Youth in the modern world briefly. The concept of youth in modern society

slide 2

Youth is a special social age group, distinguished by age limits and their status in society: the transition from childhood and youth to social responsibility. Some scientists understand youth as a set of young people to whom society provides an opportunity for social development, providing them with benefits, but limiting their ability to actively participate in certain areas of society. The age limits that allow people to be classified as young people differ depending on the specific country. The lower age limit of youth is set between 14 and 16, the upper - between 25 and 30 and over, 36 years inclusive modern classification Quinn age periods.

slide 3

Youth in the world today According to the World Report on the Status of Youth 2005, the number of young people (persons aged 15 to 24) in the world has grown from 1.02 billion people (in 1995) to 1.15 billion people ( in 2005). Young people currently make up 18 percent of the world's population; 85 percent of the world's youth live in developing countries, of which 209 million have to subsist on less than $1 a day, and 515 million have to make do with less than $2 a day. Currently, 10 million young people are living with HIV/AIDS. Although the current generation of young people is the most educated in the history of mankind, today 113 million children are out of school - a figure quite comparable to the 130 million group of illiterate young people in the modern world.

slide 4

Youth as a special social group

Young people in a significant part have the level of mobility, intellectual activity and health that distinguishes them favorably from other groups of the population. At the same time, any society faces the question of the need to minimize the costs and losses that the country incurs due to the problems associated with the socialization of young people and their integration into a single economic, political and socio-cultural space. The German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) defined the youth as a kind of reserve acting on foreground when such a revival becomes necessary to adapt to rapidly changing or qualitatively new circumstances. Dynamic societies must sooner or later activate and even organize them.

slide 5

Youth, according to Mannheim, performs the function of an enlivening mediator of social life; this function has as its important element incomplete inclusion in the status of society. This parameter is universal and is not limited by place or time. The decisive factor that determines the age of puberty is that at this age young people enter public life and in modern society for the first time encounter a chaos of antagonistic assessments. Young people, according to Mannheim, are neither progressive nor conservative in nature, they are potential, ready for any undertaking. Youth as a special age and social group always perceived the values ​​of culture in its own way, which at different times gave rise to youth slang and shocking forms of subculture. Their representatives were hippies, beatniks, dudes in the USSR and the post-Soviet space - informals.

slide 6

Youth in the Russian Federation

Today, the youth of the Russian Federation is 39.6 million young citizens - 27% of the total population of the country. In accordance with the Strategy of the State Youth Policy in the Russian Federation, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of December 18, 2006 N 1760-r, the category of youth in Russia previously included citizens from 14 to 30 years old. However, recently in most subjects of the Russian Federation there has been a tendency to shift the age limit for young people under 35 years old.

Slide 7

Youth and politics

Some studies show that young people are generally apolitical. Less than half of young Russians take part in federal elections, only 33 percent of young citizens under the age of 35 are interested in politics. At the same time, young people are interested in politics quite intensively, especially during election campaigns. As Russian experience has shown, for the first time the active involvement of young people in the electoral process was tested in 1996 during the presidential elections. At that time, it was important to attract to the polls precisely the youth, who were ready to support the reformist course of B. Yeltsin. As a result of the difficult situation that has developed with the elections in Russia, a kind of conflict has arisen between young people's ideas about participation in elections and their real political behavior. So, if 66 percent of young people consider it their civic duty to participate in elections, then only 28 percent of them took part in voting in the elections of deputies to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2003.

Slide 8

In the periods between elections, the political activity of young people, as a rule, decreases. Only 2.7 percent of young people take part in the activities of public organizations. At the same time, in recent years, the number of youth political organizations has increased: the Nashi Youth Movement, the Young Guard of United Russia, which, along with the communist youth organizations revived in the early 1990s and the youth wing of Yabloko and the Liberal Democratic Party, make up a colorful palette of bright and noisy political youth structures. Their activities are often reduced to actions aimed at attracting the attention of the media. In the context of globalization and the forced influx of migrants, young people are called upon to act as a conductor of the ideology of tolerance, the development of Russian culture and the strengthening of intergenerational and interethnic relations. However, at present, 35 percent of young people aged 18-35 experience irritation or hostility towards representatives of a different nationality, 51 percent would approve the decision to evict some ethnic groups outside the region.

Slide 9

Considering that the first post-Soviet generation has grown up in recent years, Russian researchers at the Carnegie Center note (2013) that, in particular, young people from major cities demonstrates greater political and ideological independence; this is happening not only in connection with the maturation of post-perestroika children, but also due to internal migration: young people are increasingly moving to cities, where they are merging into a progressive environment.

Slide 10

According to a study conducted in July 2004 by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), young people aged 18-24 consider pop and rock stars, representatives of the “golden” youth (52%), successful businessmen, as idols of modern Russian youth, oligarchs (42%), athletes (37%). President Vladimir Putin is the idol of 14% of Russian youth. The vast majority of respondents who believe that a healthy lifestyle depends more on the individual's own efforts proceed from the fact that the transformation of Russia into a country of a healthy lifestyle will take place only sometime in the distant future (65.9%). It is symptomatic for modern Russia that the number of respondents who, in principle, do not believe that Russia will become a country of a healthy lifestyle (22.4%) is almost twice as large as that part of the respondents who answered this question - “yes, and quite soon". Youth and politics

slide 11

The Russian Federation has a high unemployment rate among young people aged 15-24 (6.4 percent). Since the 90s of the last century, the number of young couples who lived without legal registration of marriage increased to 3 million, which led to a real increase in illegitimate children and an increase in the number of single-parent families. Housing is one of the most pressing problems facing young people and society. Problems caused by the aging of the housing stock and the underdevelopment of forms of housing rental provoke an increase in prices and rents for housing in the Russian Federation. Mortgage interest rates remain out of reach for young people. In this regard, the implementation of the priority national project “Housing”, which provides for housing subsidies for young families, deserves attention. Youth and socio-economic situation

slide 12

View all slides

Youth is the main bearer of the intellectual and physical potential of society, it has great abilities for work, technical and cultural and artistic creativity, productive activity in all spheres of human existence;

Young people have a great social and professional perspective, they are able to acquire new knowledge, professions and specialties faster than other social groups in society.

The fundamental issue when considering the role of youth in society is the question of youth as a subject and object of social transformations. Entering life, a young person is subject to the influence of social conditions, family, educational institutions, and later, in the process of growing up and moving into more mature phases of development, he begins to significantly influence society. That is, youth acts as a subject when it influences society, giving up its potential, at the same time it is an object, since social influence is directed at it in order to develop it. The youth acts as an object both to society and to itself.

Without a doubt, youth is a very important part for Chuvashia and for Russia as a whole, as it is the most active component of the state. The young are the best adapted to the introduction of new technologies, innovations and reforms. They are mobile and full of energy, so the Russian state is interested in the fact that the younger generation would be involved in the economic life of Russia and the political ... Most recently, our country has passed the economic crisis, and is now at the stage of stabilization, so young specialists in the field of economics are simply necessary for Chuvashia. It follows that the state should be interested in the formation of a viable and healthy new generation, because young people are the “salvation” for the state in terms of creating a family and eliminating the demographic crisis.

In a word, Chuvashia in our time is doing everything for the successful development of the younger generation - the rest depends on us. Purposefulness and ambitions are the main components of a happy life and a secure future, so it is important to choose your path right now, because youth is not eternal and goes away every day... Giving up bad habits, worthy occupation, finding your favorite job will help change your life for the better . The future of Russia is in the hands of young people, and this should always be remembered.

YOUTH - a socio-demographic group identified on the basis of age parameters, social status and socio-psychological qualities.

One of the first definitions of the term "youth" was given in 1968 by V.T. Lisovsky:

"Youth is a generation of people passing through the stage of socialization, assimilating, and at a more mature age already assimilating, educational, professional, cultural and other social functions; depending on specific historical conditions, the age criteria for youth can range from 16 to 30 years.

Later, a more complete definition was given by I.S. Konom:

"Youth is a socio-demographic group distinguished on the basis of a combination of age characteristics, characteristics of social status and socio-psychological properties due to both. Youth as a certain phase, stage of the life cycle is biologically universal, but its specific age limits, associated social status and socio-psychological characteristics are of a socio-historical nature and depend on the social system, culture and the laws of socialization characteristic of a given society.

In developmental psychology, youth is characterized as a period of formation of a stable system of values, the formation of self-awareness and the social status of an individual.

Consciousness young man has a special susceptibility, the ability to process and assimilate a huge flow of information. During this period, develop: critical thinking, the desire to give their own assessment of various phenomena, the search for argumentation, original thinking. At the same time, at this age, some attitudes and stereotypes characteristic of the previous generation are still preserved. Hence, in the behavior of young people, there is an amazing combination of contradictory qualities and traits: the desire for identification and isolation, conformism and negativism, imitation and denial of generally accepted norms, the desire for communication and withdrawal, detachment from the outside world.

