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Progress (progressus in Latin) – development of the new and advanced; movement to a higher level of development, to a more modern state; change to the best103.
Progress and regress – referential notions meaning the development of a society or its subsystems in the line of ascent from a less perfect state to a more modern one (progress) and the return to old obsolete forms of development, which testifies to the social stagnation and degradation (regress). Problematic is the definition of the scale of values of the criteria for the perfect state of a society. For example, marxism considers the development of a mode of production as a criterion of social progress. As for the definition of a degree of humanization of a society, one should use some other approach. All indices, fixing the movement of a society forwards and having no relation to regress (decline, degradation, and stagnation), can be empiric evidences for social progress104.
Project (projectus in Latin) – 1) developed plan of a building, a scheme of a technological process, etc., 2) preliminary text of a document, 3) plan, intention105.
Purposes of social development are defined depending on a specific historical situation, according to the reached level of development of social structures and institutions. The interpretation (not always rational one) of short- and long-term problems of social development fills in the social life by sense and allows one to define valuable orienting points in the context of the notions «aim» and «means».
Regress (regressus in Latin) – return, reverse motion, transition from higher forms of development to lower ones, change to the worse, opposition to progress106.
Reincarnation – possibility to transform a died ancestor to its totem and backwards; potential possibility to a revival in various forms. For example, the revival of the ancient cultural tradition during Renaissance107.
Results of social development – they can be different depending on achievement of the corresponding aims. The simplification of a social structure, regress under conditions of the transient periods of social-historical development can be a reason for negative results. On the other hand, the «price» of progress, e.g. in the case of a forcible modernization (industrialization in the USSR), can be too high, destroying the potential of social capital, i.e., the total possibility to implement the perspective of social development.
Rubinshtein Sergei Leonidovich (1889-1960) – soviet psychologist and philosopher, the founder of the occupational approach in psychology. He stated that the man and his psychics are formed and revealed in a primordially practical activity and, therefore, must be studied in their manifestations in main kinds of their activity. As the principal peculiarity of activity, Rubinshtein considered its sociality: activity is carried out only by a subject; activity as the interaction of a subject with an object is substantial and objective rather than pure symbolic and fictitious; activity is always creative and self-supporting. Activity is mediately defined by its object through its internal specific regularities (through purposes, motives, etc.) rather than directly108.
Sense of social development – one of the most abstract and simultaneously valuable categories. In the book of Frankel «Man seeking sense», it is noted that the finding of the category of sense allows one to overcome the existentialistic emptiness and to fill in life with a holistic content. This can be said about social development. This category, besides a vulgar content like the notion «American dream» or Russian expression «from dirt on throne», has a deep historic-sophistic sense, especially clearly comprehended in the periods of social cataclysms, when the vector of social-historical development is radically changed. The loss of the sense of social development testifies to the profound valuable crisis, e.g., the time of the downfall of West Roman Empire, disintegration of the USSR, etc.
Small group – social group, whose members directly interact with one another. A quantitative composition of a small group does not exceeds several tens of persons. A totality of small groups functioning in various spheres of vital activity of the society defines the social microenvironment immediately influencing the formation and development of a personality.
Social-economic policy as a conscious purposeful action is carried on along with rationalization of the state apparatus (M. Weber) and is aimed at the organic development. The need in an efficient social-economic policy as a regulative mechanism of the market element arises in crisis periods, e.g., the time of the «Great Depression» (1929-1933) and «New Deal» of President of the USA F. D. Roosevelt.
Social development – type of changes in the society which is characterized by a transition of all social relations to a qualitatively new state. Social development is a result of the interaction of the totality of social processes, whose base is a purposeful activity of persons – subjects of these processes. The mechanism of social development is functioning via both the arising of new needs in the process of activity of various social subjects and search for possibilities of their satisfaction. Social evolution as gradual quantitative changes in the social system prepares and completes the social revolution as qualitative changes in all social structures, which change due to a radical reconstruction of social relations and social institutions. A characteristic of social development is a social time, in which the direction of development reveals. The important role in the provision of stability of social development is played by social reforms and social planning109.
Social efficiency. In the science-wide meaning, the notion of «efficiency» goes back to the notion «effect», which appeared in natural sciences and primarily denoted «phenomenon» accompanied by some results. With expansion of the sphere of scientific cognition, the term «effect» became a close synonym for terms «useful result» and «useful action leading to the desired result». Efficiency characterizes the relation between levels of some activity by the degree of approach to the final or prescribed goal. From this viewpoint, efficiency plays the role of the measure of activity and presents a certain property of the system object. By applying this notion, we qualitatively and quantitatively define how some theoretical possibility of approaching the purpose with respect to the very purpose is realized. By comparing this possibility with the very purpose, it is necessary to perform measurements and then to compare by some accepted criterion. As one of the possible scientific criteria of cognition of the existing systems, efficiency eventually has the valuable nature. The estimation of relations of means to an aim separates the valuable aspect of cognition of the reality from other gnostic reasonings.
