Segments of society. Social segmentation. Social space, social distance, social position

Segmentation signs	Segmentation characteristics
Income level (monthly)	Less than 500 rubles; 501-1000, 1001-1500; 1501-2000, etc.
Social class (layer)	Employee; farmer; entrepreneur; employee; student
Occupation (profession)	Worker; engineer; historian; company managers, etc.
Education	Initial; unfinished average; the average; specialized secondary; incomplete higher education; higher
Religion	Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, other
Nationality	The British; Germans; Russians; Hungarians, etc.

To the greatest extent, the consumption of certain goods and services, and, consequently, the behavior of the buyer in the market is determined by the level of his income. Than big financial resources possesses the consumer, the wider his opportunities both in terms of meeting specific needs, and the structure of these needs.

Income growth is not always accompanied by an increase in the number of consumed goods of a particular name or group. For example, as income rises, the share of spending on food tends to decrease and spending on cultural needs rises.

The demand of the buyer-worker or economist, their behavior in the market can also differ significantly, because the professional interests of people leave their mark on the motives for purchasing a particular product. Professional interests are formed in the process of education. However, it often happens that people with the same education have different professions. On the other hand, you can improve your education level without changing your profession. In both cases, a reorientation of purchasing behavior is possible.

In the last decade, there has been a polarization of the Russian population in terms of income. A stratum of citizens has formed in the country with unlimited paying opportunities, which is ready to pay high prices for goods with special consumer properties (steamed veal or lamb), for high-quality fruits and vegetables, organic food, etc.

The solvency of the bulk of the population (workers, small employees, teachers of educational institutions, scientists, etc.) is limited by the ability to purchase a certain set of foodstuffs necessary for health. A special segment of the market is formed by retirees, unskilled workers, single-parent families, students and pupils.

The signs of socio-economic and demographic segmentation can be combined into more complex parameters of the segments.

Geographic, demographic and socio-economic segmentation criteria refer to the groupobjective signs , and in practice they are not enough. For a more accurate segmentation of markets, we use subjective signs - psychographic and behavioral.

SEGMENTATION BY PYCHOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLE

Psychographic segmentation combines a whole set of characteristics. The personality type of buyers, their subjective assessment of goods, consumption habits, lifestyle, can provide a more accurate characterization of the possible reaction of buyers to a particular product than quantitative assessments of market segments by demographic or socio-economic characteristics. This manifests itself in personal hobbies, actions, interests, opinions, a hierarchy of needs, the dominant type of relationship with other people, etc. ( table.).

table.

2. MARKET SEGMENTATION AND PRODUCT POSITIONING.

2.1 Breaking the underlying market into pieces.

The firm, releasing a specific product, focuses it on the consumer. Knowledge of its consumer is necessary for a company in order to better adapt to its requirements and most effectively gain a foothold in the market.

A firm can build its activities on two approaches: market aggregation and differentiation. The first approach assumes that the firm produces one or more types of goods intended for a wide range of consumers.

Practice shows that different consumers have different attitudes even to the same product. Consequently, the same product can be offered to different groups of consumers. A differentiated approach and involves dividing the market into separate segments.

Whatever the consumer audience, it is almost never a homogeneous aggregate, but consists of thousands, millions of individuals, differing in tastes, habits, and requests.

The breakdown of buyers (consumers) into separate, more or less homogeneous groups is called segmentation.

A market segment is a group of consumers characterized by the same type of response to offered products and to a set of marketing incentives.

The objects of segmentation are consumers.

The goal of segmentation is to maximize customer satisfaction in various products, as well as rationalize the enterprise's costs for the development of production programs, release and sale of goods.

A prerequisite for segmentation is the heterogeneity of customer expectations and customer states. The conditions for implementing segmentation are as follows:

• the firm's ability to differentiate the marketing structure (prices, sales promotion methods, point of sale, products);
• the selected segment must be sufficiently stable, capacious and have a growth perspective;
• the firm must have data on the selected segment, measure its characteristics, study the requirements;
• the selected segment must be accessible to the firm;
• the firm must have contact with the segment;
• the firm must be able to assess the protection of the selected segment from competition, determine the strengths and weak sides competitors and their own competitive advantages.

Segmentation allows you to:

• to determine the advantages and weaknesses of the company itself in the struggle for the development of this market;
• more clearly set goals and predict the possibilities of a successful marketing program.

The disadvantage of segmentation is to determine the high costs associated with additional market research, with the preparation of marketing programs, the use of various distribution methods.

In a modern market economy, each specific product can be successfully sold to certain segments of society, and not to the entire market, therefore, it is impossible to do without segmentation.

2.2 Segmentation strategies.

By segmenting the market, each company solves two issues:

1. How many segments should you cover?
2. How to determine the most profitable segments for her?

Answering the questions posed, the firm must take into account the goals that it sets for itself, available resources, production capacity. When solving the questions posed, one of three strategies should be chosen, namely:

• mass marketing;
• concentrated marketing;
• differentiated marketing.

Choosing a strategy mass marketing the company enters the entire market with one type of product. This is a big sales strategy when the company's goal is to maximize product sales. In this case, high costs are required. This strategy is used by large enterprises. The methods of mass distribution and mass advertising are used, one generally recognized price range, a single marketing program targeted at various consumer groups. As the market becomes saturated or competition grows, this approach becomes less productive.

Concentrated marketing assumes that a firm focuses on one segment of the market. It is used by small firms with limited resources, focusing efforts in the direction where it has the opportunity to use its advantages. The company's marketing strategy is based on the exceptional nature of its products (for example, exotic products aimed at wealthy consumers, special clothing for athletes). With this strategy, the influence of competitors is dangerous and the risk of large losses is significant.

The third strategy is to cover several segments and release their own product for each of them. This is a strategy differentiated marketing. Each segment has its own marketing plan. The release of a large number of various goods by assortment and types requires and high costs for development work, distribution and trade network, advertising. At the same time, this strategy allows you to maximize the sale of products.

2.3 Types and criteria of segmentation.

Market segmentation requires detailed knowledge of consumer requirements for a product and the characteristics of the consumers themselves. There are several types of segmentation:

• macro-segmentation - division of markets by region, country, their degree of industrialization, etc.
• micro-segmentation - the selection of a group of consumers according to more detailed criteria.
• Depth segmentation, when a marketer begins segmentation with a wide group of consumers, and then deepens, narrows it (for example, wristwatches - watches for men - watches for business men - watches for business men with a high level of income);
• preliminary segmentation - coverage of a large number of possible market segments intended for study at the beginning of marketing research;
• final segmentation - determination of the most optimal, with a limited number of market segments, for which the market strategy and program will be developed. The final stage of market research.

Market segmentation can be performed using various criteria and attributes.

A criterion is a way of assessing the validity of the choice of a particular market segment for a company, a feature is a way of identifying a given segment in the market. The following segmentation criteria are distinguished:

1. The quantitative parameters of the segment. These include the capacity of the segment, i.e. how many products and what total cost can be sold, how many potential consumers there are, what area they live on, etc. Based on these parameters, the company must determine what production capacity should be focused on this segment, what should be the size of the distribution network.
2. Segment availability for the company, those. the ability of the company to obtain distribution and marketing channels for products, conditions for storage and transportation of products to consumers in this market segment. The firm must determine whether it has a sufficient number of distribution channels for its products (in the form of resellers or its own distribution network), what is the capacity of these channels, whether they are able to ensure the sale of the entire volume of products produced taking into account the capacity of the market segment, whether the delivery system is reliable enough products to consumers (whether there are roads and which ones, access roads, cargo handling points, etc.) Answers to these questions give the company's management information to decide whether it has the opportunity to start promoting its products.

   In the selected market segment, or still have to take care of the formation of a sales network, establishing relationships with resellers or the construction of their own warehouses and stores.

3. Opportunities for further growth, i.e. determining how realistic a particular group of consumers can be considered as a market segment, how stable it is in terms of the main unifying features. In this case, the company's management will have to find out whether this market segment is growing, stable or decreasing, whether it is worth orienting production capacities to it, or, on the contrary, it is necessary to re-profile them to another market.
4. Profitability... On the basis of this criterion, it is determined how profitable the company will be to work for the selected market segment.
5. Segment compatibility with the market of major competitors... Using this criterion, the management of the company should get an answer to the question to what extent the main competitors are ready to sacrifice the selected market segment, to what extent does the promotion of this company here affect their interests? And if the main competitors are seriously concerned about the promotion of your company's products in the selected market segment and take appropriate measures to protect it, then be prepared to incur additional costs when targeting such a segment or look for a new one, where competition will be (at least initially) weaker ...
6. Efficiency of work for the selected market segment... This criterion is understood, first of all, to check whether your company has proper experience in the selected market segment, as far as engineering, production and sales staff are ready to effectively promote products in this segment, as far as they are prepared for the competition. The management of the company must decide whether it has sufficient resources to work in the selected segment, determine what is lacking here for effective work.
7. Possibility of communication with the subject... The firm must be able to constantly communicate with the subject, for example, through personal and mass communication channels.

Only after receiving answers to all these questions, assessing the potential of your company by all (and not by any one) criteria, you can make decisions as to whether or not this market segment is suitable for the company, whether it is worth continuing to study consumer demand in this segment, continue to collect and process additional information and spend new resources on it. The listed criteria are also important in the case when a firm analyzes its positions in a previously selected market segment.

When segmenting the consumer goods market, geographic, demographic, socio-economic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics are usually taken into account.

When segmenting the market by geography, it is advisable to consider groups of buyers with the same or similar consumer preferences, determined by their residence in a given territory:

Market segmentation by demographic suggest dividing it into separate groups, taking into account such factors as gender, age, family size, its lifestyle:

Psychographic signs are believed to better understand consumer motives, which makes it possible to better adapt the product to the requirements of a particular market segment. They take into account social status and lifestyle. Life style Is a global product of the personal value system, its relationships and activity, as well as its ....... consumption. It is an aggregated indicator based on various methodologies. In the course of research carried out in various countries, many different lifestyles have been identified. Their diversity is determined by the objectives of the research, the studied variables, the methods of collecting and processing information. Lifestyle styles can change over time.

Segmentation variables	Socio-economic indicators
Social status	Low, medium, high (can be detailed)
Life style	In the early 90s, French experts identified the following social styles: ambitious - ambitious individuals who primarily strive to succeed in social terms, young people living in large cities are wasteful and sensitive to consumption associated with appearance; dreamers - young families, middle-class family members, employees living in cities with a population of less than 20 thousand people. Their priorities are: home, children and people like themselves; dependents - modest, rather elderly people, in need of care; celebrities - senior management, people of the liberal professions, are arranged in life, strive for endowments and guarantees, purchase high-quality goods; activists - leaders of public opinion, middle-aged leaders, responsible workers in the social and economic sphere, care about efficiency and public peace; debaters - active youth, mainly engaged in the service sector, independent in their lifestyle and judgments, are very concerned about the problems of the environment, consumerism, strive to preserve social harmony

When segmenting the market on a socio-economic basis, first of all, groups of buyers are distinguished, taking into account the level of income, belonging to a social class, profession:

Segmentation variables	Socio-economic indicators
Income level (monthly)	Less than 100 thousand, 101 - 250, 251 - 400, 401 - 600, 601 - 800, over 800 thousand
Social class	Workers state enterprises, workers of private enterprises, collective farmer, farmer, entrepreneur, individual sector worker, office worker, creative intelligentsia, technical intelligentsia, student
Profession (occupation)	People of mental and physical labor; managers, officers and owners of the firm; people of creative professions; workers and employees; industrial and agricultural workers; pensioners; students; housewives; unemployed
The level of education	Primary or less, incomplete secondary, secondary, incomplete higher, higher, postgraduate education.

When segmenting the market by behavioral trait groups of buyers are distinguished depending on their knowledge, relationships, nature of use and reaction to this product:

Segmentation variables	Consumer habits
Shopping frequency	Regular, special
Seeking benefits	Product quality, service, economy, prestige
Consumer type	Non-consuming, previously consuming, potential consumer consuming for the first time
Consumption rate	Weak consumer, moderate consumer, active consumer
Degree of commitment	None, weak, medium, strong, absolute
The degree of readiness for the perception of the goods	Lack of awareness, awareness, awareness, interest, desire, intention to acquire
Product attitude	Enthusiastic, positive, indifferent, negative,

When segmenting the market for goods for industrial purposes the priority is given to economic and technological features and, first of all, the following are used:

• branches (industry, transport, agriculture, construction, science, culture, healthcare, trade);
• field of activity (R&D, main production, industrial infrastructure, social infrastructure);
• enterprise size (small, medium, large);
• geographical location (tropics, extreme north);
• psigraphic (personal and other characteristics of decision-makers in the company);
• behavioral (the degree of formalization of the procurement process, the duration of the decision-making process).

When selecting the optimal market segments, it is recommended to give preference to the largest segments, segments with clearly defined boundaries and not intersecting with other market segments, segments with new, potential demand, etc. It is considered to be the most optimal segment, where there are about 20% of buyers of this market, purchasing about 80% of the goods offered by this company.

2.4 Steps: Initial segmentation, selection of target markets.

The segmentation process consists of the following stages:

• Formation of segmentation criteria;
• Method input and implementation of market segmentation;
• Interpretation of the received segments;
• Selection of target market segments;
• Product positioning;
• Marketing plan development;

When forming the criteria for market segmentation, it is necessary to determine who are the main consumers of the product, what are their similarities and differences; determine the characteristics and requirements of consumers for the product.

When choosing a segmentation method, special classification methods are used according to the selected characteristics. The choice of the method is determined by the goals and objectives of the researchers. The most common method of grouping by one or more characteristics and methods of multivariate statistical analysis.

The interpretation of the received segments consists in the description of the profiles of the consumer groups (the received segments).

After dividing the market into separate segments, it is necessary to assess the degree of their attractiveness and decide on how many segments the company should focus on, i.e. select target market segments and develop a marketing strategy.

One or more segments selected for the marketing activities of the enterprise represent the target market segment. In the process of forming a target market, firms can focus on market niches and market windows.

A market niche is a segment of the market for which the product of a given firm and its supply capabilities are the most optimal and suitable.

Market window - these are the market segments that have been neglected by the manufacturers of the relevant products, these are the unmet needs of the consumers. The market window does not mean a shortage in the market, it is a group of consumers whose specific needs cannot be directly satisfied with a specially created product for this, but are satisfied as a result of the use of other products.

The firm can use concentrated or dispersed methods to find the optimal number of target markets.

Concentrated the method assumes the sequential development of one segment after another, or until a sufficient number of segments is mastered for the company. Moreover, if one of them turns out to be unprofitable, then they refuse it and start working on the next one.

