认识中国——走向从实践出发的社会科学

Understanding China: Social Science That Starts from Practice

国内外中国研究领域长时期依赖现代西方的理论而没有能够形成自己独立的理论。作者认为,现代西方主流理论多从理性人的构造出发,把它作为一切认识的前提。近年来西方理论界本身已对这种“启蒙现代主义”提出多种质疑。在社会学领域,布迪厄又提出了以实践为根据的理论设想。它其实接近于中国革命在大革命失败之后所形成的独特的认识方法:要求从实践的认识出发,进而提高到理论概念,再回到实践去检验。排除其伴随的阶级斗争意识形态,在调查方法上,这个认识传统接近于现代人类学的参与者的观察方法。在学术上,它在相当程度上体现于费孝通那样的现代中国的社会学。正是这个传统为我们指出了一个方向:走向从实践出发的社会科学和理论。

The field of Chinese studies both inside and outside China has long relied on theories from the modern West and has not been able to formulate its own body of theory. In the opinion of this author, mainstream modern Western theory generally starts out of the construction of man as Rational Man and takes that as the premise for all knowledge. In recent years, Western theorists have themselves raised a number of questions about this kind of “Enlightenment modernity.” In the field of sociology, Pierre Bourdieu has proposed that theory be based on practice. That view actually comes close to the distinctive epistemological method that evolved out of the Chinese revolutionary movement after its failure in the period of the “Great Revolution”: asking that knowledge proceed from practice, thence to be raised to the level of theoretical concept, and then to be returned once more to practice to be tested for its validity. In terms of its method of investigation, that epistemological tradition approximates the “participant observation” method of modern anthropology. In terms of scholarly research, it was exemplified to a considerable extent by the kind of modern Chinese sociological research undertaken by Fei Xiaotong. It is precisely this tradition that shows us the way ahead: to build social science and theory that starts from practice.