UDC 316.7:316.3]:32
Serhii Bezklubenko
Institute for Cultural Research of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, Kyiv.
Keywords: politics, political culture, society, public opinion, law, public court, civil society, public institution, hegemony, mass culture, mass consciousness.
Abstract. This article examines the issue concerning the causes and specific historical background of the emergence of politics as a special public institutional education. In the article, politics is viewed from the point of view of the socio-cultural phenomenon as well as a special product of socio-cultural (civilizational) development. The emergence of the community as a form of cohabitation of representatives of different clans and tribes — marked the emergence of a new type of clans and tribes — marked the emergence of a new type of human community, fundamentally different from the previous one based on blood kinship. Forced under the pressure of external circumstances — cohabitation of representatives of diffe-rent clans and tribes in one limited space radically changed the situation in the field of interpersonal relations. Natives of different clans and tribes brought with them, quite naturally, their own special traditional rules for solving problems arising in interpersonal communication. However, under the new conditions they were incapacitated — they did not and could not have universal recognition. So that not only to avoid war “all against all” but also to provide the proper conditions for a joint peaceful survival, people needed to find new principles, ways and rules adequate to the conditions, that is, the normalization of important life relationships. This amateur process of finding, testing and approving the rules (“laws”) of cohabitation in the conditions of the communities (civil society) received from the Greeks the name of the policy (by the name of the place of community stay, that is, the community). The level of civilizability of these rules and, accordingly, their observance by mem-bers of society was subsequently called the political culture. Therefore, the human community of the commune was called a civil or political society. From the point of view of society, public opinion is important with respect to its social “role” which can have a broad functional “vocation”: socialized, evaluative, analytical, constructive, destructive, regulatory, control, institutional, consultative, educational, and so on. All these “roles” of public opinion are interconnected and actualized precisely in the process of its functioning. The socialized function of public opinion is associated with the development and self-development of a person throughout his life, in the process of his assimilating and reproducing the culture of society. The regulative function of public opinion is to develop and inculcate certain norms of social relations among members of society, and not only between individuals but also between the individual and the collective, the individual collective and society as a whole. In other words, public opinion “gives advice”, “makes a verdict”, “regulates” (the behaviour of individuals, the nature and direction of the activities of communities, political institutions) supporting or rejecting certain representations, norms or values of society. These important features of public opinion as a kind of socio-cultural phenomenon are due to the fundamental causes of its genesis and functioning. First, public opinion is an integrated set of the majority of people, often the majority, if not all members of the community. Secondly, there is a place for the manifestation of public opinion in practically every sphere of public life. So, in the field of moral education, public opinion becomes a kind of tuning fork that regulates the style of behaviour and life position, in the political sphere it acts as a decisive force that determines the vector of society’s development for a certain period.
Author Biography.
Serhii Bezklubenko, Doctor of philosophical sciences, Leading Researcher, Department for scientific and creative studies on theory and history of culture, Institute for Cultural Research of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, Kyiv.
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Published: November 22, 2018.
Section: THEORY AND HISTORY OF CULTURE.