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cultural sociology

Cultural sociology (cultural sociology)

A discipline that studies the special laws of the emergence and development of culture and its social functions.

Origin and evolution

The name of cultural sociology was originally put forward by German sociologist P. Barthes in his book Historical Philosophy of Sociology (1897). In his view, Spencer only talked about "sociology in the natural age", but more importantly, he studied "sociology in the cultural age".

Cultural sociology has two sources: sociology in Germany and France; British and American cultural anthropology or social anthropology. Because the source is different, the meaning is different. Cultural sociology has two meanings: as a new comprehensive sociology and as a branch of sociology.

① Cultural sociology as a new comprehensive sociology. Mainly formed in Germany and France, especially Germany. 1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, social, economic and cultural turmoil and crisis appeared in western capitalist countries. At that time, philosophy and social scientists generally believed that this was mainly caused by the crisis of social and cultural value system. They turned to cultural studies and redefined the research object and theoretical method of sociology. After the defeat of Germany in the First World War, the sacred Germanic cultural centralism went bankrupt, and German sociologists had to re-examine German culture and study the development of national cultures in the world. Gimel's formal sociology and Durkheim's "group representation" sociology came into being.

Zimmel divided sociology into three categories: general sociology, formal sociology and philosophical sociology. He believes that formal sociology is the focus of sociology, and sociology studies the pure form of social phenomena. Because the "pure" form is abstract and difficult to grasp, Weiser and Fairkant replaced the form with "relationship" and called sociology "relationship". M weber, W Sambat, M Scheler and others revised formal sociology and relational science, and put forward cultural sociology with culture as the research object, which is the new comprehensive sociology. German cultural sociology mainly studies the development of different mental states in human history. In The Decline of the West (19 18 ~ 1922), O. Spengler divided the elegant culture in human history into eight different types, and studied their different passions, thoughts and the reasons for their growth, development and extinction. M weber's Essays on Sociology of Religion (1920 ~ 192 1) studies the different ethical spirits of the six major religions in the world (Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Israel and Judaism) and their relationship with the economic system. Therefore, German cultural sociology can also be regarded as cultural philosophy or historical philosophy. Although it is mainly spiritual and cultural, it contains a wide range of contents. In Scheler's Research on Sociology of Knowledge (1924), cultural sociology includes sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion and sociology of technology.

Durkheim established his own unique cultural sociology with the concept of "group representation". His "group representation" is similar to a wide range of cultural concepts, including group consciousness, behavior mode, system and so on. These are beyond personal psychology and have the characteristics of externality and compulsion. He believes that sociology should take "group representation" as the research object.

② Cultural sociology as a branch of sociology. Mainly in Britain and the United States, cultural anthropology or social anthropology gradually evolved from the study of primitive culture to the study of modern social life, which can be regarded as the product of the application of cultural anthropology or social anthropology in modern social life and the combination with sociology. Especially in the United States, with the emergence of urbanization and immigration, sociology is required to be "Americanized", and the research focus of cultural anthropology is also required to shift to modern social life, thus promoting the emergence of American cultural sociology. F. In Anthropology and Modern Life (1928 ~ 1938), boas believes that only by deeply studying the culture and ideals of each nation and incorporating different cultural values into objective research can strict science be established. A.L. kroeber and R.H. Lowe also believe that sociology should study the cultural phenomenon of super-individuals to explain the development process of social history. Ogburn's Social Change (1922) is a representative work of studying cultural phenomena and changes in modern society from the perspective of cultural anthropology. It is believed that many problems in modern society originate from culture and can only be solved by paying attention to the study of cultural factors in society. Another source of American cultural anthropology is ethnosociology. G. Liepeng believes in the article "Fields and Problems of Cultural Sociology and Ethnology" (1934) that cultural sociology is to study the general culture in human society, while ethnology is to study the special culture in national society, and the latter provides research materials for the former, while the former conducts comprehensive research on the latter.

British cultural sociology originated from social anthropology of functional school, with Malinowski and Brown as the main representatives. Malinowski said in "On Culture": "Scientific anthropology should know that its primary task is to establish a prudent and rigorous cultural theory. This cultural theory should include comparative sociology and unify all social sciences. " He also believes that scientific anthropology is a functional analysis of various cultures and should be carried out "according to the law of experience" or according to the law of functional relationship. Radcliffe-Brown believes that any culture is a complete system in the article Anthropological Research of Modern Society (1935), so he advocates using sociological methods to study various cultural phenomena. He called his functional anthropology "comparative sociology" and thought that comparative sociology and social anthropology were the theorization of function. He focuses on the function of culture, so his comparative sociology is also a kind of "functional cultural sociology".

research contents

The content of cultural sociology research is quite extensive, which can be summarized as follows: ① the origin, accumulation and mutation of culture; ② The relationship between the emergence, development and distribution of culture and natural ecological environment; ③ Different cultural levels of time and space development; ④ Different attributes of the social system of cultural development, such as nationality and class; ⑤ Production, circulation, storage, dissemination and application of culture; ⑥ Ways and means of cultural transmission, diffusion and control; ⑦ The process of cultural conflict, differentiation, adjustment and integration; ⑧ The motivation, law and cycle of cultural change; 9 the relationship between culture and socialization, culture and civilization, culture and lifestyle. Pay attention to the position and function of culture in modernization. In addition, it also studies the development trend of national culture and the trend of world culture, and its applied research involves many issues such as economic development, urbanization, social management, youth education and scientific and technological development.

Main theory

Since19th century, cultural sociology has formed various theories and methods in its emergence and development, but there is no fixed model. His views on cultural essence and social function can be summarized as the following theoretical viewpoints.

