Social impact of globalization

The tie between the social and the sacral is extraordinarily important by revealing the hierarchic feature of the social world20. The social carries out
vitally important sacral functions. First, this is concerned with the problems of connection with the world of Absolute, spirituality, operation of the
mechanisms of psychological compensation; secondly, the social and the sacral assist the integration of members of a certain socium around a sanctioned world outlook and moral-ethic norms; thirdly, the sacralization of the social in the traditional society legitimated the mechanisms of social control and formed the stereotypes of public behaviour; fourthly, the sacralized social promotes the solution of existentialistic problems through the production of new senses of the public activity on certain historical stages; finally, fifthly, the traditional legitimation of power, as was proved by the classic of sociology M. Weber, is realized through its sacralization.
From the viewpoint of historical sociology, a significant interest is presented by the motion of the notion of “social” in the existent world religious systems. In this context, important sense have the works of M. Weber devoted to the comparative analysis of the economic ethics of world religions.
In particular, he emphasized that the outwardly similar forms of economic
organization can join with an economic ethics completely different by its
character and, by depending on its specific features, can exert quite different
historical effects. For each religion, one can mostly separate those strata whose
vital behaviour will be defining for it even if to a certain extent. At first, Islam
was the religion of world’s conquerors from the knightly order of disciplined
fighters for faith which differed from Christian orders created by its standard in
the period of crusades only by that it required sexual asceticism. Christianity
was at first by the doctrine of itinerant craftsmans and by a really urban religion
by its character.

It is worth to note that the idea of the category of “social” in world religious
systems is quite related. In particular, christianity whose genetic root reaches the
socio-cultural system of the ancient East was finally formed as the most
widespread world religion, and all the near-Eastern-Mediterranean area was
joined under power of the supernational Roman empire. The Christian social
norms came to many socio-political doctrines, in particular in socialism, first of all, as to the problem of attitude to rich and labour. In this sense, a true overturn happened in the times of the protestant reformation. From the time of M. Luther and J. Calvin, rich is perceived as the evidence of the God-selected position.