Virtual class of school No. 185 in social studies/Third lesson, 11th grade

Characteristics of the marginalized

Crises and stress in which a person finds himself due to the reasons that influenced the process of increasing marginalization lead to changes in his psyche. Sociologists identify a number of common features that are inherent in the marginalized:

• aggressive attitude towards others;
• often lack of permanent residence;
• no attachments are formed;
• mental pathologies develop, for example, depressive states;
• creating your own rules, patterns of behavior and values;
• severance of social, spiritual, financial and other types of ties with the environment in which a person lived before the emergence of a difficult life situation that led to an asocial way of existence.

But there are some positive sides to being marginal. Having left his familiar environment, an individual finds himself outside his comfort zone, which can contribute to the formation of a new character and traits such as determination, determination, etc. A person, by combining information about several social and cultural layers, can expand his worldview, gain a number of independent judgments and ideas.

Signs of marginalized people

Sociologists call the main feature of the marginalized the severance of economic, social and spiritual ties that exist in “pre-marginal” life. Mostly migrants and refugees become marginalized. A former military man who has been discharged from service but has not yet found himself in civilian society may find himself on the edge of social groups. Connections with the past were severed upon dismissal, but there are still no new ones, and in particularly unfavorable conditions there won’t be any. Then a person can declassify – i.e. sink to the very “bottom” of life.

Other signs of marginality:

• mobility - occurs in the absence of housing, attachments;
• mental problems - appear as a result of the inability to find one’s “place in the sun”;
• development of one’s own values, sometimes hostility towards the existing society;
• sufficient ease of involvement in illegal activities.

Initial definition

Initially, the American sociologist called marginalized people who fell into an intermediate social group. For example, it is customary to include in this category a person who is in an intermediate position between urban and rural residents. That is, he was born and previously lived in a village, then moved to the city. But at the same time, all its cultural values ​​were formed by the rural way of life. Accordingly, it does not fit into the foundations and requirements of the urban environment. His habits, lifestyle, behavior, appearance are unacceptable for the social environment of the city.

The very term marginality has become very widespread in sociology, and marginals are people whose behavior and lifestyle do not fit into generally accepted rules and norms. Sociologists also note that a marginal person is a person who simultaneously belongs to two different social groups. That is, marginalized people do not fully fit into any social group.

Types of marginality

There are several types of marginalized people. Their division is very clear, since it is based on the reasons for the development of such a special way of life. So, the types of marginality can be as follows:

1. Economic, when people, for certain reasons, are left without work and a source of income, without housing. But very wealthy people also belong to this type, because due to excessive wealth they become cut off from colleagues, friends, and relatives. That is, they are equally oligarchs and beggars.
2. Ethnic, when people, due to certain circumstances, are forced to change their place of residence. They find themselves among representatives of a different race, culture, nationality, nationality. They cannot always adapt to someone else's religion, language, culture, and customs. A striking example is emigrants.
3. Religious, when people cannot decide on their religion, but they do not consider themselves atheists, non-believers or representatives of a certain faith.
4. Criminal when a person refuses generally accepted moral standards and does not accept the laws created by the state, which becomes the cause of offenses and crimes.
5. Social, when there is a change in economic systems, as a result of which people cannot adapt to new realities.
6. Political, which is associated with revolutionary or other turning points in the historical development of the country or the world.
7. Age-related, when a conflict arises between the older generation and the younger.
8. Biological, which is associated with the rejection of sick people or individuals with limited mental abilities. Thus, people with Down syndrome, people with disabilities, HIV-infected people, etc. become outcasts.

It is important to understand that individuals who do not fit into the framework and established value system have always existed

Examples of marginality

If it is difficult to understand what the marginalized are, then it is worth giving clear examples. So, there are real neighborhoods of emigrants. This is Brighton Beach, where there are many immigrants from Russia, and Chinese Chinatown. Emigrants have a different mentality than the population of the country in which they find themselves. As a result, they find it difficult to adapt to new conditions. They cannot adapt to them. They find it difficult to accept new values.

Interestingly, sometimes the marginalized are understood as world-famous artists, poets, and writers. These are real geniuses, but during their lifetime they seemed crazy to society. As a result, real geniuses, due to their dissimilarity and uniqueness, became outcasts.

History knows several marginalized people who, to a certain extent, changed the development of events in the world. These include Emelyan Pugachev, Stepan Razin, Diogenes of Sinop.

Positive aspects of marginality

Usually this word itself carries a negative connotation. But the meaning of this concept is not always negative. There is something positive here.

It would seem, how can a marginal person mean something good? But marginality is also a new worldview, interesting thinking, innovative activity, and a source of progress.

Scientists also note the positive effects of high mobility of marginalized people. Thanks to this feature, they can always:

• get a new education;
• move to another place of residence, where they will be as comfortable as possible;
• change country;
• To find a good job.

Another positive feature of marginality is the difference from other representatives of society. This is uniqueness and individuality. Thanks to this, every marginalized person can find themselves in an area of ​​life where no one has yet begun to implement their projects. Paradoxically, it is precisely the marginalized who, because of their uniqueness, often make colossal fortunes.

Social stratification and social differentiation

How do social differences (social differentiation) differ from social inequality (social stratification)?

Differentiation (from Latin differentia - difference, difference), division of the whole into various parts, forms and stages.

Social differentiation

- division of society into groups.

Social inequality

– a form of social differentiation in which individuals, social groups, strata, classes are at different levels of the vertical social hierarchy and have unequal life chances and opportunities to satisfy needs.

The essence of social inequality lies in the unequal access of different categories of the population to socially significant benefits.

Strata

(Latin stratum - layer, layer) - a social layer, a group of people united by some social characteristic (property, professional, official, etc.).

How does a class differ from a stratum?

Social class - 1) a large social stratum, distinguished from others by income, education, power and prestige; 2) a large group of people having the same socio-economic status in the system of social stratification.

Social classes are relatively stable social groups that have common interests and values ​​(for example, the peasantry, working class, bourgeoisie, middle class, etc.). Marx and Engels considered class struggle to be the driving force of history and assigned the proletariat the historical mission of violently overthrowing the bourgeoisie and creating a classless society.

Social stratification

– 1) a set of social layers arranged in a vertical order; 2) the structure of society and its individual layers; system of signs of social stratification and inequality.

A layered, multi-level society can be compared to geological strata. At the same time, compared to simple stratification, social stratification has at least two significant differences:

1) stratification is a rank stratification, when the upper layers are in a more privileged position (in relation to the possession of resources or opportunities to receive rewards) than the lower layers;

2) the upper strata are significantly smaller in number of members of society.

How does social structure differ from social stratification?

Social structure

– a network of stable and ordered connections between elements of the social system, determined by the relations of social groups, division of labor, the nature of social institutions (state, etc.). The social structure of the population also covers its division according to professional, national, gender, age, cultural and other characteristics.

Social structure arises from the social division of labor, and social stratification arises from the social distribution of the results of labor, i.e. social benefits.

And it is always unequal. This is how the arrangement of social strata arises according to the criterion of unequal access to power, wealth, education and prestige.

Social structure

- this is a set of social phenomena and processes that are in relationships and connections with each other and form some integral social object. It meant the idea of ​​orderliness in social life, so it was closer to the concept of “social order.”

Stratification is division, social structure is unification.

Society's attitude

Society has formed the erroneous opinion that marginalized individuals are at the very bottom. In fact, among them there are many successful people who succeed, in their free time they can live the life that suits them. Acquiring such status may be a conscious choice, or it may also be forced.

In everyday speech, “marginal” is used with a negative connotation and is considered as a deviation. People must understand that this type of personality is not socially dangerous. For some, marginalized people cause a negative reaction, for others they evoke sympathy. Historically, society tries to protect itself from the influence of strangers; when it sees that a person cannot meet its expectations, is distinguished by non-standard reactions, it cannot perceive such a person and isolates him.

Often the marginalized become undeserved victims. When problems start in a group of people, the one who is different in some way always becomes the culprit, even if he has nothing to do with it.

Willingness to adapt, flexibility, openness to new things, along with the tolerance of a certain group of people, can help an individual overcome all differences and adapt to a new society.

Ethnic marginalized

The migration of different peoples to countries of other races gave rise to this type of marginal person. At the same time, a strong external difference creates more and more denial, but even if a person does not outwardly differ from the race living in the country, he is also at an increased risk of not being accepted by society.

