The migration of rural residents to cities has been occurring for a long time, but still about a quarter of the population of our country lives in villages, villages and other rural areas.

The uniqueness of the rural way of life is directly related to the characteristics of the work and life of the inhabitants: the subordination of labor to natural rhythms and cycles; more grueling working conditions than usual in large cities; the practical absence of opportunities for labor mobility of residents; great unity of work and life, labor intensity of work in household and subsidiary farming; the choice of activities in free time is small. The way of life of rural settlements contains elements of a traditional neighborhood community. They have a permanent composition of residents, their socio-professional and cultural differentiation is incredibly small, and very close family and neighborly ties are typical.

The village is characterized by “openness” and sincerity of communication. The absence of large social and cultural contrasts between the residents and small numbers make the villagers’ communication quite close and penetrate into all areas of life. Friendship and camaraderie are poorly differentiated, and, consequently, there is virtually no difference in the emotional depth and intensity of communication with different partners. The smaller the village, the closer the communication between its inhabitants.

Villages as a type of settlement influence the socialization of children, adolescents, and young men in an almost syncretic (undifferentiated) way. It is difficult to determine the degree of influence in the course of spontaneous, directed and controlled socialization.

In practice, this is due to the fact that in villages control of human behavior in society is very common. Since there are few residents, the connections between them are more or less close, everyone knows everything about everyone, the anonymous existence of a person is practically unrealistic, every moment of his life becomes an object for evaluation by the public.

The content of social control in many rural settlements is determined by a specific socio-psychological atmosphere. According to a researcher of a modern village V. G. Vinogradsky, the bizarre economic life of many villages gives rise to a combination of conscience and dishonesty, “dashing theft” and “gloomy frugality and even miserliness,” “total double-mindedness.”

The rural family begins to participate in the socialization of its members mainly in the same direction as the village as a microsociety, often regardless of the socio-professional status and educational level of adults.

The ever-growing influence of the city on the village plays an important role in the socialization of rural residents. It produces a certain change in orientation life values from real ones (available in rural conditions) to those that are characteristic of the city and can only be a standard, a dream for a rural resident.

I am a romantic person, so when I mention rural life, bright pastoral pictures bloom in my imagination: a beautiful house, a garden, a vegetable garden, fields, lawns, birds, goats...

But in reality, everything is not so rosy. Rural life has undeniable advantages, but in the village the standard of living is often lower than in the city. This is especially true for Russia with its brightest contrast between village and city.

Urban lifestyle

Familiar and familiar to many, judging by the size of the urban population.

City makes a lot of things easily accessible, provides huge selection regarding:

• study and work;
• cultural and entertainment events;
• communication;
• medicine.

Comfort is also high at the everyday level. Electricity, gas, and running water are available in every apartment. But You have to pay dearly for comfort.

Stress- a constant companion of a city dweller.

The city air is full of dust and smog. Transport is often overcrowded and traffic jams are common. Always noisy, it is often difficult to feel privacy even in your own apartment if you do not take care of sound insulation.

Country life

Briefly about the obvious the advantages of living in a village:

• measured lifestyle;
• proximity to nature;
• less noise pollution;
• better state of the environment;
• there is an opportunity to engage in agriculture.

However, it will not be without hassle and large financial investments in the maintenance and repair of a private house.

Difficult to find in the village work, so you often have to work in the city and spend many hours on the road. To obtain the services of highly specialized specialists, you often still have to travel to the city.

Choice cultural and entertainment events, as a rule, small. The population is small, and sometimes it is difficult to form a social circle and find like-minded people.

Different people, different lives

Only someone is cute rural life, and the prospect of waking up every morning in a house like an anthill in the middle of a metropolis is terrifying.

Close to someone city with its speed, brightness and capabilities. For others, a change of environment is familiar: in the summer they go to nature, and spend the winter in a city apartment.

Difference in standard of living is often erased due to the characteristics of a particular city/village and a person’s social status.

Unfortunately, many of us don't have much choice when it comes to where we live. Moving from city to village, as well as vice versa, is always a difficult thing.

