“薄”政治文化何以可为--基于认知社会学的分析

What Can“Thin”Political Culture Do?Based on an Analysis of Cognitive Sociology

政治文化研究的“厚”范式强调文化的宏观性、整体性和同质性,而“薄”范式则强调文化的经验可知、建构主义、环境内生、人际异质和动态可塑性。然而,“薄”政治文化范式在经验研究中往往以“显式”的言说作为文化分析基础,从而存在潜在的信息扭曲风险。此外,其对平均意义上的文化特征的描述也使得“薄”政治文化范式容易退化为某种中观层面的“厚”政治文化范式。但从认知社会科学的思维进路出发,认知图式的模式多样性可以被用来直接分析个体政治文化的异质性。而多种可辨识的认知图式有助于研究者分解宏观层面的经验模式,以达成宏观—微观之间的联结。通过探索影响图式结构的生活经验因素,研究者可以展现政治文化图式何以动态可塑。

In the study of political culture,the“thick”paradigm emphasizes the macro-level,holistic,and homogeneous nature of the culture,whereas the“thin”paradigm focuses on empirical cognition,constructivism,environmental endogeneity,interpersonal heterogeneity,and dynamic plasticity.In empirical research,however,the“thick”paradigm often takes explicit discourse as the basis of cultural analysis,thereby potentially giving rise to the risk of information distortion.In addition,its description of the average character of cultural features has led to a situation in which the thin political culture paradigm is prone to regress into the thick political culture paradigm at some meso-level.If,however,we start out from the approach of cognition of the social sciences,the diverse models of cognitive schema can be directly applied to the heterogeneity analysis of individual political cultures.A variety of identifiable cognitive schemas can aid researchers to decompose macro-level empirical patterns and ultimately form macro-micro connections.Exploring the life experience factors that influence schema structure enables researchers to explain the dynamic plasticity of political culture schemas.