A striking example of ethnic marginalization is the acute problem in the United States of the “white” race with African Americans. Their denial in society reaches the point of absurdity: if an African-American moves into a townhouse area, then the “white” neighbors simply move out, just to be away from them. Or they begin to force them out, using both psychological pressure and physical violence.

In Russia, marginalized people from eastern countries who come to work or with dreams of a better life are subject to ridicule and prejudice from the indigenous population of cities. They are often deceived and act in bad faith.

Differences between marginals and lumpen

There is such a thing as lumpen and some people confuse it with marginalized people. A lumpen person is a person who deliberately leads an asocial lifestyle and does not even make an attempt to somehow improve it. This type includes:

• drug addicts;
• homeless people;
• conscious dependents;
• alcoholics;
• criminals who were unable to return to social life.

1. If we consider material well-being, then the marginalized have material values, some kind of property. In contrast to the lumpen, who have neither rights to property nor actual material wealth.
2. The marginalized person is a socially significant person, he has a permanent income. Lumpen does not have a permanent job or monthly income.
3. The first type of personality ignores most of the norms accepted in society, and does this purposefully. Then the second type is forced to behave this way.
4. If necessary, the marginal can be adequate and not contradict the rules of the public. Whereas the lumpen lack adequate behavior in principle.
5. If we consider the lifestyle, the marginalized are subject to some rules formed in a certain environment or dictated by personal preferences. Lumpen are subject to the rules set by their social class.

Now you know the meaning of the word marginalized. As you can see, the negative associations that arise when pronouncing this term may be unjustified. You need to understand that such individuals have the right to an equal existence in society, sometimes they achieve greater success than everyone else. However, they must try to adhere to certain rules and not break the law. Everyone has the right to be different from everyone else. The main thing is that such behavior does not harm either the person himself or his loved ones.

Social marginals

These include people with an uncertain status in society. These are mainly young and elderly people. In the first case, because the backbone of life has not yet been formed, and they are at a crossroads in achieving a social status that will allow them to establish themselves as individuals.

For example, mastering a profession after receiving an education, and a career, marital status, and material items, such as your own home, car, dacha, garage, etc. In old age, marginality arises due to the low significance of status in society.

This also includes people who find themselves in an interclass situation due to prevailing circumstances. A young guy who received an inheritance after the death of his father and squandered it, found himself at the bottom of life. Or the wife of an oligarch, accustomed to living in luxury, after a divorce, she was left with nothing.

Marginality – pros and cons

Any social phenomenon, including marginality, has its positive and negative sides. The pros and cons of marginality can be found in almost any factor leading to the appearance of an outcast, and besides, in modern society it is even fashionable to be special, not like everyone else. In some cases, isolation from society gives a person an impetus for development, in others - the individual gives up and he goes down the social ladder. Rich people can also be marginalized, and often they even like this state of affairs and isolation.

The advantages of marginalized people

One of the positive aspects that marginality gives is the absence of social shackles and mobility. It is easier for such a person to move to an economically more prosperous area or to another country, to change jobs or professions. In some cases, being different from other members of society plays into the hands of the marginalized - he can build a business on this, for example, opening an ethnic goods store or a restaurant serving his own national cuisine. Another advantage of the marginalized is that they have flexible thinking and can bring something progressive to society, different from the traditional one.

Disadvantages of marginality

The negative aspects of marginality include a high risk of the emergence of revolutionary movements, reforms and other similar phenomena in society. A large number of marginalized people in society impoverish the state - gifted individuals leave it in search of better things, less promising individuals slide to the bottom. A marginalized person can easily become a criminal, which affects the safety of people in society. Negative marginality often becomes under conditions of compulsion - when people become refugees as a result of wars, coups d'etat and reforms.

Marginality and poverty

Since in modern society the answer to the question of who the marginalized are has changed greatly, the consequences of marginality are not always poverty, deprivation of liberty or even life. Marginal people, as already mentioned, can also be very rich people who, due to their wealth, are freer than other members of society. And there are often cases when successful businessmen retire and leave big cities for the provinces and villages.

Within the framework of such a phenomenon as marginality, it is worth mentioning the recently appeared downshifters. From birth, an individual develops in two opposite directions - as a social person and as an individual person. Ideally, these forces should be balanced, but in reality, one of these directions often outweighs. With increased socialization, a conformist is born, and with increased individualization, a downshifter can be born.

A downshifter is a person who has chosen to live outside of society or has severely limited communication with people outside his family. This is a marginalized person who is quite satisfied with being in a borderline state, when he is free to move around the world and live completely independently. Most often, downshifters prefer to engage in art - drawing, writing books, etc. And their creativity is almost always in demand, because... The author has strong energy and...

Who are the marginalized? Quite often we come across this concept and, as a rule, it has a negative connotation, bordering almost on insult. So who are the marginalized? The etymology of the term comes from the Latin "marginalis", which literally translates as "from the edge". Modern sociology understands by this concept a person (sometimes a group of people) who is not fully included in any society, but is in a borderline state between different socio-cultural layers.

In its modern meaning, this term was born in the 1920s among sociologists who noted the problems of socialization of migrants who found themselves in a new society. Finding themselves in an alien socio-cultural environment, many of them could not adapt to its conditions - learn the language, behavioral norms, and so on. These people literally found themselves thrown out of social processes and were on the edge of society. The most striking example of the marginalized of the modern world are the descendants of migrants in today's France. Heirs of immigrants from the Maghreb countries (Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco), they were born outside the homeland of their ancestors and were no longer able to socialize properly. They speak Arabic poorly and have never been to Muslim countries. At the same time, the majority of them are not accepted by French society itself. Living, as a rule, in the outlying areas of Lyon, Marseille or Paris, such people also found themselves on the margins of social processes, not to mention painful social problems. There is even a special term for the descendants of migrants in the second and third generations; they are called bers (beurs - a derivative of Arabics). But the marginalized are not only migrants and their heirs. A person may find himself outside of society for other reasons - cultural, social or some other reason.

Who are the marginalized
in a consumer society?
The main characteristic of the so-called consumer society, which is talked about a lot today, is the fact that the main value of a person in the eyes of production is not his ability to work and create any goods or services (as it was before), but the purchasing ability that allows manufacturer to sell their product.
A high level of technology creates conditions in which there is no longer a need for a large number of workers, but goods produced in huge volumes must be constantly sold somewhere. Hence the fashion, which changes with each season for literally everything, and the deliberately low quality of goods, and instilling a feeling of inferiority in the owners of somewhat inappropriate devices. Thus, the marginalized in modern society are those people who cannot or do not want to constantly buy. This is what reduces their social prestige and turns them into eccentrics. At the same time, this does not mean that a person does not actually have purchasing power; he can have as many goods as he likes, but it is important that he does not realize them when possible. Who are the marginalized in other societies?
At the same time, human history knows many examples of social values. But marginalization has always been defined by the lack of opportunity or desire to be useful in any way in this society.

A person is designed in such a way that he needs to define everything, create labels that can be used in communication to simplify or embellish his speech. The term “marginal” was created by American sociologists Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944) and Everett Werner Stonequist (1901-1979), and it can be applied not only to one person, as a definition of a personality archetype, but also to society as a whole.

Marginal is the state of a person living in a buffer between existing social groups, races, political views, and economic influence. Derived from the Latin word margo - edge.

Such a person can be attributed to several groups at the same time, and 100% to none of them, due to non-acceptance and ignoring of him by society. It’s as if he’s stuck in purgatory, from which he can’t find a way out and more often than not he never finds a way out; he remains to exist in it.

This term itself carries negative connotations, and its use is always painted in sad tones. Because people are used to defining everything; it can be defined – that means it’s normal, that means it fits within the framework. In addition, from a political point of view, it is much easier to manage social groups of people when you know their behavior and can predict the result of activities or planned actions. Marginalized individuals are a threat to politicians, especially when they gather in groups and take actions, the results of which can be unpredictable and dangerous.

Marginal behavior can be defined in different spheres of life; sociologists divide it into the following types, which we will analyze sequentially.

Marginal

Marginal is a person excluded from various kinds of institutions of society.

