Socio-Cultural Factors of Economic Development

Abstract

Culture is seen as an additional resource for increasing labor productivity and the efficiency of state institutions. The main objective of the article is to develop methodological foundations for the study of culture as a factor in economic processes. The issue of the role of social and cultural norms in the behavior of economic agents and the overall functioning of the economic system is not new. The study of non-economic factors in economic processes has become a hallmark of representatives of institutionalism. The concept of behavioral economics has gained considerable popularity in the last decade. Public cooperation on the basis of patching and harmonization of personal (including economic) interests of economic individuals according to certain property rights, rules of interaction determines the processes of both household management and economic activity in general. Culture begins to take shape at the stage of individual life as a materialized result of labor, but its development acquires exceptional conditions of social interaction. Socio-cultural environment is a basic element of a social system that unites its members in time and space and explains the expediency of interaction, the principles of coexistence, establishes the rules for coordinating interests between members of one society and with representatives of other cultural traditions. All this will manifest itself in the social and institutional structure of society, the operation of formal institutions, the principles of exchange, the distribution and redistribution of property and sources of wealth, the definition of value, the prestige of work, and the structure of the division of labor. Culture acts as a prerequisite, a management tool and a result of socio-economic development. In the context of a competitive struggle for well-being, culture (as a system of values) without a proper material and technical basis turns into one of the factors of superiority, but not the key one. Without proper material support, the development of culture is impossible. The study of economic processes in the context of socio-cultural processes is fully consistent with the principles of the civilizational paradigm and interdisciplinary approach. Rejection of the analysis of non-economic factors significantly limits economic analysis. The unity of socio-cultural and economic is inherent in the very nature of the science of economic activity.