责任制考试、通过仪式抑或学术仪式——博士学位论文答辩制度的意义建构

Accountability Examination,Rite of Passage or Academic Ritual?The Construction of the Meaning of Doctoral Dissertation Defense Institution

博士学位论文答辩是考试还是形式,这是实践中和学理上有待解释的问题。在栖居制度主义视角下,答辩制度是地方性的制度意义的合流,地方性的制度意义处于集体文化中。本文采取跨个案比较研究的方法,对外部组织环境相同的三个学系建构的答辩制度的意义进行了分析。研究发现,三个学系在外部制度环境的约束下,在行动和互动中建构出“责任制考试”“通过仪式”和“学术仪式”这三种地方性的制度意义,分别体现了关注点为论文质量、学缘关系和学术自由的集体文化。本文进一步对多样性答辩制度的意义所反映的三个学系对于“合法性”的共同追求和处于“制度链”中的答辩制度的学术性进行了分析。

Whether doctoral defense is an examination or a formality is a question that remains to be explained in practice and in doctrine. In the perspective of inhabited institutionalism, the doctoral dissertation defense system marks a confluence of local institutional meanings embedded within group culture. Taking a cross-case comparative study approach, this paper analyzes the meaning of the defense system constructed by three academic departments with the same external organizational environment. The study found that the three departments reproduced, challenged, or changed the external system in their actions and interactions within the constraints of the external institutional environment, and constructed three local institutional meanings: “accountability exams”, “rites of passage”, and “academic ritual”. These three institutional meanings embody the group culture of concern for essay quality, academic affiliation, and academic freedom, respectively. Through the perspective of inhabited institutionalism, with retrospect to neo-institutionalism and symbolic interactionism, this paper further analyzes the common pursuit of “legitimacy” of the three academic departments and the academic nature of the defense in the “institutional chain” behind the meaning of the diverse doctoral dissertation defense system.