Man in the system of social relations. Theoretical aspect

In whatever state any society is, no matter what period of its development it does not experience, it always represents the most complex system of the most diverse interactions, the actors of which the person acts. In this case, the actions of a single individual do not exhaust the gamut of these interactions, because a person in the course of his social life creates or acts as a member of diverse human communities - social groups. Entering into a variety of relationships with other people, he is an objective bearer of those values, elements of culture, stereotypes of behavior that are adopted in these communities. Thus, a person in the system of social ties represents not only himself, as an individual, but also that social group, a community of which he is a member. The study of this phenomenon is a subject for many branches of science.

Considering what a person is in the system of social connections, philosophy is oriented, as a rule, to global questions of being: who is a man for what he is in this world, what is his future and past, and so on.

Sociological consideration of the issue involves the study of more practical issues. Here we consider problems of this kind: what is a person in the system of social relations, what is the structure of society, as the environment within which interactions take place. Sociology proceeds from the seemingly paradoxical fact that the human community present on the planet, being finite in number, is capable of creating an almost infinite variety of communities of very different properties and characteristics. At the same time, the sociological view suggests that if these communities themselves, as well as individuals and their components, are sufficiently fixed (explicative), then this can not be said about the relationships that are formed between people. By the way, this fact was noted at the time by Auguste Comte - the founder of sociology as a science, who in the work "Positive Philosophy" argued that these relations are latent in nature, they are incorporeal, immaterial. In proposing to make human interactions the subject of a separate science, Comte gave impetus to the emergence of a whole series of approaches, scientific schools, concepts that examined the problem of what a person is in the system of social ties.

Marxism interpreted this problem exclusively in a materialistic way, asserting that society is not formed by individuals as such, but by their interactions and relations, primarily economic ones. The same understanding of society and the place of man in it is found in more modern theories. For example, approximately from the same positions the great American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin proceeded when he formulated his theory of social stratification, which today is classical and one of the main ones in the interpretations of modern society.

To clarify the problem posed in the title of the article, it is necessary first of all to understand the category "social attitude", "social bond". Some scientists see it as an elementary part of society, placing in a row with categories "social subject", "social activity". And others, which form the basis of the categorical apparatus of sociological science.

Another view of the problem suggests the consideration of a social relation in two meanings. In the narrow - when it comes to the relationship of specific social communities, as a rule - large social groups and communities. In a broad sense, social relations are any relationship that can develop between people in the course of their diverse activities. Based on this approach, a person in the system of social ties, being included in each of the interacting groups, appears in this system as a universal creative source, co-subject, co-actor.

The society, being the most complex system of interactions, poses to science as the most important question, the problem of how to classify this variety of relations, whether it is possible to build from them some hierarchical model, what are the scenarios of a man's typological action, and so on.

It should be recognized that to date there has not been developed a single methodological approach to clarifying the question of what a person is in the system of social ties, what are the trends in the dynamics of his position in this system.

Materialists analyze this aspect solely from the point of view of the materialist view. Non-materialistic approaches, interpreting the position of a person in the system of social relations, put on the main place the factors of spiritual property. This distribution of social relations to spiritual and material ones is, to be sure, too broad. Therefore, today, for science, there is, first of all, a methodological task - to find adequate and socially significant criteria for the classification of the whole variety of social relations. Because only such an approach will make it possible to reliably investigate the role and place of a person in the life of various spheres of society.