(1) Evolutionary view of cultural sociology. From19th century Spencer, E.B. Taylor and others' cultural research on positivistic sociology to the social and cultural research of cultural anthropology in 1940s-1950s, this view belongs to neo-positivist cultural sociology. Spencer believes that culture is gradually evolving from simple to complex, from simple material to heterogeneous. Taylor believes that the distribution of culture, like a list of animals and plants, is determined by the natural geographical environment. A.C. Harden of Britain believes that human culture develops in parallel; German J. Lipper believes that a cultural history is the history of human development from a low-level barbaric state to a high-level civilized state. /kloc-there is a simple tendency of biological analogy in the cultural sociology thought in the 0/9th century. From 1940s to 1950s, a new positivist theory of cultural sociology emerged, the most representative of which was L.A. White's "technological determinism". He believes that the development of technology is the basis of cultural evolution, and other factors are secondary.

② Cultural sociological viewpoint of communication theory. 1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, some ethnologists and cultural anthropologists from German cultural circle school, British communication school and American history school studied cultural communication from social factors. They attributed the appearance of culture to a single and one-off phenomenon, studied the process of cultural communication from historical figures, navigation, war and other aspects, and attributed the same cultural phenomenon in other places to the result of communication. The main representatives are symbolic interactionists G.H Meade and C morris, who regard culture as a meaningful symbol and cultural communication as a process of individual interaction or interaction. Symbolic interaction theory is based on the subjectivism of mutual understanding, but under the influence of modern natural science, it is increasingly moving towards the study of social and cultural structure process. Compared with the cultural communication theory of ethnology and cultural anthropology, it has more sociological significance in studying the social function of culture.

③ Functionalist view of cultural sociology. There are mainly the French sociological yearbook school represented by Durkheim, the functional school represented by British Malinowski, and the structuralists in the 1940s and 1950s. It is believed that the emergence of culture is the need of social function, and the essence of culture lies in maintaining social norms and is a value tool. Malinowski believes that different cultural functions constitute different cultural layouts, and the significance of culture depends on "its position in the human activity system, its related thoughts and its full value". Parsons' theory of structural functionalism holds that culture is a tool of social structure system, and the exertion of cultural function is restricted by various social structure levels. Cultural system not only determines people's values, but also constitutes people's code of conduct. Dewey, an American pragmatic philosopher, said in his book Culture and Freedom: "Every culture has its own style, and its organizational strength has its own unique arrangement"; No matter what the natural components of human nature are, the culture of an era and a group has a decisive influence on their arrangement, which determines the activity style of any group, family, clan, nation, sect, political party and class. Because structural functionalists overemphasize the role of cultural patterns and institutions and neglect the study of cultural dynamics and changes, the theory of cultural sociology of generative structuralism by L. Goldman and others appeared in the 1960s, which not only studies the position and role of culture in the real social structure, but also studies the historical process and deep structure of cultural occurrence.

(4) The cultural sociology view of the theory of mind. The theory of using human psychology to explain the emergence and function of cultural phenomena can be traced back to the works of early cultural anthropologists such as A. Bastian in Germany and Taylor in Britain in the19th century, and sociologists such as L.F. Ward and F.H. Giddings in the United States. At the beginning of the 20th century, French works such as Durkheim and Levi-Brewer and American works such as boas also had this tendency. Bastia explained the origin of human culture with "primitive idea", while Taylor explained the formation of culture in the lower stage of primitive society with "primitive belief". In the19th century and the early 20th century, ethnic psychologists and Freudians explained human cultural phenomena from a psychological perspective. According to Raaheim Gezo of Freudian school, all kinds of cultural phenomena are based on "pornography" and "sexual desire", and even farmers' cultivation of land symbolizes maternal fertilization. M. Meade, a school of national psychology, studies the characteristics of national culture from personal psychology, and deduces the national cultural model from the personal experience of different nationalities.

Relationship with related disciplines

Cultural sociology is not only related to anthropology, ethnology and folklore, but also different. An important source of cultural sociology is cultural anthropology and ethnology. Cultural anthropology belongs to a branch of anthropology, whose main task is to study primitive national culture; Cultural sociology is a branch of sociology, which studies not only primitive national social culture, but also modern national social culture. Cultural anthropology also studies modern social culture, but it focuses on the influence of culture on human development, unlike cultural sociology which focuses on the development law and social function of culture itself. Cultural anthropology focuses on describing human behavior in different cultural situations, while cultural sociology focuses on explaining human behavior from different social and cultural structures. In terms of cultural development and functional social system, they are consistent. Ethnology mainly studies the origin, development process, geographical distribution, cultural development and customs of all ethnic groups, as well as their cultural characteristics, ethnic relations or connections; Ethnologists can only be regarded as cultural sociologists or ethnic sociologists if they regard the nation as a social and cultural group. Folklore only studies folk customs and taboos, unlike cultural sociology, which studies the emergence, development and social functions of the whole human society and culture. Can be said to be a branch of cultural sociology.

meaning

The study of cultural sociology has positive theoretical and practical significance in social life. The main manifestations are as follows: ① It is conducive to the overall and comprehensive study of culture, especially the development of contemporary cultural sociology has absorbed many theories and methods of natural science, studied culture from multiple angles, grasped the laws and trends of the emergence and development of various social and cultural phenomena, and provided various references for social life; ② People's psychology, habits, personality and behavior are closely related to a certain social culture, and strengthening the study of cultural sociology is conducive to promoting the development of civilization; Cultural sociology, as an applied discipline, can provide a new epistemology and methodology vision for solving various social problems.