New information and communication technologies have radically changed the social structure and the social space as a whole. Under the influence of modern technologies, the nature of social communications and the links in society are changing. The analysis of ongoing processes is the most critical condition for an adequate scientific and practical response to changes in the parameters of social space. To improve the quality of social management, it is necessary to turn to the theory that shows what changes are taking place in the traditional system of social organization. It also plays a vital role, analyzing innovative elements to identify what opportunities and challenges they contain.
The most famous theoretical product of the American sociologist Erwin Goffman is the concept of total institutions. Goffman puts forward the idea that closed institutions have several similar characteristics that can combine them into one group (Horowitz, 2021). In these places, people are forced to co-exist in a closed space for a certain period, obeying the institution’s internal rules. I touched upon the problems of religion total institution when I visited the temple. Having turned the wrong turn, I became an unwitting witness to a conversation. Life in the monastery, based on the observations I heard, was not so sinless. The monastery occupies a special place among total institutions because getting there has always been a voluntary choice of a person seeking communion with God. However, in the era of the Internet, the monastery does not meet these needs.
Both Irving Hoffman and Harold Garfinkel believe that the modern community functions through the separation and fulfillment of everyday compulsory obligations by individuals (Niedbalski, 2021). According to Garfinkel, the production of social order is local; it is within this order that social responsibilities are discovered and justified (Wiley, 2019). In my own experience, I can say that personal relationships between influential individuals form the basis of social organization. For example, in a hospital where the chief medical officer went to the same college as my grandfather, they will be willing to hire someone my family knows at our request. This will give our acquaintance an advantage among more experienced candidates. In the modern world, impersonal categories of individuals interact in a vast field of social behavior, but they do not need to know about the individual identity of the partners.
The challenges of globalization have stimulated the development of theories and methods that analyze the functioning of multicultural societies and international organizations. The cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall thought about whether a person is free from culture and how strong it is if there is an addiction (Carr et al., 2020). Hall put forward the idea that a person is mainly characterized by the country’s culture in which he was born, while he is not aware of his cultural peculiarity (Hutchins et al., 2020). This is true even in the modern world when a person consumes another culture via the Internet. For example, during a visit to Spain, I saw in films and read that it is customary to talk long and slowly after eating in Spain. But still, every time I tried to get up from the table right after I finished eating, I felt uncomfortable. This was because my native culture is not used to such a culture of eating. To stop being a prisoner of my own culture, I needed to become aware of the presence of an unconscious cultural program.
The opportunity to form organizations that enjoy the support of the wider society is open to anyone who meets minimal and impersonal criteria. Within the developed frame system, the defining value is assigned to the structure of the human experience. Joint actions can be considered the context of practical within-the-system frames of direct collaborative collective efforts. However, everyday activities, feelings, and thinking are still influenced by the primary culture. These are briefly the essential characteristics of social interaction and daily life in the Internet age, but their configuration and specific manifestations depend on the cultural context.
References
Carr, D., Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, J., Massey, G., & O’Brien, T. (2020). Introduction to sociology. New York, USA: W. W. Norton & Company.
Horowitz, A. (2021). A humane vision. The University of North Carolina Press, 27(1), 5-11.
Hutchins, N., Allen, A., Curran, M., & Kannis-Dymand, L. (2021). Social anxiety and online social interaction. Australian Sociologist, 56(2), 142-153.
Niedbalski, J. (2021). Life strategies of the parents of children with intellectual disabilities in the context of mixed social situations. Qualitative Sociology Review, 17(1), 176-194.
Wiley, N. (2019). Interview with Harold Garfinkel. Human Studies, 42(5), 165-181.