For example, we study the ancient Egyptian civilization at the time of the construction of the pyramids, based on the study of the structure of the pyramids themselves, on the reconstruction of the technology of their construction, as well as information about the purpose of these buildings. But, in addition, we are interested in how the ancient Egyptians concentrated the efforts of a large number of people to perform these laborious works: was it the work of slaves or free people, was it exclusively forced labor, or was participation in the construction of the pyramids considered sacred? Our understanding of the essence of ancient Egyptian civilization and, in general, ancient Eastern cultures largely depends on knowledge of this kind.

Another example. In medieval civilization, the most important of the industries was agriculture. Therefore, when studying the Middle Ages, scientists strive to obtain the most reliable data on the productivity of agriculture at that time: what was grown, in what ways and how the products were used. But besides this, in order to understand medieval culture, it is necessary to know about the more or less standard for that time ways of interacting people in this area. In particular, one must understand the traditional rules of communal land tenure, the rules of vassal land holding, etc., in which medieval culture reveals itself.

These or other stable forms of interaction between people pursuing common goals are facts on the basis of which civilizations can be studied, and, at the same time, signs that allow them to be distinguished. For example, the stock exchange is a sign of the capitalist civilization of modern times. Before that, there were no markets. And the theaters were, but different. Under the same name "theater" are hidden dissimilar, specific to different civilizations, forms of interaction between people both on the stage and between the stage and the audience: the ancient Greek theater was organized quite differently from the Italian La commedia dell'arte renaissance or repertory theater XIX century. Armies, too - in different eras, these were military organizations organized in completely different ways. The same can be said about medieval, classical and modern universities. Reliable knowledge about the peculiarities of the organization of university life in different civilizations - from the rules of admission and teaching methods to the conditions of the diploma test - can tell a lot about the characteristics of the respective cultures.

Social (or sociocultural) institutions are called stable social structures that regulate the interaction of people united for the joint performance of one or another socially significant function. Stable (rather than random) we will call such a structure that is repeatedly reproduced and does not depend on the specific composition of the participants. School, shop, ministry, court, etc. remain themselves, regardless of who exactly acts in them as students, teachers, sellers, buyers, employees, judges, etc.

A “sociocultural institution” is a theoretical concept denoting a model (conceivable structure), which in practice usually corresponds to a set of similarly organized stable human communities. In the above examples, we raised questions about socio-cultural institutions characteristic of different cultures: about institutional supportabout the construction of the pyramids in Ancient Egypt, about the institutions of medieval management, about the stock exchange as an institution of the capitalist economy, about institutionally differently organized armies, and finally, about the “theater” as a whole series of sociocultural institutions of the same name - similar, but different in historically different cultures.

An example of a modern socio-cultural institution is the "football club". Football clubs are voluntary associations of people (football players, fans, managers, etc.) whose goal is to contribute to the stable and successful participation of their team in competitions. Thanks to the club, a professional football team is a stable association; it does not fall apart when its players change. "Football Club" is an example of a socio-cultural institution in the sense of the organizational model that has developed in the era of Modernity, namely, a repeatedly reproduced model of the corresponding public organization.

Along with clubs and professional club teams, you can also find amateur teams (for example, from housemates, employees, veterans, etc.), which extrainstitutional. Sometimes they gather for one game, often their fate is connected with one person - a leader or sponsor, or some other special short-term circumstances.

The transition of the international football movement from the competition of various amateur teams to the tournaments of professional teams within the framework of typical football clubs, which took place in its time, should therefore be called institutionalization football.

The concept of an institution It was originally developed in legal science, where it denotes a certain set of legal norms that support the stability of certain socio-legal relations that are important for society. Such relations include, for example, “the institution of inheritance”, “the institution of marriage”, “the institution of elections” or even “the institution of mitigating circumstances” (it consists of a set of principles and circumstances under which a person found guilty of a crime may be more lenient punishment). In all these and other cases, we mean a set of legal relations and actions that form a given procedure. For example, the institution of inheritance is a set of legal relations and procedures that the legislator requires to be performed in order for the fact of inheritance to be recognized as valid.

Outside of jurisprudence, the concept of an institution acquires a broader regulatory framework: in addition to legal ones, it can also be formed by ethical regulators (for example, the institute of charity), aesthetic ones (for example, the institute of art competitions), but more often sociocultural institutions are formed by a wide range of regulators of various nature. For example, the institution of paternity is formed by a system of relations, some of which are legally fixed, the rest lie in the sphere of morality traditional for a given society and accepted aesthetic ideas (about the beautiful and the ugly, etc.).