Marginality is considered one of those concepts that, despite its complexity, is on everyone’s lips at the same time, but has very ambiguous interpretations, even of a speculative nature, often with a negative connotation.

This category of people is often classified as lumpen - declassed elements from society. What does marginal mean? The word is very fashionable, associated with such things as non-system, non-mainstream, being outside the views of the dominant group.

The concept of marginal is revealed through its Latin root margo - edge. A marginalized person is a person who cannot be attributed to a specific social group; he seems to hover on the edge of groups that are different from each other, and therefore feels their opposite influence.

Meaning of the word marginal

What does marginal mean? A marginal is a person who does not participate enough or is completely excluded from the activities of society’s institutions: economic, cultural, political.

Social sciences believe that the marginalized are a kind of excess material of society that needs strict control, monitoring, and requires elaboration. This is a negative phenomenon of society, indicating problems and illnesses within society.

It is possible to define a certain norm of social participation in the life of society and its groups, and lack of participation is a deviation from this norm.

Who is the marginalized? This is a person who, being placed outside the group, is perceived by its members as an outsider.

He simultaneously combines distance and closeness with the group - he is physically in it, but, however, is not included in it as its member, does not share its biography, but is an alien, staying like a guest in it.

However, the presence of such an outsider gives the group a chance to define what it itself is not, to recognize its boundaries. He is also demarcated from the group and can have objectivity in his judgments regarding it, because he is free and can leave it.

The classic concept of marginality implies not so much exclusion from a group as being on the border between two groups.

As a result, the marginalized person carries in his personality a cultural conflict that is not purely psychological, it is not cognitive dissonance, not a feeling of deprivation and psychological discomfort due to non-inclusion in the group. It is rather a practiced marginality.

This conflict is recognized by the marginalized person as involvement in several incompatible groups and the inability to identify himself completely with one of them.

Examples of marginalized people

It is interesting that some psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists consider the marginal personality type to be the most civilized, developed type, advanced, mobile and agile, open to change and everything new.

Which famous figures illustrate marginality well? Perhaps the most striking example is Jesus Christ, the God-man in the Christian tradition.

Even though he was born in a marginal environment - in a stable, and throughout his entire life, he not only does not strengthen himself in any social group, but, on the contrary, destroys many of the norms of that society: in his youth he teaches in the temple, in his youth he disperses the money changers in it, earns money through low-paid labor, takes fishermen as apprentices, communicates with harlots, and even dies among robbers. And, however, he becomes one of the most influential personalities not only in Christian, but even in secular environments, laying in it the foundations of ethics and high moral standards.

Another interesting example is the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

And not only Tolstoy - all the truly great writers, poets, playwrights who have become classics today, at one time left one or another social group, felt in themselves at least this cultural duality, which pushed them to write the works we love today .

Nowadays, marginality takes on a new dimension due to the spread of the Internet, which helps to overcome any boundaries. An increasing number of people work as freelancers, maintaining loneliness, reluctance to intensive social contacts, and denial of socially accepted standards of life.

Speaker of the Medical-Psychological

Biological marginals

People who have a disability or incapacity, either physical or mental, who cannot be considered equal to a mainstream status in society. Because they will not be able to perform full-fledged activities, they need a special approach that cannot be immediately understood, so most often they are denied and not accepted.

They are denied so much that society sometimes does not even know about the existence of some diseases and does not want to recognize them.

This is also reflected in the attitude of government officials who do not monitor the implementation of accepted standards for building a life infrastructure for people with disabilities. It is rare in any city in Russia that you will find ramps on every sidewalk, or working mechanisms for lifting strollers onto public transport. They exist, but in parts, like patches, here and there, as soon as the object was handed over it was completed, and no one is interested in how a disabled person in a wheelchair can continue his journey.

The biological type also includes sexual minorities - gays, bisexuals, transgenders and lesbians. These people cause a lot of controversy, and the process of their official acceptance by society has been going on for quite a long time. In some countries they have begun to be officially accepted, which is reflected in the registration of marriages and the possibility of adopting children.

And yet, the attitude towards such people for the most part is very negative, they are passed over, someone can intentionally cause violence, it is difficult for them to live in society, they are denied and may not be hired or accepted into their social circle. They are looked at with disgust. And now, it seems that there are more of them, but in fact, they are simply beginning to open up and unite in groups, organize pickets, parades, and other actions due to the protection of their rights to exist and be accepted by society. By such actions they prove their status and right to life in equal conditions with other people.

Types of marginalized people

As a rule, the status of “marginal” is temporary. A person adapts to new living conditions, finds a job, “grows” with connections and “joins” society, and ceases to be a marginalized person.

The intermediate position in the social structure is prolonged among the forced marginalized or those who consciously chose this status. The forced marginalized include refugees, and the “conscious” include extremists, sectarians, and downshifters.

In sociology, the following types of marginalized people are distinguished:

• political,
• religious,
• ethnic,
• economic,
• social,
• biological.

Political marginals

Political crises, a decline in civic consciousness, and distrust of the current government lead to the emergence of this type of marginalized people. The marginalized consciously oppose themselves to society and its political system. For example, people are psychologically “stuck” in the USSR era.

Religious fringes

Society can be divided into those who profess the religions accepted in it or those who do not believe in God at all. Persons who claim that they are not representatives of any religion, but at the same time believe in a higher power, become religious marginals. They are the ones who found sects and extremist religious groups. A person who professes, for example, Christianity in a Muslim country or vice versa can also be called a marginalized person of this type. Religious minorities will be marginalized for society as a whole (Christians in Kosovo).

Ethnic marginalized

The marginalized of this type include migrants and refugees who had to leave their familiar environment. Intercultural and religious differences can become insurmountable obstacles for ethnically marginalized people. This type includes children born from representatives of different nationalities. This will be true in the case where the child does not identify himself with either the father’s nation or the mother’s nation and therefore is not accepted into either of them.

Economic marginalized

Loss of a job, inability or unwillingness to find a new one, loss of property or usual sources of income lead to economic marginality. In especially difficult cases, people who find themselves in this situation become embittered and deliberately avoid their usual social circle; some fundamentally begin to live off others or government benefits. The loss of a job or property can lead a person to the social “bottom”, his lumpenization.

An example of the emergence of a large number of economic marginals in our country is the 90s of the 20th century. The closure of enterprises, scientific institutions and a general decrease in wages have left a large number of people without their usual jobs and unable to find a new one.

Nowadays, multimillionaires can also be considered economically marginalized, since their financial status and capabilities separate them from the majority of society

Social marginals

The emergence of marginalized people of this type is facilitated by social upheavals (catastrophes) in society, when the usual structure collapses. An example is the revolution of 1917, when a huge number of people were forced to flee the country.

Another reason that a person has become a marginalized person of this type may be the desire to improve his social status (find a better paid job, get married profitably). This is true if the attempts are unsuccessful. The individual has lost old social connections, but has not established new ones or has also lost them.

Biological marginals

In an ideal society, treatment of a person should not be based on his state of health and appearance. Unfortunately, disability, congenital deformities, old age or diseases such as HIV or autism spectrum disorders in children, Down syndrome make a person an “outcast”, a biological marginal.

Types of stratification systems

Historical types of stratification systems

: 1) caste, 2) slave, 3) class and 4) class systems of stratification, which are identified with historical types of social structure. However, in fact, it is more likely that any society simultaneously involves several different stratification systems and many of their transitional forms that coexist with each other.

Types of stratification systems.

Physico-genetic:

socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, physical qualities).

Caste

(from Latin castus - pure): ethnic differences that are consolidated by religious order and religious rituals (caste is a closed, endogamous group, which is assigned a strictly defined place in the social hierarchy, while position in the caste system is inherited).

Estate:

groups are distinguished by formal (legal) rights, which are strictly related to their responsibilities and are directly dependent on them.

Etacratic:

differentiation between groups is built according to their position in power-state hierarchies (political, military, economic), according to the possibilities of mobilization and distribution of resources, according to the privileges that these groups are able to derive from their positions of power.

Etocracy, etatocracy (state power) – 1) total domination of the state in all spheres of society; 2) the ruling strata of society, which have a monopoly on state property (the concept of “etacracy” is broader than the concept of “bureaucracy”).

Social and professional:

groups are divided according to content and working conditions.

Class:

the nature and size of ownership of the means of production and the product produced, the level of income received.

