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【Friday Dictionary】什么是社会秩序(Social Order)

高行云 Sociological理论大缸 2019-09-03

社会秩序

关于社会如何(how)以及为何(why联结的社会秩序之诸解释(explanations)是社会学的核心关照。

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关于社会秩序的解释在本质上有两种类型,分别可以连接至涂尔干和马克思的名字。

 

前者聚焦于共有的诸规范和诸价值如何在社会里维持凝聚。这个解释是与帕森斯和功能学派有关。而对于涂尔干,此强调来自他对斯宾塞等理论家的批评,这些理论家把日趋复杂的工业社会的社会秩序的基础集中在互相的自我利益和契约上的同意。

 

对于涂尔干,相比之下,道德性才是解释社会整合的要点。涂尔干不否认存在着冲突和使用武力,只是帕森斯才强调先在的道德共作为社会秩序的必要的先有条件。帕森斯争称:通过诸规范的内化,诸价值得到接纳才是现代社会的整合和社会秩序的基础。

 

马克思强调在资本主义社会里物质财富和政治权力的诸种不平等。诸冲突意味着道德共识并不存在以及维持社会秩序之艰难。解释社会秩序的大多是宏观理论,聚焦在作为一分析的社会。

 

近来对这个理论争论的最具原创性的贡献来自于大卫·洛克伍德(David Lockwood(Solidarity and Schism, 1992)其声明是既非马克思式也而涂尔干式的理论。因为这二人的理论中的残余范畴都是另一个人的理论中的核心元素。

 

微观……至于社会秩序如何在面对面中再生产,象征互动论、戏剧铸造术、常人方法学、交换理论等学派给出了颇为不同的说法。对这些理论议程的最广泛的描述见Dennis Wrong's The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society (1994).


以上节译,在抄录吕炳强:《凝视、行动与社会世界》(p.330)中引用该词条内容基础上,添了一些新译内容。原译文如下:




 

以下原文摘自Scott,John, ed. A Dictionary of Sociology.Fourth edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.


social order

Explanations of social order, of how and why societies cohere, arethe central concern of *sociology. The‘Hobbesian problem of order’, for example, preoccupied those classicalsociologists faced directly with the apparent consequences of *industrializationand *urbanization: the demiseof *community, disruption of primary socialrelationships, loss of authority on the part of traditional agencies of *socialcontrol, and general instability associated with rapid social *changein the 19th century.

 

There are essentially two types of explanation of social order,which can be linked with the names of Émile Durkheim on one hand, and Karl Marxon the other. The former, associated also with Talcott Parsons and the *functionalistschool of thought, focuses on the role of shared *normsand *values in maintainingcohesion in society. For Durkheim, this emphasis arose out of his critique of *utilitariansocial thought, popular especially among social and politicaltheorists such as Herbert Spencer in Britain, who focused on mutualself-interest and contractual agreements as the basis of social order inincreasingly complex industrial societies. For Durkheim, by comparison,questions of morality were central to the explanation of social integration. Inhis view, the ‘mechanical solidarity’ of pre-industrial societies rested onshared beliefs and values, located primarily in the consciencecollective. However, the advent of industrial society sees the emergence ofa new form of ‘organic solidarity’, based on interdependence arising out of *socializationand differentiation (see STRUCTURALDIFFERENTIATION ). Moral restraints on egoism arise out ofassociation and form the basis of social cohesion. While Durkheim did not denythe existence of *conflict and the use offorce, especially in periods of rapid social change, Parsons underlined theimportance of a prior moral consensus as a necessary precondition for socialorder. He saw organic solidarity as a modified form of the conscience collective and arguedthat the acceptance of values by the internalization of norms is the basis ofintegration and social order in modern societies. Because of the importancewhich he attached to a shared body of norms and values, Parsons waspersistently criticized for overemphasizing consensus, and for neglectingconflict and change in his sociological analyses.

 

The second explanation of social order derives from the Marxisttradition within the discipline and offers a materialist rather than a culturalaccount of cohesion. Marx emphasized inequalities in material wealth andpolitical power in *capitalist societies. Thedistribution of material and political resources is the source of conflict betweendifferent collectivities—social classes—who want a greater share of thoseresources than they may already enjoy. Conflict implies there is no moralconsensus and social order is always precariously maintained. It is the productof the balance of *power between competing groups,whereby the powerful constrain weaker groups, and cohesion is sustained througheconomic compulsion, political and legal coercion, and bureaucratic routine.While many Marxists have increasingly embraced cultural accounts of socialorder, for example by explaining working-class *incorporationthrough a *dominant ideology,others have noted that economic and political coercion has proved a remarkablyeffective source of stability, especially where power is legitimated asauthority. Nevertheless, persistent conflict implies tension and change, ratherthan enduring stability.

 

In the most original recent contribution to the theoretical debateabout social order, David Lockwood (Solidarityand Schism, 1992) has demonstrated that neither Marxian nor Durkheimiantheory satisfactorily resolves the issues, since each approach is forced toemploy residual categories which turn out to be the central analytic elementsof the other. In Durkheim's work, the concept of moral classification is thekey to social structure, whereas for Marx it is production relations. That is,one theory emphasizes the socially integrative structure of *status,the other the socially divisive structure of *class.However, Durkheim cannot explain how anomic declassification (disorder) occursor is structured (schismatic) without introducing concepts of power andmaterial *interests into his schema, whereas Marx cannotexplain the persistence of capitalist societies without recourse to ageneralized category of *ideology whichintroduces the (unanalysed) conceptual problem of the nature and variability ofconsensus. Explanations of social order tend to be macro-theories which focuson society as the unit of analysis, although studies of family obligations,crime, and leisure (to cite but a few examples) raise issues of social order atthe micro level. Quite different accounts of how social order is reproducedduring face-to-face interaction will be found in the writings of symbolicinteractionists, in dramaturgy, ethnomethodology, and exchange theory (all ofwhich are discussed separately elsewhere in this dictionary). The best generalaccount of the various theories and the issues they raise is Dennis Wrong's The Problem of Order: What Unites andDivides Society (1994). Seealso FATALISM ; HOBBES ; SOCIALCONTRACT ; SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION .

 

Sociological理论大缸第32期)


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