In sociology, institutions are commonly referred to as social, because they are studied as facts of public life (the institution of the state, the institutions of private property, health care, education, etc.). From the point of view of cultural studies, these institutions are considered as sociocultural, because they are studied as structures predetermined by culture and emerged in order to embody the ideas inherent in a given society about the world and man in it. As an example of one of the socio-cultural institutions of the New Age, one can cite the “museum”. A classical museum is a public repository of authentic monuments of civilization (paintings and sculptures, books, technical devices, folk crafts, etc.), organized according to thematic or chronological principle and intended to educate contemporaries. It received a civilizational embodiment crystallized in XIX century, the idea of ​​the connectedness of the historical process and the value of the past as the historical "homeland" of the present.

The construction of a civilization includes the creation of its own socio-cultural institutions, designed to organize the joint efforts of people in accordance with the ideas inherent in a given culture. Historically, all socio-cultural institutions take shape, operate and fall apart. Most often, cultural historians study already established, stable institutions that functioned within the framework of certain long-existing civilizational and cultural forms (they are called cultural and historical epochs). Less attention has so far been paid to crisis phases rise and fall of institutions.

Typically, the destruction of sociocultural institutions occurs when changes in culture change ideas about the goals for which institutions were formed. For example, the product of feudal culture - the institution of knightly troops - with the onset of the era of absolutism lost its significance, experienced a decline and gave way to the institution of a mercenary army.

When at a certain historical moment we observe the destruction of many socio-cultural institutions at once, we must conclude that this form of civilization is in crisis and that a borderline (transitional) era has begun. The moment of the onset of numerous institutional changes should be called institutional crisis of civilization, including in this concept both the collapse of the old ones and the search for new institutional forms in periods of transitional epochs.

The unity of a social institution with the culture that generates it makes it possible to explore a civilization/culture based on observation of its socio-cultural institutions. Let's take a look at modern media – mass media (media).

The Modern Media Institute is the collective name for sustainable organizational structures that govern the collaboration of journalists, technicians and managers in the editorial offices of numerous newspapers, radio and television channels. The editorial offices of media bodies are organized associations (“teams”) of people who perform official functions (roles) predetermined by the structure of the editorial office. Through their roles, they are included in the joint achievement of culturally significant goals.

A study of modern media shows that their goal is not to obtain and disseminate reliable and verifiable information, as is often declared. The modern socio-cultural institution of the media pursues a different goal. Editorial offices produce and sell a special - information "media environment" (Eng. mass-media ), which consists of a continuous stream of various judgments and information, where the reliable and the unreliable are indistinguishably merged.

Such an action of modern media is in agreement with the basic values ​​of the Mass Culture that gives rise to them. In her authenticity knowledge is neither a generally accepted condition for its value, nor the main criterion for the quality of information, and where, on the contrary, fictitious or false information and judgments often acquire high social value, based either on random signs (“sensational” rumors, gossip, versions, forecasts etc.), or on ideas about the usefulness or expediency of certain statements, views, reports of events (propaganda). Thus, institutionally - in terms of goals, methods of work, selection of specialists, the way they interact with each other, etc. - the media institute meets the requirements of modern culture, and in terms of its structure it is a typical institution of modern civilization.

Scientific and technological progress, institutional rebirth in the twentieth century and new humanitarian problems. Central to the cultural understanding of the era of Modernity is the question of the meaning of the historical processes of the past twentieth century, during which Modernity took shape, became the dominant form of culture in the world (the latest cultural and historical era). It should be borne in mind that just at that time there were two world wars and a global economic crisis between them, as well as the so-called. "Cold War" between the USSR and the USA with their allies in 1950-80. The two approaches to understanding the events of the 20th century seem to be independent of each other.

The first is focused mainly on scientific and technological progress. Its supporters usually point to the unprecedented growth of energy (nuclear and non-nuclear) technologies, international financial and corporate systems, the quantitative and qualitative development of transport and communications, which ultimately ensured the availability of comfort, health care, education, etc. to an unprecedented number in history. people in different countries of the world. All these are brilliant achievements of the human mind, which has consistently served the improvement of life for several centuries. From this point of view, the civilization of the New Age, which took shape even before the twentieth century, proved its viability and success, while the cataclysms of the twentieth century from this position can be presented as terrible misunderstandings into which the deceived masses of people were drawn into the evil will of some rulers, among which are the names Hitler and Stalin are the most famous today. Consequently, the task is to expose the established usurpers and to prevent in the future the possibility of such "evil geniuses" coming to power anywhere in the world. The new time continues. And in this sense, we can assume that we live in an era when the “end of history” has come (according to F. Fukuyama) .