The dispersed method presupposes entering at once the maximum possible number of market segments in order to be able to select the most attractive and abandon the unpromising ones, bringing the number of segments in which the company will operate to the optimal level. The dispersed method requires less time to implement than the concentrated method, but requires significantly higher one-time costs.

Let us consider possible strategies for selecting target market segments using the example of organizing cable television. The market of information services of this type can be segmented according to two criteria, dividing each of them into three levels. The first sign is age with levels: children (D), middle age (C) and pensioners. The second segmenting feature is consumer preference with levels: cognitive programs (CP), entertainment programs (RP), and feature films (HF). In this case, the segment matrix consists of 9 elements and there are 6 possible ways to enter this market.

a) concentration on a single segment				b) focus on consumer preference				c) focus on the consumer group

d) selective specialization				e) full coverage of the segmented market				f) mass marketing

Fig. 1 strategies for choosing a target market.

Strategy a) - concentrated marketing, strategies b), c), d), e) - variants of the differentiated marketing strategy, strategy f) - mass marketing. The order in which market segments are established should be carefully considered as part of a comprehensive plan. This procedure is not algorithmic, but is largely a creative process.

2.5 Positioning, Target Marketing Program

Having determined its target market segment, the company must study the properties of the image and products of competitors in order to assess the position of its product on the market and the possibility of penetrating this segment. If the segment is already established, then there is competition on it and they have taken their “positions”.

The firm must evaluate the positions of all competitors in order to determine its own positioning, i.e. ensuring a competitive position of goods on the market.

Positioning a product in a selected market is a logical continuation of finding target segments, since the position of a product in one market segment may differ from how it is perceived by buyers in another segment.

Table 1.

Determining the position of the product on the market (using the example of a component part for the automotive industry)

Some Western marketers consider positioning within the framework of sales logistics, it is defined as the optimal placement of a product in the market space, which is based on the desire to bring the product as close as possible to the consumer. Advertising professionals use the terms “positioning” to refer to the selection of the most advantageous position of a product in a product display. In any case, product positioning is the determination of the place, position of the product in relation to those already on the market. The place of the product is found by comparison. Comparative analysis can be carried out, for example, according to the scheme presented in table 1.

The indicators of the scheme can be changed, supplemented, adapted to a specific situation, typical for the company and the manufactured product.

There is also a known method of drawing up functional maps based on drawing up three types of maps:

• Product positioning map
• Consumer preferences map
• Summary map

Positioning and segmentation are closely related concepts. The positive impulse of the company itself positions the product, that is, the buyer believes the brand of the company.

Further, for each market segment, a target marketing program is developed according to the 4xP principle (product, promotion (advertising, direct sales, sales promotion, public relations)). The practical meaning of segmentation is presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Marketing mix	Mass marketing	Concentrated marketing	Differentiated Marketing
1	2	3	4
Target market	Wide range of consumers	One well-defined consumer group	Two or more defined consumer groups
Product or services (Product)	Limited number under one brand name for many types of consumers	One brand of goods or services tailored to one group of consumers	A distinctive brand of goods or services for each consumer group
Price (Price)	One “widely recognized price range "	One price range, adapted for one group of consumers	A distinctive price range for each consumer group
Sales (Place)	All possible outlets	Only suitable outlets	All suitable outlets are different for different segments
Promotion	Mass media	Suitable media	Suitable media are different for different segments
Focus on strategy	Targeting different types of consumers through a single broad marketing program	Targeting a specific consumer group through a highly specialized but massive program	Targeting several different market segments, through different marketing plans tailored to each segment

Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Like the individuals of all those animal species, which are more or less characteristic of a group way of life, the human individual already at the moment of birth becomes a member of a certain society, organized in accordance with certain rules of community. To simplify the picture, we can say that in animals these rules are dictated mainly by evolutionarily developed programs of intraspecific communication, in humans - by cultural traditions specific to a given ethnos. That social organism, into the fabric of existence of which the life of each of us is woven from birth to the hour of death, we are accustomed to call society. Being in this sense a brick of our everyday language, the word "society" in the human sciences acts as a special term, becoming one of the fundamental concepts of philosophy and sociology. Here we use the terms “society” to denote a certain type of social organization that has developed on the basis of a certain culture and, once formed, itself supports the existence of the latter and its development.

There is no doubt that the method of social organization practiced in a particular human society is largely determined by the ecological conditions of a particular natural environment, which people have to master in their life interests. However, the fact that in the same natural conditions societies with a fundamentally different social structure can exist indicates the enormous role of traditions, that is, the spiritual principle, as the reasons for the uniqueness of this system of social relations. Since the world of traditions of each ethno-sa is absolutely unique, because its formation in the history of the people, in principle, is not subject to the laws of logic, the very assumption of the possibility of the existence of some universal type of human society would be at least naive.

Diversity of societies and their classification

Strictly speaking, it would not be difficult to expect a diversity of societies, comparable to the diversity of ethnic cultures, which is truly grandiose. According to rough estimates, at present there are from 4 to 5 thousand independent ethnocultural formations on the planet. Even with a cursory glance at the striking diversity of existing human societies, coupled with those that did not stand the test of time and gave way to others, an analogy with cosmic stellar systems involuntarily suggests itself. Indeed, both giant stars and dwarf stars have been and still exist here and there. In the process of ethnogenesis, some communities of people eventually fade away, like cooling luminaries, others gain vital energy, turning from a modest grouping of mortals into a powerful state, shining like a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of its contemporary interstate relations.

Everything that is now known about the history of human relationships on our planet testifies to the striking unevenness of the evolution of human societies - whether it happened in Eurasia, in the New World or on the African continent. In particular, according to the French cultural critic J. Balandier, pre-colonial Africa “... is the most unusual laboratory that experts in the field of political science could only dream of. Between societies organized in roving groups (pygmies and negrilli) and societies that have already created a state, there is a wide range of political entities. Societies with "minimal" power are very diverse, where balance is created by constant interaction between clans and tribal groups (lineages) and the strategy of marriage unions. More or less complex pre-state societies are known ... The traditional state is also represented in very different guises ”[Balandier, 1984].

In fact, the ideas about the world of each of the ethnoses that have gone into the past, as well as all the existing ones, represent their own bizarre, unique alloy of traditions, attitudes and beliefs, rooted both in the centuries-old practical experience of this people, and in truly countless ones, legalized over the centuries. delusions of reason. As the French philosopher A. Bergson wrote, "But about sapiens, the only being endowed with reason, is also the only being that can make his life dependent on deeply unreasonable phenomena." The microcosm of the ideas about the universe that have developed in the depths of the ethnos with the cults and rituals that follow from this, as well as the rules of behavior of people in their private life and in relations with other members of society - all this together constitutes the spiritual basis of this unique culture. Its second, material half is made up of the tools of labor characteristic of a particular ethnic group, the skills of their use and the products of self-support obtained in the process of activity.

With all the colossal diversity of ethnic cultures and the corresponding methods of social organization, many variants of the social structure differ only in particular details, which makes it possible to combine fundamentally similar variants of social structures into certain prefabricated groups (or classes) and to compare the latter with each other. Such a procedure for classifying societies is far from simple, so it is not surprising that different researchers are often guided in this work by different principles and approaches.

The most common principle of classification, where it is based on such a property of society as the degree of development of the power of some of its members over others. With this approach, societies are concentrated at one pole in which power structures and functions are reduced to a minimum or are absent altogether. These are the so-called anarchist, or egalitarian societies (from the French egalite - "equality"). At the other extreme, we find all sorts of variants of totalitarian societies with a despotic system of control of an authoritarian personality (dictator) and a bureaucratic minority over the bulk of the population. In the latter case, we have before us the principle of the state structure, brought to its logical conclusion, as an apparatus of violence by the ruling elite over the minority, which is infringed upon its rights. Between these two poles are all sorts of pre-state societies - with immature mechanisms of centralized power and moderate social inequality, as well as states based on the principles of democracy and parliamentarism.

Another way of classifying societies emphasizes differences in their basic structural features. With this approach, three types of societies can be distinguished: segmental, stratification and synthetic. What it is? Segmental structure in its structure can be likened to the so-called modular organisms, which are built, as it were, on multiple “repetition” of similar parts (“modules”) that perform similar vital functions.

Such are, for example, reed clumps connected to each other by an underground rhizome, or “segments” (metameres) of the tapeworm-tapeworm, each of which is a more or less self-sustaining semi-autonomous system. Stratification societies get their name from the Latin stratum (literally “layer”). A society of this type is easiest to imagine in the form of a puff cake, so that all kinds of interactions between layers (strata) are organized more horizontally than vertically. And, finally, synthetic I call the current industrial society, in which all functional subsystems that fulfill its needs (politics, economy, science, religion, education, etc.) merge into a single complex mechanism that enslaves, in essence, with its inexorable the human masses serving him. Before our eyes, the next step is also taking place - the merger of such industrial societies into a single global, world society, which, in contact with segmental and stratification types, quickly destroys them, engaging more and more ethnic groups in the mad race of "modern mass society".

Since the two considered variants of the classification of societies put different criteria at the forefront, these classifications are not mutually exclusive, which makes it possible to combine the categories they offer. Thus, segmental-type societies most often turn out to be simultaneously anarchic, and the state structure in its most developed forms is characteristic of synthetic industrial societies. However, combinations of features provided by both classification options can be very different and sometimes very bizarre. Thus, in the Kingdom of Nepal, the caste system (a typical variant of a stratified society) dominates the centralized state power, in which ethnoses of hunter-gatherers are involved as its edge elements, whose social organization retains all the features of an anarchic segmental society.

Segmental type societies

A typical example of this type of society is provided by the social organization of the South American Nambiquara Indians, who live in the dry shrub savanna (the so-called brusse) of southwestern Brazil. These Indians do not wear any clothing, except for a thin thread of homemade beads that hangs around the waist of the women. Men sometimes cover their genitals with a straw tampon, but do not use the so-called sex cover, which serves as an indispensable part of the male "wardrobe" for most of the Indian ethnic groups in Brazil, as well as in many other primitive cultures of the world. The lack of clothing is compensated by a variety of beads and bracelets (from the shell of an armadillo, straw, cotton fibers, etc.), and men's jewelry often looks more elegant and festive than that of the fair sex. At the beginning of this century, the number of Nambikvar was about 20 thousand people. In the mid-60s, according to data The World Organization health care, Nambiquara were among the endangered peoples - along with one and a half to two dozen other ethnic groups living in the tropical forests of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Spatial structure. In their existence, Nambiquara are completely dependent on the autocracy of the surrounding nature. Based on their centuries of experience, these people learned to anticipate her whims, which enabled them to survive - despite the constant pressure on them from the harsh, if not to say - aggressive environment. In the dry season, which lasts from April to September, the necessary food can be obtained only by constantly moving in small groups (up to 20-30 people, connected by ties of kinship) through the vast expanses of inhospitable bars. With the onset of the rainy season, several such groups, connected with each other by a network of kinship, settle somewhere in an elevated place near the river bed. Here, the men jointly build several primitive round huts from palm branches. During this time, hunting and gathering, which provided food during the dry season, gave way to slash and burn farming. Near the village, the Indians burn out areas of lush vegetation, and in the glades reclaimed from the forest they set up modest gardens, barely able to feed the population of the village of up to a hundred people for almost six months. Nambiquara gardens grow cassava, from the tuberous roots of which women make starch-rich flour, as well as corn, beans, pumpkins, peanuts, cotton and tobacco, which is used for smoking by both men and women. With the onset of the next dry season, the community again splits into groups, each of which goes on a long and difficult journey.

So, we see that the Nambikvar's society is built of segments of the same type, in fact. During the rainy season, such segments are communities tied at this stage of their existence to temporary forest “villages”. In the dry season, Nambiquara society is represented by roving groups widely scattered over the vast expanses of the brusse. Thus, here we have at least two hierarchically subordinate levels of community organization. The higher level is the "agricultural" communities, the lower nomadic groups, which are nothing more than fragments of these very communities.

K. Levi-Strauss, who studied in detail the way of life of nomadic groups, argues that there is hardly a social structure more fragile and ephemeral than a collective of this kind. “Individuals or entire families,” writes the scientist, “separate from the group and join another one with a better reputation. That group can either eat more abundantly (thanks to its opening of new territories for hunting and gathering), or be richer in decorations and tools thanks to trade exchanges with neighbors, or become more powerful as a result of a victorious military campaign ”[Levi-Strauss, 1984] ...

Leadership. One of the most important factors determining the fate of a group and, ultimately, its subsequent prosperity or complete disappearance, is the personal qualities of the leader of a particular group. Levi-Strauss calls such a leader a "leader", although he immediately stipulates that he does not, in fact, have any powers of authority. The word used by the Nambikvar for the leader of the group is literally translated as "the one who unites." In choosing a leader (whose office is not inherited from the Nambiquar - for example, from father to son), Indians pursue the goal of creating a viable collective, but by no means burdening themselves with centralized power. The degree of responsibility and range of responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of a leader many times exceed the privileges due to him, such as the right to have several "additional" ones in addition to one wife. By virtue of the above, it is not so rare that a man categorically refuses to take on the role of "leader".

“The main qualities of a leader in Nambiquara society,” writes Levi-Strauss, “are authority and the ability to inspire confidence. Those who lead a group during the dry, hungry season absolutely need these qualities. For seven or eight months, the leader is fully responsible for the group. He organizes the preparation for the trip, chooses the route, determines the place and duration of stops. He decides on the organization of hunting, fishing, collecting plants and small animals, he determines the behavior of his group in relation to neighboring groups. When the leader of the group is at the same time the leader of the village (that is, the place of temporary location for the rainy season), his duties are further expanded. In this case, he determines the beginning and place of sedentary life, directs garden work and chooses agricultural crops; in general, he guides the activities of the villagers depending on the seasonal needs and opportunities. "

However, in the event that the leader's miscalculations follow one after another, the discontent of his wards grows, and families, one after another, begin to leave the group. In such a situation, a moment may come when the few remaining men in the group are no longer able to protect its female half from the claims of strangers. And here the leader has only one way out - to join a larger and more successful group and thereby abandon his role as leader. Against the background of this constantly ongoing process of changing the composition of groups, the collapse of the former and the emergence of new ones, the only stable cell in the Nambiquara society is a married couple with their offspring.

Intergroup relationships. To complete the picture, it is necessary to say a few words about the relationship of nomadic groups with each other. It is essential that groups belonging to different communities can roam at the same territory at the same time. Such groups are not connected with each other by a network of kinship ties, and sometimes members of one and the other even speak significantly different dialects. In most cases, the relationship between such groups is based on latent antagonism, but if one of them or both are depressed due to their small size, the groups can unite and become related. However, as already mentioned, mutual distrust between groups roaming in the same territory (but belonging to different communities) is much more characteristic of the Nambikvar than good-neighborly or allied relations between groups.