Lifestyle is a combination of various aspects of people’s life, their behavior in everyday practice. Ultimately, the way of life is determined by the specific socio-economic conditions of a given society, the level of development of the productive forces and the nature of social relations. Therefore, the way of life in different historical eras is not the same. In addition, the way of life reflects national traditions, customs of a given people, their mentality, spiritual culture in general, as well as a person’s property status and economic status. In this regard, the lifestyle of social classes, nations, individual social strata and groups is different in content. The way of life of people living in different territories and in different regions differs in significant features. different types settlements. These features are determined by the nature of labor, its technical and technological content, and the territorial parameters of the life of the population. In this case, we are interested in the urban lifestyle. It is based on the content of industrial labor, the territorial-spatial nature of the urban environment, population density and other factors inherent in the city as a type of settlement (development of infrastructure, concentration of organs state power etc.). All this is reflected in the content of the urban lifestyle, all its aspects: work, everyday life of the population, forms of using free time, satisfaction of material and spiritual needs, participation in political and social life, norms and rules of behavior.

Every phenomenon is cognized more deeply and systematically in comparison with other phenomena of the same order as it, through the disclosure of their general and special features. We will consider the urban lifestyle by comparing it with the lifestyle of the rural population, as well as comparing the lifestyle of large and small cities.

What is characteristic of the lifestyle of the population of a big city today?

Firstly, the separation of the place of employment and place of residence. In rural areas, a person lives and works in the same small space, within the boundaries of the fields belonging to a given village. This is especially true today for farms: A farmer's land is usually located around his house. The separation of place of work and place of residence is not so strongly felt in small towns. The distances between them are small, people often do not use public transport, and it is poorly developed in such cities. In a large city this problem is very acute. For example, in Moscow, travel time to work and back is often two to three hours. This situation has a negative impact on the life of a working person; The road in crowded transport exhausts his strength, unpleasant situations sometimes arise in the salons Vehicle, injure the nervous system. When a person arrives home, he no longer has the energy or time to do housework or keep the apartment clean, not to mention reading, watching television, or spending time with children. In general, transport in Moscow works well compared to other cities, but it cannot cope with the increasing demands placed on it. The opening of new surface routes and metro lines lags behind the increase in the city's population. Transport problems are common in large cities around the world. Thus, a day for a working person in a big city is divided into three parts: work, being in transport and sleep. There is almost no time left for other types of life activities. Free time is only on weekends.

Secondly, the urban lifestyle is largely characterized by the individual-family orientation of the population’s life. In Russia, from time immemorial, collectivism has been an essential feature of people's behavior and their entire lives. The collectivist psychology of the Russian people came from peasant life, based on communal land use and periodic, fairly fair, distribution of land between peasant households (per capita). With collectivization Agriculture in the USSR, the collectivist psychology of the peasant was supported by joint, socialized labor on collective farm fields. Collectivism in agricultural production also extended to interfamily, interpersonal relationships, and to the entire lifestyle of a village resident. This feature of the rural way of life has not been lost today.

The life activity of city residents is different. On the one hand, industrial work is collective in nature. Even more collective than agricultural labor, because in large plants and factories thousands of workers are gathered into single labor collectives. But each worker knows only a few immediate neighbors at his workplace, where he works individually. On the village field, work is carried out, as a rule, by an “artel”.

Individuality as a feature of the urban lifestyle is fully manifested in its family and everyday aspects. Here, unlike in the village, a person withdraws into his family after work. He often does not know his neighbor who lives next door to the apartment. And in general, in the city, neighborhood as an aspect of family and personal relationships plays a very insignificant role. People meet with work colleagues more often (they go to visit each other, relax together). The rooting of the individual orientation of the urban lifestyle is facilitated, not least, by the presence in cities of so-called “dormitory areas”. These are new buildings on the outskirts of the city, where there are no industrial or other enterprises. Working in the city center, people come here only to “sleep”. Here their life activities hardly go beyond the scope of family life. Because of this, in the city social control is significantly weakened, while in the village it is at a high level: people know each other thoroughly, they know their parents, grandparents, and everyone living in a given village. Everyone's behavior is under the control of all village residents.

