social development definition

The social essence is established in social institutions as forms of fixing the means of realization of a specialized activity which provides a stable functioning of public relations. Thus, the society is interested in the assistance

to the stability of social institutions which is ensured by the constitution, laws, and other normative-legal acts. Whenever social functions are not realized through formal rules, one says about an informal institution. Social institutions

are classified on the basis of functions they execute. We bear in mind economic, political, educational, cultural, and religious institutions, including social institutions in the narrow sense of this word. Economic social institutions include those which realize the production and distribution of social goods, services, labour organization, and regulation of money turnover.

Political social institutions are associated with the establishment, execution,

and support of the power (the last is, first of all, the parliament, President government, judicial bodies, and parties). Educational and cultural are the

institutions created for the development of culture, socialization of the young

generation, and transfer of the cultural society’s values (at families, schools, etc.)

to it. Finally, religious social institutions help to satisfy the inquiries and needs

associated with the understanding of the supernatural and sacral. In fact, the society’s power is determined by the level of its spirituality.

Social institutions are in a permanent dynamical state which is manifested

through the notion of “social process”, i.e., a successive change of phenomena of

social reality.

It is rightful to distinguish the following social processes which take place

on various levels:

• — intrapersonal,
• — individual-personal,
• — interpersonal-group,
• — national-state,
• — international (interstate),
• — civilizational (general-human)

and those which change a social structure and public relations in the framework of:

• — separate national-state formations;
• — separate communities and local civilizations;
• — humanity (global society) on the whole.

The development of the social essence is described through the system of social laws. In this case, a social law is the objective repeated causal tie between social phenomena and processes which arise due to the public activity of the people or its actions. Social laws reflect both the invariant coexistence of social phenomena and tendencies of development, as well as they establish a functional dependence between social phenomena.

Social institutions are connected continuously with valuable normatives and

ideologies like the external forms of sensitive emanations of ethics are related to

psychology of public relations on various scales, namely, individuals, groups,

societies, communities, and the humanity on the whole In this case, the traditionally comprehended interconnection between “the social” (external, material) and “the psychic” (internal, ideal) is reflected in the quite known formula by K. Marx: “social being defines social consciousness”. In other words, it is rightful to assert in the period of the traditional forms of social development that the consciousness as a psychic (internal) form of reflection is predetermined and manifested itself through the social being.

At the same time, the French researcher S. Moscovici drew the inverse conclusion by analyzing the modern West society. He inferred in his book “La Machine a Faire des Dieux” published in 1988 that, in the process of analysis of the human society, the social can be separated from the psychological only in abstraction, i.e., they are inseparable. But in this case, psychic processes (beliefs, emotions, and passions) become the defining factor in the formation of social structures and institutions. On this ground, he concluded that the psychic forms the foundation of sociology.

Thus, we may say that a cardinally different character of connection between the psychic and the social is established in a post-industrial society when the influence of the psychological aspects on various processes of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services becomes stronger and defining.

By refusing the economic determinism in a post-industrial society, one can logically explain social phenomena by psychological reasons. In essence,

sociology and psychology become the adjacent scientific disciplines, whose

objective boundaries intersect and have no clear demarcation line, in the process

of social development.