Youth consciousness is determined by a number of objective circumstances.

Firstly, in modern conditions the process of socialization itself has become more complicated and lengthened, and, accordingly, the criteria for its social maturity have become different. They are determined not only by entry into an independent working life, but also by the completion of education, the acquisition of a profession, real political and civil rights, and material independence from parents.

Secondly, the formation of the social maturity of young people occurs under the influence of many relatively independent factors: family, school, work collective, mass media, youth organizations and spontaneous groups.

The boundaries of youth age are mobile. They depend on the socio-economic development of society, the level of well-being and culture achieved, and the living conditions of people. The impact of these factors is really manifested in the life expectancy of people, expanding the boundaries of youth age from 14 to 30 years.

Since ancient times, the formation of society has been accompanied by the process of socialization of new generations. One of the main problems of the socialization of young people is that they either accept the values ​​of their fathers or completely reject them. The second happens more often. Young people believe that the social values ​​that the "fathers" lived by lose their practical significance in any new historical situation and, therefore, are not inherited by children.

Today, the main task of the survival of the Belarusian society is to solve the problem of maintaining social stability and transferring cultural heritage from one generation to another. This process has never been automatic. He always assumed the active participation in it of all generations. It must be remembered that it is at a young age that a system is formed value orientations, the process of self-education, self-creation of the individual and approval in society is actively underway.

In today's rapidly changing, dynamically developing world, young people have to decide for themselves what is more valuable - enrichment by any means or the acquisition of high qualifications that help them adapt to new conditions; denial of previous moral norms or flexibility, adaptability to the new reality; unlimited freedom of interpersonal relationships or family.

Values ​​are a relatively stable, socially determined attitude of a person to the totality of material and spiritual goods, cultural phenomena that serve as a means of satisfying the needs of the individual.

TO core values relate:

1. Humanity;

2. Good manners;

3. Education;

4. Tolerance;

5. Kindness;

6. Honesty;

7. Diligence;

8. Love;

Young people have acquired a number of new qualities, both positive and negative.

The positives include:

1. The desire for self-organization and self-government;

2. Interest in political events in the country and region;

3. Not indifferent to problems national language and culture;

4. Participation in organizing your leisure time;

5. Focus on self-education;

Negative qualities such as:

1. Tobacco smoking, drug testing and adolescent alcoholism;

2. Doing nothing;

3. Sexual experimentation;

4. Infantilism and indifference (nihilism);

5. Uncertainty and unpredictability;

There are several important socio-cultural conditions for successful personal socialization:

1. Healthy family microenvironment;

2. Favorable creative atmosphere at school, lyceum, gymnasium;

3. Positive impact of fiction and art;

4. Media influence;

5. Aestheticization of the nearest macro environment (yard, neighborhood, club, sports ground, etc.)

6. Active involvement in social activities;

Social adaptation is a controlled process. It can be managed not only in line with the impact of social institutions on a person in the course of his production, non-production, pre-production, post-production life, but also in line with self-government. IN general view most often, four stages of adaptation of a person in a new social environment are distinguished:

1. the initial stage, when an individual or group realizes how they should behave in a new social environment for them, but are not yet ready to recognize and accept the value system of the new environment and strive to adhere to the old value system;

2. the stage of tolerance, when the individual, the group and the new environment show mutual tolerance for each other's value systems and patterns of behavior;

3. accommodation, i.e. recognition and acceptance by the individual of the basic elements of the value system of the new environment while simultaneously recognizing some of the values ​​of the individual, the group of the new social environment;

4. assimilation, i.e. complete coincidence of the value systems of the individual, group and environment; Complete social adaptation of a person includes physiological, managerial, economic, pedagogical, psychological and professional adaptation.

Specific points of social adaptation technology:

* only a person tends to create special "devices", certain social institutions, norms, traditions, facilitating the process of his adaptation in a given social environment;

* only a person has the ability to consciously prepare the younger generation for the process of adaptation, using all means of education for this;

* the process of "acceptance" or "rejection" by individuals of existing social relations depends both on social belonging, worldview, and on the direction of education;

* a person consciously acts as a subject of social adaptation, changing his views, attitudes, value orientations under the influence of circumstances;

Social adaptation is the process of active development of the social environment by the personality, in which the personality acts both as an object and as a subject of adaptation, and the social environment is both an adapting and adaptable side.

Successful social adaptation of the individual requires the maximum expenditure of the spiritual energy of the individual.

Youth is the path to the future, which is chosen by the person himself. The choice of the future, its planning is a characteristic feature of a young age; he would not be so attractive if a person knew in advance what would happen to him tomorrow, in a month, in a year.

General conclusion: "Each subsequent generation of young people is worse than the previous one in terms of the main indicators of social status and development." This is expressed, first of all, in the tendency to reduce the number of young people, which leads to the aging of society and, consequently, a decrease in the role of youth as a social resource in general.

The demographic situation is complicated by a new reality in Belarus - the growth of murders and suicides, including among young people. The reason is the emergence of difficult personal and life situations. According to the data, 10% of graduates of state institutions for orphans commit suicide, not being able to adapt to living conditions.

First, the unresolved socio-economic and everyday problems.

Secondly, in the trend of deterioration in the health of children and adolescents. The rising generation is less healthy physically and mentally than the previous one. On average in Belarus, only 10% of school graduates can consider themselves absolutely healthy, 45-50% of them have serious morphofunctional deviations.

Recently, there has been a clear increase in the number of diseases among students, such as:

1. mental disorders;

2. peptic ulcer of the gastrointestinal tract;

3. alcohol and drug addiction;

4. venereal diseases;

Some young people, due to an unbalanced diet and reduced physical activity, gain excess weight, spend little time outdoors, and are not involved in sports and recreational activities.

Thirdly, in the tendency to expand the process of desocialization, the marginalization of young people. The number of young people leading an asocial, immoral lifestyle is increasing. For various reasons and to varying degrees, they include: disabled people, alcoholics, vagrants, "professional beggars", persons serving sentences in corrective labor institutions who strive to be socially useful citizens, but due to social conditions cannot become them. There is a lumpenization and criminalization of youth. ѕ young students consider themselves to be low-income.

Fourthly, in the trend of decreasing opportunities for youth participation in economic development. Statistics show that the share of young people in the unemployed remains high. The labor market is characterized by a significant overflow of labor from the state to the non-state sector of the economy.

Moving to the sphere for positions that do not require professional knowledge, young people risk their future well-being, not ensuring the accumulation of intellectual property - professionalism. Moreover, this area of ​​employment is characterized by a very high degree of criminalization.

Fifthly, in the trend of falling social value of labor, the prestige of a number of professions important for society. Sociological studies of recent years state that in labor motivation, priority is given not to meaningful work, but to work aimed at obtaining material benefits. "Big salary" - this motive turned out to be decisive in choosing a place of work.

Modern youth has such a feature that shows that most of them want to have a good income, while having neither a profession nor a desire to work. This is due to the fact that young people do not have incentives to work.

The problem of criminal influence on young people cannot but disturb the Belarusian public lately. Among criminal offenses every fourth is carried out by young people and adolescents. Among the offenses, mercenary crimes attract attention - theft, extortion of money, fraud. When analyzing statistical data, the volume of acquisitive crimes in the present period is growing rapidly. It depends on the fact that there is a differentiation among young people and most of the young people, parents cannot give what they would like, taking into account requests. And they themselves cannot receive this due to the fact that they do not have a specialty or work skills. Young people do not want to get an education just because they have no prospects after they get an education. Nowadays, more and more young people are using drugs. Maybe this comes from the hopelessness of realizing their capabilities or from the fact that, due to a lack of understanding of the seriousness, they were involved in this by people interested in drug trafficking.

Youth and Society

The role of youth in the social structure of modern human society increases every year. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the process of population aging has been rapidly developing on the planet, and for the older generation, caring for health and wellness has become an increasingly important task. proper upbringing young people.

The German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) calls youth the social reserve of any society, so it is clear that the worldview of young people and the level of development of their consciousness are very important for the state and society. By nature, young people, according to Mannheim, are neither progressive nor reactionary, they are potential, ready for any undertaking. Depending on which teacher a young man follows, he can become both a hero of his Motherland and a traitor to his own family (K. Marx).

According to the UN, in the first decade of the 21st century, the number of boys and girls on the planet has grown to about 1.5 billion people, which is about 20% of the total population of the globe. Moreover, 85% of these young people live in developing countries. As for Russia, in our country citizens under 30 years old are approximately 40 million people (27-30% of the population).

Youth is heterogeneous in its structure. It is clearly divided into several layers, differing from each other in their beliefs, their activities and their interests. Unified table of division of youth into age groups does not currently exist in the world. Depending on the particular country or region, demographers refer to people from 13 to 36 years old as young people. In modern Russia, citizens aged 14-30 are considered young, although in domestic science there is already a tendency to increase the upper limit of this gradation to 35 years.

