of an American city depends on the head in terms of the distribution of funds, but the mayor also depends on voters who may not elect him for a new term. The line of behavior of the dependent system must be predictable for the dominant system in the area that concerns dependency relationships.

Social dependence is also based on the difference in status in the group, which is typical for organizations. Thus, individuals of low status are dependent on individuals or groups that are of higher status; subordinates depend on the leader. Dependence arises from differences in the possession of meaningful values ​​regardless of official status. Thus, the manager may depend on monetary terms from a subordinate from whom he borrowed a large sum of money. Latent, i.e. hidden, dependencies play an important role in the life of organizations, teams, groups.

Often in an organization, the leader relies in everything on the opinion of a relative working here, in order to please him, erroneous decisions are often made from the point of view of the interests of the organization, for which the whole team then pays. In the old vaudeville "Lev Gurych Sinichkin", the question of who will play the main role in the premiere performance instead of the ill actress can only be decided by the main "patron" of the theater (Count Zefirov). Cardinal Richelieu effectively ruled France instead of the king. Sometimes a sociologist, in order to understand conflict situation in the team where he was invited as an expert, one must begin with the search for a "grey eminence" - an informal leader who actually has real influence in the organization.

power relations are of the greatest interest among researchers of social dependence. Power as the ability of some to control the actions of others is of decisive importance in the life of a person and society, but so far scientists have not developed a consensus on how power relations are carried out. Some (M. Weber) believe that power is associated primarily with the ability to control the actions of others and overcome their resistance to this control. Others (T. Parsons) proceed from the fact that power must first of all be legalized, then the personal position of the leader makes others obey him, despite the personal qualities of the leader and subordinates. Both points of view have the right to exist. Thus, the emergence of a new political party begins with the fact that there is a leader with the ability to unite people, create an organization and begin to lead it.

If the power is legalized (legitimate), people obey it as a force, resisting which is useless and unsafe.

In society, there are other, not legalized aspects of the manifestation of power dependence. The interaction of people at the personal level often leads to the emergence of power relations, paradoxical and inexplicable from the point of view of common sense. A person of his own free will, not urged on by anyone, becomes a supporter of exotic sects, sometimes a real slave to his passions, which make him break the law, decide to kill or commit suicide. The irresistible attraction to gambling can deprive a person of his livelihood, but he again and again returns to roulette or cards.

Thus, in a number of spheres of life, constantly recurring interactions gradually acquire a stable, orderly, predictable character. In the process of such ordering, special connections are formed, called social relations. Social relations - these are stable ties that arise between social groups and within them in the process of material (economic) and spiritual (legal, cultural) activities.

Sociologists have been looking for those protozoa for a long time. social elements, with the help of which they could describe and study social life as a set of infinitely diverse events, actions, facts, phenomena and relationships. It was necessary to find the phenomena public life in the simplest form, indicate an elementary case of their manifestation, construct and recreate their simplified model, studying which, the sociologist would be able to consider more and more complex facts as a combination of these simplest cases or as an example of this model complicated to infinity. The sociologist must find, in the words of P.A. Sorokin, the "social cell", by studying which he would gain knowledge of the basic properties of social phenomena. Such the simplest "social cell" is the concept of "interaction", or "interaction", which refers to the basic concepts of sociology as a science of the development of society. The interaction, which ultimately manifests itself as the social behavior of individuals in society, became the subject of analysis in the works of such outstanding sociologists of the 20th century as P.A. Sorokin, G. Simmel, E. Durkheim, T. Parsons, R. Merton, D. Homans and others.

Social interactions of people in society

Social contacts

The problems of forming relationships in society from the simplest to the most complex, the mechanism of social action, the specifics of social interaction, the very concept of "social system" are developed in detail and studied at two main levels of sociological research - the micro level and the macro level.

At the micro level, social interaction (interaction) is any behavior of an individual, group, society as a whole, both at the moment and in the future. Each action is caused by the previous action and at the same time acts as the cause of the subsequent action. It is a system of interdependent social action associated with a cyclic causal relationship, in which the actions of one subject are both the cause and effect of the response actions of other subjects. Interpersonal interaction can be called interaction at the level of two or more units of interpersonal communication (for example, a father praising his son for good studies). On the basis of experiments and observations, sociologists analyze and try to explain certain types of behavior that characterize the interaction between individuals.

At the macro level, the study of interaction is carried out on the example of such large structures as classes, layers, the army, the economy, etc. But the elements of both levels of interaction are intertwined. So, the daily communication of soldiers of one company is carried out at the micro level. But the army is a social institution that is studied at the macro level. For example, if a sociologist studies the reasons for the existence of hazing in a company, then he cannot adequately investigate the issue without referring to the state of affairs in the army, in the country as a whole.