Another view is an understanding of the history of the twentieth century as a period of global crisis of the civilization of the New Age and the formation of modern Mass Culture with its own new civilization, the formation of which continues before our eyes. From this point of view, the cataclysms of the 20th century were generated by the emergence of new social and economic conditions created by the successes of science and production, and, at the same time, the inability of people to realize their radical novelty in a timely manner and find goals and methods of activity adequate to the new conditions. From this second point of view, the historically new social conditions of the 20th century were predetermined by the introduction of new technologies, the growth of production, and communications.

Among the new circumstances created by scientific and technological progress in the twentieth century were not only increased comfort, health and longevity (first in the richest countries). For the first time, conditions and needs for collective actions of unprecedented power (organization of large-scale production and mass demand) and unprecedented scale of impact on human collectives (totalitarian regimes and their propaganda, commercial advertising, economic crises, etc.) have developed, including the possibility of self-destruction that has arisen for the first time humanity - military, environmental, narcotic, etc. New global threats have emerged, some of which have been averted (for example, the threat of nuclear war), and some threats are continuously being implemented where they are not yet able to effectively counter them (for example, the spread of AIDS, industrial environmental pollution).

As you can see, both of these views are not completely contradictory: the progress of mankind in the field of scientific and technical capabilities is obvious, but it is these achievements of the human mind that have created new problems. Moreover, not only scientific and technical, but also humanitarian problems - social, economic, managerial, environmental, transport and various others.

Here are some examples of the new social problems generated by the technical improvements of our time.

One of the new sources of risk was the unprecedented power supply, economic and information equipment of an ordinary private person, which turned his will into a factor of high unpredictability for himself and those around him. How to prevent catastrophes caused by mistakes or the will of an ordinary person, if he has a service weapon, maintains millions of bank accounts in his service, flies a civil aircraft? How can he avoid the consequences of not being good enough at repairing a tank in a chemical plant or inattentively inspecting products in a baby food factory?

Social problems are becoming a direct consequence of the introduced technological advances.

Mass computerization of banking, insurance, medical and other services facilitates and speeds up all forms of their work with a mass clientele, but creates risks of violating the confidentiality of private information in case of loss of databases.

The growing energy intensity of the world economy economically justifies the use of nuclear fuel. Nuclear power plants provide cheap electricity, but at the same time create problems. They consume a lot of water50 m 3 /s at one NPP with a capacity of 1000 MW, i.е. as much as a city of 5 million people consumes), carry the risk of radioactive contamination of the environment due to the transportation of waste, reactor accidents, etc.

Advances in genetic research open up the possibility of deliberate insertion into the genetic codes of living organisms. The results of such an introduction can be beneficial: genetically modified plants give an incomparably higher and more stable yield, medical genetics promises to cope with hereditary diseases. On the other hand, the genetic constancy of wildlife and man is the deep foundation of social stability. The social experience of interaction with wildlife and human nature has a duration of many thousands of years, it is expressed by numerous, often unconscious adaptive (adaptive) skills - food, emotional, family and household and other strategies. Genetic engineering, which will be able to create essentially new types of living organisms, including humans with new properties, will no doubt give rise to the problem of their mutual adaptation.

The new situation will inevitably present unprecedented demands for the creation of new strategies and new forms of human interaction. For example, “personality” may seem in the new conditions to be a too conservative way of organizing the human Self, while impersonal people with a short social memory and simplified signs of self-identity may turn out to be much more socially adaptive and even the only ones fit for life in a new high-tech type of civilization.

All these and other modern problems are of an institutional nature, although, as it may seem at first glance, only new purely technical problems arise in various segments of society. For example, countering terrorism, in this technocratic perspective, comes down to building more advanced observation devices.

Consider, for example, the institutional problems that have arisen in the course of computerization in various industries.

At the first stage, the use of computers made it possible only to replace paper passportization (of bank accounts, polyclinic cards, museum exhibits, goods and other accounting groups) with electronic one. But later, work with the emerging databases opened up new goals, required a new organization and approaches - from setting new tasks and appropriate personnel to changing the rules for the functioning of these institutions. From the side of visitors, a hospital, a museum or a bank may look the same, but institutionally these institutions have been transformed due to computerization: new departments have been created, the duties of employees have been partially changed, etc.