Teenagers

A significant group among the total mass of young people in any state are teenagers aged 13-19. In the European community, they are called teenagers (eng. Teenager - "teenager"). In Russia, there is no special term for this group of citizens, although in reality it exists and unites mainly young people studying.

Teenagers, as a special age and social group of society, always perceive life and cultural values ​​in their own way, which gives rise to the emergence of special forms of youth subculture.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, youth communities did not show themselves so actively as to arouse increased interest from journalists, scientists and politicians, therefore, for the first time, science began to study this social phenomenon only in the 1950s. Until now, world culture has been relatively unified: regardless of age, all people sang the same songs, watched the same films, read the same books, visited common museums and exhibitions. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the picture has changed. In the cultural preferences of "fathers" and "children", ever deeper differences begin to form, which concern not only everyday life, but also culture, education and worldview.

The American sociologist T. Rozzak proposed the term “counterculture” to designate the youth movement of the 20th century. In the conditions of the post-war (1945-1950) aggravation of social and economic relations, the counterculture was an attempt by young people to adapt to the problematic conditions of existence and express their attitude to the activities of the older generation to the whole world.

Subculture

The formation of youth counterculture was preceded by the concept of subculture, which first appeared in the middle of the twentieth century in the works of sociologists, anthropologists and culturologists. The term "subculture" (lat. sub - sub + culture) researchers denoted a separate group of people who differ in their behavior from the prevailing majority.

A subculture is usually characterized by its own system values, special slang, demeanor, clothing. Examples of subcultures are national, geographic, professional, dialect, age associations of people in any large territorial regions of the country or the world.

In the 1950s, American and British sociologists (D. Risman, D. Hebdige) in their studies introduced the concept of subculture as a deliberately chosen association with similar interests, tastes and goals. In their opinion, subcultures are formed by people who are not satisfied with generally accepted standards and values.

At the same time, the term “urban tribes” appeared in the works of European psychologists to refer to youth associations of Western civilization. In the USSR, the term “informal youth associations” (or simply “informals”) was used for this purpose. Sometimes in Soviet society, another designation for youth subcultures was also used - “tusovka”.

Subcultures could be based on a variety of interests - from musical styles and art movements to political or sexual preferences. Such associations, as a rule, were closed in nature and strove for complete isolation from the rest of society. On this basis, part of the subcultures came into conflict with national values ​​and took on an aggressive and even extremist character. But, basically, escapism was typical for youth subcultures - an escape from reality and the creation of their own inner world, where adults were not allowed.

Those youth subcultures that preached an open protest against the generally accepted norms of morality and law, with light hand American sociologist T. Rozzak, began to be called counterculture. Gradually, this term began to be used to refer to all areas of the youth subculture of the twentieth century.

YOUTH SUBCULTURE OF THE XX CENTURY

Counterculture (“against” + “culture”) is an international youth subculture of the 20th – early 21st century, uniting groups of teenagers who are heterogeneous in ideological and political views, striving to resist the culture of the older generation, which, according to teenagers, is not capable of organizing a just society on the planet and maintain peace and social prosperity. The "anti-consumer" lifestyle of the followers of the counterculture is often combined with cultural nihilism, anarchism, technophobia, and religious quests. A protest against the policies of the older generation can be both passive and extremist in nature.

Very quickly, initially a single counterculture, depending on interests and goals, was divided into many independent areas. In the process of development, each such direction developed a worldview common to all its followers, uniform style clothes (image), their own special language (jargon, slang), their attributes (symbols, signs). All this became a kind of marker that distinguishes “ours” from the rest of the world.

But over time, individual elements of some particular counterculture became so popular that they merged into the general culture of society. For example, high boots "Dr. Martens", typical for skinheads, have long been generally accepted by many non-formals and even ordinary members of European and Russian society. And the clothing styles "Gothic Lolita" and "Gothic Aristocrat" are not only an element of the image of the subculture ready, but also the style of Japanese urban fashion.

The "classic" youth countermovement of the Western world covered the period from the late 1940s to the early 1980s and included three main areas:

beatniks - "broken generation" (1940s - 1950s);

hippies - "independent generation" (1960s - early 1970s);

new left - "rebellious generation" (late 1960s - 1970s).

Since the late 1970s, the youth subculture has gone beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American world and has acquired a worldwide character. In the Soviet Union, it was represented by a few groups of hippie teenagers and the so-called dudes.

Beatniks

The appearance of the beatnik subculture was preceded by the period of existence of the so-called "lost generation" - young people who went through the trenches of the First World War (1914 - 1918). Called to the front at the age of 18, they began to kill early, not understanding why they bring death to others and die themselves. After the war, these people with a crippled psyche often could not adapt to civilian life: many of them became drunkards, others went crazy, and someone committed suicide.

The theme of the "lost generation" has become the leitmotif of the work of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, Henri Barbusse, Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound, Francis Scott Fitzgerald. In their books they described life former soldiers who returned in 1918 from the fronts of the First World War spiritually crippled, having lost faith in justice, mercy and love. In the novel "Three Comrades" E.M. Remarque predicted a sad fate for the "lost generation".

Since the mid-1940s, the “lost” ones have been replaced by beatniks quite close in spirit to them (eng. The Beat Gtntration), whose name translates as “broken generation”. Many of the beatniks, like their predecessors, were engaged in literary creativity. The bourgeois state machine did not touch them, since they did not get into politics, from the very beginning proclaiming the “backpack revolution” as their slogan (as opposed to Senate debates and street armed conflicts with the police, the beatniks advocated leaving the “adult” world for nature, where they are loved and understood).

The term "beatnik" appeared in 1948 in the articles of J. Kerouac, who tried to characterize with this word youth movement New York, formed in the early 1940s on the basis of the ideals of the outgoing "lost generation". Alma mater of the beatniks was Columbia University, where many of them studied at that time and where the first circles of the “broken” were formed.

Among the main representatives of beatnikism were writers William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, poets Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and others. Since 1958, they began to publish in the American press and, against the backdrop of growing popularity, organized their own magazine, Btatitudy, where they promoted their ideals: an asocial lifestyle, contempt for the “American dream” - new houses, cars, prestigious work. Modern researchers believe that beatnikism is at the origins of the revolution that shook the puritanical mores of America. The beatniks influenced not only the literary work of their contemporaries, but also their appearance, behavior and mores.

Representatives of the "broken generation" traded in black sweaters, dark glasses and berets, glorified an easy apolitical lifestyle, and soon the urban youth began to organize beatnik-style parties. New York City record companies quickly picked up on their ideas to boost vinyl sales. The film directed by Stanley Donen "Funny Face" also contributed to the popularization of beatnikism.

One of the attributes of a beatnik was considered a black sweater with a high neck and a beret, as well as white T-shirts without any patterns. The wearing of two bongo drums was encouraged. The beatniks did not have any specific hairstyles, however, girls and boys were dominated by long straight hair. The clothes were dominated by black light. Black glasses were mandatory. Striped outfits and cassocks with hoods were also used. Among men, the goatee was in vogue. The most common footwear was ordinary leather boots. The girls wore black tights and dark makeup, long black tights or skirts, and capri pants. Interestingly, the style of clothing developed by the beatniks would later have a great influence on the formation of the Goth wardrobe.

The beatniks were characterized by individualism, sexual liberalism (many of them were openly homosexual) and drug propaganda, protection of the rights of Negro youth, surprisingly combined with political conformism, and anarchy in matters of state and law. Not surprisingly, at the time of its inception, the term “beatnik” did not carry a positive connotation and was considered a derogatory word: this was the name of bearded guys and rather promiscuous girls, parasites and jazz lovers who loitered in New York bars and demonstrated their pompous rebellion against the main values ​​​​of the American nation.

But over the years, the term underwent significant changes and by the end of the 1950s began to refer to a large group of American youth who left a certain and not very clean mark on the history of the West. The liberal lifestyle that members of the beat generation promoted with their poetry and music appealed to many young Americans who began to actively popularize it. With the growth of the public authority of the beatniks and the strengthening of their positions in the literary and bohemian environment of San Francisco, filmmakers, record companies and even the most ordinary people joined this process.

In music and poetry, the beatniks actively experimented, an example of which is the " creative method cutting." Composing the texts of songs and poems, they wrote their lines on separate strips of paper, put these scraps in a hat and, taking them out in random order, assembled the future “work”.

Such "poetry" involved fast and loud reading aloud to the accompaniment of a jazz orchestra or bongos. Loud recitation with constant repetitions of individual words, according to contemporaries, had a strong impact on the youth audience.

The theme of the poems was characterized by the preaching of voluntary poverty, erotic freedom, vagrancy and refusal to participate in the political movements of the century. Beat poetry was called "jazz typewriter”: the texts looked jerky and uneven, and entire syllables were often omitted in the middle of words.

A. Ginsberg. At the Dharma Center in the Rocky Mountains.

A magpie is chirping on a juniper bush with its tail to a crimson sunset.