A simple, elementary level of interaction are spatial contacts. We constantly encounter people and build our behavior in transport, shops, at work, taking into account their interests and behavior. So, when we see an elderly person, we usually give way to him at the entrance to the store, make room for him in public transport. In sociology, this is called visual spatial contact"(the individual's behavior changes under the influence of the passive presence of other people).

concept "intended spatial contact" used to refer to a situation in which a person does not visually encounter other people, but suggests that they are present in some other place. So, if it becomes cold in the apartment in winter, we call the housing office and ask them to check the hot water supply; entering the elevator, we know for sure that if the help of the attendant is needed, we must press the button on the control panel and our voice will be heard, although we do not see the attendant.

As civilization develops, society shows more and more attention to a person, so that in any situation he feels the presence of other people who are ready to help. Ambulance, fire brigade, police, traffic police, sanitary and epidemiological stations, helplines, rescue services, maintenance services mobile operators, computer network technical support departments and other organizations are created in order to provide and maintain social order in society, in order to instill in a person confidence in security and a sense of social comfort. All this, from the point of view of sociology, is a form of manifestation of supposed spatial contacts.

Contacts related to interests people are a more complex level of interaction. These contacts are determined by the clearly "targeted" needs of individuals. If you, while visiting, get acquainted with an outstanding football player, then you can experience a feeling of simple curiosity as to a famous person. But if there is a business representative in the company, and you are looking for a job with a diploma in economics, then in your mind there is immediately a need for contact where there is interest. Here, the actualized motive and interest is caused by the presence of a need - to make an acquaintance and, perhaps, to find with its help Good work. This contact may continue, but it may also end abruptly if you lose interest in it.

If a motive - this is a direct impulse to activity associated with the need to satisfy a need, then interest - it is a conscious form of manifestation of need, which ensures the orientation of the individual to a certain activity. Before you went to visit, you asked a friend to help you find a job: introduce you to a businessman, give you a good reference, vouch for your reputation, and so on. It is possible that in the future this friend will in turn ask you to help him with something.

AT exchange contacts social interaction becomes more difficult. This is a kind of contact, during which individuals are interested not so much in people as in the objects of exchange - information, money, etc. For example, when you buy a movie ticket, you are not interested in the cashier, you are interested in the ticket. On the street, you stop the first person you meet to find out how to get to the station, and the last thing you pay attention to is whether this person is old or young, handsome or not, the main thing is to get an answer to your question. The life of a modern person is filled with such contacts of exchange: he buys goods in a store and in the market; pays for tuition, goes to a disco, having preliminarily done a haircut at a hairdresser; a taxi takes him to the specified address. In modern society, exchange contacts are becoming more and more complicated. For example, wealthy parents send their daughter to a prestigious educational institution in Europe, believing that in exchange for the money they pay, the employees of the educational institution will take care of all the socialization, upbringing and education of their daughter.

Thus, under social contact is understood as a short-term initial stage of interaction between individuals or social groups. Social contact, as a rule, takes the form of spatial contact, psychic contact, and exchange contact. Social contacts are the first step in the formation of social groups. The study of social contacts makes it possible to find out the place of each individual in the system of social ties, his group status. By measuring the number and direction of social contacts, the sociologist can determine the structure of social interactions and their nature.

social actions

- the next level of complex social relationships after contacts. The concept of "social action" is considered one of the central in sociology and is the simplest unit of any kind of human behavior. The concept of "social action" was introduced into sociology and scientifically substantiated by M. Weber. He considered social action “the action of a person (regardless of whether it is external or internal, whether it comes down to non-intervention or patient acceptance) ... which, according to the alleged actor or actors meaning is related to action others people and focuses on it.

Weber proceeded from the fact that social action is a conscious action and is clearly focused on others. For example, a collision between two cars may be nothing more than an accident, but an attempt to avoid this collision, scolding that followed the incident, a growing conflict between drivers or a peaceful settlement of the situation, attracting new parties (traffic inspectorate, accident commissioner, insurance agent) is already a social act.

A well-known difficulty is the drawing of a clear boundary between social actions and asocial (natural, natural). According to Weber, suicide will not be a social act unless its consequences affect the behavior of acquaintances or relatives of the suicide.