Cultural - symbolic:

unequal access to socially significant information, unequal opportunities to interpret it, and the ability to be a bearer of knowledge.

Cultural-normative:

differences in respect and prestige that arise from comparisons of lifestyles and norms of behavior followed by a group.

Social - territorial:

unequal distribution of resources between regions, differences in access to jobs, housing, quality goods and services, educational and cultural institutions.

General information and classification

Marginalized people are individuals who, due to certain factors, have lost their social functions, but do not join others when they are outside the group of people. Today, a fashionable concept can be called marginal, which touches on the idea of ​​freedom, when a person is outside the boundaries of any systems or laws that are imposed by a certain structure.

For example, marginals are called:

• a person who went to Tibet to seek the meaning of life;
• a world traveler who lives on wheels;
• a hippie who denies social hierarchy;
• a freelancer who does not have corporate conventions;
• a millionaire who stands above all other people due to his great wealth;
• a hermit who lives without using the achievements of science or household appliances.

For the first time in psychology, this term was used in 1928 by R. Park. Then this concept meant an individual who occupied a middle position between urban and rural residents. In fact, this is a person who previously lived in a village, and then, once in the city, continued to preserve his cultural values, and did not have the opportunity to fit into the foundations of urban civilization. The habits and behavior of such a person are unacceptable in the social environment of the city. Today, this term refers not only to such people; this concept has become much broader. Sociologists call marginalized those individuals whose behavior goes beyond the boundaries of the rules and framework accepted in a certain social group. In psychology, a marginal person is considered as an individual who physically belongs to a particular social group, but is emotionally, morally and mentally outside the bounds. A marginal is a person who lives in a certain social environment, but refuses to accept the principles and values ​​that are imposed on him. Today, there are synonyms for this concept, such as “black sheep”, “outcast”, “nihilists”, “informals”, “individual”.

When a person finds himself in a society that is not related to him, events can develop according to two scenarios:

• the personality is unable to find a place for itself, it is tormented by contradictions;
• Active attacks are directed at the marginalized person, to which he is forced to respond with aggressive behavior.

There are five types of marginals.

1. Ethnic. The reason for the formation is migration, especially when it is forced. For example, among refugees. When resettling, people encounter difficulties that hinder normal adaptation due to differences in culture and language. Once on the territory of a foreign state, a person cannot adapt to its order, laws, mentality, and religion. The main feature of this type is that the indigenous people refuse to perceive them as equals.
2. Political. Such individuals actively oppose the current government. Such individuals have no civic responsibility and no tolerance towards any ruling party. Even if those whom the marginalized previously supported come to power, he stops doing so, thereby opposing himself to it. Such individuals are not satisfied with most of the laws approved in the country; in order to express themselves, they can violate them.
3. Economic. This includes people who have either a very small or a very large income. In the first case, the individual feels his insignificance due to the fact that he is not able to earn money like other people. In the second, he feels superior to others and believes that he is better than everyone else. The main feature of this type is an ostentatious negative attitude towards people around him, impulsiveness, attempts to demonstrate that he is better than the rest of society. This category of marginalized people increases during financial crises.
4. Biological. This includes transgender people and people who have mental health problems or disabilities. Such individuals are unable to exist on equal terms with other members of society, due to the fact that the latter reject them.
5. Social. This includes individuals who are disappointed in people or those who have experienced changes in their social status, both for the better and for the worse. The person becomes withdrawn, separates himself from other people, and behaves defiantly. Can use society as a resource necessary to achieve a certain goal.

Political marginals

A change of power and political system in a country gives rise to marginal behavior in a person who denies the new direction of power and is unable to accept it, remaining in the mood of the old political foundations.

The most striking example of political marginal behavior is the period of perestroika in Russia, because the old foundations in the society of Soviet power still live in the minds of many people.

In Europe, the creation of the European Union and the unification of many countries into it also reflect the marginal behavior of a political nature among peoples who do not accept it, and thus small revolutionary strikes arise that the authorities have to suppress.

"Unclear Concepts"

The most difficult situation is with words that are not used daily in the speech of a large number of journalists. These include, for example, “offer” or “marginal”. The meaning of a word is sometimes difficult to guess by its sound. And if the word is foreign, then the task becomes almost impossible. We have to turn to explanatory dictionaries to establish the origin of a term that is unfamiliar to the ear.

Who is the marginalized? The meaning of the word is particularly difficult to ascertain for several reasons. Firstly, not all explanatory dictionaries provide the full number of meanings. Secondly, the very meaning of this word has undergone several dramatic changes, which has made it rather blurred and unclear. Only by tracing the entire history can one understand this issue.

First of all, marginality is not a mathematical concept, not a plant, or a piece of clothing. This is a man. But what kind of a person is, what distinguishes him from everyone else and why he received a separate status - all these questions are the subject of a detailed conversation.

Characteristic signs of marginalized people

Modern sociologists, psychologists and philosophers find the manifestation of marginalized people in society as positive, because such people are flexible and capable of rebuilding and assimilating new knowledge and norms of behavior.

When a person, for various reasons, no longer sees value in the existing state of his affairs, he goes into a state of marginality and searches for new ideas and trends, while feeling and assuming his denial by society and loved ones.

Old principles of life lose meaning for him, and new ones are not accepted; he is subject to a state of depression and prone to self-destruction of the individual. A way out is possible if you move to another social group and manifest your plans there. Having reached a comfortable state, he discovers many new opportunities, knowledge and those facets of life that others do not notice due to the established framework of society.

Who are called marginalized, and how do they differ from ordinary people? A marginalized person is a person who, for some special reason, has fallen out of the familiar environment in which he lives and has not tried to join another layer of society. An individual who is in limbo and usually refers to people who do not conform for a number of other reasons, or due to a cultural aspect.

Marginal personality according to Robert Park

American sociologist Robert Park considered the following to be the main character traits and personality traits of marginalized people:

• anxiety;
• aggressiveness;
• ambition;
• touchiness;
• selfishness;
• categorical views;
• negativism;
• unsatisfied ambition;
• anxiety states and phobias.

In society, marginalized individuals were people with an asocial lifestyle (poor refugees, homeless people, beggars, tramps, people with various kinds of addictions, lawbreakers), who can be classified as representatives of the social bottom. Their living conditions have a significant negative impact on their mental state. Any civilized society lives according to its own established rules, customs and norms. R. Park believed that a marginal personality

:

1. Rejects any norms and traditions accepted in society.
2. Has no sense of duty towards the society in which he lives.
3. Experiences a strong need to be alone and avoids the company of people.

Important! Most sociological experts and practicing psychologists believe that the margins are a source of cultural growth. He can objectively, without external influence, evaluate any phenomenon and situation, because he is not involved in it, as if isolated

It fills a social group with new ideas, views, introduces new trends, helps members of society to develop, broaden their horizons, look at problems from a different perspective, and instills tolerance.

Economic marginalized

For the most part, it overlaps with the political type, because economic marginals are people who have lost their jobs due to the closure of industries that the state no longer needs, or an outdated profession, or their labor has been replaced by machine labor.

An example of an economic marginal can also be people whose retirement age comes earlier than that established as the main one in the country. In Russia, early retirement is required for the following categories of workers: military personnel, medical workers, miners and some others; they enter a period that is called marginal, because vitality and abilities are still at their best, and not everyone has the opportunity to acquire new professions and knowledge I can do it.

Types of marginalized people

In accordance with the reasons that influenced the process of marginalization, types of people who were unable or did not want to adapt to new conditions are identified.

Political marginals

People of this type express active opposition to the type of power that has been established in the country. They are intolerant towards its representatives and do not bear any civil responsibility. This situation will also be observed if there is a change of regime and the position of the ruling force is the party that the marginal person supported for some time.

Religious fringes

People who do not adhere to the views of one of the official faiths, but form their own system of ideas that explain the origin of the world and man’s place in it. A person can become marginal even if he is a representative of any religion in a society dominated by another religion.

Ethnic marginalized

Social maladjustment may arise due to forced migration. Refugees, finding themselves on the territory of a foreign country, cannot adapt to its rules, laws, and mentality. A big obstacle is ignorance of the language and a different religion. The indigenous inhabitants of the country reject immigrants; they place them below themselves, which increases the number of marginalized people.