Thirdly, the urban lifestyle is characterized by the predominance of social forms of satisfying people’s everyday needs and a decrease in family forms! In this regard, it is qualitatively different from the rural way of life. In the village, from time immemorial, a person's everyday needs were satisfied in the family. Family members, as a rule, knew how to sew their own clothes, repair shoes, and make simple tools. And, of course, grow bread, vegetables, meat and other food products for your own consumption. Therefore, the villager early years gets used to working in the family farm, and then in the field.

In the city, due to objective conditions, the economic and household function of the family is narrowed. A city dweller cannot grow food - he buys it in the store. He most often does not know how to repair his clothes and shoes. A city apartment, unlike a village house, does not require the preparation of fuel and animal feed.

IN last years The service sector in cities has expanded significantly. This is caused technical progress-- an increase in the number of personal cars, televisions, computers, and mobile phones. They require maintenance and repair. The expansion of the network of service enterprises is also associated with their transition to private property. They provide considerable income to their owners, so their number is growing. If in the recent past, say, in Moscow there was an acute shortage of urban service enterprises, now there is another problem for the population - their high cost. Not every working Muscovite, especially a pensioner, can use consumer services enterprises.

Fourthly, the urban lifestyle develops away from nature, in an artificial socio-cultural environment. No matter how rich a particular city is in green spaces and water spaces, they cannot replace living nature. Meanwhile, man as a socio-biological being needs to communicate with the natural environment from which he grew and in which he was historically formed. The biological principle in a person does not disappear when he moves to the city, with the title “city dweller”. A deficiency in the satisfaction of this principle negatively affects a person’s physical health, his psyche and, ultimately, his social behavior.

Naturally, a person, born in urban conditions, adapts to them; his body adapts to a polluted atmosphere and far from clean environmentally friendly water and food. However, the adaptive capabilities of the human body are not unlimited; today they clearly lag behind the growth of components of the artificial environment, especially in a big city. This increase intensifies under market conditions. Business owners care little about developing the city's infrastructure, creating a favorable city-wide environment for residents, and landscaping the streets. They shift the care and costs of this onto the local budget, being interested only in the short-term profit of their enterprises.

The feeling of distance from nature among city dwellers is enhanced by the monotony of the typical development of residential outskirts of modern cities. Houses, like Siamese twins, are similar to each other in different cities. It is not difficult for a person to confuse them, like the hero of the famous film who, having accidentally ended up in Leningrad, could not distinguish the house there from his house in Moscow, where he lived.

For small towns, the problem of remoteness from nature is not as acute as in large and super-large cities. The residents there are closely connected with the village, communicate more often with the villagers, and buy food from them for the winter. The lifestyle of small towns takes on the character of a rural-urban lifestyle. Currently, the remoteness of city residents from nature is somewhat compensated by the massive acquisition by city residents of garden plots, where they spend weekends, vacations, work on the land, and communicate with nature.

These are some of the characteristic features of the urban way of life, which in their totality distinguish it into a special type of way of life as a social phenomenon.

It is known that a person as a personality is formed depending on the objective conditions in which he lives. They determine his value orientations, worldview, system of views on the surrounding reality and his place in it. The urban environment is no exception in this regard. With all its aspects, it has a daily influence on the development of the personality of a city resident from his very birth. Urban living standards in which a person finds himself in adulthood (he moves to the city for permanent residence) determine his desocialization and resocialization, adaptation to their characteristics. With good reason we can talk about “the education of man by the city.”

On what aspects of the personality of a city dweller does the city exert its educational influence? First of all, on his mentality. A city dweller thinks in broader categories than, say, a resident of a village or small town. This is facilitated by a number of reasons: the breadth of urban space, being in large work teams, multinational population, a system of cooperative ties between enterprises, etc. It is also important, of course, that the city’s population has the opportunity to get more high education than a village resident. Therefore, he no longer thinks only in concrete, but also in abstract theoretical categories, and is predisposed to generalizing the facts of life. A worker, an ordinary employee of a city enterprise or institution, communicates more often than a resident of other settlements with the intelligentsia, which is concentrated mainly in cities. This communication contributes to the growth of the general cultural level of the urban population as a whole.

