最大宴席网:个体社会资本本土化测量方法初探

The Maximum Banquet Network: An Exploration on the Measurement of Chinese Individual Social Capital

在中国文化背景下,不少学者认为拜年网是当前测量个体社会资本的一个有效的方法。实际上并非如此,拜年网既无法衡量个体社会资本的"关系网络"和"结构位置"两大块内容,在测量关系资本时也无法使用单一指标用以指示个体社会资本的大小;在移动通信及互联网技术的浪潮下,使用拜年网测量个体社会资本的有效性更受到质疑。相比之下,普遍存在于中国社会宴席之上的人情礼帐网,由于人情、面子、关系和报的逻辑,它有力地指涉着个体所有可用的社会关系,个体与关系人连带的强与弱以及关系人所拥有的资源的多与寡。发生于最大宴席之上的人情礼帐网也因此可能是一种比拜年网更好的用以测量个体社会资本的方法。

The Chinese New Year Greeting Network is considered to be an effective method to measure the Chinese individual social capital. However, this kind of method cannot afford to reflect the network structure or the position, which are actually the essentials of the individual social capitals.Furthermore, when adapting The Chinese New Year Greeting Network; scholars will find it difficult to use a single indicator to show how large the social capital is. With the wildly use of mobile communications and internet technology, the Chinese New Year Greeting Network tool is even more and more challenged. In contrast, the Banquet Network prevalent in the Chinese society is found able to effectively indicate the all the social relations, the strength of the ties and the amount of capitals owned by the ties. The Banquet Network thus seems to have become a good substitution of the Chinese New Year Greeting Network when we measure the individual social capital in Chinese society.