Angry during the orioka in the altar hall - the artichoke blossomed in the afternoon.

I put on a shirt and took it off when I went to lunch.

A dandelion seed flies over wet grass along with mosquitoes.

At four in the morning, two middle-aged men sleep together holding hands.

In the half light of early dawn, a flock of birds chirps under the Pleiades.

The sky glows behind the fir trees, the larks sing, the sparrows: chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp.

Caught stealing, ran out of the store and woke up.

In their poems and songs, the beatniks were looking for new means of expression, with the help of which it would be possible to convey the mood of detachment, rejection of reality, longing for bygone times:

Where are your semolina shoes

And where did you put your double-breasted jacket.

You wouldn't have given a penny for them before.

Once upon a time you were a beatnik

You were once a beatnik..

You were ready to give your soul for rock and roll

Extracted from a picture of someone else's aperture.

And now TV, newspaper, football;

And your old mother is pleased with you.

Once upon a time you were a beatnik...

You were once a beatnik...

Rock 'n' roll is gone forever

The gray hairs of your youth cooled the ardor.

But I believe, and it is pleasant for me to believe in it,

That in your heart you remained the same as you were.

Once upon a time you were a beatnik...

You were once a beatnik...

By the end of the 1960s, beatism was gradually disappearing, and a new youth subculture, the hippie movement, began to take shape in Western society to replace it.

Hippie

The term "hippie" was first recorded in a New York TV show in 1965, where the word was used to refer to groups of young long-haired people who loudly protested against the Vietnam War. The origin of the term is usually associated with English words hip or hep, meaning "understanding, knowing".

The hippie subculture appeared in the USA (San Francisco) and was closely connected with the beatnik movement that preceded it. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were a few groups of hipsters among the beatniks - jazz musicians and their fans. Perhaps this is where you need to look for the origins of the hip movement, which was formed in parallel with the development of rock and roll from jazz. One of the first and most famous hippie communities in the United States was the Merry Pranksters group, which formed the main features of this subculture.

The main preaching of the hippies was the propaganda of non-violence (ahimsa). They firmly believed in the human right to freedom, which can be achieved only by changing their inner world for the better. “Spirituality is what a person lacks,” the hippies sang in their songs. They called for the creation of spiritual communities where one could hide from the "black" civilization.

In everyday life, hippies wore long hair, were fond of Eastern religions (Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism), listened to rock and roll and hitchhiked around the world. Many of them were vegetarians. The largest hippie colonies in America were located near San Francisco. Later, the hip movement spread throughout Europe, and here the Free City of Christiania in Denmark was considered the largest colony of hippies.

Ignoring the laws of the bourgeois state, hippies did not visit educational establishments and didn't work. They earned their livelihood through begging, which in English was associated with the word "ask" (to ask, ask); hence the term "askers" - street beggars. The name has survived to this day, however, its meaning has changed somewhat: now askers are street musicians who play in front of passers-by in order to earn money.

The hippie subculture created its own symbolism, and one of the most popular symbols was an old Volkswagen minibus decorated with inscriptions. On such minibuses, the “long-haired” drove around America, shocking American farmers with their slogans: “Make love, not war!”; "Turn off the pig!" ("Pig" hippies called the American machine gun); "Give the world a chance!"; “We won’t leave!”; "All you need is love!".

The symbolism of the hippies also included the so-called "baubles" - bracelets that complemented the clothes of teenagers, decorated with ethnic elements - beads, weaving from beads and threads, etc. "Baubles" had a rather complex symbolism. So, a black and yellow striped “bauble” meant a wish for a good hitchhiking, and a red and yellow one meant a declaration of love.

A well-known symbol of hippies was also considered a "hairatnik" - a plain headband or armband that determined the status and belonging of a hippie to a particular community. Hairratniks were used by teenagers in role-playing games. A white armband, for example, denoted a "dead" or invisible character in the game.

Jeans very quickly became the branded clothes of the “long-haired”, and for a more complete self-expression, hippies used a tattoo. The most common were text tattoos, the content of which was reduced to the slogans: “No to war!”, “Peace to the world!” and the like. There were also drawn tattoos - with symbols of the hip movement. Since the "long-haired" often weaved flowers into their hair, distributed them to passers-by and inserted field daisies into the gun barrels of policemen and soldiers, all hippies began to be called "flower children".

In addition to external paraphernalia, the folklore tradition of “troubles” also belongs to the hippie culture. Basically, these are songs, poems and "carts" - funny stories from the life of a hippie.

A hairy, dirty, unshaven people sits by the fountain.

A veteran sits next to him.

Son, why are you so dirty?

There is nowhere to wash.

What's so torn?

So there is nothing to wear.

And why thin?

There is nothing.

Have you tried to work?

Right now! I'll drop everything and run to do all sorts of nonsense!

All hippies were originally apolitical. Following the beatniks, they proclaimed their departure from society to nature, where they created colonies remote from civilization - the so-called "free cities". Colonies usually sprang up on the outskirts of large metropolitan areas, in abandoned houses and barns. Here hippies organized colorful festivals, here they entered into “free marriages” among themselves and raised their children.

Hippie calls for a "return to nature" were sometimes accompanied by marches of naked teenagers (the spread of nudist culture is associated with the hippie movement). In this regard, we can mention the “March of Love”, organized during these years by a few Soviet hippies, Muscovite teenagers who went naked on the Moscow streets, were detained by the police and taken to a psychiatric clinic. Their main slogan was the rejection of politics, although some of the Russian hippies even then demanded the abolition of the “communist regime”.

In an effort to completely isolate themselves from the ideology and culture of the older generation, the hippies created their own musical ensembles that performed their own songs in the style of rock and roll, which the press dubbed "psychedelic music." At that time, “psychedelia” was understood as a “change” or “expansion” of consciousness, which was achieved with the help of holotropic breathing, special meditations, and also by taking drugs.

A wave of passion for psychotropic substances swept through America at that time, and hippies did not pass by this phenomenon. They actively used the psychedelic LSD, intended for the treatment of severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Taking LSD caused abnormal deviations in the mental state of a person: he ceased to be aware of the events taking place, he felt invulnerable and omnipotent. In this state, a teenager could walk onto the highway in front of moving traffic or jump out of the window of a high-rise building, believing that he could fly. In addition, the uncontrolled use of LSD often caused an active manifestation in a person of previously hidden mental illnesses - epilepsy, schizophrenia, etc.

The characteristic genre of hip music very quickly became the so-called "rock operas", among which the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" (1970) was the most famous. It was a rock opera written by Andrew Webber and Tim Rice and filmed in 1973 by American director Norman Jewison. The film was filmed in Israel, in places where famous historical events involving Jesus Christ once took place, and received mixed criticism.

The Western European media accepted the picture with enthusiasm, while the church anathematized it. Condemning the authors of the opera, the Vatican declared: “They cannot be saved because they remain deaf to the voice of God. A Christian should stay away from this anti-Christian work." In the Soviet Union, the performance of the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar" was not welcomed.

The plot of the musical is based on the biblical story and describes the final stage of the arrest and execution of the Savior. Main acting characters operas are Jesus and Judas, who are arguing about the need to make sacrifices in the name of the salvation of mankind. The text of the opera is permeated with atheistic ideas and belittles the image of Christ, while justifying the betrayal of Judas. Even then, in the middle of the twentieth century, Western morality entered a period of difficult moral and spiritual crisis, which today ended with the moral fall of the Catholic clergy, the acceptance and justification of same-sex marriages and other "charms" of modern European culture.

Shortly after the film's production, it was translated into various languages ​​and accepted for production at opera houses. One of the first Russian translations was made by Alexander Butuzov. In Russia, the performance of this rock opera has been allowed since 1990 and has been performed in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Irkutsk and other cities.

The peak of the popularity of the hip movement came in 1967 (the so-called "summer of love"), when music CDs were released with unofficial "long-haired" anthems performed by singer Scott McKenzie. By this time, the hippie subculture had spread not only in America and Europe, but also in Asia.

So, in Japan, under the influence of the international hip movement, many youth groups began to appear, the most popular among which was considered the “new trend - Bosozoku”. Literally, this name can be translated as "aggressive gang riding motorcycles." Motorcycles with Japanese symbols and long exhaust pipes, painted with all the colors of the rainbow, rushed along the city streets of Japanese megacities. Their owners, Japanese teenagers, terrorized motorists and pedestrians, disturbed the peace of sleeping citizens. However, very quickly, these failed "bikers" moved to cars, decorated even more extravagantly than motorcycles. The hoods of the Bosozoku cars bulged forward by 15-20 centimeters, and the spoilers of the unusual shape. exhaust pipes cars were brought up and often stuck out above the roof, and the cars themselves were so low that they almost touched the asphalt.