For example, theoretically, a resident of any city in Ukraine can transfer money from his account in a local bank to a large banking system that has a branch in South Africa with an order to purchase shares of a campaign for him there, which announced a promising project on the African continent. The whole transaction may take, probably, five banking days. It is clear, however, that the feasibility of this scheme depends not only on the technical quality of communication and the existence of legal conditions, but also on the work of the local bank. Is there a group in its composition that is able to keep the world business in sight, able to offer investors attractive investments in such distant lands, with the goal of including their bank through such operations in the broad context of the global economy? This, therefore, is about the institutional restructuring of the work of a local bank, taking into account the requirements of the global economy.

Similarly, a museum, if it seeks to enter the international system of museum research, must not only receive technical support, but also train researchers in foreign languages, computer technologies and change the organization of their work to achieve other goals arising from the international division of labor. in the museum research field. But computer technologies make it possible to set completely new tasks in the field of museum activity itself: this is the so-called "virtual museum". Technical and substantive (content) support for such a museum requires the creation of a completely new institutional structure. Thus, the common name - museum - can only hide the difference between these two institutions of real and virtual ways of preserving public memory.

Concert. Performing songs in a hall in front of an audience of 500 people and performing songs in a stadium in front of an audience of, say, 50,000 listeners are different events. Despite the fact that they are called the same - "concert", institutionally they have more differences between them than similar features. Compare the repertoire, stage style, musical and technical means, financial support, security, prevailing tastes, expectations and behavior of the public in both cases, etc., typical for both cases, etc.

When we talk about the crisis of the usual established goals and forms of achieving them, about the overdue institutional reform simultaneously in different fields of activity (the above are examples from various fields: computer science, finance, biology, museum work, art), about the formation of new structures of human interactions that are suitable to achieve new goals, we are talking about clear, observable signs of a change in the type of civilization. In this case, in the 20th century, it is about the change of the civilization of the New Age by the civilization of Modern mass culture. The peak of this shift, apparently, was passed back in the 1970s. Today, this new civilization everywhere - on a global scale - establishes its own institutions, goals and rules of activity, new meanings of human existence.

"Additions". The correspondence of civilization and its institutions can be traced by comparing similar socio-cultural institutions in the contexts of different cultural and historical eras.

Supplement 1 to this chapter contains an outline of the history of the library,which shows how in different civilizations the “library” function of storing and disseminating socially valuable information was institutionalized. The second deals with the institutional crisis of art that occurred at the same time. The third of the essays "Supplement 3" is devoted to the institutional crisis of science in the twentieth century.

Supplement 3 . Science as an institution and the institutional crisis of science in the 20th century

The concept of "science" means both the process and the result. In the first sense, "science" is a special (research) activity to identify the permanent properties of the world around us. In the second, "science" is the body of knowledge thus obtained. Scientific knowledge is formalized in the form of "laws" and their consequences - in a certain way verified and practically reliable statements about stable relationships in the world around us.

Science is not the only way to create and store knowledge. To a large extent, knowledge about the permanent properties of the world is available to people before and outside of any science, through the accumulation of ordinary life experience. For example, domestic livestock keeping has been practiced by mankind for many millennia and requires considerable knowledge, which was formed and preserved in the very activities of pastoralists. (Agricultural science appeared only at the end XIX century, but since then it has been difficult to do without it). Religious truths, mystical beliefs, artistic images, craft skills (for example, the ability of a carpenter to take into account the properties of different types of wood) are also not scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, this is positive knowledge that can be relied upon in one or another human activity. Their truth is justified by the evidence that is generated within the corresponding experience of individuals and groups. And evidence is the source of local knowledge. It is enough to be outside the relevant practice, and the evidence of these truths may seem doubtful. That is why non-scientific knowledge is not universal. Invite a skilled carpenter to give a scientific lecture on the properties of wood. He, perhaps, will not be ready to do this, although he practically knows about these properties .. Another example. The reality of the country of Castalia is obvious to the reader of The Glass Bead Game by G. Hesse, but there is no such country outside this novel.

Scientific knowledge expressed by judgments, such as “action is equal to reaction”, “the Sun is the closest star to the Earth in the Universe”, “the function of the lungs is gas exchange”, “the growth of a market (capitalist) economy goes through its periodic recessions”, “the drama of the era of classicism subject to the requirement of "three unities", etc. are considered fair (true), because they reflect facts and relations, the knowledge of which no longer depends on practical evidence: they are discovered and proven by scientific methods.

