现代性的反叛与理论社会学的前景

The Rebellion of Modernity and the Future of Theoretical Sociology

现代性又一次显示了自己的永新特征:它不断脱出既有的形貌,日益变得轻盈、灵巧、液化、流变,它的经验结果也更为不确定和难以预料。这造成了现代叙事和想像的“衰败”,也使社会学的批判和反思走向亢奋。然而,在西方社会学“新三圣”的现代性理论中,激进具象下隐匿的深沉困惑和焦虑表明,这无以挽回旧式现代性的总体颓落之势。与此同时,现代性在中国正面对着一种新生。“社会互构”理论指出了新型现代性的大趋势,即以人为本而不是以资本为本的实践选择,正在促使资本从目的性意义向手段性位置回归。这一理论还阐释了,通过多元社会主体的“互构谐变”,推进社会沟通、对话、协商以及论坛和听证的制度化,实现我们对于和谐社会的共同期待。正是这一来自实践的理路,使理论社会学拥有了一个赢得未来的起点。

Modernity reminds us of its permanent feature： its outgrow from its former shape into a more light-footed, flexible, fluid and evolutional state, which makes its future more undetermined and more difficult to predict. This, in turn, has caused the decadence of modernity narrative and imagination, critiques and reflections on sociology have also been fermented. However, the deep confusion and anxiety buried in the pretended radical dictions of the so-called new Magi of sociology, namely, Habermas, Giddens and Beck, has betrayed the irretrievable decline of the Old Modernity. Meanwhile, modernity is awaiting a new birth in China. The theory of Mutual Construction predicts a major trend of this new sort of modernity, that is, a human-oriented rather than capital-oriented practical choice, is forcing the return of capital from a goal for itself to an instrument. Moreover, this theory also expounds that the mutual construction of multi-agents can promote social communication, dialogue, negotiation and the institutionalization of forum and testimony conference, so as to realize the expectation of a harmonious community. In a word, it is this practice that has gained theoretical sociology a pivot for a brighter future.