As for Russia, the first hippies appeared in our country during the days of “Gorbachev's perestroika” (1985-1990) and still exist. In the Soviet Union, these "long-haired" were sometimes called "hippies", then "hippans", or even "hippies". They lived, as a rule, in large cities, where they created their own “parties” (“Psychodrome No. 2” in Moscow on Znamenka; “Saigon” in Leningrad on Nevsky Prospekt; “Andreevsky Spusk” in Kiev). Out-of-town "people" who come to these parties always received help and support from local "hipsters".

Soviet hippies quickly created their own slang, incomprehensible to an outsider. Some of the words from this slang have survived the time and remain in use to this day: “gerla”, “people”, “session”, “track”, “civil”, etc.

At present, there are several creative hippie associations in Russia: the art group of Moscow artists "Frisia"; creative workshop "Antilir"; association of musicians "Time H"; Moscow "Commune on Prazhskaya" (it is also the fnb-group "Magik Hat"). There are also small hip communes in Chelyabinsk, Vladivostok, St. Petersburg. All of them have long been "diluted" with members of other youth subcultures - goths, emos, bikers, etc. In recent years, online communities of hippies have become increasingly popular, in connection with which the term "cyberhippie" has appeared on the Web.

The symbols and culture of hippies are now actively used by representatives of many other domestic youth subcultures. So, the slang is ready and the rappers are borrowed from the hippies with some distortions. Roleplayers wear baubles and call themselves people and hairasts. Obviously, the hippie ideology did not disappear with the completion of their vigorous activity, it continues to exist among young people, although its external attributes and slang have undergone noticeable changes.

In memory of the generation of long-haired, their admirers erected in Arcola (Illinois, USA) a memorial Peace Sign with the inscription: “Dedicated to hippies and hippies at heart. Peace and love".

New Left

In the middle of the 20th century, the English critical Marxists P. Anderson, S. Hall and E. Thompson began publishing the socio-political journal New Left Review in London. The American sociologist C. Mills used part of the name of the journal in his "Letter to the New Left", which contributed to the spread of this phrase among young people.

The New Left movement developed in the 1960s in parallel with the hippie subculture, and spread to Western Europe, Japan and the United States. Anarchists and neo-Marxists, as well as the American philosopher Herbert Marcuse, had a strong influence on the New Left. In his famous book The One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse described the western society of zombified popular culture people whose only means of protest is total rejection of the System.

Following Marcuse, the new left protested against the "consumer society", the lack of spirituality of bourgeois culture and the unification of the human person. They advocated "direct democracy", in which the state is run directly by its citizens, as well as freedom of expression and non-conformism - the ability to defend one's views regardless of public opinion.

Unlike the communists, who considered the industrial proletariat their social base, the new left sought support among the workers of the new post-industrial society. They participated in all mass movements of youth for university freedoms, in demonstrations for the civil rights of blacks and other minorities in the West. Their anti-militarist movement took on a particularly massive character during the years of the Vietnam War.

In the 1960s, the new left carried out non-violent methods of struggle, but by the end of the decade, some of them switched to extremist activities. Between October 1968 and May 1969 alone, student riots engulfed about 200 US universities. Over 750,000 people then participated in the "new left" movement, and three million Americans sympathized with them.

The subcultures of hippies, sexual minorities, and feminists were closely associated with the new left. Their ideology was quickly absorbed by the Maoists, Trotskyists and anarchists who participated in the anti-war movement. By the beginning of the 1970s, the New Left movement entered a period of ideological crisis, and with the end of the Vietnam War, it finally came to naught, having managed, however, to exert a strong influence on international left-wing radical groups - the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the "Symbiontic Liberation Army" and the "Weathermen" in the USA, the "Red Army of Japan". The New Left also had a notable influence in shaping the international Green movement.

Under the influence of the new left in the United States in 1967, the Yippie movement took shape (from the English abbreviation VIP - “International Youth Party”). The Yippies were a mixture of hippies and New Left. They collaborated with the Black Panthers, staged thousands of marches and demonstrations. A stormy public outcry was caused by the nomination of Pigasus (Svintus).

To be continued.

Social characteristics of youth. Youth is a socio-demographic group, distinguished on the basis of age parameters, social status and socio-psychological characteristics. In different countries, in different social strata, the point of view on the processes and indicators of the maturation of the individual is not the same. In this regard, the age limits of youth are not strictly unambiguous and are determined by different researchers ranging from 14–16 years to 25–30 or even 35 years. As a rule, this period of a person's life is associated with the beginning of independent labor activity, gaining material independence from parents, civil and political rights. Some scientists add more signs such as marriage and the birth of the first child.

Note that the age at which youth begins does not coincide with the age at which childhood ends, the duration of which is defined as 18 years and enshrined in international documents such as the Declaration and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In our country, young men and women receive a passport at the age of 16, and this means recognition by society of their civil maturity. Youth is a certain phase, a stage of a person's life cycle. During this period, there is a sense of its originality and individuality. On the basis of young people's awareness of their capabilities and aspirations, comprehension of previous experience, an internal position is formed, and a search for their place in life is underway.

In youth, a person has whole line important events affecting the change of its status. This is not only obtaining a passport, but also graduating from school, serving in the army. In their younger years, many people are actively looking for a profession that is significant for them, complete their education, become established as specialists, and thereby determine their new position in society. Youth is called the time of becoming. There is an opinion that before the age of 40 a person works for authority, for a name, and after 40 years, authority and a name work for a person rather.

The formation of the personality of a young person is carried out under the influence of the family, school, public organizations, informal associations and groups, the media, labor collectives. In general, young people today, much later than their peers in the past, begin independent adult life. This is due to the complication of labor activity, which entails a lengthening necessary deadlines learning.

In terms of socialization, a special place is occupied by the period of early youth. It includes boys and girls who are approximately 16-18 years old. Many at this age are quite capable of making responsible decisions, psychologically ready for this (for example, the choice of friends, educational institution, etc.), although full capacity comes only at 18 years old.

The acquisition of the fullness of rights and obligations changes the status of a young person and significantly expands the range of his social roles which undergo significant changes during adolescence. If the roles of a child and a teenager are mainly related to the family (son / daughter, brother / sister, grandson / granddaughter), school (student / student), various forms of leisure activities (participant in the sports section, hobby group), then new ones appear in youth. : worker, student, husband, wife, mother, father, etc. Friendship, love, work experience help young people feel like adults for the first time, ideally they form the ability to be with another person in a relationship based on trust, support and tenderness. However, the difficulties of socializing young people can lead to psychological breakdowns. First of all, the gap between the desire to most likely achieve and the inability, unwillingness to achieve the goals set by painstaking work has a negative effect. Well, if there is willpower, diligence, patience, if a person is not spoiled.

It is not uncommon for modern young people, on the one hand, to want to remain children as long as possible, shifting the care of themselves, and even of their young family, to their parents, and on the other hand, they demand to be treated as adults, seek non-interference in their personal life. Such behavior is called infantilism. Infantilism(from lat. infantilis - infantile, childish) - this is the preservation in adults of the physical and mental traits characteristic of childhood. Such features are emotional instability, immaturity of judgments, irresponsibility, capriciousness. This condition is sometimes the result of diseases suffered in early childhood, or some other reasons that led to excessive care from parents or close people. But if you are already an adult, then take the trouble to be him in practice and be fully responsible for yourself.

A person feels young as long as he is capable of creativity, can change, rebuild himself and at the same time be responsible for everything he has done. There are people who feel young not only in their mature years, but also in a very advanced age. Youth prolongs doing what you love, in which there is interest and creative activity, as well as healthy lifestyle life. The feeling of youth is manifested both in appearance and in human behavior. “A person is as old as he feels himself to be,” says a well-known aphorism.

Youth subculture. The desire to communicate with their peers leads to the development of a specifically "youthful" self-consciousness and lifestyle - a youth subculture. Under youth subculture refers to the culture of a certain young generation, characterized by a common style of life, behaviors, group norms and stereotypes. As a special subculture, it has its own goals, values, ideals, illusions, which do not always and do not exactly repeat those prevailing in adult society; it even has its own language.

The reasons for the formation of the youth subculture are the desire of people of this age to separate themselves, first of all, from the elders, the desire to belong to any community of peers, the search for their own path in the "adult world". Formed both formal and informal youth groups. Formal groups are officially registered and are often led by adults. The motives for joining this or that group, this or that youth direction, are different. This is primarily a desire to gain mutual understanding and support, to feel stronger and more secure; sometimes it is also a desire to feel power over others.

There are many types of youth groups and associations. Some of them are characterized by aggressive self-activity based on rather dubious or even asocial value orientations. Primitivism, flashy visibility of self-affirmation is also popular among some teenagers and young people. For individual young people, outrageous outrageousness is often the most accessible form of self-affirmation.

Some groups actively oppose themselves to the adult world. Call public opinion most often expressed in the features of clothing and fashionable additions to it. Sometimes direct antisocial acts (hooliganism, fights) are also committed. In this case, society is faced with deviant behavior.