Social engineering – notion introduced into the scientific turnover by K. Popper in the 40s of the XX century. It means a totality of systemized methods, means, ways of transformation of social sciences, first of all sociological knowledge, into social programs and projects. On the other hand, social engineering is a specific branch of sociology studying the methodological and theoretical foundations of social invention, and construction of new or improvement of existing social realities. In the first case, social engineering presents itself as a practical-applied activity, and, in the second, as the science on this activity, peculiarities, and tendencies of its functioning and development. K. Popper considered social engineering as a purposeful interference of the man with social processes by «the method of trials and errors». An analogous position was occupied by F. A. Hayek who considered that the order in a society is reached with the help of rationalized spontaneity rather than through a realization of programs. Main functions of social engineering are as follows: aim-forming (creation of a new reality produces new needs); constructive-prognostic (prevention of unfavorable phenomena); expert, control, design-constructive ones. Note that social construction and innovations are the most complex forms of social-engineering activity110.
Social genesis [from societas (in Latin) – society and genesis (in Greek) – origin] – process of origin, establishment, and further development of a society as the highest form of natural organization111.
Social hierarchy – structural organization of a society or separate groups by the sign of levels with subsequent submission of lower levels to higher ones. Whereas the notion of stratification accents differences and makes every stratum (estate) autonomic, the notion of social hierarchy passes ahead the subsequent interrelation and co-submission between different levels. Social hierarchy is characterized by: functional-purposeful unity of levels composing it; dominant of subjective organizational-administrative bases of its formation and existence; predominantly vertical connections and the pyramidal model of the structure of a socium; centralization of functions and structural components with their simultaneous polycentralism, which is an indicator of stability and vital ability of hierarchic formations112.
Social law – category for designation of forms of manifestation of the social causality and universal dependence of objective, necessary, stable, and repeating ties between processes and phenomena in the society.
The social law is a law of functioning and development of the social reality. It is a law of the society not directly but only through the social reality. The social law reveals only through the activity of people since any ties between social processes and phenomena arise only due to the activity of people. Social laws are characterized by such notions and terms as type, contents and structure, mechanism, character, sphere, and direction of its action, forms of governance, functions, requirements of the law. The clarification of social laws is a necessary condition of control over social processes and prognostication of their development. The category «social law» is commonly accepted neither by the classical nor contemporary sociology113.
Social mechanism – totality of actions and deeds inalienable from their subjects-carriers, due to which various social phenomena occur and the social process is realized. A structure-forming element of the social mechanism is the interaction of social subjects, motivation of behaviour, legal and moral norms, political belief, social status and social position, institutional means. Social processes and phenomena can be a social mechanism of processes and phenomena in the wider context. The attachment of a conscious-controllable character to the social mechanism is realized through social technologies which help to attain the optimum variant of such an action. A social mechanism involves spontaneous factors complicating the prognostication of specific consequences of an action. The functioning of a social mechanism is an object of scientific investigation, and the social technology is designed with regard for the goal of a transformation, which is an object of the socioengineering activity114.
Social process –subsequent change of a state or movement of elements of a social system and its subsystems, or any social object; it occurs under influence of internal or external conditions, has a stable order of the interaction of its components, temporal duration, and orientation to one or another state of the social object. The mentioned processes are often conjugate and have symmetric structural mechanisms differing by the sign of orientation: integration and disintegration of a social system, stability (static character), mobility (dynamism) of a social structure115.
Social programs – presentation of principal positions of activity of social structures, political parties, and organizations in a definite perspective. Programs-maximum define the final aim, general problems, and give the theoretical foundation of principles and methods of their solutions. Programs-minimum define the nearest problems and specific plans of activity for achievement of the final aim. Subjects of social programming are bodies of state administration of various levels. The purposeful social programming can be an important directive planning document including the resource, executive, and temporal provision of the complex of social-economic, scientific-research, and organizational-administrative measures ensuring the most efficient and well-timed solution of the state-wide social problems116.
Social psychics – historical-cultural and psychological readiness of the socium to reproduction of definite behavioral models of reaction to a problematic situation and the necessity to solve new problems advanced by social life. The psychics of a community, i.e., a certain nonaccidental human formation (society, nation, ethnos, family, social organization) is also called by mentality, spirit of people. The societal psychics is a peculiar psychoculture realized in material phenomena (articles of culture and household, architecture, music, literature, painting, rituals, traditions), energy (rhythms of the socium reflecting in behaviour, facial expressions, rate of reactions), information («noosphere», social and natural metabolism). The societal psychics includes a group of properties, states, and processes, which are studied by using the structural-functional model due to their complexity and multidimensionality117. The societal psychics is a collective dictionary of historical-cultural heredity of the society118.
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