Является ли этническая культура социальным институтом?

Abstract

The article analyzes approaches to the study of social institutions in their broad and narrow sense, with a focus on the sociological interpretation of institutions and institutionalization. The significant functions of a social institution and the conditions for its formation in response to a social request are determined. The understanding of culture as a generic concept for ethnic culture is fixed and the rationale for the institutional interpretation of culture is given. The author comes to the conclusion that ethnoculture can be regarded as a social institution both in a broad sense (as a set of norms, rules, traditions and rituals that regulate the life and behavior of people), and, at a modern stage of development, in a narrow sense (ethnoculture is institutionalized in specific political (ministries of culture), social (public organizations), cultural (theaters, libraries), educational (schools, colleges, universities) structures that perform the function of cultural transmission, which was previously carried out mainly in the institution of the family, and is now diversified into various organizations) . The institutional understanding of ethnic culture allows us to reveal cultural dilemmas, track the structural and functional transformations of ethnic cultures and the specifics of their interaction with other social institutions of our time.