Social Culture : reevaluating the Paradigm

Hristić, Ljubomir (2018) Social Culture : reevaluating the Paradigm. Series Monographs . Institute of social sciences, Belgrade. ISBN 978-86-7093-206-7

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Abstract

We can consider values as culturally objectified, abstract ideas of phenomena. Such ideas are of lasting significance to the satisfaction of needs of political subjects. These ideas are a subjective reflection of the objective needs of social subjects; they express the subject’s attitude toward its own needs. Therefore, it seems right to call values ideas of needs. All values, whether they are ideas (models) of activities, or ideas of social relations, or abstract ideas, or specific objects which are needs in themselves, are according to this approach, ideas of needs. The last are ideas of needs in the strictest sense of the word. Therefore, they may be called primary values, for they serve an essential motivating function. The remaining types of ideas (of activities, of the desired type of social relations, and so on) also result from a recognition of certain needs (Karwat, 198). From Almond and Verba’s pioneering study in the early 1960s to Inglehart’s work into the 1990s, the theory and methodology of this set of approaches to social culture study have served to emphasize certain aspects of social actuality and to obscure others, generating partial (in both senses) explanation that is, at best, only weakly circumstantial, and, at worst, contrived. The purpose is to summarize and analyze the features of social culture study that have left it so vulnerable to criticism - and indeed, that have led numerous social scientists to rebuff the concept outright. Here I present, initially, a debate of practical problems, and then a debate on the conjectural problems of social culture approaches.

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