迈向社会全体的个案研究

Case Studies towards the Analysis of Total Social Construction

个案研究的科学性,体现为一种社会全体的可能性解释。个案研究的策略,不同于以代表性为基础的假设检验,也不等于社会生活的单纯描述和记述,而是从具有典型性的案例出发,发现由具体社会生发的运行机制,在广度和深度上尽可能扩充、延展和融合与外部各种政治、社会、文化因素的关联。个案研究需要运用人文地理志、制图术、人口志、历史编纂学、传记学、语词编纂学等各类民族志方法,通过"事件化"的社会激活过程,呈现出多重社会构成的脉络。依据这些分析性线索,个案研究可进一步展现社会诸要素之间多重连续的相关关系和共变关系,发现主导性的社会机制或逻辑,并最终通过结构化的方式呈现出社会全体的完整图景。

Case study is an irreplaceable sociological strategy for research on social construction.Different from either hypnosis tests or descriptive accounts of social life,case study aims to make a long chain of interpretations from a typical case to the construction of the whole society,by linkages of concrete people,conditions and situations in a case with other related social,political,and cultural elements all the way through.In other words,the case is not only influenced by the policies made by central or local governments in different levels from above,but also located in grassroots customs and mores at bottom.To find these multiple relations horizontally and vertically clustered in a case study,various methods of-graphy must be used,such as geography,cartography,demography,historiography,biography,autobiography,lexicography,and ethnography finally.But at the same time,all these elements and their relations should be activated by eventalization happened in daily life.Through the ways of stimulation of abnormal process or sublimation of normal rituals in eventalization,the complicated,correlative,and sustainable relationships among social elements are presented as many social mechanisms in different dimensions.On all accounts,the whole scene of society will be opened out as a solid structure by the various points(events),lines(linkages),and plane(mechanism)in three dimensions,as Max Weber said,“the causal relations in sociological research would be satisfied as a special explanatory demonstration”.