Our brief excursion into the world of the Nambiquara Indians allows us to understand some general principles of the organization of a typical segmental society, devoid of any institutions of centralized power and management. A similar type of social organization has survived to this day among many ethnic groups with a variety of forms of primitive economics - hunting and gathering, slash-and-burn agriculture and pasture cattle breeding. At the same time, some ethnic groups completely rely on any one of these three life support strategies, while others practice different combinations of them - like, for example, the same nambikvara, which change from the dry season to the rainy one from hunting and gatherer to cultivation of agricultural crops. It is these differences between ethnic groups in the sphere of their economy that determine the characteristic features of the social organization of each of them, despite the fact that all the variations we observe one way or another fit into the framework of a single type of segmental anarchic society.

The role of kinship systems. Everything that has been discussed so far concerns mainly that side of the social organization of segmental societies, which can be called territorial, or spatial structure. In its architectonics, a hierarchy of structural units is clearly traced: segments of a lower level, together with similar ones, are added to segments of ever higher levels. For example, among the Nuers of East Africa, the social unit minimum level it turns out a woman with her children, as a rule, occupies a separate hut, in which her husband sometimes lives. In the latter case, we have before us the so-called small, or nuclear (from the word nucleus - nucleus) family. A group of close relatives (for example, several brothers with their monogamous or polygamous families) inhabit several huts, which together make up a manor or a farm. This grouping is usually referred to as the “big family”. The estates concentrated in one place form a village. The inhabitants of villages located in a particular sector of the Nuer country consider themselves members of a unity designated by ethnographers as a department of the tribe. The departments divide up the territory of the tribe as such. Nine large tribes and a number of smaller ones form the ethnos Nat (as the Nuers themselves call themselves), which numbered about 200 thousand people in the first third of our century [Evans-Pritchard, 1985].

Undoubtedly, without understanding the principles of the spatial organization of segmental societies, we will not be able to appreciate all of their originality. And yet the above descriptions outline only the outer side of the structures of interest to us, a kind of tip of the iceberg, relatively easily accessible to the eye of an outside observer. The very essence of the social processes taking place in all the societies we have mentioned and in others like them is based on a very complex set of rules of community, which are based on the so-called systems of kinship.

The fact is that in segmental societies, all life and activities of a person from birth to death takes place in a circle of persons, the overwhelming majority of whom are more or less close relatives. The reason for this, in particular, is that the largest territorial segment of society, such as a tribe, is an endogamous cell for most of the ethnic groups of interest to us. This means that tradition requires each member of the tribe to find a marriage partner (husband or wife) within their tribe. It is clear that with a tribe of only a few hundred people, whose ancestors occupied this territory for centuries, all people living here today, with the exception of a few newcomers, turn out to be in one way or another connected by blood ties.

Drawing a picture of social relationships in Nuer society, E. Evans-Pritchard writes: “Rights, privileges, obligations are determined by kinship. Either a person is your relative (real or fictitious), or it is a person to whom you have no obligations, and then you consider him as a potential enemy. Every person in the village and in the surrounding area is considered a relative in one way or another. Therefore, apart from the occasional homeless and despised vagrant, the Nuer communicates only with people who behave towards him like relatives. "

Legal regulations. The study of ethnic groups that have retained the features of the primitive communal system in their lives is always an excursion into the world of amazing beliefs, customs and rituals that are often poorly understood by an outside observer. But what is most surprising is the ability of such societies to maintain a stable internal order in the absence of any explicit instruments of legislative, executive and judicial power. In an egalitarian society with primitive forms of economy, a person considers himself equal to everyone else and is not inclined to obey any dictates from his neighbors. When Miklukho-M-aklay asked the inhabitants of a Papuan village who their leader was, every adult man invariably pointed to himself.

In such a situation, the main sources of maintaining public order are, firstly, the habit, absorbed with mother's milk, to adhere strictly to the time-honored rules of dormitory, and, secondly, the shared understanding that, in resolving conflicts, a compromise between community members is obviously preferable. violence. For in a small, close team, the cohesion of which is opposed to the aggressiveness of the outside world and forms the very basis of survival, any discord is like a cancerous tumor. More and more new participants will gradually be drawn into the conflict, which leads to the escalation of tension in relations between everyone and everyone and threatens, ultimately, with the collapse of the community.

Therefore, in many archaic societies, there is a belief that discord and quarrels between group members invariably damage all its well-being. “Anger,” writes L. Levy-Bruhl, in particular, “perhaps most of all confuses and worries primitive people. This is not due to the violence that he can entail, as we might think, but because of the fear of the bad influence that he brings down on the whole society, or, more precisely, before that harmful beginning, the presence of which finds himself in a rage of a person who is in anger. " For this reason, it is rarely seen that in the societies in question, a person openly contradicts the interlocutor.

It must be said, however, that the categorical condemnation of violence in relationships between community members is not a common feature of all those ethnic groups whose social structure and basic moral principles have been sufficiently well studied and understood. Indicative, in particular, is the opposition carried out by the famous ethnographer, American M. Mead between the two ethnic groups of New Guinea: the Mundugumors and the Arapesh. “I was disgusted with the culture of the Mundugumors, with its endless struggles, violence and exploitation, dislike of children,” Mead writes. "The dominant type among the Mundugumors was ferocious money-grubbing men and women ... Both men and women were expected to be openly sexual and aggressive." In contrast, the Arapesh have raised everyone from childhood in a spirit of complete responsiveness to the needs of others, so that the mildest condemnation from the community is enough to force the egoist to cooperate. In the culture of the arapesh, the type of selfish screamers, "whose ears are closed, and their throats are open," is unconditionally condemned, while the most useful members of society are considered modest, balanced and taciturn people, "whose ears are open and their throats are closed."

Of course, the possibility of an absolutely conflict-free society is just an illusion, albeit a fairly widespread one. Always and everywhere, the interests of the individual in one way or another come into conflict with the interests of other people, and this causes not only banal quarrels and squabbles, but sometimes can lead to the most serious consequences - for example, to murder. The question arises whether there are any public sanctions against the killer in a community devoid of central authority and judicial authorities. And in general, how in such conditions can control over antisocial behavior that violate the normal course of life of the entire team be exercised? We find an exhaustive answer to these questions in the works of E. Evans-Pritchard, already known to us, who paid special attention to all possible forms of conflict in the society of African pastoralists - Nuer.

As I already said, this ethnos is split into several tribes, and one of the important features of a tribe as a real segment of society is the existence in it of the right to compensation for murder - the so-called "vira for blood". The murder of a member of another tribe by a Nuer is not in any way condemned in the circle of the murderer. How to avenge the murdered is a problem of outsiders, who are usually viewed in the community as potential military adversaries. If a person kills a resident of his own or a neighboring village, the danger of a blood feud becomes real. The relatives of the slain will be covered with shame if they do not devote all their energy to his revenge. In this case, any male relative of the killer can become a victim. And as soon as all the inhabitants of a village or district are, to one degree or another, related to each other, a multitude of people are automatically drawn into the confrontation between the two lineages. This situation is completely intolerable for the community. According to Evans-Pritchard, the fear of causing blood feud is the most important mechanism for maintaining law and order within the community and the main guarantee of the safety of an individual's life and property. It is the task of the so-called "leader in the leopard's skin" to prevent the deepening and spreading of the conflict caused by the murder.

The role of this character is nothing more than the role of an intermediary in negotiations between the killer and the relatives of his victim. The Nuers themselves, apparently, do not experience the slightest admiration for this figure performing purely ritual functions. "We chose them, gave them leopard skins and made them our leaders," the Nuer say, "so that they can participate in the sacrifices on the occasion of the murder." The leader is not able to force the parties to go to the world force of his authority, because no one can force the Nuer to take any step against his will. Nevertheless, the positive outcome of the negotiations was actually a foregone conclusion. As long as there is nothing worse for the members of the community than a sustained blood feud, the consent of both sides will almost certainly be obtained. However, the leader usually has to spend a lot of time and energy in order to persuade the relatives of the murdered to the world, because in order not to lose dignity in such a delicate matter of honor, they should show a certain stubbornness. “Nuer is proud,” they say, “and does not want cattle (as compensation - EP), but a human body in revenge for the murdered one. Having killed a person, he pays his debt, and his heart rejoices. "

Emergency resolution of conflicts that can generate blood feud among the Nuer is relatively easy to implement within the village or when friction arises between the inhabitants of neighboring villages. However, if enmity arises between larger territorial segments of society, such as tribal departments, several people can die immediately in a clash between them. At the same time, there are often no directly interested persons who would be ready to immediately enter into an intermediary for the payment of compensation. The relatives of the killed are simply waiting for a new clash in order to avenge all their losses in full. In such a situation, the crack between the segments widens until the positive contacts between them cease completely. As a result, the initially single tribe splits into two, which do not have any obligations in relation to each other.

Splitting the community. For the Nuer, a village is not just a place to live. Each homestead includes livestock pens, pastures and plots used for planting crops. Therefore, a family in a state of growing conflict with other residents cannot afford to simply leave its place and settle down somewhere else. The situation is different with forest farmers, such as, for example, the South American Yanomama Indians, whose plantations are often located at a considerable distance from the Shapuno village. Among these Indians, who have earned the reputation of "fierce people" for their belligerence and imbalance, a one-time splitting of the community is quite common. Men are extremely quarrelsome and vindictive, and even a minor disagreement between them can easily develop into mutual intolerance. Relatives from one side and the other are inevitably drawn into the latent enmity. The denouement often comes after the warriors, during their evening leisure hours, smoke epen, a special powder made by yanomama from poisonous plants and causing hallucinations. In a state of intoxication, enemies invite each other to a competition in strength. A tragic denouement occurs only if one of the participants grabs the bow. The Indians, as a rule, use arrows with jagged points, poisoned with curare poison. So a well-aimed shot almost inevitably entails the death of an enemy, and a miss can easily turn into the death of one of the involuntary witnesses of what is happening.

Such excesses inevitably entail the departure from the community of a whole group of people linked by kinship, common interests and the strength of the authority of the warrior taking on the role of leader in the separating group. It was shown that the splitting of the community is most realistic to expect after the number of its members reaches about a hundred people. With a population of 40-60 people, the village can put about 10 waiteri men (as the Yanomama warriors are called) as a combat detachment to protect themselves from the raids of neighbors. This is obviously not enough, given the climate of mutual mistrust, deceit and unpredictability prevailing in relations between communities. Two such units make the community less vulnerable and allow more successful raids on neighbors to kidnap the women there. Two dozen fighters correspond to the total community size of about 100 people. However, with its further growth, the likelihood of internal strife increases sharply, and it is at this stage that the community usually splits - like those processes of sociotomy, or desmosis, which are described in the populations of social insects and some species of monkeys.

Xenophobia and War. If the usual state of a community in a segmental society is peace, only sporadically darkened by short-term outbursts of anger and violence, then the relationship between communities looks quite different. This is what N.N. Miklouho-Maclay on the general social climate on the northeastern coast of New Guinea: “The wars here, although they do not differ in bloodshed (there are few killed), are very long, often turning into the form of private vendettas that maintain a constant wandering between communities and greatly delay the conclusion of a peace or truce. During the war, all communications between many villages stop, the prevailing thought of everyone: the desire to kill or the fear of being killed ... Security for the natives of different villages is still a cherished dream on my Shore. Not to mention the mountain dwellers (who are considered especially warlike), but between the coastal states of affairs is such that not a single native living at Cape Dupere dares to walk along the coast to Cape Rigny, which is 2 or 2, 5 days of walking. "

This is how the situation looked in the 70s of the last century, but it did not undergo significant changes, at least until the 30s of this century, when American ethnographers began to work in New Guinea. So, M. Mead in the following words describes the attitude to the Chu-Zhaks among the mountain arapes living a little west of the Maclay Coast: “The children of arapesh grow up, dividing people in the world into two large categories. The first category is relatives - three or four hundred people, residents of their own area and residents of villages in other areas, associated with marriage and long genealogical lines ... The second - aliens and enemies, usually called varibim, people from the plains, literally - "people from the riverside land". These people from the plains play a double role in the lives of children - a scarecrow, who must be feared, and an enemy who must be hated, ridiculed, outwitted - creatures to whom all the hostility that is forbidden in relations between members of their group is transferred ”(detente and italics M. Meade).

Xenophobia soaked in mother's milk is extremely characteristic of the primitive consciousness of members of segmental societies around the world. It is rooted, firstly, in the militant ethnocentrism of economically backward peoples, in their ideas about their superiority and exclusivity, and, secondly, in the unshakable conviction that all the misfortunes that threaten a community stem from the witchcraft of alien neighbors. The feeling of invisible danger constantly emanating from there, threatening you and your loved ones, colors with an unaccountable feeling of fear a person's entire life from birth to the grave. The cause of illness or death is seen here in the fact that the victim, through negligence, left somewhere a particle of his "dirt", which was found and bewitched by enemies from the neighboring community.

It may seem surprising that only in a few segmental societies (such as, for example, the mountainous micro-ethnos Aipo in western New Guinea), wars between communities are directly engendered by their competition over space - in particular, by protecting their territory from outsiders. The reason may be that the structure of family relations (clan and lineage) in these societies carries a much more important psychological load than the spatial, territorial structure. Among the Australian aborigines, the territory of the so-called local hereditary group is determined not so much by its borders as by those specific areas that the group has owned from time immemorial. Other groups are not forbidden to hunt within this territory, but they are strictly forbidden to approach those places that are related to the cult totemism of the group (these can be caves, the walls of which are painted with ocher or blood, as well as specific rocks, trees, water sources, etc.). For the Bushmen of the Kala Hari Desert, the boundaries of territories belonging to large segments of society (the so-called nexus) are inviolable, while on the territory of a local group it is allowed, albeit with reservations, to hunt other groups that are part of the same nexus. According to some observers, among the Bushmen and pygmies of the Ityri Forest in Zaire, who also lead a life of hunter-gatherers, neighboring groups plan their movement in such a way as to avoid contact with each other as much as possible.

In the attitude of a hunter and gatherer or a forest farmer to his land, according to M. Mead, "there is nothing from the proud possessiveness of the landlord, vigorously defending his rights to it from all newcomers." The New Guinean arapesh, like the aborigines of Australia, the land belongs to the spirits of their ancestors, and the people themselves belong to this land. Papuans from the Alitoa community discussed the situation in the neighboring village, the population of which has clearly declined in recent years: “Oh, poor Alipingale, when its inhabitants die, who will take care of the land, who will live there under the trees? We must give them children so that they can adopt them, so that this land and trees have people when we die. "

If in segmental societies they usually do not fight over land, what are the material reasons for the constant wars between communities against the background of that xenophobia that determines the entire psychological mood of individuals? Obviously, these reasons are different in different cultures. For example, among the Yanomama, according to these Indians themselves, the main, if not the only purpose of military raids on neighbors is the kidnapping of local women. Monogamous marriage is not honored in the Yanomama, and most men have several wives, acquired mainly by force [Ettore Biokka, 1972].