Fishing and hunting do not in themselves appear to be social activities if they do not correlate with the behavior of other people. Such an interpretation of actions - some as non-social, and others as social - is not always justified. So, suicide, even if we are talking about a lonely person living outside social contacts, is a social fact. If we follow the theory of social interaction P.A. Sorokin, then any phenomenon that happens in a society cannot be isolated from it and characterizes, first of all, this society (in this case, suicide acts as a social indicator of the society's troubles). It is also very difficult to determine the presence or absence of awareness in a particular act of an individual. According to Weber's theory, actions cannot be considered social if the individual acted under the influence of affect - in a state of anger, irritation, fear. However, as studies by psychologists show, a person never acts fully consciously, his behavior is influenced by various emotions (likes, dislikes), physical condition (fatigue or, conversely, a sense of elation), character and mental organization (temperament, optimistic mood of a choleric person). or phlegmatic pessimism), culture and intelligence, etc.

Unlike social contacts, social action is a complex phenomenon. The following components are distinguished in the structure of social action:

• individual who acts
• an individual's need for a specific action
• purpose of action
• action method,
• another individual to whom the action is directed
• action result.

The mechanism of social action was most fully developed by the American sociologist T. Parsons (“The Structure of Social Action”). Like Sorokin, Parsons considered interaction to be the basic process that makes possible the development of culture at the level of an individual. The result of interaction is social behavior. A person, being included in a certain community, follows the cultural patterns accepted in this community. The mechanism of social action includes need, motivation, and action itself. As a rule, the beginning of social action is the emergence of a need that has a certain direction.

For example, a young man wants to learn how to water a car. The urge to take action is called motivation. The motives for social action can be different: in this case, a young man either wants to distract his girlfriend from a rival who drives well, or he likes to take his parents to the country, or he wants to get additional income by “carriage”.

By performing social actions, the individual experiences the influence of others and himself, in turn, wants to influence others. This is how an exchange of actions takes place, which acts as a social interaction. In this process, an important role belongs to the system of mutual expectations, which makes it possible to evaluate the behavior of a given individual in terms of generally accepted norms.

Imagine that, while in a company, a young man met a girl and they agreed to meet. Each of them has a system of expectations of behavior accepted in society or a given group. A girl can consider a young man as a potential groom, so it is important for her to establish a strong relationship, consolidate an acquaintance, find out everything about his views on life, interests and affections, his profession, material opportunities. The young man, in turn, also thinks about the upcoming meeting, either seriously or as another adventure.

The meeting can take place in different ways. One will drive up in a foreign car and invite you to a restaurant with a subsequent drive to an empty cottage. Another will offer to go to the movies or just walk in the park. But it is possible that the first young man will soon disappear, and the timid young man will receive a diploma, enter the service, and become a respectable husband.

Forms of social interactions

Mutual expectations are often not justified, and the relationships that have arisen are destroyed. If mutual expectations are justified, they acquire a predictable, and most importantly, stable form, such interactions are called social relations. Sociology distinguishes between the three most common types of interactions - cooperation, rivalry and conflict.

Cooperation- a type of interaction in which people perform interconnected actions to achieve common goals. As a rule, cooperation is beneficial for the interacting parties. Common interests unite people, cause them feelings of sympathy, gratitude. Mutual benefit encourages people to communicate in an informal setting, contributes to the emergence of an atmosphere of trust, moral comfort, the desire to yield in an argument, to suffer some inconvenience for oneself personally, if necessary for business. Collaborative relationships have many advantages and benefits for doing business together, fighting competitors, increasing productivity, retaining employees in the organization, and preventing employee turnover.

However, over time, cooperation based on cooperation begins to acquire a conservative character. People, having studied each other's capabilities, character traits, imagine what should be expected in a particular situation from each. Elements of routine arise, the stability of relations becomes stagnation, gives rise to the need to maintain the status quo. Group members become afraid of change and do not want it. They already have a set of standard, time-tested solutions in almost any situation, have established relationships with the entire system of multilateral relations in society, know their suppliers of raw materials, informants, designers, and representatives of power structures. There is no road for newcomers to the group, new ideas do not penetrate this blocked social space. The group begins to degrade.

Interaction based on rivalry(competition) is one of the most common types of interaction, opposite to cooperation. The peculiarity of rivalry is that people have the same goals, but pursue different interests. For example, several companies are applying for an order to build a large bridge across the Volga. Their goal is the same - to get an order, but their interests are different. Two young people love the same girl, they have the same goal - to achieve her favor, but the interests are opposite.