In the youth subculture, as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, in turn, there are smaller, but nevertheless rigidly designed subcultures (punks, ravers, rockers, skins, football and music fans, etc.).

At the same time, groups of social amateur performance aimed at constructively solving specific social problems are becoming more and more authoritative in the youth environment. These include environmental movements, activities for the revival and preservation of cultural and historical heritage, the provision of mutual support (warriors who fought in "hot spots", the disabled, etc.); the activities of volunteers who help people who are especially in dire need of it are also important.

Social mobility of youth. Youth is the most active, mobile and dynamic part of the population.

social mobility called the transition of people from one social group to another. A distinction is made between horizontal and vertical mobility. Horizontal mobility is the transition of a person to another social group without changing social status, for example, divorce and education new family, transfer to work in the same position from one enterprise to another, etc. Vertical mobility associated with the transition up or down the steps of the social ladder. This, for example, promotion or, conversely, demotion, or even deprivation of work. A private entrepreneur can go from being a small owner to becoming the owner of a reputable firm, but it can also go bankrupt.

In modern society, the intensity of the processes of horizontal and vertical mobility increases dramatically. The reason for this is the dynamism public life, rapid transformations in the economy, the emergence of new professions and activities and the curtailment, even the disappearance of many old, once quite respectable industries and related jobs.

Today a young man entering independent life, must be prepared for the fact that he may have to retrain, master new occupations, constantly improve his qualifications in order to be in demand on the labor market. Many young people will need to consider moving to another city or changing careers to work in rural areas. The fact is that young people often lose out in competition with older, skilled and experienced workers who already have good reputation. It is no coincidence that youth unemployment rates are particularly high in many countries.

At the same time, young people are on the side of quick reaction to changes taking place in the labor market. It is easier for young people to master new professions generated by scientific and technological progress. They make decisions easier than older people to move to a new place of work and residence, start a business, undergo retraining, etc.

The acceleration of the pace of social life entails the transformation of young people into an active subject of the economy, politics, and culture. The activity of young people is also clearly manifested in the sphere of politics, since all ongoing political processes directly or indirectly affect the life of young people, their position in society. Society and its power structures are oriented towards young people as the most promising age category in terms of social and professional careers.

Young people are in many ways the way society has raised them. At the same time, she, as a rule, has her own common sense, the intention to get a quality education, the desire to work for the benefit of herself and people.

Questions and tasks.

1. What factors influence the definition of the age limits of youth? Why does the age at which youth begins not coincide with the age at which childhood ends?

2. What is the contradictory nature of the socialization of young people?

3. There are many various classifications youth groups and associations. So, according to the nature of the motivation of amateur performance, they are divided as follows:

· aggressive self-activity, which is based on the most primitive ideas about the hierarchy of values ​​based on the cult of persons;

shocking amateur performance, which consists in “calling” aggression on oneself in order to be “noted”;

· alternative self-activity, consisting in the development of behavior patterns that are contrary to generally accepted norms;

constructive social initiative aimed at solving specific social problems.

What motives for joining youth groups and associations can be considered positive? Which of the above types of amateur performance, in your opinion, is socially acceptable? Give specific examples of youth groups with these types of activities.

4. What, in your opinion, is the role of youth in the development of modern society?

5. Create a verbal "portrait" of a typical young person in our country. Indicate his life plans, mastered social roles, etc. What qualities do you personally lack?

Study assignments for topic 1

1. Washington D.C. professor Denis Bolz (USA) writes:

"IN high school I taught sociological subjects: history, political science, psychology, sociology and international relations.” In what sense is the word "sociology" used here? How is sociology defined today?

2. Depending on the subject, conflicts can be subdivided:

- on intrapersonal (between the conscious and unconscious desires of the individual, between the requirements of conscience and the desire for pleasure, between instinctive urges and norms of culture and morality);

- interpersonal (between two or more individuals who are at war with each other due to competition for the possession of vital resources in the form of property, power, position, prestige, etc.);

- intragroup and intergroup (they arise both within a social group and between different groups as a result of the struggle of individuals and their communities for better conditions and a higher degree of remuneration for activities in a group - industrial, political, sports, etc.);

- ethno-national (occur when the interests and attitudes of one ethnic group or nation are infringed or suppressed by the state, representatives of other nations or other social communities);

- international (arise between nations due to a clash of economic, territorial, ideological interests, etc.).

According to the scale and prevalence in sociology, conflicts are local, regional, within one country, global.

Give examples of these types of conflicts from history, literature, and the media.

3. Let's think about the representatives of which professions should have the most developed sociological thinking and sociological vision of the world? In other words, who needs sociological knowledge the most? To do this, analyze the professions (driver, teacher, salesman, miner, manager, pilot, farmer, janitor, waiter, banker, magician, journalist, border guard, plumber, cook, engineer) according to two criteria:

a) how often their representatives have to communicate with people on duty;

b) whose professional or business success to the greatest extent depends on the knowledge of the psychology of people and the ability to solve social problems.

For convenience, break professions into three groups with strong, medium and weak severity of these signs.

4. How do you understand the saying of Mark Twain: “When I was 14 years old, my father was so stupid that I could hardly bear him, but when I was 21 years old, I was amazed at how much this old man had grown wiser over the past seven years” ?

What features of the younger generation can be illustrated by this statement? Justify your answer.

5. Men and women, entering into interpersonal relationships regarding family organization and marriage, go through several stages: premarital relationship between potential spouses (love, matchmaking, engagement); marriage; stage young family; the appearance of children, the formation complete family; stage mature family(growing up of children, their socialization); as well as the stage family breakdown(for reasons of divorce, or the death of one of the parents; aging, illness and death; separation of children from parents, etc.).

Discuss this chart with your parents. At what stage do they see their family? What joys and difficulties of the passed stages do they remember most of all? How does this relate to you?

6. Do you agree with the opinion that young people have better adapted to the conditions of modern Belarusian reality than representatives of older generations? Give examples.

7. Discuss which of the following criteria determine whether a young person has reached adult status: economic independence, living apart from parents, marriage, participation in elections, having a child, ability to answer before the law. Think about what other criteria you could name as defining. Justify your answer.

8. In the novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is very subtly noted: "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." How do you understand the words of the great writer?

9. Pick up sayings of famous people about the family that are close to you. Explain your choice.

10. It is known that any social phenomenon necessarily has two sides - positive and negative. There are no unilateral events. If you only find the negative, then you missed or haven't found the positive yet.

For example, "hippies" were considered in the 60s. both in our country and abroad, mainly as a negative phenomenon. But years have passed, and it turned out that it was they who awakened ecological consciousness in society, which changed our world for the better.

Find positive and negative sides the following phenomena:

Collectivization of the 30s

Massovization of culture

Gorbachev's perestroika.

Migration of people from the village to the city.

The collapse of the USSR.

12. Compare two approaches to the problem of the social ideal.

A.V. Lunacharsky: “The meaning of our socialist work is to build a life that would make it possible to develop all the possibilities hidden in a person, which would make a person dozens of times smarter, happier, more beautiful and richer than today.”

J. Adams: “The American dream is not just a dream of cars and a high salary, it is a dream of such social order in which every man and every woman can rise to their full height, to which they are internally capable, and receive recognition - as such, what they are - from other people, regardless of the accidental circumstances of their birth and position.

13. From the standpoint of the stratification theory, society is viewed as a system of social strata. The widely used so-called one-level stratification(when dividing society according to one attribute) and multilevel(when a society is divided simultaneously on two or more grounds, for example, on grounds of prestige, professional, income level, level of education, religious affiliation, etc.).

Build a diagram: "The social structure of the Belarusian society" in the 20s (30s, 80s) 20th century Describe the dynamics based on it social structure Belarusian society. What do you think caused it?

14. According to the 1999 population census, out of 10,045,000 inhabitants of Belarus, 81% of them identified themselves as the titular nationality - Belarusians. 19% of the population represent more than 140 nationalities and nationalities, including 11% (1,141,731 people) identified themselves as Russians; 3.9% (395,712 people) - Poles; 2.4% (237,015 people) - Ukrainians; 0.3% (27,798 people) are Jews. Throughout the centuries-old history, a stable interaction of the culture of the titular nation with the culture of other national communities, primarily Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Tatars, has been preserved.

Compare the 1999 census data with previous census results. To do this, build comparison table. What historical events led to the changes you identified. Give examples of mutual assistance, cooperation known to you. different nationalities in Belarus.

15. Build a block diagram: "Types of social groups." Specify it with examples.

Documents and materials

1. P. Sorokin believes that social space is a kind of universe, consisting of the population of the Earth. Where there are no human individuals, or where only one person lives, there is no social space (or universe), since one individual cannot have any relation to others. It can only be located in geometric, but not in social space. Accordingly, to determine the position of a person or any social phenomenon in the social space means to determine his (their) attitude to other people and other social phenomena taken as such “reference points”. The very choice of "reference points" depends on us: they can be individuals, groups or aggregates of groups.