The Nuers of East Africa are no less aggressive and militant than the South American Yanomama, but the main goal of their inter-tribal wars and predatory raids on communities of other ethnic groups is the capture of livestock, although girls and women of marriageable age are also among the spoils of war. War, according to E. Evans-Pritchard, is the second most important activity of the Nuer after cattle breeding. A routine way of spending time and even a kind of entertainment for the Chin Nuer men is the periodic robbery raids on the communities of the neighboring Dinka people, associated with the Nuers by common ethnic roots. The Dinka, like the Nuers, live by cattle breeding, but they obtain livestock mainly by theft and deception, and not by force of arms, as the Nuers do. Therefore, the latter are not afraid of the Dinka, despise them, and do not even take their shields from them, going on a campaign against the numerically predominant enemy. Boys, who are taught from early childhood in Nuer society to resolve all disputes by fighting, dream of the time when, immediately after initiation, they can take part in a campaign against the Dinka and thereby quickly enrich themselves and acquire a reputation as a warrior.

The motives underlying intercommunal and intertribal enmity among some ethnic groups of New Guinea do not look as frankly mercantile to us as those that give rise to wars among the Yanomama and Nuer. Here, legalized by the age-old tradition, the hunt for people from among the "outsiders" does not require any justification of the economic order. It is closely intertwined with the daily life of the community and harmoniously fits into the whole system of archaic beliefs and bizarre rituals that determine the identity of the individual and the entire ideology of the local primitive culture. I mean the so-called "headhunting", which is practiced to this day by the Asmat Papuans living in the southwestern part of New Guinea. Asmat literally means “true people”. Such self-esteem, however, does not prevent these Papuans from regarding the head of their fellow tribesman from another community as a full-fledged hunting trophy, and not just the head of a white-skinned alien (for example, a missionary), who is not considered to be true people here.

These Papuans live in comfortable villages, each of which must have a so-called men's house, which is a kind of club for all kinds of ceremonies and rituals. The number of inhabitants in these villages ranges from several hundred to one and a half thousand people. There is usually no good-neighborly relations between the villages, and the communities that make up them are in a state of constant enmity with each other. This is understandable, since, according to local custom, the initiation (initiation into a man) of each boy in the village requires as a necessary condition for the acquisition of the next trophy - the head of one of the men of another community. It is important that the name of this person must be known in advance by his killer, since this name will be assigned to the young man at the time of initiation. Together with the name, the strength, energy and sexual potency of the killed must also go to him. Of course, each episode of the death of a member of one community sooner or later entails a retaliatory act of revenge, so that the losses of both sides are steadily increasing. Periodic commemoration of the victims of this kind of partisan war is poured out in each community into a complex, multi-stage ritual.

More recently, headhunting was also practiced by other ethnic groups of New Guinea (such as, for example, the Chambuli and Abelams in the north of the central part of the island), as well as by the inhabitants of the islands of Mikronesia and Melanesia in the southwestern sector of the Pacific Ocean. For example, on the Palau archipelago (Caroline Islands), which lies about 1,000 km northwest of New Guinea, the political situation in the last third of the last century looked, according to N.N. Miklouho-Maclay, as follows. “Wars,” the scientist wrote, “are very frequent in the archipelago, and the most insignificant reasons are considered sufficient for waging them. They significantly affect the decrease in population, since there are many areas independent from each other, and all of them are constantly at war. These wars are more like head-hunting expeditions and, it seems, are even predominantly waged for this purpose. "

Miklouho-Maclay especially emphasized the "vile", in his words, way of waging wars among the natives. He writes that in their ideas “... any cunning, deception, ambush are considered permissible; it is not even in the least considered humiliating if one person is killed with the help of a large number of people, even a woman and a child. The main thing is to get the enemy's head ”(Miklouho-Maclay's italics). The absence of any moral and ethical obligations to "outsiders", even if they belong to the same ethnic group and the same culture, and the resulting naively cruel, infantile disregard for the value of human life - these are the features that are common to all those anarchic societies of Africa, South America and Oceania, which passed before our eyes. Alas, the echoes of these barbaric customs still exist in our "developed" industrial society, but here the individual's safety is guarded by law and law and order, which, unfortunately, are often violated.

Observing the customs of the Nambikwara, Yanomama or Asmat, how not to recall the following significant remark of M. Mead: is present in the inhabitants of one country and absent in the inhabitants of another, although the latter may belong to the same race. "

Towards the formation of the state

Most of those social organisms that have passed before our eyes are among the so-called self-sustaining societies. This means that people here in each given period of time consume everything that they extract or produce to maintain their existence. In this respect, especially indicative are the societies of hunters and gatherers, as well as forest farmers, whose technical equipment is at the stage of the Late Stone Age. Agricultural crops grown on forest clearing by the Papuans and New Guineas or by the Yanomama Indians, for the most part, are fruit or tuberous plants, the harvest of which, unlike grain crops, does not lend itself to long-term storage. Therefore, the accumulation of any surplus is, in principle, impossible or very limited, so that the community is always in danger of hunger.

Societies that practice primitive forms of pasture cattle breeding are in a somewhat better position. Livestock is a kind of capital that can be accumulated and used for exchange. However, even having a large herd does not solve the problem of daily good nutrition. The Nuers, for example, only in the most exceptional cases decide to slaughter a cow, and they, according to Evans-Pritchard, have only one step from complete satisfaction of needs to need and malnutrition.

It is difficult to remain indifferent at the sight of an unusually variegated and multicolored picture of the diversity of archaic societies, only a small fraction of which I have been able to touch on on the previous pages. However, no matter how unique the way of life, manners and customs of each of them are, in this infinite diversity we still managed to distinguish, perhaps roughly and conditionally, three main types of socio-cultural formations. I mean, firstly, hunter-gatherer societies, secondly, rainforest farmers and, finally, societies that practice the simplest methods of pasture cattle breeding. In other words, the most important features of each of these three types of societies are determined, first of all, by the methods of their life support and production. The entire sum of production skills, mutually related to the material culture dominating in a particular society (which includes tools of labor, dwellings, household items, etc.), can be called civilization. It is in this sense that the French ethnographer J. Macke speaks, in relation to the three named types of societies, about the "civilization of the bow", "the civilization of the forest" and the "civilization of the spear."

Speaking about the fourth type of society, namely about the "civilization of granaries", J. Mac has in mind a completely definite circle of African ethnic cultures. These are Bantu-speaking Negroid ethnic groups living in the area of ​​the African savannah south of the equator (lunda, luba, bemba, lozi and a number of others, which make up a significant part of the population of southern Zaire, Angola and Zambia). The most important difference between the peculiarities of agriculture in the civilization of the forest, on the one hand, and in the civilization of grain storage, on the other, is determined by the composition of agricultural crops. Forest farmers specialize mainly in the cultivation of tuberous crops (sweet potatoes, yams, cassava), the harvest of which is difficult to store. As for the inhabitants of the savannah, they, not completely abandoning the cultivation of tuberous, focused mainly on crops of cereals - such, in particular, as sorghum and millet. And since long-term storage is guaranteed to the grain harvest by nature itself, people have the opportunity to store it for future use. According to J. Macke, during the transition from forest farming to agriculture in the savannah, a line was taken that ensured the accumulation of surpluses. It was also important that portions of grain, due to their flowability and homogeneity, are convenient to measure, transfer from hand to hand in strictly comparable quantities and transport over long distances. It is clear that this circumstance increases the opportunities for exchange and establishment of connections between communities distant from each other - in contrast to what we have seen, say, among the farmers of the rainforest.

The possibility of accumulation of surpluses with fatal inevitability gives rise to material inequality of people, on the nutritious soil of which the real fall in society grows together with the bureaucracy serving it. The egalitarian society of primitive communism, step by step, grows first into a kind of pre-state formation, and then, under a certain set of circumstances, into a centralized state with a more or less developed administrative system of management of all its subdivisions. A segmental society, consisting of communities of equal value to each other, turns into a hierarchically organized pyramid, where the privileged elite dominates the vast periphery. Ethnographers could observe all the stages of this process of the birth of the state with their own eyes on the example of agricultural societies in the southern half of Africa, to which we will turn after J. Mac.

In the villages of the inhabitants of the African savannah, the traveler is immediately struck by the large, clay-coated baskets standing on the wood scraps next to the huts. By the number and size of these baskets-granaries, at first glance, one can determine the degree of well-being of the inhabitants of a particular dwelling. It is also clear that the richest granaries belong to the head of the community. However, one should not think that all their contents are certainly the personal property of the latter. The stocks stored here, made up of the peasants' surplus crops, are intended for public use during village festivals or in case of crop failure. It is also important that the possession of such a reserve frees up the leader's time to engage in a wide variety of affairs of community management and the improvement of the village. As if in return, he demands from residents further replenishment of supplies, which, ultimately, provides the leader with more and more effective means of pressure and coercion. So, step by step, the leader acquires real political power and becomes a leader in the full sense of the word.

With the growth of the well-being and power of this or that leader, his appetites grow, and he, with the help of his associates, or even military force, seeks to spread his influence over neighboring communities, one way or another suppressing the leaders there. This process of centralizing political power goes through several successive stages, so that hierarchically organized political structures are formed over time. For example, in Zambia today, several dozen villages with a total population of about 5-10 thousand inhabitants make up the so-called chiefdom, under the rule of a leader of a relatively low rank. He, along with other leaders of equal status, is subordinate to a higher-ranking leader, who already controls several chiefs. Among the people of Cuba, until recently, the political organization was a union of leaders who dominated their own territories and at the same time recognized the power of the so-called Nyimi, the leader of the Mbala tribe. A political organization of this type can be called a federal proto-state, rallied under the auspices of one of the leaders. Societies of this type, with all sorts of particular variations, have arisen and disintegrated many times throughout the history of tropical Africa.

Under such a system, the power of the leader is based on four foundations. This is, firstly, wealth, which is determined by the number of villages belonging to the leader and, accordingly, by the contingent of workers to cultivate the fields and combat-ready young men. Further, the strength of the leader's influence depends on the size of his entourage, which constitutes the layer of nobility and bureaucracy. In addition, he has the right to administer the court and seek the execution of the sentence by means of coercion. Finally, the leader is surrounded by the halo of the omnipotent magician. According to the American ethnographer V. Turner, among the Ndembu people in Zambia, the supreme leader “... is at the same time the top of the political and legal hierarchy, and the entire community ... Symbolically, he is also the most tribal territory and all its riches ... The fertility of the land, as well as the protection of the country from drought, hunger, disease and insect raids are linked to the position of the leader and to his physical and moral condition. "

It is important to emphasize, however, that for all this omnipotence of the leader, his position in society largely retains the echoes of earlier systems of universal equality. This becomes especially obvious when one gets acquainted with the ritual of initiation into the leader, the first stage of which, according to Turner's descriptions, is a procedure that, from our point of view, is extremely humiliating for the future ruler. Here are just some excerpts from the high priest's monologue addressed to the newly-minted leader. “Shut up! You are a pitiful selfish fool with a bad temper! You don't love your friends, you just get angry with them! Meanness and stealing are all that you own! And yet we have called you and we say that you must inherit the leader. Having renounced meanness, give up anger, give up adultery, immediately give up all this! .. If earlier you were mean and used to eating your porridge and meat alone, today you are a leader. You must give up self-love, you must greet everyone, you are the leader ... You must not judge with partial judgment in the affairs in which your loved ones are involved, especially your children. "

At the end of this speech, each of those present has the right to shower the chosen one with abuse and, in the most harsh expressions, recall to him all the insults he has inflicted. At the same time, it is assumed that the leader will not be able to recall any of these insults to his subjects in the future. Not limited to verbal attacks on the initiate in power, the high priest also resorts to physical influence on him, from time to time slapping the leader on his bare buttocks. It is impossible not to admit the truth of the statements of eyewitnesses of this whole scene, who say that on the night before entering the dignity, the position of a leader is equated with the lack of rights of a slave. The described ritual has a double meaning. First, it symbolizes the “death” of the future leader as an ordinary member of society. Secondly, from now on, the leader should consider all his privileges as a gift of the community, which should be used for the collective good, and not for the satisfaction of his own interests. Even when a person becomes a leader, he must remain a member of the community of people that chose him, “laughing with them,” welcoming everyone and sharing food with them.

Probably, such primitive democratism in the rituals of consecration of the sovereign gradually dies out when the society of sa-vanna farmers is transformed from a federal union of leaders into a unitary state with tsarist power. The residence of the king becomes the capital of his vast possessions, where taxes flow from all its ends in the form of taxes from the population. The king's retinue is no longer limited to a few of his advisers, but now includes an extensive staff of courtiers, endowed with unequal rights and responsibilities. For example, during a meeting of the government elite of the Lozi state, travelers who visited it in 1942 counted forty-six Hindu officials to the right of the king, who were placed in the order of seniority of their titles. On the left were fourteen lower-ranking courtiers, the so-called Likombwa, as well as several of the king's sons.

Slightly deviating aside, it should be emphasized that all those political (potestary) formations, which were discussed here, in the 19th and 20th centuries were not subjects of international law. Rather, they were structures of local self-government, located on the territories of states ruled first by the colonial administration, and after the collapse of the colonial system in Africa, by national governments. So, the mentioned kingdom of Lozi, founded in the 17th century, with1890 ended up on the territory of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, which since 1964 became part of the Republic of Zambia, ruled by the president and parliament.

Stratification societies

So, we briefly and very schematically got acquainted with how the formation of pre-states and the simplest early state formations on the basis of property inequality in archaic agricultural societies can occur. Now we have to find out how, on their basis, the emergence of societies with a more complex internal structure is possible - belonging, in particular, to the category of typical statistical societies. Perhaps the most peculiar of them, where the principle of the "puff pie" is expressed most clearly, are societies subdivided into castes. They differ from other stratification societies, estate and class, in that the boundaries between the coexisting strata of society remain practically impenetrable here. This means that a person born as a member of a given caste will never and under no circumstances be able to transfer to another. Castes are endogamous communities, that is, marriages between a man and a woman from different castes are prohibited both by tradition and by law, if, of course, there is legal law in the country. They are possible only within a given caste, why a descendant of one or another married couple will inevitably be born, already being a member of the caste to which his parents belong.

One of the varieties of caste division of society is based on ethnic differences between people. It is this option that is possible in the case of the integration of the “civilization of the spear” with the “civilization of granaries”. The history of Africa provides several examples of such integration, and in all cases alien tribes of warlike pastoralists settled on the lands; already mastered by farmers, leaving behind the position of a privileged stratum of the population.