The urban environment fosters in a person a heightened sense of internationalism and equal treatment of people of other nationalities and religions. Without this, social stability in a big city and normal functioning of labor collectives consisting of representatives of many nations and social groups. For example, representatives of almost all nations and religious movements that exist in Moscow live in Russian Federation. Friendly, equal relations between them are the key to calm life in the city.

Transience and the constant change of rhythms in the development of urban life make people want to know urban processes, since they affect everyday life, the well-being of residents, and the social status of workers. The desire to know everything about one’s hometown and real knowledge about it contribute to instilling in its residents a sense of urban patriotism and a desire to contribute to its well-being. City authorities must systematically provide information to the population about news in the life of the city and answer citizens' questions. In Moscow, such information is regularly broadcast on television and radio channels, especially in the television programs: “Events. Moscow Time” and “Facing the City.”

Urban conditions naturally favor general cultural and professional growth residents, especially young people. Young people can prepare and enter a university, improve their specialty both at the enterprise and in the postgraduate education system. The city has libraries, theaters, and museums, a visit to which helps enrich the spiritual world of a person.

Thus, the urban way of life, being a variety of the way of life of a given society, retains the basic, essential features of the latter. At the same time, it represents an independent type of lifestyle as a social phenomenon. It is characterized by such features that qualitatively distinguish it from, say, a rural way of life. In the future, both of these basic ways of life will apparently come closer together on the basis of the gradual overcoming of social differences between city and countryside, between people of industrial and agricultural work. The differences are precisely social, natural differences will persist for a long time. The study of the processes occurring in urban and rural ways of life, in their movement towards each other, in their mutual enrichment is the task of sociological science.

Russia has always been considered an agrarian state, the bulk of whose population lives in rural areas. The situation has changed somewhat only in recent years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For Russia, the rural way of life has always remained leading and predominant among the population. At all times, Russia has been an agrarian country, and today the share of agriculture in the economy remains quite significant. This is due to many features of the geographical and political position of the country. Firstly, the vast territories and favorable climate of the central part of the state have always created appropriate conditions for the development of agriculture. Secondly, from time immemorial, Russian people have been inextricably linked with the land and agriculture - many folk epics, fairy tales and songs confirm the special love and tenderness experienced by Russian people for their native land.

Even in ancient times, Russian society was characterized by a special commitment to agriculture. Subsistence farming and barter in kind were common among peasants. Where climatic conditions were most favorable, peasant communities produced grain both for personal consumption and for sale.

Later, in the Middle Ages and during the existence Russian Empire, serfdom, which was inextricably linked with the rural way of life, became especially widespread. The landowners owned large villages and hamlets, whose residents were engaged in the production of grain, meat and other products. The percentage of rural residents has always been high; even at the beginning of the 20th century, the share of rural residents in the Russian Empire was more than 80%.

The USSR pursued a massive policy of developing agriculture and uniting small private producers into large collective farms. Many peasants resisted such changes, since wealthy villagers did not want to share their property with their poor and lazy neighbors. This revealed the main problem of the Russian village. Rural residents who were able to provide for themselves through subsistence farming and produce food for sale most often worked hard and built up a large farm with their labor. But there were also poor families who, at best, could only produce food for their own survival. The collectivization reform was intended to equalize the property of these two classes, which led to conflict in society and resistance from rich peasants.

Advantages and disadvantages of a rural lifestyle

The rural way of life has always attracted the population of the country. But in Lately City life seems more and more attractive and easier. What are the pros and cons of a rural lifestyle these days?

Advantages of rural life

A village or hamlet is distinguished by a high level of ecology, which is quite important these days. A healthy lifestyle attracts many people - fresh air, proximity to a river or other body of water, the absence of large factories and factories that produce harmful emissions - all this has a beneficial effect on the general condition of the human body.