Rivalry, or competition, is the basis of market relations. In this struggle for income, feelings of hostility, anger towards the opponent, hatred, fear, as well as the desire to get ahead of him at all costs arise. The victory of one often means a catastrophe for another, loss of prestige, good work, well-being. Envy of a successful rival can be so strong that a person commits a crime - hires killers to eliminate a competitor, steals Required documents, i.e. goes into conflict. Such cases are a fairly common phenomenon, they are widely represented in the literature (T. Dreiser, J. Galsworthy, V.Ya. Shishkov and other writers), they are written about in newspapers, they are discussed on television. The most effective means of limiting this kind of competition is the adoption and implementation of appropriate laws and the appropriate education of a person. In economics, this is the adoption of a series of antitrust laws; in politics - the principle of separation of powers and the presence of opposition, a free press; in the sphere of spiritual life - the spread in society of the ideals of kindness and mercy, universal moral values. However, the spirit of competition is an incentive in business and in general in any work, which does not allow a person to rest on his laurels.

- open, direct confrontation, sometimes armed. In the latter case, we can talk about a revolution, an armed uprising, a riot, riots. For example, after the riots that engulfed Chisinau in 2009 and Bishkek in 2010, there was a change of government in Moldova and Kyrgyzstan. Prevention of violent conflicts, struggles that harm a person and violate public order is the task of the state. Studying the problem of social interaction, sociologists, in particular T. Parsons, developed the doctrine of equilibrium social system , which is a decisive condition for the preservation of the system, its viability. A system is stable or is in relative equilibrium if the relations between its structure and the processes occurring inside it, and between it and the environment are such that the properties and relations are unchanged.

However, there is another view that contains an explanation of the conflict not only as a negative, but also as a positive element of social life.

In this way, social action is such an action of a person that correlates with the actions of other people and focuses on them. Social action is a constitutive element, a "unit" of social reality. Many sociologists (for example, M. Weber, T. Parsons) saw it as the starting point of the entire system of social relations. Sustained and systematic implementation of actions, implying feedback, is called social interaction. Social interaction, as a rule, is expressed in the form of cooperation, rivalry or conflict.

A social action involving at least two participants influencing each other is calledsocial interaction. The mechanism of social interaction includes the following components:

a) individuals who perform certain actions;

b) changes in the social community or society as a whole, caused by these actions;

c) the impact of these changes on other individuals that make up this community;

d) the feedback of these individuals.

Social interaction is considered by various sociological theories. D. Homans and T. Parsons developed the problem of social interaction most deeply. In his study of social interaction, Homans relied on such terms of exchange of actions as "doer" and "other", and argued that in this kind of interaction, each participant seeks to minimize his own costs and receive the maximum reward for his actions. He considered social approval to be one of the most important rewards. When rewards become mutual in social interaction, the social interaction itself is shaped into relationships based on a system of mutual expectations. The situation of non-compliance with the expectations of one of the participants in the interaction can lead to aggressiveness, which itself can become a means of obtaining satisfaction. In social interaction, which includes many individuals, social norms and values ​​play a regulatory role. An important feature of social interaction between two actors is the desire for a certain ordering of its nature - rewarding or punishing.

Parsons noted the fundamental uncertainty of social interaction, in conditions when each participant in the interaction strives to achieve their own goals. Although the complete elimination of uncertainties is not possible, they can be reduced by the action system. Parsons built the principle of social interaction on such concepts as motivational orientation, satisfaction and dissatisfaction of needs, role expectations, attitudes, sanctions, assessments, etc. Using these concepts, he sought to solve the problem of social order.

The structure of social interaction includes social connection and social relations. The starting point for the formation of a social bond is social contact, that is, a shallow, superficial social action of a single character.

A social action that expresses the dependence and compatibility of people and social groups is called social connection. Social bonds are established to achieve a certain goal, at a certain time and in a certain place. Their establishment is connected with the social conditions in which individuals live and act. In sociology, there are different types of connections:

interactions;

Relationships;

control;

institutional connections.

The concept of social connection was introduced into sociology by E. Durkheim. By social connection, he meant any socio-cultural obligations of individuals or groups of individuals in relation to each other. Durkheim believed that social ties exist in the group, organization and society as a whole.

The main elements of social communication are:

Subjects (individuals and groups);

Subject (travel in transport, going to the theater);

The mechanism of social connection and its regulation (payment of needs).

The purpose of social communication is to satisfy any need of an individual or group. With the development of society, social ties become more complicated.

Quite often, social ties are considered, characterizing small groups. Social ties allow individuals

identify with a given social group and feel the importance of belonging to that group.

social relations- a long-term, systemic, stable form of social interaction with extensive social connections. It requires social motivation.

social motivation- the internal motivation of the behavior (activity and activity) of an individual or a social group, caused by their needs and determining behavior. The basic needs are physiological (hunger) and emotional (love), but a cognitive assessment of the situation is also possible. Motivation happens internal- aimed at satisfying personal needs, and external- seeking to receive a reward that is not personally necessary. Allocate motivations that encourage activity, and motivations due to the influence on individuals of existing stereotypes.