The origins of these events date back to the beginning of the second millennium AD, when tribes of pastoralists belonging to the Nilotic group of peoples began to settle from the Nile Valley southward into the savannahs, inhabited by Bantu Negroids. The newcomer pastoralists, in whose midst initially the relations of equality and anarchy prevailed, used the pre-state structures of local farmers, which were discussed above, as the basis of a new political system. At the same time, caste inequality was also superimposed on the property and class inequality of farmers. For example, in the kingdom of Ankole, which was formed in the 15th-16th centuries on the territory of modern Uganda, the Hima herders assumed the role of the dominant caste, keeping the caste of the original local inhabitants, the iru farmers, subordinate.

One of the most important tools for maintaining such domination was the ban on raising livestock, which extended to all Ira. The peasant could get for use either a cowhide cow, or gobies, which were slaughtered for meat. In exchange for these animals, the iru had to give part of their harvest to the herders. The ability of the peasants to rebel against the established order was reduced to a minimum, since it was forbidden for them to have weapons and be part of military detachments. Marriages between Ira and Khima were strictly prohibited. And although the caste inequality that existed in Ancola served as a source of constant social tension, from an economic point of view, the system turned out to be progressive, since the division of labor that had developed in society brought mutual benefits to both pastoralists and farmers.

The reason for the emergence of another, much more exotic variant of a caste society no longer lies in the enslavement of one people by another, but in religious ideas dating back to ancient times, which developed within one or another single ethnos. An excellent example of a religion that gave rise to a very bizarre caste system that became the basis of the entire social organization of many peoples of South Asia is Hinduism. In the beliefs of the Hindus, the opposition of the concepts "purity" - "impurity", which from time immemorial has been fundamental in almost all archaic cultures, has been brought to its logical end. "The ideas of filth, impurity, purity, purification and others like them are closely related for primitive people with the ideas of hostility or favor of unknown forces and good and evil influences, with the beginning and end of their action, and therefore with the ideas of happiness and unhappiness," he wrote L. Levy-Bruhl. Let us recall, for example, with what panic fear the Arapesh Papuans relate to the possibility of leaving somewhere inadvertently a piece of their "dirt", which can be found and bewitched by strangers.

The states of impurity for a man of primitive culture are truly incalculable. For example, among the Kaffir tribes of Africa, children are considered unclean until the moment of initiation, before they become adults; all women during menstruation and during the first month after childbirth; widowers within 15 days after the death of a spouse; mother of a recently deceased child; men upon returning from a military raid, etc. Hinduism has adopted all these beliefs, adding to them a number of new ones. For example, the Hindus consider all violence to be a powerful source of impurity - and not only against people, but also against animals, plants and against the mother earth. That is why people of a clerical rank under no circumstances should be engaged in tillage (in which wounds are inflicted on the ground), and the professions of a butcher who slaughters livestock, and butter churn, which takes the life of plant seeds, are classified as "unclean".

All this creates among the peoples professing Hinduism a very special psychological atmosphere of fear of a wrong step that threatens to come into contact with evil. Here is what, in particular, the French ethnographer M. Gaborio writes about the everyday state of mind among the inhabitants of one of the countries of the Hindu world: “The feeling of supernatural forces permeates the entire life of the inhabitants of Nepal ... sense of the word, except for entertainment. And the dances themselves often acquire religious significance and can easily turn into shamanic "whirling" ... Numerous and omnipresent sacred forces have, as it were, two poles. One positive: great gods care about order in the world and society. It is a source of purity and hope, assurance of salvation. The other pole is negative, negative, where the mutually connected impurity and danger are concentrated; sexuality, birth, death - sources of impurity - alienate a person from the great gods and give over to the power of younger evil deities, ghosts and sorcerers wandering the earth. "

The emergence of the Hindu caste system is grounded in Sanskrit treatises created in the first millennium BC. They established the division of society into four classes, called varnas, outside of which (and, consequently, society as such) were left the so-called non-brewery, which include the most disadvantaged strata of pariahs and untouchables. At the top of the hierarchical pyramid created by the covenants and Hinduism is the highest varna of the priests - the Brahmins. Slightly lower is the kshatriya varna, which includes the highest secular aristocracy, called upon to exercise earthly power, as well as people of military professions. They are followed by the descending varna of the vaisyas, uniting farmers, pastoralists and merchants. Members of all these three varnas at the age of 8-12, after learning the sacred texts, go through
initiation, which is seen as a second, spiritual birth. Therefore, brahmanas, kshatriyas and vaisyas are called twice-born - in contrast to the representatives of the fourth, lowest caste of sudras, which unites artisans and servants.

Initially, the varna system arose, most likely, as a natural, indispensable result of the property and social stratification of society - in about the same way as it happened, say, among the farmers of the African savannahs. Varnas have something in common with the estates of a more familiar European society (clergy, nobility, merchants, artisans) that marriages between them are not completely prohibited: a Hindu can take a woman from a lower varna as a second wife or concubine, although marriage to a representative of a higher varna is considered unacceptable. The main difference between varnas and estates today is that the non-hierarchical subordination of varnas is based on the principle of their unequal value in terms of the degree of “ritual purity”: the varna of the brahmanas is the purest, the varna of the sudras is the least pure, except, of course, the untouchables and pariahs. ...

It was this principle, brought to its logical conclusion, that formed the basis for the division of varnas and society as a whole into castes, or jati, which took shape in later times, in the course of the further evolution of Hindu cultures. All members of this caste, without exception, are characterized by a well-defined level of hereditary purity and impurity, which once and for all determines the place of this caste in the hierarchy of society. The degree of purity is determined primarily by the type of activity of people: if any caste from the varna of Brahmans, guarding the purity of the whole society, by definition belongs to the most pure, then the castes of laundresses or goldsmiths-sanitizers are among the most unclean, as soon as they are by the nature of their occupation always and everywhere directly in contact with "dirt", with the waste of human life.

Impurity is transmitted through water, food, and even touch. So if a member of any of the unclean castes drinks the water given to him by a person from an unclean, but still higher caste, he will lose some of the purity that his caste hereditarily possesses. For purity is an unstable state, and impurity is omnipresent and contagious. In order to maintain the level of purity inherent in a given caste, a person must constantly, under pain of exclusion from the caste, perform ablutions and all kinds of ritual purifications - especially after dangerous contact with a member of a lower caste. Needless to say, impurity is transmitted by a powerful stream during sexual intercourse. Hence - the strictest prohibition not only on marriages, but even on fleeting sexual relations between representatives of different castes.

Different ethnic groups adhering to Hinduism can be subdivided into an unequal number of castes - in accordance with national traditions or with local customs of a given area. For example, among the inhabitants of the highlands (terais) of Nepal, the varna of the brahmanas is divided into three castes, the varna of the kshatriyas is also divided into three, the varna of the vaisyas is represented by a single caste, and the sudras are divided into 13 pure castes, at least 4 impure castes and 7 untouchable castes. Interestingly, the caste of leatherworkers-shoemakers belongs to the latter, since they constantly deal with the skins of fallen and killed animals. Some scholars count up to 59 castes in this region, although there are usually no more than 20 of them within one large village. The Sinhalese, who are the ancient settlers of the island of Sri Lanka, have 25 castes, and them later conquerors of Tamils ​​- 48.

It is not easy for a man of a secular society to realize for certain, how petty, importunate and imperiously the caste controls every step in the daily existence of a member of the Hindu society. Here is what a prominent connoisseur of Indian culture I.P. Minaev (cited from: [Kochnev, 1976]): “Interfering in all his affairs, she also demands strict observance of her rules and regulations, for non-observance there is a threat of excommunication, otherwise civil death. The outcast, excommunicated from the caste becomes an outcast: he is deprived of all his rights, he even ceases to be the son and heir of his father. " And further: “... an Indian, excommunicated, expelled from the caste, is deprived of everything, this is a fragile boat, without a rudder and oars; everything was taken away from him, together with the caste - his tribe and nationality ”. It seems that in such an oppressive social climate, the only consolation for members of almost all low castes is that there are people who are even lower on the social ladder. Or, as they say in Nepal, "for every untouchable there is an untouchable."

In conclusion of this section, it is worth saying a few words about how the system of stratification developed by Hinduism functions in a multinational state, where different ethnic groups differ sharply from each other in the fundamental features of their social organization and material culture. Such is, in particular, the Kingdom of Nepal, which has existed since 1951 under the laws of a constitutional monarchy. The ethnic composition here is very variegated; according to various estimates, from 30 to 60 languages ​​and dialects are in circulation in the country. Nepal is an agrarian country, so the social organization of the majority of the population professing Hinduism, in general, is similar to what we saw when we got acquainted with the "civilization of granaries". The main peculiarity of local peasant life is that in each village community the distribution of its inhabitants "by quarters", as well as the division of labor, is strictly regulated by caste rules.

However, along with this agrarian civilization in Nepal, there are others. We are talking about numerous tribes with their own beliefs, very far from Hinduism. Some of these tribes gradually move to a settled way of life, others live by hunting and gathering, being to this day under the shadow of the "onion civilization", or engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture in accordance with the dictates of the "forest civilization". All these numerous ethnic groups in one way or another interact with each other, step by step creating a single "synthetic" society, where each is more or less dependent on each. At the same time, the social status of any participant in interactions - be it a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a person with a bow and arrow in his hands - is assessed from the standpoint of the caste system of Hinduism, as a worldview that is absolutely dominant in the country.

Here is what M. Gaborio, an expert on the life of Nepal, says about this: “... in the mountains, people of pure castes receive water from all tribes, even from kusunda and raute, which are just transitioning to a sedentary lifestyle; women from all tribes can be elected as second spouses by men of pure castes. None of the tribal customs, no matter how unacceptable it may seem to devout Hindus, can serve as an obstacle: for example, it does not bother anyone that the Magars, Tamangs and Kirata eat pork, like untouchables ... The tribes, with their own the parties have fully mastered the hierarchical differences, and although within the tribe there is equality of all its members, in relations with outsiders it is required to observe the status ... that is, the superiority of the brahmanas and other high castes of the Kshatriya level is recognized ... This is especially clearly manifested when tribal members come into contact with the unclean ... or with the Muslims: they do not accept water from their hands. As for the untouchables, tribal members not only do not accept water from them, but also avoid physical contact with them and never let them into their homes. "

From the point of view of an ordinary member of an open democratic society, the caste system is likely to look strange and even repulsive anachronism. However, M. Gaboriau adheres to a different opinion, emphasizing its structural and organizing function. “The caste system,” he writes, “thanks to the hierarchical structure and division of labor, contributes to the integration of the many peoples of Nepal into a single society and a single economic structure, and despite the fact that it was abolished on paper in 1963, it continues to be one. of the most important factors of national integration ”. Perhaps the author is right in many ways, but for me the caste system is a striking example of how people can be attached to the bizarre and very burdensome delusions of their infinitely distant ancestors.

Industrial mass society

After all that we have learned about segmental and stratification societies, rooted in the distant past of humanity; It will be useful to say a few words about the main features of those societies in which a man of modern times lives and which in their development are directed towards the future. Societies of this third type can be called industrial if we consider industry as the main mode of production of material values, which in one way or another determines the face of their entire economy. If we put at the forefront the entire sum of socio-psychological phenomena that is covered by the concept of "human factor", then these societies of a new type can most accurately be called mass societies.

It is well known that the formation and further development of the industry has entailed a powerful flow of resettlement of people from countryside to urban industrial centers. This process, which has significantly brought the collapse of numerous segmental societies, has laid the foundation for the rapid growth of clusters of people heterogeneous within themselves, not subject to any traditional, well-established rules of community. This is how the author of The Age of Crowds, the famous French specialist in social psychology S. Moskovichi, describes this situation; “Torn from their homes, from their soil, people gathered in unstable urban conglomerates, became a mass. With the transition from tradition to modernism, a multitude of anonymous individuals, social atoms, devoid of connection with each other, are thrown into the market. "

It is clear that, having become the economic pillar of society, cities have simultaneously turned into centers of political life, the focus of power of rulers and legislators, a kind of control rooms that keep under vigilant control everything that happens in the rural periphery. The high concentration of the population in a large city makes it a hotbed of all kinds of innovations. According to the French sociologist E. Durkheim, it is here that "... ideas, fashions, right, new needs are developed, which then spread to the rest of the country." At the same time, old stable traditions are destroyed most rapidly in cities, giving way to a fickle mass culture, which is in a continuous rapid rotation. Such a powerful and undeniable influence of megacities on all aspects of the life of modern society allows us to designate the latter as urbanized societies.

Of course, cities have sprung up here and there throughout the history of mankind. Consider, for example, Jerusalem, Troy, Athens and Rome, the city-states of medieval Italy. Urban civilizations were born not only in the Mediterranean - this cradle of modern European culture, but also far beyond its borders, even in equatorial Africa and Mesoamerica, where ancient cities now lie in stone ruins as evidence of the engineering talents of generations long gone. However, these cities were ridiculously small in comparison with modern megalopolises, until the beginning of the era of industrialization, they invariably remained tiny islands of comfort and luxury in vast territories, whose inhabitants obtained food by hunting, arable farming or cattle breeding.

Today, it is even difficult to imagine how incredibly quickly, in the course of modern history, originally agrarian societies were and continue to turn into urbanized ones. In 1900. in the world there were only about 350 cities with a population of more than 100 thousand inhabitants in each, after 50 years there were already about 950, and after another 33 years - almost 2.5 million. During the same period, the number of cities with a population of over 1 million people increased from 10 in 1900 to 81 in 1950, and to 209 in 1983. If at the very beginning of our century, the townspeople accounted for a little more than 10% of the world's population, then in In 1950 their share reached 29%, and in 1983 it exceeded 40%. In the period from 1950 to 1983 alone, the number of urban residents increased from 730 million to 1895 million, that is, 2.6 times. 3a same time rural population the world grew by only 53% - from 1,800 million to 2,750 million, and in some countries (for example, in the then USSR) it even decreased. Today, more than a quarter of all humanity are residents of large cities, the population of which annually increases by a total of about 50 million people.

All these figures clearly illustrate the scale of the concentration of people in the era of so-called technological progress, which, from the point of view of a sociologist, it is quite appropriate to qualify as the “century of crowds”. Let us not forget, however, that cities are not the whole society of an industrial type. Obviously, each such society is concluded within the boundaries of a certain state with its own political system, legal norms, with peculiarities of morality, collectivism and social psychology that are unique for the people of each country. In other words, although the most important feature of modern industrial societies is a centralized system of state power, it would be inaccurate to equate the concepts of "society" and "state", because the second of them only partially covers the first. Probably to avoid this confusion of concepts, the classic of world sociology Pitirim Sorokin, discussing the laws of existence of modern societies, cautiously calls them "political communities", "political organizations" and "political organisms", and uses all these terms as synonyms. In the future, I will also adhere to the same terminology, especially since a little below it will be very useful for me to outline the views of an outstanding sociologist.

