共生与世界主义:帕克人类生态学视阈下的美国社会

Symbiosis and Cosmopolitanism:American Society from the Perspective of Park’s Human Ecology

美国是一个多族群的移民国家,族群关系研究是帕克“人类生态学”的主题。在社会形态继替的自然过程中,帕克看到旧大陆停滞在竞争、冲突的初级阶段,因而将适应、同化寄希望于发生在美国生境的高潮阶段。然而,同化的终极理想总是遥不可及,共生的混杂状态才是既定的社会事实。吊诡的是,帕克对此并不感到不可忍受,因其独特的生命历程,帕克始终对少数族裔抱持一种同情,这成就了一种“世界主义”的社会想象。令人感到遗憾的是,仅仅围绕自然经济组织起来的生态秩序,缺少培育共识的熟悉土壤。从五湖四海来到新大陆的移民,源自不同的种族世系,他们习惯于生活在经济上彼此依存、情感上相互隔离的共生关系之中。假如中国城市中的移民没有成为患有“流浪癖”的“陌生人”,可能是因为他们心中都有个“家”,才让他们身处异乡流动而不流浪。

The United States is a multi-ethnic immigrant country,and the study of ethnic relations is the subject of Park’s“Human Ecology”.According to his sequence of“race relations cycle”,Park sees that the Old World is stagnant in the“preliminary stage”of competition and conflict,and thus pins his hope on the“climax stage”of accommodation and assimilation in American society.The transformation of these two stages is accompanied by the natural process of“succession”of social forms.However,the ultimate ideal of assimilation is always out of reach,and the hybrid state of symbiosis is an established social fact.The paradox is that Park does not find this unbearable.Because of his unique background,Park sympathies with minorities and that leads to a“cosmopolitan”sociological imagination.Regrettably,the ecological order,organized solely around the economy of nature,lacks the familiar ground that can make social life tolerable for immigrants.Immigrants,who come to the New World from all corners of the world to seek their destiny,are from different ethnic origins and bear different cultural imprints.Even if they find a place in urban life,they can hardly feel at home.Immigrants have long left behind a traditional family-centered and outward-expanding order in an effort to adapt to a symbiotic world of economic interdependence and emotional isolation.If the migrants in Chinese cities do not become“strangers”suffering from“wanderlust”,it may be because they still have a“home”in their hearts.Because they always have such a concern deep in their hearts it allows them to be moving around in strange places without wandering.This is completely different from the cosmopolitan American society.