To determine the social position of a person, it is necessary to know his marital status, citizenship, nationality, attitude to religion, profession, membership in political parties, economic status, his origin, etc. But this is not all. Since there are completely different positions within the same group (for example, a king and an ordinary citizen within the same state), it is also necessary to know the position of a person within each of the main population groups.

1) social space is the population of the Earth;

2) social status is the totality of his ties with all groups of the population, within each of these groups, that is, with its members;

3) the position of a person in the social universe is determined by establishing these connections;

4) the totality of such groups, as well as the totality of positions within each of them, constitutes a system of social coordinates that makes it possible to determine the social position of any individual.

Based on the characteristics of P. Sorokin, determine the place of the Republic of Belarus in the social space. What is the position of your family in the social space?

2. Get acquainted with an excerpt from the work of the German sociologist R. Dahrendorf "Elements of the theory of social conflict."

The regulation of social conflicts is a decisive condition for the reduction of violent almost all types of conflicts. Conflicts do not disappear through their resolution; they do not necessarily become immediately less intense, but to the extent that they can be regulated, they become controlled, and their creative power is put at the service of the gradual development of social structures ...

For this, it is necessary that conflicts in general, as well as these individual contradictions, be recognized by all participants as inevitable, and moreover, as justified and expedient. The one who does not allow conflicts, considers them as pathological deviations from an imaginary normal state, fails to cope with them. Resigned recognition of the inevitability of conflicts is also not enough. Rather, it is necessary to be aware of the fruitful creative principle of conflicts. This means that any intervention in conflicts must be limited to regulating their manifestations and that futile attempts to eliminate their causes must be abandoned.

How does the author assess the possibility of conflict regulation? Based on the texts of the paragraph and the document, formulate the basic principles of compromise conflict resolution. Illustrate them with examples you know. How do you understand the meaning of the last sentence of the text? What conclusion can be drawn from the read text for understanding the social conflict?

3. Get acquainted with the reasoning of I. S. Aksakov:

“Society, in our opinion, is that environment in which the conscious, mental activity of a certain people takes place, which is created by all the spiritual forces of the people, developing the people's self-consciousness. In other words; society is... self-conscious people.

What is a people?.. A people consists of separate units, each having its own personal intelligent life, activity and freedom; each of them, taken separately, is not a people, but all together they make up that whole phenomenon, that new face, which is called the people and in which all individual personalities disappear ...

There is no society yet, but a state is already emerging over the people - continuing to live an immediate life. But doesn't the state express people's self-consciousness? No, it is only an external definition given to itself by the people; its activity, that is, the state, and the sphere of its activity are purely external... And so we have: on the one hand, the people in their immediate being; on the other hand, the state - as an external definition of the people, borrowing its strength from the people - strengthening at its expense with its inaction inner life, with its long-term stay in immediate being; finally, between the state and the people - society, i.e. the same people, but in its highest human meaning ... "

How, according to I. S. Aksakov, do the state, people and society differ from each other? Why does the state not express the people's self-consciousness?

4. From the work of the modern American sociologist E. Shilze "Society and Societies: Macrosociological Approach".

What is included in societies? As has been said, the most differentiated of these consist not only of families and kinship groups, but also of associations, unions, firms and farms, schools and universities, armies, churches and sects, the party and numerous other corporate bodies or organizations which, in in turn, have boundaries that define the circle of members over which the appropriate corporate authorities - parents, managers, chairmen, etc., etc. - exercise a certain measure of control. It also includes systems formally and informally organized along territorial lines - communities, villages, districts, cities, districts - all of which also have some features of society. Further, it includes unorganized collections of people within society - social classes or strata, occupations and professions, religions, language groups - who have a culture that is more inherent in those who have a certain status or position than everyone else.

So, we have seen that society is not just a collection of united people, original and cultural collectives, interacting and exchanging services with each other. All these collectives form a society by virtue of their existence under common authority which exercises its control over the territory defined by the boundaries, maintains and propagates a more or less common culture. It is these factors that make a set of relatively specialized original corporate and cultural collectives into a society.

What components, according to E. Shils, are included in society? Indicate to which spheres of life of society each of them belongs. Select from the listed components those that are social institutions. Based on the text, prove that the author considers society as a social system.

5. Julian Simon, in his book Basic Methods of Research in Social Science (New York, 1969), writes:

“Psychology students often think that a laboratory experiment, during which causal relationships are established between various aspects of the behavior of animals or people, exhausts all the possibilities of social research.

Many of those involved in concrete economics are still convinced that only statistical analysis, which allows one to give an objective picture of the fluctuations in prices and the mass of goods, is the most reliable measure of economic behavior.

In contrast, some anthropologists continue to believe that participant observation remains the most reliable way of knowing, as a result of which we study the daily interactions of people who create the social world in which we live.

At the same time, psychoanalysts are convinced of the infallibility of getting used to or feeling into the inner world of their patient as the only reliable method of studying human behavior, its intimate motives.

And marketers do not recognize other means than studying how the aspirations of a particular individual are related to his social characteristics and consumer behavior.

Indeed, each science that studies human behavior has developed its own scientific traditions and accumulated relevant empirical experience. And each of them, being one of the branches of social science, can be defined in terms of the method that it predominantly uses. Although not only in this way. The sciences also differ in terms of the problems they study.

What are the main methods of studying people? What can be learned about them through observation? What is an experiment? What calculations are carried out when studying the behavior of people and their opinions? What research methods will be required in order to determine: a) the population of a given country; b) readiness of people to vote in the forthcoming parliamentary elections; c) ways of interaction of miners during the strike; d) the rate at which rumors spread?

6. Read the judgment of one of the leading American sociologists, Wright Mills:

“By institution I understand the social form of a certain set of social roles. Institutions are classified according to their tasks (religious, military, educational, etc.), form an institutional order. The combination of institutional orders forms a social structure.

Society is a configuration of institutions that, in their functioning, limit the freedom of action of people. In modern society, there are five institutional orders: 1) economic - institutions that organize economic activity; 2) political - institutions of power; 3) family - institutions that regulate sexual relations, the birth and socialization of children; 4) military - institutions that organize legal heritage; 5) religious - institutions that organize the collective worship of the gods.

What important institution is not named by R. Mills in the list of institutional orders?

7. Get acquainted with the following judgment:

“Young people are beginning to be afraid and hate, artificially opposing them to the “adult” society. And this is fraught with serious social explosions. The crisis in Russian society has given rise to an acute conflict of generations, which is not limited to the traditional for any society divergence of "fathers" and "children" in their views on clothes and hairstyles, in tastes in music, dancing and behavior. In Russia, it concerns the philosophical, ideological, spiritual foundations of the development of society and man, basic views on the economy and production, and the material life of society. The generation of "fathers" found itself in a position where the transfer of material and spiritual heritage to successors is practically absent. The social values ​​by which the "fathers" lived, in the new historical situation, have overwhelmingly lost their practical significance and, therefore, are not inherited by the "children", since they are not suitable for them either for the present or for the future life. There is a gap in generations in Russian society, reflecting a break in gradualness, a gap in historical development, the transition of society to the rails of a fundamentally different system.

What kind of generational gap and conflict between “fathers” and “children” are we talking about here? What is the essence this phenomenon? Argument your position.

8. E. Starikov in the article “Marginals, or Reflections on an old topic; “What is happening to us?”, which was published in the Znamya magazine in 1985, writes:

... Marginal, simply speaking, is an “intermediate” person. The classic figure of the marginal is a man who has come from the countryside to the city in search of work: no longer a peasant, not yet a worker; the norms of the village subculture have already been undermined, the urban subculture has not yet been assimilated. There is no unemployment in our country, but there are declassed representatives of workers, collective farmers, intelligentsia, and the administrative apparatus. What is their distinguishing feature? First of all, in the absence of a kind of professional code of honor. The physical impossibility of hacking distinguishes a professional worker.

Only under stable conditions permanent place residence and work, normal living environment, a strong family, the existing system of social ties, in a word, the "rootedness" of the individual allows you to develop a clear hierarchy of values, conscious group norms and interests. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, "there is nothing in the world more precious than the bonds that connect man to man." To tear them means to dehumanize a person, to destroy society. Everything that weakens human bonds, unnecessary bans, mass migrations, forced distributions, forced evictions, barbed fences - everything that we are still so burdened with is to be avoided.

The rootless human "I" blurs: the motives of behavior begin to form in isolation from the values ​​of a stable group, that is, they largely lose their meaning. Morality ceases to rule actions, giving way to benefit, convenience, and sometimes physiological need (this is the explanation for "unmotivated" cruelty, "senseless" crimes).