D.K. McClelland introduced the concept - achievement motivation, involving the assessment of individual and cultural differences in the pursuit of achievement. According to his hypothesis, the need for achievement is stimulated by close relationships with relatives who set high standards of behavior.

There are various forms of interaction.

Cooperation - it is a joint activity of individuals, groups and organizations to achieve a set goal. Cooperation is closely related to conflict and competition. It is somewhat paradoxical, since the parties to the conflict cooperate to some extent to maintain the conflict. Therefore, the question of what exactly is the decisive social bond of society - cooperation or competition, remains open.

Under competition refers to an activity in which an individual or group competes with another individual or group to achieve a goal. Competition can be direct or indirect. It may be normatively or socially regulated, but it may not be regulated.

Many strands of social thought (eg social Darwinism, utilitarianism) emphasized the social benefits of competition and perceived competition as a universal and productive element in society. Representatives of Marxism, on the contrary, considered competition as a specific need of capitalism, in which the insignificant manifestations of fairness and efficiency that are on the surface are refuted by the real asymmetry of power, basic contradictions and conflicts.

The existence of different ideas about competition does not make it possible to consider it unambiguously positively or negatively. The most rational approach is M. Weber, who proposed to evaluate competition as a particular aspect of social relations, the consequences of which must be analyzed individually in each individual case. The concept of "competition" partially coincides with the concept of "conflict".

In all episodes of his life, a person is connected with other people. In order to satisfy his needs, a person must interact with other individuals, participate in joint activities. After a series of interactions with others, a person enters into a certain relationship.

Social connections - it is a special type of contact between people. We can talk about the presence of a social connection when there are obvious three signs: 1) personal obligations of each member of the group to comply with the norms common to the group and protect common values; 2) the dependence of the members of the group on each other, arising on the basis of a common interest; 3) identification of the individual with the group.

Main elements that make up a social connection are contacts. They can be spatial, psychological (interest), social (exchange).

Social relationships have various bases and many different shades, depending on personal qualities individuals. The formation of social ties occurs gradually, from simple forms to complex ones. The development of social ties leads to social interactions. Measuring the number and direction of social contacts makes it possible to determine the structure of social interactions and the nature of social relations.

social interaction(interaction) is a form of social communications; the process of communication between individuals, their influence and influence on each other. Social interaction is made up of individual social actions. An important role in the implementation of interactions is played by the system of mutual expectations presented by individuals and social groups to each other before performing social actions.

Typology. Interactions can be both short-term, situational, and stable, reusable or even permanent. According to the types of actions, interactions can be physical, verbal, gestural. Social interaction based on status systems is typified by spheres, as it includes people's communications in the economic, professional, family-related, demographic, political, religious, territorial-settlement spheres. The most common forms social interactions are cooperation (cooperation), rivalry (competition), conflict (collision).

As a result of the repetition of one or another type of interaction, different types social relations between people.

Social Relations - it is a certain stable system of connections and dependencies individuals, which has developed in the process of their repeated interactions with each other in the conditions of a given society; it is a set of forms of organization of the joint life of people. Social relations are clearly divided in meaning and content, which depend on how the need for values ​​and possession of them are combined in interactions. Social relations are the stable element that unites people in society.

16. National-ethnic communities and relations

The ancient Greek word "ethnos" has about 10 meanings: people, crowd, tribe, mass, etc.

In ethnographic literature, “ethnos” is commonly understood as a stable community of people living, as a rule, in a separate territory, having their own original culture, language, and self-consciousness. In Soviet sociology and ethnography, it was traditionally believed that ethnic division is a kind of social and ethnic groups are integral systems inextricably linked with socio-economic factors. Therefore, ethnos is a social phenomenon.

There are two opposite approaches to understanding the essence of an ethnos: natural-biological, sociocultural.

The origins of the first date back to the middle of the 19th century, and its representatives belonged to the so-called racial-anthropological school in naturalistic sociology, which we mentioned in our previous lectures. Representatives of this trend Zh.A. de Gobineau, S. Ammon, J. Lapouge believed that the ethno-cultural diversity of mankind is due to genetic differences.

The specificity of the sociological approach to the study of ethnic groups lies primarily in the fact that, unlike ethnography, which has a clearly defined historical and descriptive character, in sociology ethnic communities are considered as elements social structure society, in close relationship with other social groups - classes, strata, territorial communities and various social institutions.