Scientific activity (in our time it is called "classical science") was formed in a meaningful and institutional way in the era of modern times, in XVII - XIX centuries Discoveries of scientists in the field of natural ratios up to the end XIX centuries had, first of all, the meaning of philosophical proofs - one or another principle of the world order, the cognitive power of the human mind, etc. At first, scientists managed to identify stable relationships in the field of motion of mechanical bodies and formulate them quantitatively, i.e. by means of mathematics. Later, scientific research extended to the history of the Earth, the animal world and man. IN XVII century, the search for the "laws of nature" was a completely new thing, the importance of which, over time, became more and more generally recognized. Scientists enjoyed public support for the so-called "enlightened" classes because educated people saw in their activities not a narrowly scientific, but a general cultural meaning. The discovery of simple and understandable rules that inevitably operate throughout the Universe anew, after the fall of religious culture in the Renaissance, substantiated the consciousness of the unity of the world, its orderliness and justice (first of all, this is the mechanics of Copernicus-Galileo-Newton and taxonomy, for example, the taxonomy of plants J. B. Lamarck (1744 – 1829) and animals by C. Linnaeus 1707 – 1778).

A scientist needed a laboratory and a library to work, and he could have them because early classical science was part of the lifestyle of high society. No wonder the era was called the "Enlightenment". Scientists and their discoveries enjoyed material and moral support from the royal court and aristocratic salons (in France), or involvement in university life, where scientists combined research and teaching (in Germany), or private contributions to the organization of laboratories and wide public attention (in England) , or state recognition (in Russia), etc. All these social conditions, without which scientists could not work and publish their results, gaining recognition, must be included in the concept of the institution of classical science - a complex system of laboratories, libraries, publishing houses, amateur scientific societies and professional academies, universities and specialized higher schools, used for the production and storage of scientific knowledge and its application in creating a "scientific picture of the world".

It should be borne in mind that throughout almost the entire New Age, technology developed independently of science. . Separate facts of the organization of production on the basis of scientific discovery, as exceptions, appeared only from the second half of theXIX century. Science becomes an integral part of production and economic activity only by the middle of the 20th century.

Despite the quantitative growth in the number of scientists and their discoveries, before the First World War, the essence of science remained within the semantic limits set by the New Age. A scientist is first and foremost a naturalist. An outstanding scientist is a master of experiment and its interpretation, a virtuoso of the knowledge of Nature. He himself determines the direction of his research, the scientific fields (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) are still very wide, the scientist has at his disposal a laboratory and one or two assistants, literature and collegiate contacts by correspondence and thanks to trips for work to other laboratories and universities (lectures and research). Only in the middle XIX century, international organizations of scientists began to appear and international congresses were held in some areas of science. The basic model of the work of a master scientist, a lone occupied with the study of essential phenomena and connections in the surrounding world and the world order hidden behind them, remained unchanged until the First World War. An example of a discovery, to a large extent "threshold" in the history of physics, the discovery of " X -rays ”(in Russian,“ X-ray ”), which was made in the fall of 1895 by the Würzburg physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen ( Röntgen ) can illustrate the institutional principles of contemporary science.

Like many of his contemporaries, Roentgen was a lone researcher. He even personified this type in its extreme form. He almost always worked without assistants, and usually until late at night, when he could carry out his experiments completely without interference, using the instruments that were available at that time in the laboratory of any institute. The scientist drew attention to the glow in the dark of a fluorescent screen, which could not be caused by reasons known to him. So, by chance, Roentgen discovered radiation that could penetrate many opaque substances, cause blackening of a photographic plate wrapped in black paper or even placed in a metal case. Having come across an unknown phenomenon, the scientist worked all alone for seven weeks in one of the rooms of his laboratory, studying the properties of radiation, which in Germany and Russia are called "X-rays". He ordered that food be brought to the university and that a bed be placed there in order to avoid any significant breaks in work. Roentgen's thirty-page report was entitled "On a New Kind of Rays. Preliminary Communication." Soon the work of the scientist was published and translated into many European languages.New rays began to be investigated all over the world, in just one year over a thousand papers were published on this topic. W. Roentgen - Nobel Prize in Physics for 1901.