Economic marginalized

Large or small income can also contribute to the process of asocialization. Poor people consider themselves worse than others, rich people - better. Both types are distinguished by impulsiveness, a negative attitude towards life, and attempts to demonstrate their position. The largest number of such people appears during financial crises.

Social marginals

These are persons in whose life there has been a sharp change in social status, while it could not only worsen, but also improve. Emotional turmoil led to disappointment. For such individuals, society becomes a resource for achieving certain goals. An example would be a marriage entered into for the purpose of improving well-being. A person finds himself in another social circle, alien to him in spirit.

Some experts identify another type - the criminal fringe. People who have deviant behavior that leads them to crime.

There are representatives of marginalized individuals who are characterized by a low level of adaptation, antisocial attitudes and an antisocial lifestyle. Their life takes place in a subculture that offers them alternative values ​​and ways to realize them.

Biological marginals

Transgender people, people with disabilities, people with a non-traditional sexual orientation, mental disabilities or incurable diseases, for example, AIDS, often become outcasts from society due to prevailing ideas about what traits a member should have.

In some cases, people who find themselves outside of social groups include old people whose ties with the younger generation are interrupted, which causes conflicts. It becomes impossible to create relationships with peers due to limited physical abilities, economic dependence, etc.

Examples of marginalized people include people with low intellectual abilities. The inability to adapt to cultural norms forces one to deny them, which leads to an asocial lifestyle.

There is also a type of person who has higher mental development than representatives of society. As a result of this, he is not ready to accept the value system that dominates among the bulk and deliberately distances himself from it. Such processes can be most clearly traced against the background of social cataclysms, for example, revolutions or changes in the government system.

Forms of social stratification

Pitirim Sorokin: “The specific hypostases of social stratification are numerous. However, all their diversity can be reduced to three main forms: 1) economic, 2) political and 3) professional stratification. As a rule, they are all closely intertwined. People who belong to a higher stratum in one respect usually belong to the same stratum in other respects, and vice versa. Representatives of the highest economic strata simultaneously belong to the highest political and professional strata. The poor, as a rule, are deprived of civil rights and are in the lower strata of the professional hierarchy.

This is the general rule, although there are many exceptions. So, for example, the richest are not always at the top of the political or professional pyramid, and the poor do not in all cases occupy the lowest places in the political and professional hierarchies. This means that the relationship between the three forms of social stratification is far from perfect, because the different layers of each form do not completely coincide with each other... they coincide with each other, but only partially, i.e. to a certain extent."

Conclusions: 1) there are three basic types of stratification (economic, political, professional), 2) as well as non-basic types of stratification (cultural-speech, age, etc.).

Economic stratification is characterized by indicators of income and wealth. Income is the amount of cash receipts of an individual or family for a certain period of time (month, year). This includes salary, pension, benefits, fees, etc. Income is usually spent on living expenses, but can be accumulated and turned into wealth. Income is measured in monetary units that an individual (individual income) or a family (family income) receives over a specified period of time.

Political stratification is characterized by the amount of power. Power is the ability to exercise one’s will, determine and control the activities of other people through various means (law, violence, authority, etc.). Thus, the amount of power is measured, first of all, by the number of people who are affected by the power decision.

Occupational stratification is measured by the level of education and the prestige of the profession. Education is the totality of knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in the learning process (measured by the number of years of study) and the quality of the knowledge, skills and abilities acquired. Education, like income and power, is an objective measure of the stratification of society. However, it is also important to take into account the subjective assessment of the social structure, because the process of stratification is closely linked to the formation of a value system, on the basis of which a “normative scale of assessment” is formed. Thus, each person, based on his beliefs and passions, evaluates professions, statuses, etc., existing in society differently. In this case, the assessment is carried out according to many criteria (place of residence, type of leisure, etc.).

The prestige of a profession is a collective (public) assessment of the significance and attractiveness of a certain type of occupation. Prestige is respect for status established in public opinion. As a rule, it is measured in points (from 1 to 100). Thus, the profession of a doctor or lawyer in all societies is respected in public opinion, and the profession of a janitor, for example, has the least status respect. In the USA, the most prestigious professions are doctor, lawyer, scientist (university professor), etc. The average level of prestige is manager, engineer, small owner, etc. Low level of prestige - welder, driver, plumber, agricultural worker, janitor, etc.

The main dimensions of social status - wealth, power, education, prestige - often do not coincide. For example, on the scales of education and prestige, a professor is higher than a policeman, but on the scales of income and power, on the contrary, a policeman is higher than a professor. If you mark the social position of both with dots on each scale and connect them with lines, you get the combined status of each of them. The overall status looks like a broken line, which is called a stratification profile (or status profile).

What are the marginalized?

Marginal is a concept denoting a person who is outside any institutions of society. It was first used in the 20s of the last century by American sociologist Robert Park in relation to people occupying a borderline position between social groups in order to identify those immigrants who were unable to adapt to new social conditions. The psyche of such people underwent certain changes, as a result of which they constituted a separate marginal group. This education lived by its own rules, norms and laws, rejecting the values ​​of the society within which it existed and ignoring its traditions.

Marginalized people and modernity

Today the words “marginal”, “marginal element” are quite popular. They are often mistakenly used as a synonym for the word “lummen,” which denotes a declassed element who has lost contact with society and does not have high morals and ethics.

Often marginalized people are generated by various social cataclysms - wars, coups, revolutions. At this time, the destruction of previously established social groups occurs and people cannot attribute themselves to any newly created formations.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rNTjLy3YQgo

A person is part of society and in one way or another participates in its economic, political and cultural life. However, there are those who try to reduce their participation in these areas to a minimum, and ideally, “fall out of the picture” altogether. For some, a similar situation develops regardless of their will. But this does not mean that the marginalized will necessarily sink to the very bottom. Very often, people who have crossed the borders of all social groups strive to regain their lost position. This causes further social cataclysms or leads to the emergence of new groups in society that compete with existing ones.

Another facet of the meaning of such a multifaceted concept is being on the border between different groups. A person cannot identify with any particular group. He is simultaneously a member of several groups that are incompatible with each other, but does not completely associate himself with any of them.

Many artists, writers and simply creative people can be described as marginalized. For example, L.N. Tolstoy, being a count, lived in the village and did not strive to participate in the secular life of the nobility, which surprised his contemporaries a lot.

Sociologists have also observed that marginalization in the workplace occurs because workers are underemployed. As a result, they waste time aimlessly, get bored, and do not have the opportunity to express themselves and their best qualities. This ultimately leads to depression. Marginalization in the workplace due to insufficient work has even been given a separate term - “moral persecution”.

Main types of marginalized people

Studying the reasons that made a person an outcast, researchers identified four types of outcasts:

• ethnic. The most striking example is refugees from countries where armed conflicts occur. Fleeing from a disadvantaged environment, such people cannot always find their place in a new, more prosperous society, which is why they inevitably become marginalized. This group also includes people who came in search of a new life to a richer country. Ethnic marginalized people are the most difficult to adapt;
• economic. The main reason for the appearance is the loss of a source of income, savings or property. Factories are closed, deposits are devalued due to inflation, scammers are deprived of an apartment or house - all these situations can turn a person into an economic outcast. Such risks exist mainly during a political or economic crisis;
• social. Trying to rise higher in the so-called “social elevator”, a person suddenly gets stuck between “floors”, or may even fall to the very bottom, not achieving what he wants and becoming disappointed in everything;
• political. They are the product of political crises, when a person loses confidence in a certain political force. Changing regimes, social norms or statehood are all fertile ground for the growth of the number of political fringes. Thus, in the countries of the post-Soviet space, many people cannot psychologically part with the USSR, although they already live in a new independent state.

With the development of modern technologies, the concept of “marginal” has received a new interpretation. Today, more and more people do not have the desire to maintain intensive social contacts, preferring loneliness and working as a freelancer.

Lumpen

Lumpens and marginalized people - these two groups of the population seem to fall out of the stable social structure of society.

Lumpen - proletariat (from German Lumpen - “rags”) is a term introduced by Karl Marx to designate the lower strata of the proletariat. Later, all declassed segments of the population (vagrants, beggars, criminal elements and others) began to be called “lumpen”. In most cases, a lumpen is a person who does not have any property and lives by doing odd jobs.

