作为社会思想与记录社会变迁的社会调查——兼论学科自主知识体系的建立

Social Investigation as a Social Thought and a Record of Social Change:Reflections on Building Independent Knowledge System

社会调查收集特定社会议题的数据与资料,是了解社会实情的重要过程。作为现代社会科学研究的基本范式,社会调查在中国“国族救亡”之际被引入,带来了理解社会思想观念的根本性转变,为记录社会变迁进程与制定社会改造方案提供了素材,推动了社会学学科的诞生与建立。在社会学的重建过程中,大规模的社会调查收集了社会转型的大量数据与资料,成为推进定量研究方法与技术的重要基础。随着数字社会的来临,社会生产与生活发生根本性变革,社会调查应继续坚持记录社会变迁的宗旨,针对新的社会议题,使用新的方法与技术,收集新形式的数据与资料,提炼概念建构理论,注重特殊性与普遍性,建立学科自主知识体系,参与到解释人类文明进程的知识积累之中。

Social investigation is important to know what is happening in society and collect data on particular research topics.As a fundamental research paradigm of modern social sciences,the social investigation was introduced into China in the movement of"Saving the Nation."It brought new ideas of understanding society,provided data and materials for recording social change and making social reform policies,and gave birth to sociology in China.In the restoration of sociology after the end of the 1970s,social surveys have collected plenty of data and materials on social transition,facilitating the development of quantitative research methods and techniques.Social production and social life have changed fundamentally with the coming of digital society.The social investigation will keep recording the trend of social change,collecting data and materials through new methods,constructing new concepts and theories,and building an independent knowledge system to accumulate knowledge of explaining human civilization.