The colossal number of human masses involved in the life of modern political organisms is the first thing that catches the eye when comparing them with fragmented segmental societies or with archaic societies of a stratification type. The population of most European countries, for example, ranges from 4 million to 50 million people. Of course, the industrial mass society retains many features of archaic segmental and stratification societies. Countries are divided into certain segments (counties, cantons, regions, states), equal in their rights and subordinate to the central administration. Industrial society is stratified, as we can see below, to an even greater extent than caste, but the strata here are not separated from each other by impenetrable barriers. On the contrary, in the life of modern society, sometimes referred to as a "society of equal opportunities", the phenomenon of social mobility plays a huge role: a successful individual is able to quickly climb the levels of the social hierarchy, while a loser is in danger of falling from a high status position to the very bottom.

In a mass society, a person is in constant motion - literally and figuratively. The need to constantly change their social role and contact with a huge number of socially anonymous partners creates an environment of unpredictability for the individual. And since everyone is more or less dependent on everyone, unpredictability becomes the background of the life of entire corporate groups of society as such. All this forces us to admit that the social order, which seems to us initially given and more than natural, is an extremely fragile thing. And if you look deeper, the apparent harmony of society is, in essence, a toy in the hands of blind elemental forces, born of the collisions of many differently directed personal and group interests.

This is what Pitirim Sorokin means when he speaks of the patterns of changes in political stratification in modern society... The larger the political organism, the more pronounced the political stratification, all other things being equal. However, in each individual case there is a certain "point of oversaturation" at which the hierarchical pyramid, which has become hypertrophied, collapses, sometimes dragging the whole society along with it in its fall. According to the scientist's figurative expression, in the course of the transformations of society, changes in the height and profile of the "social cone", the steepness of its slopes, and the integrity of the internal structure take place all the time. “In any society,” writes Pitirim Sorokin, “there is a constant struggle between the forces of political alignment and the forces of stratification ... stratification to the point of equilibrium ... By the above methods, the political organism returns to a state of equilibrium when the shape of the cone is either hypertrophied flat or highly elevated. "

However, you ask, what determines the "state of equilibrium" that is normal for society? According to Pitirim Sorokin, it is dictated by the size of the population involved in the life of society. “The increase in the size of the political organization increases stratification primarily because a larger population dictates the need to create a more developed and larger apparatus. The increase in the management personnel leads to its hierarchization and stratification, otherwise ten thousand equal officials, say, without any subordination, would disintegrate any society and make it impossible for a political organization to function. Augmentation and stratification state apparatus contributes to the separation of management personnel from the population, the possibility of their exploitation, mistreatment, abuse, etc. - it was, is and will be a factor of fluctuations in stratification. Second, an increase in the size of a political organization leads to an increase in political stratification, since more members differ among themselves according to their inner abilities and acquired talents ”(P. Sorokin's italics).

In addition to political stratification in every modern society, economic stratification (division into rich and poor) and professional stratification associated with the existence of more or less prestigious professions... With all this, it is political stratification that determines the face of society, and it is also subject to the most dramatic changes during periods of social instability. Here is what Pitirim Sorokin says about this: “Compared to the economic profile, the changes in the outline of political stratification seem less smooth and more convulsive. Serious socio-political reform (... change of electoral rights, introduction of a new constitution) slightly alters the economic stratification, but often leads to a major change in political stratification. In the event of a catastrophe or a major coup, radical and unusual profiles occur. Society in the first period of the great revolution often resembles the shape of a flat trapezoid, without upper echelons, without recognition of authorities and their hierarchy. Everyone is trying to command, and no one wants to obey. After a short period of time, authority appears, soon an old or new hierarchy of groups is established and, finally, the destroyed political pyramid is restored again. "

Study of the dynamics of fluctuations in political stratification different societies in the course of human history allowed Pitirim Sorokin to come to the pessimistic conclusion that it is difficult for people to expect the natural development of society from one stable form to another. Although, according to him, there has recently been a clear wave of transition from despotic to democratic societies on all continents, it would be a naive illusion to believe that a reverse movement is impossible. Recalling the long-term domination of totalitarian despotic regimes in the "countries of people's democracies" headed by the former USSR, in Nazi Germany and in other countries, Pitirim Sorokin writes: forgot about her ... ". Therefore, he states, “There is no constant trend of transition from monarchy to republic, from autocracy to democracy, from minority rule to majority rule, from the absence of government interference in the life of society to all-round state control. There are also no reverse tendencies. "

The very fact of the domination of a multi-level, ramified hierarchy in all spheres of mass society (economic, political and professional) clearly tells us that social harmony is a very difficult to achieve and extremely unstable state. Many great thinkers of the past were well aware of this. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote back in the 17th century that the natural state of society is "a war of all against all." For the equality of people by nature gives them equal hopes for success in life. "That is why, if two people desire the same thing, which, however, they cannot possess together, they become enemies." The German thinker Emmanuel Kant formulated the same idea at the end of the 18th century in a slightly different way. In his opinion, a person “... necessarily misuses his freedom in relation to his neighbors; and although he, as a rational being, wants to have a law that would define the boundaries of freedom for everyone, but his greedy animal inclination prompts him, where he needs to, to make an exception for himself ”(quoted from: [World of Philosophy, 1991 ]). Therefore, Kant believes, "The means that nature uses in order to carry out the development of all the inclinations of people is their antagonism in society, since it ultimately becomes the cause of a law-governed order."

These ideas were later developed by a number of sociologists and political scientists and served as the basis for a new branch of social science - conflictology. Summarizing everything that scientists have done in this area, A.G. Zdravomyslov summarizes the views that have developed here in the following way: “Do not mislead people with the myth of the general harmony of interests ... Conflict is an inevitable result of any management system, any hierarchically organized system. The ideal of complete social equality is an undoubted utopia, a harmful delusion that only leads to the destruction of the effectiveness of any joint activity ... ". Moreover, according to the author, "The essence of any political regime lies precisely in the fact that it determines the forms of political conflict in the struggle for power."

It is clear that the more people are involved in the social process, the more often conflicts arise on domestic, national, religious grounds. In modern industrial society, the individual becomes, in essence, omnipresent due to the unheard-of progress in communication technology and the imperious intrusion of the media into the daily existence of each and every one. Under the influence of the propaganda of the conflicting political leaders, huge contingents of people, turned into the "public" by the expansion of radio and television, willy-nilly become participants in the incessant struggle between political parties. The ups and downs of this struggle become for many a source of constant social tension, a sense of instability of existence, outbreaks of collective hysteria.

There is a long-standing and enduring tradition among philosophers to anathematize these and many other disastrous costs of a mass technocratic society, which in reality cannot be regarded as anything other than its indispensable and irreparable attributes. The hidden vices of our reality sometimes include the need for everyone to assume the full measure of responsibility for their own destiny. The case is presented as if the individual, freed in modern times from the authority of the church, racial and class barriers, is burdened by his freedom of the social atom, ”and, often without realizing it, seeks to get rid of it. This, in particular, is the idea of ​​the book by the American philosopher of modern times E. Fromm "Escape from Freedom". Man, he writes, “... became free from external shackles that hinder him from acting in accordance with his own thoughts and desires. He could freely act of his own free will if he knew what he wants, what he thinks and feels. But he doesn't know that; he adapts to anonymous power and assimilates such a "I" that does not constitute his essence ... Despite the appearance of optimism and initiative, modern man is crushed by a deep sense of powerlessness, therefore he passively, like a paralyzed person, meets impending catastrophes. Based on this premise, which, I am convinced, excessively dramatizes the true state of affairs, E. Fromm continues: “Loneliness, fear and loss remain; people cannot tolerate them forever. They cannot endlessly drag out the burden of "freedom from"; if they are unable to move from negative freedom to positive freedom, they try to get rid of freedom altogether. The main paths along which there is an escape from freedom is obedience to the leader, as in fascist countries, and forced conformity, prevailing in our democracy. "

It seems that the author did not regret black paint for the picture painted here. Before us is a typical example of the so-called alarmist style of assessing what is happening, which also makes its contribution to the piggy bank of forcing social tension in society. Man has never experienced a state of unclouded comfort: in archaic societies, people live under constant fear of hunger, hostile spirits and "strangers", in a mass society they fear crime and unemployment. However, it is also true that in the minds of people the hope for the emergence of a strong and wise ruler does not die, who will finally establish a "reasonable" order, eradicate crime, and make everyone rich and happy. The ineradicable belief in the possibility of such a coming of the Messiah only during the twentieth century plunged many peoples into endless troubles and sufferings. The epic of "building communism" in Russia provides an impressive example of such a course of events. “Literally before our very eyes, a group of" adventurers "enslaved and deprived of their property millions of people in Russia in the period from 1918 to 1920. They slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people, tortured others and imposed on millions of compulsory hard work, which is no easier than the labor of slaves in Egypt during the construction of the pyramids. In short, they deprived the Russian population of all rights and freedoms and created real state slavery in its worst form within four years. " Having promised the people universal equality, the Bolsheviks actually created a truly colossal bureaucratic pyramid, which, perhaps, had no analogues in the entire history of mankind.

Throughout human history, few of the outstanding thinkers have not proposed their project of creating a harmonious and "just" society. Today, philosophers limit themselves to revealing the real and far-fetched vices of the modern social order. Thousands of pages have been and will be written on these topics. However, I think it is difficult to say anything more sensible on this topic in comparison with the following words of Emmanuel Kant: “Man wants consent, but nature knows better what is good for his kind: she also wants contention. He wants to live carelessly and cheerfully, and nature wants him to get out of the state of negligence and inactive contentment and plunge headlong into work, experienced difficulties in order to find means of rational getting rid of these difficulties. "

In this cursory review of the diversity of human societies, I tried to carry out the idea that at the heart of each of the many variants of human sociality lies, in the end, an alloy of the ideas of the world, work experience and age-old traditions passed down from generation to generation, which exist in a given society. All this taken together creates culture - that is, something that is absent in any developed form even in our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, in great apes. The vast spectrum of cultures - from the most archaic to purely technocratic, where existence is already unthinkable - without a TV and a computer, owes to the infinite variety of combinations of the freedom of flight of human thought, on the one hand, with its ability to freeze for centuries in the form of the most bizarre beliefs and absurd delusions , with another. Already known to us Pitirim Sorokin, discussing the laws of human social evolution, comes to the conclusion that “... human society, the whole culture and the whole civilization, in the final analysis, is nothing more than a world of concepts frozen in a certain form and certain forms .. . ". Or, in other words, "... the social world is the world of ideas, and man is an animal that creates the kingdom of logical being - a new and higher form of world energy."

In general, segmentation is the division of all consumers into groups according to predetermined criteria for selecting consumers into groups. Segmentation allows you to prioritize, choose one or another marketing strategy, quantitatively and qualitatively assess processes, trends and consumers. Today we will talk about such segmentation as segmentation by value.
Values ​​shape the worldview of people, which means they influence purchasing behavior. Segmentation of consumers based on personal values ​​provides insight into their motivations and priorities. Also, people's values ​​do not change so quickly, so this segmentation is suitable for strategic planning marketing.

Understanding value orientation enables trade marketers to understand their target audience... This will allow you to understand how to work with the audience, how to build communication. Marketing strategists will be able to imagine which customer segments are prioritized and which strategies will be most effective. Brands will be able to compare their audience profile with that of competing brands and see if they are reaching the most attractive target audience in the market.

Value-Driven Segments

Research firm GfK identifies the following value-driven consumer segments:

• Segment "Ambitious"
• Segment "Caring"
• Segment "Saving"
• Segment "Hedonists"
• Segment "Self-sufficient"
• Segment of "Rationalists",
• Segment of "Traditionalists"

"Ambitious" (in the international classification - Achievers)- people puzzled achievements and the severity of social status. In pursuit of this, they put their own interests ahead of the interests of other people. Their main goal, as an indicator of success and the ability to buy things that demonstrate their achievements, is money. They pay special attention to appearance your own, surrounding and things, as one of the necessary elements, testifying to the status. They are willing to take risks to achieve their goals. Strive for control over time, other resources, including people.

If necessary, they are ready to sacrifice friends and compromise with their conscience. Their desire for success is, ultimately, a means to indulge their desires, but still, in comparison with the ambition to get ahead, this is secondary for them. What should be the main message in communications aimed at Achievers: you earned it; you deserve it; show the world that you did it.

Hedonists... People who need continuous sensation enjoyment... They are constantly looking for new and exciting experiences. They seek adventure and risk to feel alive. Most of them love to have a good time, preferably with close friends. They are interested in everything that life has to offer, they like to indulge their desires, they do not value religion and traditions. They need money to support their lifestyle. They are willing to take risks and take the initiative to get ahead. They want to be independent, it is important for them to think freely and do what they want. They are not afraid to be different from others.

Self-directed... It is important for representatives of this segment be whole and truthful with ourselves, and this is much more important than having a lot of money or power. If it requires compromising principles, they will not pursue social status. They are interested in the whole world and everything that it has to offer. They believe it is important to respect national, religious and racial differences. But at the same time, they do not believe that they should blindly follow the rules and conventions. They value fulfilling their obligations to loved ones / friends. They do not seek to save the world.

"Socially-oriented rationalists" (SocioRationals): Striving to keep the world from understanding that save is wise, not because they are idealists. They see the world as large and multifaceted, where differences must be respected to maintain order. They value giving everyone the same opportunity. It is important for them to work for the welfare of society. They value knowledge and feel the need to keep learning throughout their lives. They can find inspiration in religion and ideas of humanism. They need the support of others. Which messages are being responded to: Fair trade and ethical sources of resources; reasonable and responsible; quality and cost.

"Saving" (Survivors)... Restrained and humble. In any business, they try to make every effort, while neither do not seek to earn much money. These are people with a life as simple and concise as possible. They love the culture of their country and would not want it to be influenced from outside. They lead a quiet, homely lifestyle, and at times they are uncomfortable that the world is changing too quickly. Usually, they are content with their social position and do not seek power and responsibility. They don't need adventure and risk. They focus on core values. What's relevant to the segment: get what you see; simply; optimal price-quality ratio.

What is in Russia?

In Russia, the segment of “Caring” has always traditionally been large (22%), and during the crisis, the share of “Traditionalists” has grown.

What's in the dynamics?

Since the beginning of the crisis in Russia, the number of “Hedonists” has decreased, while the number of “Ambitious” and “Traditionalists” has increased. The “Self-sufficient” segment also decreased. This trend in the dynamics of consumer segments suggests that Russians have become less relaxed, more pragmatic, achievement-oriented, but also less self-sufficient. At the same time, the share of consumers with a focus on family and children remains high.

How does this affect consumption?