Lumpen

- declassed elements, people without social roots, a moral code, ready to unthinkingly obey the strong, that is, the one who currently has real power.

The lumpenization of society means an increase in the proportion of these strata in the population and the spread of the lumpen psychology in conditions of social crisis.

Lumpens are a kind of ragamuffins who have sunk to the “bottom” of life and fallen out of their midst. The more lumpen people become in society, the greater the threat to society they pose. Their environment is a kind of stronghold for various extremist-minded individuals and organizations.

SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY - ABSTRACTS - Marginals and marginality

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

TOMSK STATE UNIVERSITY OF CONTROL SYSTEMS AND RADIO ELECTRONICS (TUSUR)

Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology

Report

On the topic

Marginals and marginality

2010

Introduction

Marginal - this word (from the Latin “marginalis” - borderline) means people who have fallen out of one social group and have not fully integrated into another. If you want, people on the border. Such a layer arises when there is a sharp and large-scale breakdown of the usual social structures: this is exactly what happened in Russia in the era of Alexander II and then Witte and Stolypin.

There is a long-noticed paradox. Reforms always have an effect after some time - when their efficiency has worked. During the reforms themselves, it is often their side, negative consequences that are most often felt most strongly - it is no coincidence that the Chinese have the most terrible curse: “May you live in times of reforms!” The reason here is not only and not so much in economic factors, but precisely in the socio-psychological breakdown of society as a whole, and many of its specific members in particular. Remember from N. Nekrasov: “The great chain broke, broke, sprang: - one end for the master, the other for the peasant!”

It is in such years that many people with a borderline psychology, with a characteristic intermediate mentality, appear - and this is an inevitable painful price for reforms, often threatening society.

We live in a constantly developing society, moving in various social spheres, belonging to various social groups. Politics and economics, the social system into which we find ourselves living in Russia, have a huge impact on our lives. Undoubtedly, all historical and political moments and changes in the life of society resonate in the souls of people, and literary and artistic figures have a special talent, thanks to which we have the opportunity to learn interesting facts and delve into a deep analysis of the lives of various people in different historical periods.

Today we’ll talk a little about how Russian writers described the marginal environment, mainly turning to the work of Mikhail Bulgakov, who created his works at the beginning of the 20th century, during the formation of Bolshevik power.

Marginalized people in the works of M.A. Bulgakov

In Russia there were practically no classes or social groups whose interests coincided with the interests of the communists. How then did the latter win? After all, if Soviet power was “hanging in the air” (a popular Socialist Revolutionary definition), then it should have had no chance of success at all! Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks still won the civil war, at least formally. How can we understand this? Perhaps there was, after all, some class or social layer in Russia that supported the Bolsheviks? Yes, there was such a social class in the country. Only it was not noticed at all for decades and people started talking about it only now, in recent years. His name is marginal.

The famous Russian writer of the first half of the 20th century. Mikhail Bulgakov has a story “Heart of a Dog”. It is based on a fantastic plot. Professor Preobrazhensky performed an unusual operation: he implanted the pituitary gland of a hooligan killed in a fight into the body of a stray dog ​​named Sharik. The result is a hybrid, a man-dog with the soul of a murdered hooligan, to whom the professor gives the surname Sharikov. The hybrid begins to behave disgustingly: he is rude to the professor, tries to evict him from the apartment, and rape the maid. At the same time, he comes into contact with a communist who teaches him primitive Marxism, and the student very quickly learns the principle of “subtract and divide.” The horrified professor decides to end Sharikov's life, restores the animal's pituitary gland and turns him back into a good-natured stray dog. People like Sharikov are, of course, an extreme case of primitivism and moral degradation, especially condensed by the writer’s artistic imagination. But it captures some typical features of the behavior of a person who has “liberated” from culture. What does this really mean? For a person, the basic values, norms and incentives of behavior that regulate the relations of people in society lose their meaning. He rejects (or forgets) what his family or others taught him in childhood. He loses contact with them, sometimes deliberately abandons his family, his past, and does not like to remember it. He becomes a man “from nowhere”, going to “nowhere”.

In such a person, the normal mechanisms for reproducing one’s own existence are disrupted - from basic household discipline to motivation to work. He does not like to work, loses professional skills, which include not only technical skill, but also a certain code of honor (work efficiently, receive a reward corresponding to the effort expended and the result). He wants to receive without giving. In reality, he is only capable of unskilled or low-skilled labor. Therefore, he is either a hack at work, only pretending to be active; or a person who works irregularly for the minimum wage; or worse - a beggar, a thief or a robber.

Without working, a person with the psychology of a lumpen or marginalized person acutely hates those who work normally and create their own well-being through labor. He has a pathological aversion to all property. In his eyes, any wealth should not belong to anyone, it can only be an object of division. Equal distribution is what, in his opinion, should be the rule of social relations and social justice. And there is a kind of logic in this approach. Anyone who is unable to provide for himself must strive to live at the expense of others - no matter how this is achieved.

The tendency towards egalitarianism in the bearer of a “disgraced” consciousness manifests itself not only in relation to material wealth, but also in relation to everything - tastes, behavioral stereotypes, lifestyle. The marginal does not accept any diversity that differs from its meager and limited existence. He hates any manifestations of education and culture. In terms of his development, he is somewhere at the level of a teenager, and this infantilism accompanies him throughout his life. He has no goals, is unable to plan and even organize his life, and is deprived of a sense of responsibility. Like a child who breaks toys if he doesn’t like them, a person with a lumpen psychology is ready to spoil and destroy everything that does not fit into his perception - works of art, beautiful things, complex equipment, city squares, etc.

Our mentality is formed in the interaction of consciousness itself and the sphere of the unconscious. Consciousness is shaped by culture. This is a system of certain values, regulations and attitudes that explicitly or implicitly determine our activities. The subconscious is mental processes that arise and proceed as if spontaneously, unconsciously (various emotions, affects, dreams, etc.). In a normal person, consciousness generally controls the sphere of the unconscious. Sigmund Freud compared the conscious and subconscious mind to a rider and a horse. If the rider sits firmly in the saddle, the horse obeys him. If the horse loses control, it can throw the rider off.

Today we can hardly claim that we have learned to analyze our unconscious well, although several generations of theorists and the practice of psychoanalysis have done this (Z. Freud, K. Jung, E. Fromm, etc.). By the way, psychoanalysts did not specifically consider the case of cultural disorientation and “uprootedness.” In any case, it is clear that various instincts operate in the sphere of the unconscious - the sexual instinct, the instinct of self-preservation, the satisfaction of certain needs, the instinct (or temptation) of appropriation, etc. The disorderly manifestation of instincts is restrained and directed by consciousness and culture. When cultural regulators are weakened, instincts come out. “What is intelligence to us! - says one of the lumpen characters in the novel by the wonderful Russian writer Andrei Platonov “Chevengur”. “We want to live as we wish...”

But if the “desire” contradicts the socio-cultural orders that have developed in society, it must be satisfied by force. The cult of power - both in the sense of using it and in the sense of subordinating it - is extremely characteristic of the lumpen consciousness. The most obvious example of the hierarchy of relations among the marginalized is the atmosphere of a gang of thieves. It is no coincidence that sociologists and philologists note that in societies where there are signs of cultural decay and the emergence of a significant number of marginal elements, there is a “lumpenization of the language”, its saturation with expressions from the criminal environment.

At the same time, it would be a simplification to consider that the mentality of the lumpen or marginalized is completely “liberated” from culture. Cultural values ​​or behavioral stereotypes are contained not only in consciousness, but also in the layer of the unconscious, accumulating there over thousands of years of transmission of cultural experience. But the whole point is that in the psychology of the lumpen they do not form a definite system, they are randomly mixed and therefore cannot be stable guidelines for him in life. Therefore, a variety of elements can be combined in the consciousness and behavior of the lumpen. Denying religion and religious values, he is at the same time prone to the most fantastic superstitions, belief in “miracles.” Cynicism and contempt for others can give way to extreme fanaticism. Along with deep egoism and individualism, he is quite characterized by a herd feeling, a willingness to “be like everyone else.” Hating culture and education, he at the same time is not averse to picking up some knowledge and flaunting it.