The opportunity to produce your own food is also attractive to many. It's no secret that products sold in stores contain practically no vitamins and may contain various harmful impurities. Village products have particular health benefits.

Peace, quiet and distance from the bustle of the city are a huge advantage for many people these days.

Disadvantages of a rural lifestyle

The distance from communications and organizations of public importance is perhaps one of the biggest disadvantages. The need to transport children to school, to go shopping or to work is one of the reasons why city residents do not want to move to the countryside.

For most people, keeping subsistence farming and completely providing oneself with food seems to be a significant difficulty.

The social environment has a huge impact on teenagers. However, the social environment includes not only such components as school, family, peers, but also the place of residence - in the city or in the countryside. Urban and rural residents have significant differences in lifestyle and value orientations. Therefore, we will characterize rural and urban settlements and characterize the features of the way of life of their inhabitants.

Rural settlements. The peculiarities of the rural way of life are connected with the peculiarities of the life of the inhabitants: the subordination of labor to the rhythms and cycles of the year; more difficult working conditions than usual in the city; low opportunities for labor mobility of residents; great unity of work and life, immutability and labor intensity of work in the home and subsidiary farms; The range of free time activities is quite limited. Elements of the traditional neighborhood community have been preserved in the way of life of rural settlements. They have a fairly stable composition of residents, their socio-professional and cultural differentiation is weak, and close family and neighborly ties are typical.

In general, modern villages and hamlets retain many traditional features of the rural way of life; the rhythm is measured, unhurried, and preserves elements of natural conformity. Time is not always considered by rural residents as quickly passing, as a social value.

The village is characterized by “openness” of communication. The absence of large social and cultural differences between residents, the small number of real and possible contacts make the villagers’ communication quite close and covering all aspects of life. Friendship and friendship are poorly differentiated, and therefore the emotional depth and intensity of communication with different partners rarely have serious differences. The smaller the village, the more inclusive the communication of its inhabitants.

Circumstances such as the presence or absence of a school, club, post office, medical center, as well as proximity to the city, large or small, and the presence of good roads and transport routes are also important.

The rural type of settlement influences the socialization of children, adolescents, and young men almost syncretically (undifferentiated), that is, it is practically impossible to track their influence in the process of spontaneous, relatively guided and relatively socially controlled socialization.

In rural settlements, social control of human behavior is very strong. The content of social control in many rural settlements is determined by a specific socio-psychological atmosphere. Today it is characterized by the alienation of residents from the sense of master of the land on which they live, drunkenness and alcoholism.

A rural school, due to its close integration into rural life, influences the education of younger generations much less than an urban school.

A rural family (in which children identify themselves with their parents to a much greater extent than in an urban family) influences the socialization of its members mainly in the same direction as the village as a microsociety, often regardless of the socio-professional status and educational level of the parents.

The constantly growing influence of the city on the village plays a special role in the socialization of rural residents. It produces a certain reorientation of life values ​​between real ones, accessible in rural conditions, and those that are characteristic of the city and can only be a standard, a dream for a rural resident.

Urban settlements. The city is characterized by: concentration large quantity inhabitants and high population density in a limited area; a high degree of diversity of human activity (both in labor and non-productive spheres); differentiated socio-professional and often ethnic structures of the population.

The city has a number of characteristics that create special conditions for the socialization of its residents, especially the younger generations.

A modern city is objectively the center of culture: material (architecture, industry, transport, monuments of material culture), spiritual (education of residents, cultural institutions, educational establishments, monuments of spiritual culture, etc.). Thanks to this, as well as the number and diversity of layers and groups of the population, the city is a center of information potentially available to its residents.

At the same time, the city is a center of criminogenic factors, criminal structures and groups, as well as all types of deviant behavior. The city has a large number of dysfunctional families with criminal potential; there is a more or less large number of users of narcotic and toxic drugs (especially among young people); there are informal groups and associations with an antisocial orientation; the passion for gambling is widespread, there is a more or less massive involvement of various groups of residents in small-scale commerce, actually or potentially criminalized, there are stable criminal groups that involve youth and teenagers in their composition and sphere of influence.