Enhancement The importance of the “Traditionalists” segment is responding to the growth of patriotism, which can be expressed, for example, in greater support for national marketing, local brands and products.

Representatives of the "Hedonists" segment usually spend a lot of time outside the home, in cafes, cinemas and restaurants, they love shopping, fashion, and travel. Decrease in share consumers with hedonistic value attitudes can lead to a deterioration in the environment for the restaurant business, fashion retail. The good news is that this segment is "quick-witted", responds quickly if you offer a new tempting experience. Experience shopping is first and foremost for hedonists.

The growth in the share of “Ambitious” consumers shows that wider horizons are opening up for more expensive products that will help owners to boast of their achievements, and on the other hand, for the segment of ready-to-eat meals. It also means that more consumers will choose to either eat out or cook something quickly at home.

How does this affect media behavior?

The most significant television audience is Traditionalists. They watch TV more than others, like to learn more about repairs and garden / vegetable garden. Online, they are more interested in the weather, TV programs than others.
Hedonists watch less TV, spend more time online and like to communicate. The media with the highest affinity index (engagement) among the "Hedonists" are entertainment sites, games, "visual" online resources such as Instagram and others. social networks.

"Ambitious" have a high involvement in resources about gadgets, reference books, navigators / maps.

Something like this ... In pursuit of pseudo-trends, it is important to understand the fundamental principles and then much can be foreseen without changing forecasts from researcher to researcher. René Descartes said:

Knowing a few principles frees you from knowing many facts

societies

and democratic

modes

Arend Leiphart

That it is difficult to achieve and maintain stable democratic governance in a multi-component (plural) society is an established belief in political science. It goes back to the dictum of Aristotle that "the state most of all strives to ensure that everyone in it was equal and the same" (1). Social homogeneity and political cohesion are seen as necessary conditions or factors that contribute significantly to a stable democracy. Conversely, deep social differences and political divisions in multi-dimensional societies are considered to be the cause of the instability and breakdown of democracies.

The present study is devoted to the consideration of a special form of democracy - co-social, which introduces the following amendment to the above-formulated provision: although it is difficult to achieve and maintain stable democratic governance in a multi-component society, it is by no means impossible *. In a co-social democracy, the centrifugal tendencies inherent in a multi-component society are balanced by attitudes towards interaction and the corresponding behavior of leaders of various segments of society.

* The term "co-public" (in English - consociational) is derived from the concept "consociatio" from the book "Politica Methodice Digesta" (1603) by Johannes Altusius.

* Published in the next issue of the magazine.

Elite cooperation is the first and main distinguishing feature of co-social democracy: a number of closely related additional characteristics will be discussed in the next chapter *. Co-public democracy is both an empirical and a normative model. It serves as an explanation of political stability in a number of small European democracies that will be discussed: Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. / ... /

A challenge to democratic pessimists

Although the co-community is nearing the end of the development stage of these four countries, the interest in this phenomenon can by no means be purely historical. Having succeeded in creating stable democratic regimes in societies with serious contradictions, they stand out as exceptions to the rule, not only in European politics, but also on a global scale. In a study of 114 polities, R. A. Dahl notes that while 58% of polities with a low level of subcultural diversity are polyarchies or are close to them, among polities with an average level of diversity, polyarchies make up only 36%; of those in which diversity is characterized as strong or extreme, only 15% fall into this category (2, pp. 110 - 111). In particular, many countries that do not belong to the Western world are characterized by sharp internal contradictions of all kinds and political instability. The experience of the co-public in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland provides a concrete example of how democracy can become a stable and effective system of government in a multi-component society. / ... /

The argument that co-social democracy can act as a normative model challenges the widespread pessimism of the day, and this is where it is. This attitude is based on the belief that after a period of over-optimism in the 1950s and early 60s, pessimism became generally accepted in the 70s. Of course, democracy has suffered too many failures, and too many outbreaks of violence have occurred in multi-constituent societies in recent years, to keep the outlook on the prospects for the development of democracy too strong. But despair would be just as unwise. Pessimists can reject or ignore the arguments and recommendations presented in this book with a clear conscience, but only if they come to the conviction that co-social democracy is not just unlikely, but completely impossible in multi-component societies in the third world - and such a point view hardly has a right to exist after analyzing all the available facts.

Democracy pessimists should also keep in mind that their sentiments carry the danger of a self-fulfilling prophecy: if politicians and political scientists believe that democracy “does not work” in multi-component societies in the Third World, they will not try to establish or force it to act. Such a negative approach, of course, will only increase the likelihood that undemocratic forms of government will continue to dominate there.

Definitions

Many of the above terms are well known, widely used, and in most cases do not need explanation. However, it might be helpful to define key concepts to avoid misinterpretation. First, a plural society is divided, according to G. Eckstein, by "segmental contradictions." He writes: "These exist where political contradictions generally coincide with the lines of social division of society, especially with the most important boundaries existing within society" (3).

Segmental contradictions can be of a religious, ideological, linguistic, regional, cultural, racial or national character. Further characterization, following from Eckstein's definition, implies that political parties, interest groups, means of communication, schools, voluntary associations tend to organize along lines that repeat the boundaries existing within society. The population groups formed due to such contradictions will be referred to as segments of a multi-component society.

Democracy is a concept that resolutely defies definition. It is enough just to note here that in this book it is synonymous with what R. Dahl calls "polyarchy" (2, p. 1 - 2, 231 - 249). This is not a system of power that fully embodies all democratic ideals, but a system that is sufficiently close to them.

Political stability is almost an equally complex and ambiguous term. In this study, it means a multidimensional concept that includes concepts often discussed in the literature on comparative political science: maintaining a system, civil order, legitimacy and effectiveness. The main characteristics of a stable democratic regime are that it has a high likelihood of maintaining its democratic character and is characterized by a low level of existing or potential civil violence. The two dimensions are closely related: the latter can be seen both as a precondition and as an indicator of the former. At the same time, the degree of legitimacy inherent in the regime and the effectiveness of the latter in making and implementing decisions are related both to each other and to the first two factors. Together and interdependently, these four factors constitute a characteristic of democratic stability.

In defining the key concept - co-social democracy - ... both the contradictions between segments inherent in a multi-component society and the political cooperation of segmental elites are taken into account; co-social democracy should be distinguished from two concepts close to it - "segmental pluralism" introduced by VR Lorvin, and "democracy of consent" by G. Lembrukh. Lorwin focuses on the first characteristic feature of such a democracy and leaves out of the scope of the study the question of the elite's response to the manifestation of segmental contradictions, moreover, he is limited only to schisms within society that are of a religious and ideological nature. Lembruch defines the democracy of consent as a strategy for resolving conflicts through cooperation and agreements between different elites, rather than through power struggles and majority decisions; this is the second feature of co-public power (4). In other words, co-social democracy means segmental pluralism (provided that it includes all possible watersheds in a multi-component society), combined with a democracy of consent. / ... /

Composite societies and democracy in the first world

The importance of the co-social type of democracy as an empirical model is related to the contribution it makes to the understanding of Western democracies. The impetus for its creation Served theoretical development problems of political stability, in particular the classical typology of political systems by G.A. Almond, first proposed in 1956 and being the most significant of the currently undertaken attempts to classify malich types of democracies (5, p. 391 - 409). Since the model of co-social democracy is an attempt to improve and complement Almond's authoritative typology, it is necessary to take a closer look at his ideas. This is also important because this author not only introduces a number of essential variables and relationships that are defining criteria, but also integrates several similar theories and concepts into a coherent typology: we are talking about partially coinciding and overlapping belonging to communities, about party systems, separation of stripes and political development. They are all extremely important in the analysis of co-social democracy.

In Almond's early formulation, political systems fall into four main categories: Anglo-American; European continental; pre-industrial or partially industrial; totalitarian. The first two are types of democratic regimes, they are determined by the criteria of political culture and role structure. Anglo-American systems are characterized by a "homogeneous, secular political culture" and a "highly ramified" role structure, while continental European systems are distinguished by "fragmentation of political culture", that is, by isolated "political subcultures" and a structure in which "roles are rooted in subcultures and tend to form their own subsystems of distribution of roles" (5, p. 398-399, 407) ... In other words, continental European systems represent multidimensional societies. Great Britain and the United States are examples of the first, not multi-component type, and Weimar Germany, France and post-war Italy - the second *. / ... /

In both Almond systems, the structure of political cultures and role structures are linked to political stability in the countries under consideration. The Anglo-American type, with its homogeneous political culture and autonomous parties, advocacy groups and means of communication, is associated with stability, while the continental European type, with its fragmented culture and interdependence between parties and groups, is associated with instability. The same relationship is unconditionally repeated in the "functional approach to comparative politics" put forward by Almond (7, pp. 3 - 64). W. T. Blum claims that it contains "the theory of the most Efficient (i.e., stable) system" and that " specific traits the most effective state system ... are strikingly similar to modern parliamentary democracy, especially in its British incarnation ", that is, in other words, with the Anglo-American type (8).

* The difference between these two types of democracy is understood in the later (1966) and much broader developed typology of political systems put forward by Almond in collaboration with G.B. Powell Jr. (6, p. 217, 259-266.)

To use the expression of Almond himself, the continental European type is associated with “immobility” and “the enduring threat of what is often called a“ Caesarist coup. ”This unstable type of government is not able to automatically preserve democracy and can lead to the establishment of a dictatorship; it even, as Almond claims , “the potential of totalitarianism is contained.” In his later work, he argues that the immobility inherent in the continental European type of democracy may have “significant (and apparently adverse) consequences for its stability and survival.” In contrast, the British system is described as “viable” in the sense that it “is able to respond to both internal and external influences more flexibly than many, even than most other systems” (5, p. 408; 6, p. 106, 262).

Separation of powers and overlapping affiliations

Almond's scheme largely echoes the doctrine of the separation of powers, which considers the issue of the stability of democracy, especially from the point of view of the possibility of preserving the democratic character of a regime created on a democratic basis. In his speech as president at the 1966 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Almond contrasted separation of powers with systems theory, calling it the first "dominant paradigm" of political science in the 18th and 19th centuries to be replaced by the systems paradigm. At the same time, he emphasized the commonality of these two theories, calling the authors of the "Federalist Articles" system theorists *. The connection between the separation of powers and Almond's functional approach is especially important in this context, since one of the criteria for distinguishing between Anglo-American and Continental European types in Almond is the role structure, or rather, the degree of autonomy or isolation of roles.

* "Federalist Articles" or "Federalist" - the famous 85 letter-articles, published in October 1787 - August 1788 in New York newspapers by A. Hamilton, J. Madison and J. Jay in defense of the Constitution of 1787 - approx. ed.

The main difference between the doctrine of separation of powers and Almond's scheme is that Almond extends the idea of ​​separation of powers not only to three formal "branches" of power (legislative, executive and judicial), but also to informal political substructures (parties, interest groups, funds communication), and the main emphasis is shifted to these latter (structures "at the input"), and not to the first (structures "at the output"). Other differences are almost exclusively terminological in nature. Almond views power as functions, and for him the separation of powers becomes a "guarding of boundaries" between functions. Both the separation of powers as interpreted by the Federalist and this preservation of boundaries between political functions contribute to the stability of democratic systems. Great Britain (an example of the Anglo-American type) is characterized by "effective preservation of borders ... between the subsystems of polity", while in France (in the III and IV Republics. - Ed.), Representing the continental European type, there is a "weak demarcation ... between different parts of the political system. " French parties and advocacy groups "do not form developed autonomous political subsystems. They are interpenetrating, especially in the Catholic, socialist and communist subcultures. In the same way, the Anglo-American and continental European types differ in the degree of autonomy of their means of communication." In the USA, Great Britain and in the old countries of the British Commonwealth there are "autonomous and specialized means of communication", while in France and Italy "there is a press that tends to obey group interests and political parties" (7, p. 37 - 38, 46) ...

Just as the doctrine of separation of powers is complemented by the idea of ​​checks and balances, the doctrine of maintaining boundaries is complemented by similar concepts of "multifunctionality" and "regulatory role." According to Almond, perfect border preservation is not achievable in practice. Formal "branches" of power, parties, interest groups, etc., inevitably perform not one, but several functions: "Any political structure, no matter how highly specialized it may be, ... is multifunctional." Here, therefore, it is not so much important that political parties, for example, become the only unifier of political interests and do not perform any function other than uniting these interests, but that this function becomes their special responsibility. V modern systems with developed specialization, the prototype of which is Anglo-American democracy, there are some structures "which differ in functional certainty and which tend to play a regulatory role in relation to this function in the political system as a whole" (7, p. 11, 18).

In addition to the fact that the first criterion of Almond's typology - role structure - approaches the doctrine of the separation of powers, there is also a close connection between the second criterion - political culture - and the concept of "overlapping belonging" proposed by supporters of "group theory" AF Bentley and D B. Truman, and are very similar to the concept of "overlapping divergences" by S. M. Lipset. These concepts are based on the assumption that if people belong to several different organized or unorganized groups with different interests and views, then their views will be more moderate as a result of the emerging psychological influences from different sides... Moreover, leaders of organizations with a heterogeneous composition in this situation will be subject to multidirectional pressure and also tend to choose a moderate, middle course. This moderation is vital to political stability. On the contrary, if a society is torn apart by sharp contradictions, and the affiliations and loyalties of its members do not intersect, confining themselves exclusively within certain segments of society, then there will be no place in it for the multidirectional pressures so necessary for political moderation and stability. According to Truman, if a complex society manages to avoid "revolution, degeneration, decline (and) maintain stability ... it will only be due to the multiplicity of belonging" (9). Lipset argues that "the chances of a stable democracy are increased if groups of people and individuals belong to several overlapping politically significant public associations"(10). And Bentley calls the compromise" the very essence of the action of the process of intersection of interests of different groups "(11).

In terms of political culture, overlapping affiliation is characteristic of a homogeneous political culture, while in a fragmented culture, intersections between individual subcultures are either few or nonexistent. In Almond's typology, stable Anglo-American systems have a homogeneous culture, while unstable continental European systems are characterized by deep divisions between subcultures. Their inflexibility and instability, Almond argues, is "a consequence of the state of political culture." As an example, Almond and Powell describe the French system during the IV Republic as being divided into "three major ideological communities or subcultures" in which major parties, advocacy groups, and communications were "controlled within these ideological communities." As a result, "demands grew, but were not embodied in political alternatives or in the adoption of new laws," which led to long "periods of immobility, interspersed with short periods of liquidation of crisis situations." Sometimes Almond and Powell themselves use the vocabulary of the theory of overlapping belonging: in a country like France, “a person is rarely exposed to“ multidirectional pressures ”that make his rigid political attitudes more moderate” (5, p. 408; 6, pp. 122 , 263 - 265). And in the book "Civic Culture" Almond and S. Verba argue that " different countries are different. In the Catholic countries of Europe, for example, these schemes tend to accumulate ideological potential. Family, church, advocacy group, political party coincide in their ideological and political characteristics and reinforce each other in influencing society. In the USA and Great Britain, on the contrary, the scheme of overlapping affiliation is widespread "(12).