One of the classics of sociology, the French scientist Emile Durkheim introduced the concept of “anomie” (from the French anomie - lawlessness, lack of norms). This category was also developed by American sociologists T. Parsons and R. Merton, and English scientist A. Haurani. Anomie is a state of “lost” consciousness of a marginal personality that does not fit into the process of changing cultures in the era of modernization, the transition from traditional to modern relations. The marginalized, the socio-cultural lumpen, lives as if in two or more worlds, not belonging to any of them. He accepts only the external forms of social orders (if he accepts them at all), but does not understand their inner meaning, does not have his own system of values, at best he can only imitate someone else’s, and not even imitate correctly. He is deprived of strong cultural roots in the environment - in his village, in his city, in his state, in his ethnic group. Therefore he has no true individuality, no sense of his own personality. He becomes a man of the crowd, easily susceptible to various suggestions and political manipulation.

The most important thing in the characteristics of the marginalized is the absence of a stable social psychology. The value system is biased or extremely relative (“What is truth?” These words of Pontius Pilate can be considered an epigraph to everything that is written about the marginalized). And hence the negativity of their worldview. Being socio-psychological “border guards”, they feel more comfortable not in the sphere of creation, but quite the opposite. After all, creation means stability in the long term, and the marginalized are children of instability and, even suffering from it, cannot escape from its spiritual atmosphere, becoming a kind of hostages of troubled times. This is exactly the same case that is described in “The Heart of a Dog” by M. Bulgakov: people sing revolutionary songs instead of doing urgent things, and the caustic professor Preobrazhensky is a normal person, not a marginalized person - he venomously remarks: “If you shit in the hallway every day , there will definitely be devastation.” That's what we got...

Hence, not just the desire for destructive actions, but the poeticization of destruction. Like V. Bryusov: “I will break with you, but not build!” It is no coincidence that the dominant feature of Soviet poetry of the 20s is the “intoxicated romance of the destruction of the old” (I quote a school textbook from the 70s). It is no coincidence that A. Tolstoy wrote with such sympathy the heroine of the story “The Viper” - a woman so accustomed only to kill that even in peaceful life, in any conflict situation, her hand reaches out to the Browning, and he eventually shoots - at her neighbor communal apartment. (Remember the Afghan syndrome.) It is no coincidence that, finally, the talented proletarian poet V. Kirillov wrote lines in 1918 that would simply make any person who considers himself a cultured person shudder:

“In the name of our Tomorrow, we will burn Raphael, destroy museums, trample flowers of art!” Dashing, isn't it? And the worst thing is that these lines are not instructions from the Lubyanka: no, the poet was sincerely fascinated by his incomparable aesthetic vandalism.

There is hardly any need to explain that marginal society was a godsend for the Bolsheviks. The marginalized people not only supported them - they became the main breeding ground for them, from where the cadres of “Bolsheviks and others” were recruited (as in A. Platonov’s “Chevengur”), from the leadership to ordinary fighters. It was here, in the marginal elements, that the idea of ​​a revolutionary, violent reorganization of the world found its paladins, its fanatical followers, ready to go to the cross for it or send others there who did not agree.

From “disempowered” individuals to a “disempowered” society. By the beginning of the 20s, the socio-cultural crisis in Russia reached its apogee. According to demographers, the civil war and the disasters that accompanied it (epidemics, emigration, Jewish pogroms, famine of 1921) claimed 15-16 million human lives. Confusion and anarchy reigned in the country, which led to the rapid growth of declassed elements. But it was during this period that an unprecedented historical chance opened up for them: from someone who was “nobody” to become “everyone”. The political force that stimulated this process were the communists and the Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks were the only political force in Russia that was not afraid of either social chaos or mass violence from declassed elements. Moreover, they deliberately used them as a battering ram to destroy the “exploitative society.” Although officially Russian communists proclaimed the working class as their main social support, in fact, in the eyes of many of them, the “proletarian” (“poor”, “dispossessed”, etc.) was not so far from the lumpen. And their ideology corresponded well to the egalitarian needs of the marginalized - “barracks communism.”

The Bolsheviks began to actively implement this model of social structure as soon as they came to power, not only because of the state of emergency during the civil war, but also because it corresponded to their beliefs. True, then they were forced to retreat. The peasantry was dissatisfied that their grain was being forcibly taken away from them, and the authorities did not yet have enough strength to subjugate them to their will. Therefore, under pressure from Lenin, a new economic policy (NEP) was announced, under which a more moderate “tax in kind” was introduced, which enabled peasants to sell part of their products on the market. But several years passed, and the NEP was liquidated. This second (and final) transition to “barracks communism” was carried out by Stalin.

Stalin understood better than other communist leaders what layer the government needed to rely on if it intended to build totalitarian egalitarian socialism. Being himself a typical declassed person, he was well aware of the psychology of the marginalized (although, naturally, he did not use this term). He knew that the “intermediate”, culturally “disempowered” person is subject to force, capable of blind faith, devoid of moral principles and therefore can be obedient and at the same time a cruel performer, and he takes measures to recruit the lower social classes into the structures of power.

After Lenin's death, the so-called Leninist conscription into the Communist Party was announced. In less than two years, the party ranks have increased fivefold. What kind of contingent joined the party can be judged by the following statistics: even among the delegates to the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1925), only 5.1% had higher education, and more than 60% had a lower education. Stalin consciously sought to ensure that this new, lumpen layer would supplant the more or less educated and realistically thinking “old guard” associated with Lenin. Already by 1928, the share of Leninist cadres in the party was less than 1%.

The marginalized did not have to be begged for a long time to join power - they themselves were eager to get it. She gave them a feeling of their importance, a relatively easy and well-fed life, where they had to not work, but command. And they went - to the party, councils, trade unions, security agencies. The rural lumpen layer played a truly decisive role in the implementation of the forced collectivization of the peasantry in the late 20s and early 30s. Now this has become quite clear when, in the era of perestroika and glasnost, studies on this topic, memoirs of eyewitnesses, as well as works of fiction appeared. It was “angry beggary”, with the support of the repressive apparatus of power, that managed to enslave the Russian village again - this time in favor of a totalitarian socialist state. The rural lower classes had their own interest in collectivization - they used the property of wealthy peasants, occupied their huts, and became bosses over their fellow villagers.

Collectivization not only put peasants in a dependent position, but also opened the way for the massive movement of peasants to cities for the needs of industrialization. Industrialization was carried out using paramilitary methods. Huge masses of people were sent to “big construction projects”, living and working in extremely difficult camp conditions. All these were huge shake-ups in society, knocking people out of their usual conditions of existence, from their sociocultural roots. Suffice it to say that if by the beginning of the 30s more than 80% of the population lived in the village (and another 10% in small towns close to the village way of life), then after some 30 years the ratio changed radically - only rural residents remained 40% versus 60% urban, with most of the latter living in fairly large cities.

To this we can add mass repressions during the Stalinist period, the transfer of millions of people to concentration camps, which provided the state with practically free slave power. In short, communism expanded the scale of socio-cultural devastation in Russia to unprecedented proportions. What was created, in the words of the American historian M. Levin, was a “sand-like society” (“quicksand society”) - “the whole nation became, as it were, declassed, some went down, others went up.”

But the lumpenization of society was achieved not only by macrosocial movements. Cultural policy pursued the same goal. Its main focus was the destruction of previous cultural traditions - both national and world. A brutal attack on religion was launched. Religious holidays were cancelled, priests were arrested, churches were destroyed. In 1917 in Russia there were 78 thousand Orthodox churches alone (not counting Catholic churches, synagogues, mosques). A quarter of a century later, fewer than 100 churches remain.

Morality was replaced by the theory of class struggle. Only that which served the cause of socialism and was approved by the authorities was good and correct.

The situation was similar in the intellectual and scientific spheres. Marxism was declared the Only True Teaching. Everything else was considered either as small steps on the way to the top of the Absolute Truth, or as unconditional lies and delusions, leading astray and therefore worthy only of being erased from human memory. Under this flag, continuous campaigns were launched against “bourgeois” movements in philosophy, historical science, linguistics, etc. Entire branches of scientific knowledge were prohibited - genetics, cybernetics, sociology, psychoanalysis. There was a taboo on many works of world and national fiction. This conscious course towards cultural isolation was intended to form a “new man”, that is, truly not associated with universal human traditions.