One more example. The outstanding German theoretical physicist Max Born (1882-1970) in the book "My Life and Views" (1968) recalls those scientists who influenced his professional development. The following passage gives an idea of ​​the almost private nature of communication in the scientific circles of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, as if it were not a question of training a scientist, but, say, an artist or musician. (By the way, Born was a skilled enough pianist to play violin sonatas with Albert Einstein.) “In order to study the fundamental problems of physics more deeply, I went to Cambridge. There I became a graduate student at the College of Gonville and Caius and attended experimental courses and lectures. I realized that Larmor's treatment of electromagnetism was hardly new to me compared to what I had learned from Minkowski. But J. J. Thomson's demonstrations were brilliant and inspiring. However, the dearest experiences of that time were, of course, the human feelings that aroused in me the kindness and hospitality of the English, life among students, the beauty of colleges and countryside landscapes. Six months later, I returned to my native Breslau and tried to improve my experimental skills there. At that time there were two professors of physics, Lummer and Pringsheim, who gained fame for their measurements of black-body radiation. . In 1919, Born came to Frankfurt, where he had working conditions reminiscent of Roentgen's laboratory. “There I was given a small institute equipped with equipment, and I also used the help of a mechanic. My first assistant (assistant) was Otto Stern, who immediately found a use for our experimental equipment. He developed a method that made it possible to use atomic beams to study the properties of atoms. .

This style of modest scientific life, combining teaching, experiments, informal communication with close students, colleagues and like-minded people, Born supported in subsequent years in Germany and in exile in Scotland. But there is in his memoirs one episode from the First World War, which can serve as an example of a new approach to the organization of science. In 1915, Max Born was drafted into the army. “After a short stay in the radio units of the Air Force, at the request of my friend Ladenburg, I was transferred to the artillery research organization, where I was assigned to a unit engaged in sound location - determining the location of guns based on the results of measuring the time of arrival of shot sounds at various points. Many physicists gathered under one roof, and we soon, when time allowed, began to engage in real science.(highlighted by me - M.N.) " .

In this passage, Born describes the early experiences of a new approach to the organization of scientific research. The belligerent state gathers specialists, bears the costs, and, through the mouth of the military, sets research tasks for them, expecting applied ones, i.e. practically applicable, results - not in the form of articles and theories, but in the form of effective methods and devices. For the first time, science is no longer viewed as a way to “seek the truth without prejudice and prejudice,” and they begin to set tasks for it arising from military (later industrial) practice. “According to the results of the First World War, it became clear that without using the results of science it is impossible to count on victory. All world powers began to finance scientific research focused on the creation of new types of weapons and the development of means of protection against them. Technological science was formed as a result of these organizing efforts of states and became their necessary component” .

The military experience of the relationship between the state and science, acquired during the First World War, was then repeatedly used, it formed the basis for the organization of scientific research for the entire subsequent twentieth century - within the framework of a new, Mass Civilization.

Of course, individual scientific research was not immediately supplanted. Not only Max Born recalled physical experiments in semi-basement rooms and informal friendly seminars among physicists. But the main path of institutionalization of science in the "era of the masses" was defined as the transition to "Big Science". New institutions implied scientific research, which required huge labor and material resources. In each case, public or private (in countries with a market economy) funding of scientific research in the field of nuclear energy, genetics, space exploration, artificial materials, etc. must be motivated by practical results in the form of products suitable for use either in the military or in the civil sphere. It is even better to have so-called "dual-use" products, such as aircraft that can be used to carry both military cargo and, with a little modification, passengers, or devices designed to monitor the health of astronauts that can be used in hospitals. This means that the concept of "pure" science - science for the sake of truth, which characterized the understanding of this activity in the culture of the New Age, lost its meaning with the advent of the era of Modernity. In a mass society, a scientist is no longer expected to confirm or discover such facts and patterns that would have an impact on collective ideas about the world and the person in it. All science, regardless of the nature of the actual research, in modern culture has acquired the meaning of "applied" - science for the sake of practice.

“Big science” has become no longer a science proper, but a special industry in which scientists become partners in production. For example, in the Soviet Union, in the implementation of the space, or rather, the military space program, dozens of scientific institutes were created, and nuclear scientists, materials scientists, rocket scientists, mathematicians, ballistics scientists, cybernetics, physicians, and many others worked in them. In order to achieve the necessary secret of research and concentration of resources, cities closed from the outside world, "science cities" were built. , "special", i.e. secret, research institutes and experimental plants, testing grounds and so on. Millions of people took part in these works. In the USSR, a special ministry was created to coordinate the military-industrial complex, with a strange name for such a case, the “Ministry of Medium Machine Building”. In the United States, the functions of the "military space ministry" are performed by "NASA » – National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In modern Russia, an analogue NASA - RSC (Rocket and Space Corporation) Energia.

Due to the new state of science, discoveries made by scientists as part of major projects are part of a collective effort and usually remain anonymous. In the history of pharmacology, the name of the English biologist who discovered the antibiotic "penicillin" (1929) - Alexander Fleming, has been preserved. But a modern person is unlikely not to become interested in the names of the creators of new, much more effective drugs: such a question in the culture of Modernity, in fact, does not make sense.