Composite societies and party systems

Almond's typology is not only closely related to theories of separation of powers and overlapping affiliation, but also approaches the traditional dichotomous classification of democratic polities, based on the number of parties operating in them, suggesting their division into bipartisan and multiparty. It should be emphasized that this typology is often used to classify not only party systems, but also political systems in general. For example, 3. Neumann argues that "these various political systems have far-reaching consequences for the electoral process, and further - for decision-making by governments ... Classification according to this criterion (the number of parties) is thus completely legitimate and significant" (13 , p. 402 - 403). M. Duverger comes to the conclusion that "the difference according to the feature: one-party - two-party - multi-party system: can become the main way of classifying modern regimes" (14, p. 393).

Both Duverger and Neumann emphasize the relationship between the number of parties and democratic stability. The bipartisan system, Duverger notes, not only "looks the most appropriate to the natural order" because it can adequately reflect the natural duality of public opinion, but it is also potentially more stable than the multiparty system because it is more moderate. The first reveals a "decrease in the degree of political differences", which limits party demagogy, while in the latter, there is a "aggravation of political differences" and "intensification of contradictions", accompanied by a "general strengthening of extremism in public opinion" (14, p. 215, 387 - 388 ). Similarly, Neumann argues that a multi-party system, unlike a bipartisan one, does not have a "unifying and centralizing force" and, accordingly, "does not carry a clear perspective of an effective political formation" (13, p. 402).

Almond argues that in modern developed political systems, with properly set preservation of borders (that is, in the Anglo-American type), the unification of political interests becomes the primary and specific function of political parties. And this function is the "middle stage of the (political) process", which is designed to transform the perceived interests into "a relatively small set of policy alternatives." In this case, a two-party system would be the most appropriate mechanism, and a multi-party system the less effective unifier. Nevertheless, Almond at first rejected the idea that his Anglo-American type corresponds to a two-party system, and the continental European one corresponds to a multi-party system: European political systems "(7, p. 39, 40; 5, p. 397).

However, in his later works, Almond unconditionally accepts the identity of his own typology (at least in that part of it that relates to democratic systems), a typology built on the basis of the number of parties: “Some party systems are able to unite interests much more effectively than others. parties are an important factor. Bipartisan systems that are accountable to a wide range of voters are usually forced to pursue a course of uniting interests. " On the other hand, the presence of a large number of relatively small parties increases the likelihood that each party will simply express the interests of a particular subculture or clientele with a minimum of unifying tendencies. Bipartisan systems are not only the best collectors of interests, but they also contribute to the effective preservation of borders. If we follow Almond's logic, it seems desirable that the structures that unite political interests should function independently of the structures that make decisions and shape interests, and "bipartisan systems operating on the principle of competition are obviously the easiest to achieve such a division of functions and preserve it" ( 6, p. 102-103, 107). Both effective consolidation of interests and the preservation of boundaries between functions are directly related to democratic stability, and both of these features are characteristic of the Anglo-American type of democracy. / ... / *

Composite societies and democracy in the third world

So many developing countries, especially in Asia and Africa, but also some countries in South America, such as Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad, are burdened with political problems caused by deep divisions between segments of their population and a lack of unifying consensus. The theoretical literature on political development, nation-building, democratization interprets this circumstance from strikingly mutually exclusive positions. On the one hand, many authors pointedly refuse to recognize its importance. W. Connor even rebukes most of the leading theorists of nation creation for “trying to play down, if not completely ignore, the problems stemming from ethnic heterogeneity” (15). On the other hand, those authors who take this issue seriously attach paramount importance to it. For example, he is ranked first by L. W. Pye in his famous "seventeen-point syndrome", which together determine the nature of the political process of the "non-Western" type. Pye argues that in "non-Western" societies, the political sphere is not clearly separated from the sphere of social and personal relations: "The basic structures of 'non-Western' politics are communal in nature, and political behavior is strongly colored by considerations of communal belonging" (16)

* Due to lack of space in the journal, the next paragraph was omitted - "Special cases, where the specificity of small European democracies is analyzed. - Ed.

Such communal landmarks are what K. Geertz calls "primitive" devotion, which can be based on language, religion, custom, locality, race, or supposed blood ties "(17). Subcultures of European co-social democracies, which are religious and ideological character, and on which linguistic differences are also imposed in two of these countries, can also be regarded as primitive groups, if we consider ideology as a kind of religion.All these societies, both Western and non-Western, will here be called multi-component societies. And the definition of this term , given at the beginning of this chapter, is close to the sense in which it was used by J. S. Fernivall.

It should be noted that the conceptual constructions of Almond and Fernivall are completely compatible, because Fernivall specifically includes cultural differences as one of the characteristics of multi-component societies: "Each group is committed to its religion, its culture and language, its ideas and way of life." He defines a multi-component society as one in which "different parts of society live side by side, but in isolation, in a single political entity." This concept is somewhat narrower than that of Geertz, since it does not apply to regional differentiation. Fernivall's multi-component society is mixed, if you will, geographically, but presupposes the social isolation of its elements: "In the strictest sense, this society is a mosaic (of peoples), because its parts mix, but do not unite with each other" (18, p. . 304).

This paper adopts a broader definition because it better suits the objectives of comparative research, despite frequent criticism that the concept of a pluralistic society is too vague and covers too much. At the same time, it is imperative to rigorously take into account quantitative and qualitative differences within such a broad category as multi-component societies: differences between the types of segmentation and differences in the degree of multi-component society.

The second significant feature of non-Western politics is the failure of democracy. After an initial optimism about democratic prospects in the newly liberated countries (these prospects were associated mainly with the democratic aspirations of their leaders), a spirit of disappointment reigned. And, as many observers point out, there is a direct link between two fundamental features of non-Western politics: a multidimensional society is unable to sustain democratic governance. This dependence was indirectly noted already in the work of Fernivall. He applied the concept of a multi-component society to colonial countries and expressed the opinion that their unity is supported only by non-democratic means of colonial rule. This is consistent with J. St. Millm of the chances of representative democracy in a multi-component society: “Free institutions are hardly possible in a country inhabited by different nationalities. cannot exist "(19).

This assumption is expressed in the most categorical form by MG Smith. The dominance of one of the segments is included in his definition of a multi-component society. But it's not just a matter of definition. According to Smith, plurality entails the maintenance of political order by coercion and force: "cultural diversity or plurality automatically creates a structural necessity for the dominance of one of the cultural sectors. This ... necessitates the undemocratic regulation of relations between groups." From such a remark follows a dichotomous typology, strongly reminiscent of Almond's classification of European political systems. One type is represented by "integrated societies characterized by consensus and cultural homogeneity" and the other by "regulated societies characterized by disagreement and cultural diversity." It follows from this that homogeneity is a necessary precondition for democratic governance, which entails a specific prediction: "Many of the newly liberated countries can either disintegrate into separate cultural units or maintain integrity, but only in a dominance-subordination relationship between groups" ( twenty).

These ideas figure prominently in the political development literature. The concept of this development is rather amorphous and has received a wide range of definitions. It usually includes (at least before a spirit of pessimism about democracy has recently taken hold) two dimensions such as democratization and the integration of the nation (or nation-building), in addition to the development of differentiated functions and effective specialized structures. There are three important aspects of the concept of political development related to the above. First, democratization and other dimensions of development are usually understood as a consequence of the integration of a nation. For example, Pye argues that political development in general cannot go far without an awareness of deep identification with the entire system. The importance of the integration of the nation for political development sometimes leads to the fact that an equal sign is put between these concepts: political development is the creation of a nation (21). Second, this assumption gives rise to a recipe for policy making: nation building must be prioritized and the first challenge for leaders in developing countries. Third, it is generally believed that nation-building implies the eradication of primitive subnational allegiances, replacing them with allegiance to the nation. L. Binder argues that “the integration of a nation requires the creation of a cultural and ideological consensus of a level and scope that has not yet been achieved in these (i.e., developing) countries (22). that political modernization means the integration of the nation, and that this implies "the replacement of a large number of traditional, religious, family and ethnic political authorities with a single secular nationwide political authority" (23).

An alternative approach to the study of political development is the center-periphery scheme, but this approach does not provide an alternative interpretation of the nation-building process. The novelty they bring is in the emphasis on the decisive role of the elites. In an authoritative study according to the "center - periphery" scheme by E. Shils, the center is the part of society "in which power is concentrated", and the periphery is the "hinterland" ... over which this is done. " - And “the phenomenon of the kingdom of ideals and values.” This value system of the center is indeed central, no matter how tautological it sounds, since “it is shared by the ruling authorities in society.” The value system in the center has a consensus meaning, but adherence to it becomes blurred on the periphery, which can be very heterogeneous and divided in terms of attitudes towards values.For multi-component societies, this model means the need for political dominance of the center, represented by one of the segments, or, if dominance is unacceptable, the creation of a national consensus in the sense of "including the mass of the population in the system of institutions and the values ​​of the center "(24, p. 117, 118, 124, 128). These conclusions coincide with the conclusions of other theories political development.

If, on the other hand, one does not draw such conclusions, then several tricky questions arise about how the "center-periphery" scheme is applicable to multi-component societies. At the 1970 UNESCO Conference on Nation Building, the general conclusion of all participants was that such an approach is useful as a tool for description and modeling, but at the same time there were criticisms about the limited suitability of the named approach for studying Societies with regional and cultural contradictions. These remarks were formulated in the conference report as follows: "What does this model mean in the territorial sense? If" center "is a territorial concept, is it possible for several centers to exist? ... If there is no such homogeneity, or if the dominant center is experiencing resistance from the regional centers, which consider themselves to be competing or even “counter-centers,” then does the former remain a “center”? (25).

"If in practice these questions are not answered in the center-periphery scheme, then this scheme cannot be considered acceptable for the study of multi-constituent societies. Shiels, however, clearly emphasizes that his concept of the center does not imply any pragmatic cooperation of elites. The center's value system does not have to be all-encompassing and absolutely consensual, and the ruling class can also be “relatively segmental.” But there must be a sense of unity based on a “common attitude to the center's value system,” which would unite different segments, and not just “notions of coincidence of interests” (24, p. 126) Thus, the above issues cannot be resolved within the framework of the theory of co-public.

Exaggerated contrasts between the first and third world

The main mistake that is present in many theoretical works on political development is the exaggeration of the degree of homogeneity of Western democracies. Development is usually seen as a movement from the current state of non-Western states or their state at the time of independence to a desired or actually achievable goal. Such a goal is the ideal type of a highly homogeneous Western society. Fernivall's analysis of multi-constituent societies was precisely based on a dichotomous view of Western and non-Western societies. In his early work on Netherlands India, he noted that multidimensional societies do not exist only in tropical countries. Racial divisions in the United States, culturally divided Canada and religiously divided Ireland were cited as examples (26). However, in his later work, he emphasized the importance of "the contrast between a multi-component society in tropical colonies and a unitary society that is taken for granted in the West" (18, p. 307). But the model of "normal homogeneous Western states" proposed by Fernivall does not fit all Western societies in general. She approaches the Anglo-American type of Almond, or more precisely, the idealized British society. J.S. Coleman criticizes the conventional view of political development, which is that end product development should become a "modern" polity. He argues that this approach is indicative of an "ethnocentric, pro-Western normative bias" (27). The more essential flaw of this approach, however, is that the bias is actually not even pro-Western, but pro-British.

Almond's concept of political development, together with his dichotomy and typology of Western democracies, allows him to avoid this mistake. He writes that the level of political development should be measured by the degree of differentiation of roles, the autonomy of subsystems and secularization (6, p. 105, 306), which are properties of the role structure and political culture, and, in fact, by the same concepts that make it possible to distinguish two types Western democracies. The continental European type, with a fragmented (i.e., inhomogeneous and non-secular) political culture and weak subsystem autonomy, should therefore be regarded as relatively less developed than the Anglo-American type.

Fernivall and later scholars agree with Almond's thesis about the political consequences of cultural homogeneity and plurality, but ignore the fact that many Western societies - continental European systems, according to Almond - belong to the multi-component type. This error has been emphatically pointed out by at least one author. A. Diamant objected to Pai's proposed division of polities into Western and non-Western: some of Pai's seventeen characteristics for non-Western polities, Diamant writes, "can be unconditionally applied to the political situation in Austria between the two world wars." In more general view, he argues, one should abandon the Western ideal type, which corresponds to a predominantly British consensus political situation: “Much more successfully, this ideal type could be deduced from what G. Almond called a continental political system with several subcultures. Non-Western political systems will become much clearer and closer, if we apply the continental type based on a multiracial (multinational) society devoid of a strong consensus "(28). But Diamond's warning went almost unnoticed.

The second major mistake that political development theorists since Fernivall have persisted in ignoring the fact that several multi-constituent societies in Europe have achieved stable democracies through co-social means. Fernivall argues that Western experience does not provide a normative model for multi-component societies, whose problems "require appropriate solutions that lie outside the sphere of Western political science. In the West, the main task of applied political science is to identify public will and promote its implementation." He does not believe that the introduction of new forms of government will allow multi-constituent societies to create and maintain democracy and emphatically rejects such a co-social method as community representation, since “it rather fragments rather than strengthens public will and works to strengthen divisions between segments, not social cohesion. " Such a pessimistic position inevitably leads Fernivall to the conclusion still dominant in political development literature that building a nationwide consensus is not only a necessary condition for democracy, but also the primary goal for non-Western political leaders: “It is not enough ... just to create a new mechanism : first of all, it is necessary to transform society. The functions of power are to create a common social will, which would become the basis of power, representing the entire people as a whole ... The transformation of society is a precondition for changing the form of government "(18, p. 489 - 490, 503 - 546).

This recipe represents the third major error in the mainstream approach to political development, and it is one with the most far-reaching consequences. While replacing segmental commitments with nationwide consensus seems to be a logical answer to the questions posed by a plurality of societies, it would be extremely dangerous to pursue this goal. Due to the stability of primitive orientations, any attempt to eliminate them not only has little chances of success (especially in the short term), but can backfire and stimulate cohesion within segments and violence in relations between segments, rather than nationwide cohesion. A co-public alternative would avoid this danger and offer a more promising method of achieving both democracy and a sufficiently high degree of political unity.

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20. This is how Leo Cooper outlined the essence of Smith's theory in Plural Societies: Perspectives and Problems. - In: Pluralism in Africa. Berkeley, 1969, p. fourteen.

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28. Diamant Alfred. Is There a Non-Western Political Process? Comments on Lucian W. Pye "s" The Non-Western Political Process. - Journal of Politics ", 1959, no. 1, p. 125, 126.