The city is also characterized by a historically established urban lifestyle, which includes the following main features:

· the predominance of anonymous, business, short-term, partial and superficial contacts in interpersonal communication, but at the same time a high degree of selectivity in emotional attachments;

· low importance of territorial communities of residents, mostly underdeveloped, selective and, as a rule, functionally determined neighborly connections (cooperation of families with small children or old people to look after them, “car” connections, etc.);

· the high subjective and emotional significance of the family for its members, but at the same time the prevalence of intense extra-family communication;

· diversity of lifestyles, cultural stereotypes, value orientations;

· instability social status city ​​dweller, large social mobility;

· weak control of human behavior and the significant role of self-control due to the presence of various social connections and anonymity.

The characteristics mentioned above make the city a powerful factor in human socialization, because they create conditions for children, adolescents, and young men to make choices and demonstrate mobility.

The city creates mobility for its residents in various aspects of their life. The most basic of them is territorial mobility.

Firstly, with age, a person’s perceived, cognizable and mastered living space expands. This expansion goes from the preschoolers' yard across the street, a block near junior schoolchildren, neighborhood in teenagers to other parts of the city and even the city as a whole in their youth.

Secondly, with age, an orientation towards spending part of the time in in public places, the intensity of which, as a rule, reaches its peak in adolescence, and then, as a rule, also declines.

Thirdly, in adolescence or adolescence, many city residents develop subjectively significant and intimately significant areas and places with which the most important areas of life are associated, and later - memories.

Fourthly, city residents have the potential to change their place of residence within the city.

For the socialization of a city dweller, the main significance is that the city creates conditions for social mobility, both horizontal (changes in the type of occupations and membership groups within one social stratum) and vertical (transitions from one social stratum to another - up or down the social ladder ).

Depending on the extent to which adolescents realize opportunities for mobility, they are more or less prepared to use new forms and methods of activity, cognition, skillful and careful in communication, prepared for surprises in everyday contacts, and oriented in the surrounding reality; prone to risks and non-standard responses to life's challenges. All this largely determines the readiness, preparedness and desire of children and adolescents to make a choice.

Any person makes numerous choices throughout his life, showing his subjectivity and subjectivity, more or less consciously assessing the alternatives available to him, and self-determining in relation to them.

The city as the center of culture, as well as prosocial, asocial and antisocial phenomena, the urban lifestyle in general provides each of its residents with a huge range of very different alternatives. This creates potential for individual choice in various fields life activity. Let us note only a few of them, the most significant for the socialization of younger generations.

Firstly, the city provides great amount alternatives, being a kind of “node” of information and information field. The carriers of information are architecture, city planning, transport, advertising, the flow of people, and individuals.

Secondly, in the city a person interacts and communicates with a large number of real partners, and also has the opportunity to look for interaction, buddies, friends, loved ones among an even larger number of potential partners. In general, the city provides a wide choice of social circles and groups.

Thirdly, interactions and relationships are significantly differentiated in the city. Here, the approved and disapproved behavior of adults and young people in general differs significantly. Communication between adults and younger ones tends to become less intense and open as children grow older.

Communication with peers has obvious age-related characteristics. It usually takes place in groups that arise in the classroom or in the yard. However, the older a child gets, the more often he can look for and find partners outside the classroom, school, and yard.

Fourthly, the socio-cultural differentiation of the urban population, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rather close territorial proximity of the strata, lead to the fact that a city resident not only sees and knows different lifestyles and value aspirations, but also has the opportunity to “try on” them on yourself.

In general, the role of the city in the socialization of children, adolescents, and young men is determined by the fact that it provides each city dweller with potentially wide opportunities to choose social circles, value systems, lifestyles, and, consequently, opportunities for self-realization and self-affirmation.

Thus, based on all of the above, we can present the conclusion in the form of a table in which we briefly outline the main differences in the lifestyle of urban and rural residents.

Table. Comparative characteristics lifestyle in urban and rural areas

Therefore, we can say that the city has greater potential for human development and self-realization than the village.