The transition across the line of cultural epochs - from the New Age to Modernity, which science experienced in the 20th century, can be seen by observing how the public perception of scientific discoveries that are recognized as outstanding, for example, awarded the Nobel Prize, has changed. The discovery of X-rays was a common cultural fact, as well as the discovery of radioactivity by A. Becquerel and the study of this phenomenon by the spouses Pierre and Marie Curie (Nobel Prize for 1903), the study of reflexes by Ivan Pavlov (award for 1904), the theory of relativity by A. Einstein (1921 ). Personal fame was gained by scientists, creators of quantum theory, in which the "inevitability of a strange world" of microparticles was theoretically substantiated - Nobel laureates Max Planck (1918), Niels Bohr (1922), Werner Heisenberg (1932), Max Born (1954). However, let's try to recall the names of physicists who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in the late 1990s, for example, in 1995 "for the discovery of the tau lepton", (M. Pearl ), "for the detection of neutrinos" (F. Reines ), in 1996 "For the discovery of the superfluidity of helium-3" (D. Lee, D. Osheroff and R. Richardson), in 1997 "For the development of methods for cooling and trapping atoms with a laser beam" ( S. Chu, K. Cohen-Tannoji and V. Phillips), etc. In the second half of the twentieth century, among the discoveries in natural science, none had the power to directly influence people's worldview. The results of the work and the names of the largest scientists began to be perceived as having significance only within the science itself.

At the same time, the era of the mass scientific and technical industry of Modernity gave rise to the phenomenon of scientific "celebrities", whose fame is based not so much on their scientific achievements, but on their "popularity" created by their frequent appearance in the radio and television space in order to promote research close to them. industries. By analogy with the stars of show business, professor from the Higher School of Economics, sociologist S. Kordonsky called them "pop scientists" . “Pop scientists imitate the possession of knowledge and sell advertising slogans to the state and corporations,” writes this author. – An academic scientist who frightens with ozone holes, a meteor attack or global warming, was bred in corporations involved in the development of new “high-tech” products, and gradually became an element of the standard media, and therefore political space. /…/ Pop scientists explain why it is necessary to give money, for example, for astrophysical or genetic research. And outstanding representatives of technologized astrophysics and genetics rely on their demands to allocate money from the budget for public speeches of these representative academics. "Public Relations" or "Departments"public relations » are important subdivisions in the structure of all major scientific or research and production institutions of Modernity.

"Big science" has similar features in all countries where mass civilizations have managed to take shape. The work on the creation of the atomic bomb in the United States "Project" Manhattan "was carried out by the same gigantic corporate institution as the work on the creation of the atomic bomb in the USSR. On the other hand, industrial giants conduct such large-scale research work to create their engineering products that they can also be considered scientific superinstitutions (for example, the Aircraft Corporation " Boeing "(Boeing) and its European competitor, the aircraft manufacturer" Airbus"(Airbus). In our time, any branch of science, in order for the results of their research to be of public importance, must be built according to the model of scientific and production "Big Science" - with the participation of large state or corporate interests. . And although the data on the organization of nuclear research in China, Pakistan, India, Iran or the DPRK are difficult to obtain, there is no doubt that they are organized everywhere according to the institutional scheme of "Big Science", which corresponds to the goals and values ​​of modern Mass Culture.

Here is another extended definition.

INSTITUTION ) This term is widely used to describe regular and long-term social practices that are sanctioned and maintained by social norms and are important in the structure of society. Just like ‘role’ , 'institution' means established patterns of behavior, but it is seen as a higher order unit, more general, including many roles. Thus, the school as a social institution includes the roles of student and teacher (which usually implies the roles of "junior", "senior" and "leading" teachers), and also, depending on the degree of autonomy of different schools in relation to external structures, the role of parents and the role of managers, inspectors associated with the relevant governing bodies in the field of education. The institution of the school as a whole covers all these roles in all the schools that form the school system of education in a given society.