No less energetically, the communist authorities sought to cut the ground from under the feet of a person in the family. First, in the 1920s, an attempt was made to destroy the family by preaching “free love” and denying the meaning of marriage. Then they abandoned this and proclaimed the need to strictly preserve formal family foundations - even to the point of making divorce more difficult and criminal prosecution for committing an abortion. But the family found itself under the vigilant control of the state. Wives were not only allowed, but also ordered to inform on their husbands, and children - on their fathers. Children were raised for the most part in state nurseries and kindergartens. For many families, sending children there was simply a necessity: the wage policy was structured in such a way that a man alone could not support a family and a woman also had to work.

In general, the main link in all the regime’s efforts to create a society of “disempowered” people was the deindividualization of man, tying him entirely and completely to the state chariot - economically, politically and culturally. A system was created in which a specific person meant something only by being integrated into one or another state unit. “Beer is issued only to trade union members,” as the slogan read, which we find in the book of popular Soviet writers of the Stalin era Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. Other writers compared the Soviet man to a “cog” in the mechanism of a socialist society. Such a “cog” could not, by definition, be the subject and creator of his own life.

But no society can be built solely on prohibitions and denial of cultural traditions. What positive things did communism offer to the masses? Once upon a time, the brilliant Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky in the romance “The Brothers Karamazov” created the image of the Grand Inquisitor - a kind of socialist dictator who wants to lead people to social well-being at the cost of depriving them of freedom. The Grand Inquisitor points out three slogans that will captivate the masses: Miracle, Mystery and Authority. The Bolsheviks rejected Dostoevsky and were not interested in him. However, in their policy they acted (of course, without knowing it themselves) completely according to the specified recipe.

The “miracle” consisted of the shining prospects for building a fundamentally new society. In communism, not only the one who was “nobody” had to become “everyone”, but also “everything” was invented from “nothing”. It was a large-scale technocratic utopia. It was supposed to create a world in which the most complex mechanisms would surpass the human mind in their functions, and people themselves would be like well-oiled machines, whose actions would always be correct and predictable.

“Complete electrification”, “tractorization”, “chemicalization”, etc. - these slogans replaced one another throughout the entire communist period. It cannot be denied that in this way the Soviet government really managed to involve significant masses of the population in the process of industrialization, infecting them with the pathos of technical creation. In one of the stories by the popular Soviet writer Vasily Shukshin, a simple working guy, drunk, shouts: “I believe! To aviation, to the mechanization of agriculture, to the scientific revolution! To space and weightlessness! Because it’s objective!.. I believe!” For many, this feeling was quite sincere.

Our illustrious fellow countryman, sculptor I. Shadr, has a famous work: “Cobblestone is a weapon of the proletariat.” So, the marginalized became cobblestones in that war (only, of course, not among the proletariat, but among the Bolsheviks). All the negative qualities of marginal psychology - isolation from traditional values, craving for destructive actions as an end in themselves and hence psychological readiness for violence with all the ensuing consequences - were deliberately placed at the service of the emerging regime and cultivated by it. But this course of events was not fatal. It was possible to channel this energy in a positive direction - the marginalized were not bastards, they were just people at a crossroads. And marginal danger is not eternal, just as the painful breakdown of a reformed society is not eternal. A terrible lesson! Especially for us who are living today, because we also live in times of reform...

Social stratification and the problem of the middle class in modern Russian society

The official ideology claimed that there was no social inequality in the USSR. After the victory of socialism, there supposedly existed two friendly classes in our country - the working class and the peasantry, and between them there is a stratum recruited from their ranks - the working intelligentsia. However, scientific analysis of social processes in the USSR allows us to doubt the correctness of this statement.

And in the early 90s, as a result of the policy of “perestroika” and the negative trends it brought to life in the life of Soviet society, the USSR ceased to exist, and Soviet society ceased to exist. As a result of the collapse of the USSR, a state was formed - the Russian Federation. Modern Russian society is a transitional society. It involves the formation of socio-economic and political relations of a new type, and at the same time the process of intensive restructuring of society is carried out. This process is associated with the seizure and redistribution of property, the struggle for power between the old and new elite, changes in the assessment of the social prestige of various types of activities, changes in value guidelines, the formation of new guidelines, patterns and norms of behavior.

As a result of these processes, a new stratification system is emerging in Russian society, largely similar to the Western-style stratification system, since private property relations play a significant role in it. Sociological research shows that in the last decade, a top stratum of property owners has formed in Russian society, constituting about 3% of the total population. The main part of this layer was formed by the former nomenklatura, which, occupying key positions in the economy and politics, as a result of privatization, legalized its function as the real manager and owner of the means of production. The other two sources of replenishment for the upper stratum are businessmen in the shadow economy and a small layer of talented and successful scientific and technical intelligentsia.

About 80% are in the lower strata of society, most of whom have a standard of living below the poverty line. The middle layer of the social pyramid is extremely thin. It is estimated at 17% of the population. Its members include medium and small entrepreneurs, farmers, management staff, the highest strata of the scientific and technical intelligentsia and the cultural sphere. They very vaguely resemble the so-called “middle class” of Western society. Thus, the profile of social stratification in our country is extremely acute and this serves as a source of constant social tension, which can lead to a social explosion.

In modern conditions in Russia there has been a tendency to form a number of social strata belonging to the middle class - these are entrepreneurs, managers, certain categories of the intelligentsia, and highly qualified workers. But this trend is contradictory, since the common interests of the various social strata that potentially form the middle class are not supported by the processes of their convergence according to such important criteria as the prestige of the profession and income level.

The income level of various groups is the third significant parameter of social stratification. Economic status is the most important indicator of social stratification, because the level of income influences such aspects of social status as the type of consumption and lifestyle, the opportunity to start a business, advance in career, give children a good education, etc.

In 1997, the income received by the top 10% of Russians was almost 27 times higher than the income of the bottom 10%. The wealthiest 20% accounted for 47.5% of total cash income, while the poorest 20% received only 5.4%. 4% of Russians are super wealthy - their income is approximately 300 times higher than the income of the bulk of the population.

Conclusion

The fate of a society dominated by a one-dimensional perspective of assessment is sad. The more the distribution of wealth coincides with the distribution of social prestige, the greater the likelihood of mutual rejection of the lower, middle and upper strata, the closer and more acute the danger of disintegration with its varieties from revolution to civil war.

Of course, there is no country in the world where the poor do not dislike the rich. But this natural hostility can be strengthened or weakened - depending on factors of a sociocultural rather than economic order. If members of the poor learn that they have no chance of society promoting their “non-commodity” virtues, this will lead not only to frightening moral degradation, but also to an explosive exacerbation of class hatred. Having no chance of getting rich, he can achieve recognition and honor in a completely different field. Social policy must solve this problem.

Social policy is a policy of regulation of the social sphere aimed at achieving well-being in society. The social sphere of public relations includes forms of regulation of labor relations, participation of workers in the management of the production process, collective agreements, the state system of social security and social services (unemployment benefits, pensions), participation of private capital in the creation of social funds, social infrastructure (education, healthcare, housing, etc.), as well as the implementation of the principle of social justice. Thereby regulating relations between different social strata.

Key characteristics of marginalized people

We can safely identify several key characteristics of the marginalized, among which we should note the severance of any spiritual as well as social ties that previously existed in “pre-marginal” life. Typically, refugees and migrants are included in the category of marginalized people. People who find themselves on the outskirts of social groups, a military man discharged from service, who has not yet decided what exactly he will do with his life. Among other signs of marginality, it is worth highlighting such characteristics as:

• a number of psychological problems - a person simply cannot find himself and his “place in the sun”;
• mobility - if there are no attachments and there is no housing;
• own values. In such situations, there is even some hostility towards the society that exists;
• involvement in some other

History of marginalized people: facts

Today, the word “marginal” is fashionable, but very vague in terms of its meaning. People sometimes pronounce it without realizing its real meaning, but they consider it very, very appropriate. Historians say that the first marginalized people can safely be called slaves who later received freedom. These slaves were not prepared to live as free citizens and were simply not morally and psychologically prepared for such changes. You can give an example of the modern marginalized, this is a special category of middle-aged people who served in prison for at least ten years and have now been released. The conditions are new for them, however, they do not know how to exist in them and again soon return back to the places that sheltered them for these many years.