In the bowels of society, there are two multidirectional processes. Some of the outcasts quickly turn into lumpen. Look who sells kvass, pies, bus tickets; ask who aspires to be butchers, bartenders, bottle collectors; not to mention the lawless hordes of speculators, blackmailers, prostitutes. These are mostly young people. The path to the social bottom, as a rule, is irrevocable. Another process - the process of taking root in the cities of recent rural residents - in itself, in principle, is even progressive. If, moving to the city, a person can count on a decent skilled work, then from a marginal, he turns into a full-fledged city dweller.

How would you define the social essence of the marginalized and the sources of replenishment of their ranks? What does the process of rootedness mean, and how does the deprivation of social roots differ from it? Why does a person's value system change when he gets from a stable social environment to an unstable one? How did you understand the idea of ​​two differently directed processes? Can they be likened to upward and downward social mobility?

Because of man's biological ability to procreate, his physical abilities are used to increase his food supply.

The population is strictly limited by the means of subsistence.

Population growth can only be stopped by counter-reasons, which amount to moral abstinence, or by misfortunes (wars, epidemics, famine).

Malthus also comes to the conclusion that the population is growing exponentially, and the means of subsistence - in arithmetic.

Which of the views of Malthus turned out to be prophetic? How can scientific and technological revolution compensate for the limited natural resources?

10. German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) identified youth as a kind of reserve that comes to the fore when such revitalization becomes necessary to adapt to rapidly changing or qualitatively new circumstances. Youth performs the function of an enlivening mediator of social life. This parameter is universal and is not limited by place or time. Young people, according to Mannheim, are neither progressive nor conservative in nature, they are potential, ready for any undertaking.

How do you understand Manheim's words? Is this true for today's youth?

11. From the work of the Russian sociologist O. S. Osinova “Deviant behavior: good or evil?”.

The form of society's response to one or another type of deviation should depend on which (generally) social norms are being violated; universal, racial, class, group, etc. The following dependencies can be distinguished:

– The higher level (according to the degree of generality) social norms and values ​​are violated, the more resolute should be the actions of the state. The highest value is the natural rights of man.

The youth- this is a special social and age group, distinguished by age limits and their status in society: the transition from childhood and youth to social responsibility. Some scientists understand youth as a set of young people to whom society provides an opportunity for social development, providing them with benefits, but limiting their ability to actively participate in certain areas of society. Young people in a significant part have the level of mobility, intellectual activity and health that distinguishes them favorably from other groups of the population. During this period, the person lives milestone family and outside family socialization.

Today, scientists define youth as a socio-demographic group of society, singled out on the basis of a combination of characteristics, features of social status and due to certain socio-psychological properties that are determined by the level of socio-economic, cultural development, features of socialization in Russian society.

The boundaries of youth age are mobile. They depend on the socio-economic development of society, the level of well-being and culture achieved, and the living conditions of people. The impact of these factors is really manifested in the life expectancy of people, expanding the boundaries of youth age from 14 to 30 years.

Differentiation of young people according to the age allows us to distinguish three main groups:

• · 14-19 years old(boys and girls) - a group of young people who are financially dependent on their parental families and who are faced with the choice of a profession;
• · 20-24 years old(youth in the narrow sense of the word) - a youth group integrating into the socio-professional structure of society, acquiring material and social independence;
• · 25-29 years old(young adults) - a socio-demographic group that is completing the acquisition of a full set of social statuses and roles, which has become the subject of social reproduction.

Thus, we can conclude that the lower age limit is determined by the fact that from the age of 14 physical maturity begins and a person can be engaged in labor activity (the period of choice to study or work). The upper limit is determined by the achievement of economic independence, professional and personal stability.

As structural elements You can also distinguish the following groups of young people:

• · demographic(gender, age, marital status);
• · national-ethnic;
• · target and contact(for example, all young people aspiring to enter higher education; all young people working in the organization);
• · by level of education;
• · at the place of residence(urban and rural youth);
• · according to the degree of socio-political activity;
• · by hobby(athletes, musicians, etc.);
• · by professional affiliation.

The application of these and other typological criteria allows you to build a multidimensional personal space of young people.

Thus, it would be more correct to speak not about youth in general, but about studying, student or working youth; youth from large central cities, provincial cities or youth from rural areas, etc. It follows from this that when determining the social positions of young people, their various groups, it is necessary to study the qualitative social characteristics of young people: social composition and origin, financial situation of parents, worldview and religious affiliation, education, professional activities, political views, etc.

In developmental psychology, youth is characterized as a period of formation of a stable system of values, the formation of self-awareness and the formation of the social status of an individual. The consciousness of a young person has a special susceptibility, the ability to process and assimilate a huge flow of information. During this period, critical thinking develops, the desire to give one's own assessment of various phenomena, the search for argumentation, original thinking. At the same time, at this age, some attitudes and stereotypes characteristic of the previous generation are still preserved. This is due to the fact that the period of vigorous activity in a young person encounters a limited nature of practical, creative activity, an incomplete involvement of a young person in the system of social relations. Hence, in the behavior of young people, there is an amazing combination of contradictory qualities and traits: the desire for identification and isolation, conformism and negativism, imitation and denial of generally accepted norms, the desire for communication and withdrawal, detachment from the outside world. The instability and inconsistency of youth consciousness have an impact on many forms of behavior and activity of the individual. The formation of the social maturity of young people occurs under the influence of many relatively independent factors: families, educational institutions, labor collectives, the media, youth organizations and spontaneous groups. This plurality of institutions and mechanisms of socialization does not represent a rigid hierarchical system; each of them performs its own specific functions in the development of the individual.

Value orientations are the most important elements of the internal structure of the personality, fixed life experience individual. The set of established, established experiences that separate the significant, the essential from the insignificant forms a kind of axis of consciousness that ensures the stability of the personality, the continuity of a certain type of behavior, and activity, expressed in the direction of needs and interests. As a result, value orientations are the most important factor that ensure the cohesion of social groups and regulate the behavior of the individual. Through orientation, a person selects the most significant objects for him. Thus, orientations reflect the selectivity of people. This circumstance gives them the status of an independent phenomenon.

Youth, as a social group, whose position is completely determined by its socio-economic condition, first of all reacts to the changes taking place in society. The youth is of interest as a generation that in the near future will take the place of the main productive force, and therefore its values ​​will largely determine the values ​​of the whole society. The situation in the country as a whole largely depends on what principles, norms and values ​​this social group adheres to.

The system of value orientations of the individual, although it is formed under the influence of the values ​​that prevail in society and the immediate social environment surrounding the individual, is not rigidly predetermined by them. The personality is not passive in the process of forming its orientations. The values ​​offered by society, the individual assimilates selectively. The formation of value orientations is influenced not only by social factors, but also some characteristics of the individual himself, his personal characteristics. The system of value orientations is not given once and for all: with changes in living conditions, the personality itself, new values ​​appear, and sometimes they are completely or partially reassessed. Once again, it should be emphasized that the value orientations of young people, as the most dynamic part of Russian society, are the first to undergo changes caused by various processes taking place in the life of the country.

In the value orientations of modern Russian youth, it is traditionally possible to distinguish 2 groups of values: terminal - beliefs that some ultimate goal of individual existence is worth striving for; instrumental - beliefs that some mode of action or personality trait is preferable in any situation. This division corresponds to the traditional division into values-goals and values-means.

At present, the analysis of the values ​​of different generations, and especially young people and its specific part - students, which, as a social group, is characterized by age, belonging to a higher school and involvement in the process of forming a layer of intellectuals, is of particular relevance. Modern Russian students are forced to focus on a mixed system of values. Traditional values ​​have not been completely replaced by Western ones and, most likely, a complete change of values ​​will not happen. However, the change in the socio-cultural situation with an attempt to create a market economy in Russia, democratic changes, led to the emergence and increase in the importance of some values ​​that were absent or were on the periphery of the traditional system of values.

Values ​​effectively determine the behavior of people, if only they are introduced not by force of coercion, but are based on the authority of society. Studying the value orientations of students makes it possible to identify the degree of their adaptation to new social conditions and their innovative potential. The future state of society largely depends on what value foundation will be formed.

Characteristics of modern youth

The intellectual and educational values ​​of modern youth should be considered from the perspective of their mental, creativity which, unfortunately, has declined significantly in recent years. This is due to the deterioration of the physical and mental condition of the younger generation. The new conditions have given rise to new problems that have become inherent in the socio-cultural values ​​of today's youth.

Without having an idea of ​​what the basic values, guidelines, views and interests of a young person are today, it is extremely difficult to count on a positive result in the process of forming the best qualities of a citizen in him. Under the conditions of very unfavorable influences of the macro environment as a whole, the prestige of morality has decreased, greedy orientations, and purely personal, pragmatic interests among the youth have increased. A significant part of young people have destroyed and lost such traditional moral and psychological traits as romanticism, selflessness, readiness for a feat, honesty, conscientiousness, faith in goodness and justice, the desire for truth and the search for an ideal, for the positive realization of not only personal, but also social significant interests and goals, and others.