There are currently four types of social integration.
- Cultural – expresses agreement between standards, norms and behavior, interconnection of separate subsystems;
- Normative – coordination between norms and behavior of people;
- Communicative – exchange of information within a group or society;
- Functional – exchange of services between members of a society.
Natural integration appears on the basis of the coincidence of interests, both individual and group. Forced integration is built on prohibitions to subordinate personal interests to externally set goals.
The extreme form of forced integration is totalitarianism. A more natural variant of social integration is syncretism, when a person in society is valued not only due to what social class or group he belongs to, but how different he is from the rest.
Social integration is seen as a process that has a close relationship with other social processes. any integration, like differentiation is incomplete, but is an important condition for the functioning of a social system.
Often integration is understood as social integration, which is incorrect.
Social integration is the result of integration, ordering of parts of the whole.
In modern times, in professional literature, on the one hand, the concept of “social integration” is used as a generic concept for different ways of integration, and on the other hand, as the achievement of some result. This leads to complexities that result in contradictory use of the notions of assimilation, growth of cultural level.
Social polarization
The opposite of social differentiation is social polarization, polarization weakens the interconnections between social groups, as a result different communities begin to close and distance themselves from each other. Residents of cities and villages, different generations and other strata become less and less dependent on each other. The society begins to experience generation gap, misunderstanding, each social group is focused on its own interests and prospects and does not think about the problems of other groups. As a result, horizontal mobility acquires a dysfunctional form.
A dysfunctional form is a disruption of some activity or process, incorrect fulfillment of a necessary function, its opposite.
In pure form, neither social integration nor social polarization practically do not manifest themselves. social integration and social polarization practically do not manifest themselves in pure form, they are mainly manifested in the process of changing societies.