Usually, there are five main sets of institutions (1) economic institutions that serve for the production and distribution of goods and services; (2) political institutions that regulate the exercise of and access to power; (3) institutions of stratification that determine the placement of positions and resources; (4) kinship institutions associated with marriage, family and socialization youth; (5) cultural institutions associated with religious, scientific and artistic activities. (Sociological Dictionary / Translated from English. Edited by S.A. Erofeev. - Kazan, 1997)

Fukuyama, Francis (b. 1952) is an American political philosopher, author of The End of History and the Last Man. Internet page dedicated to the work of F. Fukuyama (in Russian) -

During the first 20 years of its activity, the European aircraft manufacturing concern Airbus was almost 100% financed by the budgets of European countries. More hidden government support in the US: it is carried out through government orders. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, when the industry was on the verge of a crisis, the US government helped Boeing Corporation with several large contracts.

Determining the essence of socio-cultural institutions is impossible without analyzing their functions that ensure the achievement of the goal. Society is a complex social entity, and the forces at work within it are closely linked, so it can be difficult to foresee the results of any single action. In this regard, a certain institution performs its own specific functions. Their totality constitutes the general social functions of institutions as elements, types of certain systems.

An important role in defining the tasks of socio-cultural institutions was played by the scientific works of M. Weber, E. Kasirer, J. Huizinga. They and other culturologists distinguish regulatory, integrative and communicative functions in the structure of spiritual production. In any society, complicated multi-level systems are created, specially focused on the development of certain knowledge, ideas about life and the person himself, as well as plans and goals not only daily, but also calculated for further behaviour.

Therefore, a socio-cultural institution must have a system of rules and norms of behavior that, within the framework of spiritual culture, consolidate, standardize the behavior of its members and make them predictable. When analyzing the components of cultural regulation, it should be taken into account that the implementation of the standards of human values ​​is carried out through their integration with social roles and norms of behavior, the assimilation of positive motivations and values ​​accepted in society. Socialization is supported by personal institutions (in the family, school, labor collective, etc.), as well as institutions, organizations, enterprises of culture and art.
The study of trends in the development of the process of socialization shows that with the complication of the socio-cultural field, the mechanism of socialization and its direct cultural application also become more complex.

A specific function of socio-cultural institutions is integration, which is distinguished by S. Frolov, A. Kargin, G. V. Drach and other researchers. In the social sphere, there is a spread of a complex of views, beliefs, values, ideals that are characteristic of a particular culture, they determine the consciousness and behavioral factors of people. Cultural institutions are focused on ensuring and preserving the heritage of culture, folk traditions, historical knowledge, which helps to strengthen the connection between generations and unite the nation.
There are different cultures in the world community. Cultural differences hinder communication between people, sometimes hinder their mutual understanding. These differences often become barriers between social groups and associations. Socio-cultural institutions strive to overcome cultural differences with the tools of culture and art, strengthen the ties of cultures, activate their relationships and thereby unite people both within the same culture and beyond its borders.

Traditions are social attitudes determined by norms of behavior, moral and ethical values, ideas, customs, rituals, etc. Therefore, the most important tasks of socio-cultural organizations are the preservation, transfer and improvement of socio-cultural heritage.

The development of forms and methods of communication is the most important aspect of the activities of various cultural institutions. Scientists consider the development of socio-cultural activities in the course of the interaction of societies, when people enter into relationships with each other. Culture can be created jointly, precisely through joint actions. T. Parsans emphasized that without communication there are no forms of relations and activities. Without the presence of certain communication forms, it is impossible to educate the individual, coordinate actions, and maintain society as a whole. Therefore, a methodical, stable, diverse system of communications is needed that maintains the maximum degree of unity and differentiation of social life.

In our era, according to the Canadian culturologist M. McLuhan, the number of contacts of an individual with other people has significantly increased. But these relationships are often mediated and one-sided. Sociological research suggests that such one-sided relationships often only contribute to the development of feelings of loneliness. In this regard, socio-cultural institutions through the assimilation of cultural values ​​contribute to the development of real human forms of communication.
Thus, the communicative function of socio-cultural institutions is to streamline the processes of broadcasting socially important information, the integration of society and social groups, the internal differentiation of society and groups, the separation of society and different groups from each other in their communication.

Sociologists consider the sphere that allows people to take a break from everyday problems, in most cases as leisure, freed from specific participation in production. Leisure activities are much broader in content, because they can include the most diverse types of creativity. It is advisable to consider free time in the sense of realizing the interests of the individual associated with self-development, self-rehabilitation, communication, pleasure, health improvement, and creative activity. In this regard, one of the most important tasks of the socio-cultural institution is the transformation of leisure into the field of cultural activity, where the realization of the creative and spiritual potential of society is carried out.

An analysis of the factors in the formation of recreation for the population shows that libraries, clubs, theaters, philharmonic societies, museums, cinemas, parks and other similar institutions are the place for the implementation of cultural initiatives.