论城市社会学的学科规范与研究定位

On the Discipline Norms and Research Positioning of Urban Sociology

不同于社会学通过分析城市所承载的社会发展进程来把握社会秩序,城市社会学认为社会秩序至少部分地来自城市及其内部活动,因而以城市内部特定社会过程研究作为学科建立的依据,并将城市定义为承载社会运行的人口聚落,与之相应的研究对象便是与社会组织息息相关的资源分配过程。为了实现城市经验与秩序理论的融会贯通,城市社会学采用“理想类型普遍化”的研究方法,对塑造城市空间形态的具体区位性资源配置过程的特殊性进行概括。在“个人与社会的关系”这一社会学基本问题的限定下,个人以占有城市区位性资源的方式融入社会就构成了城市社会学的基本问题。学科规范决定了城市社会学的研究任务是揭示社会如何通过城市实现组织化,其作为社会学分支学科的研究定位也是以组织化视角来探讨社会秩序。从城市社会学的研究经验可以看出,社会学分支学科不是简单地运用社会学的理论与方法来分析某一社会现象或问题,而是立足社会学关注的社会秩序问题,从具体类型的人类实践中发现新的研究问题,据此建构自身知识体系。

Unlike sociology,which grasps social order by analyzing the social development process carried by cities,urban sociology believes that social order at least partially comes from the city and its internal activities.Therefore,it is based on the study of specific social processes within cities and defines cities as population settlements that carry social operations.The corresponding research object is the resource allocation process closely related to social organizations.In order to achieve the integration of urban experience and order theory,urban sociology adopts the research method of“generalization of ideal types”to summarize the particularity of the specific location resource allocation process that shapes the urban spatial form.Under the limitation of the fundamental sociological problem of“the relationship between individuals and society”,the integration of individuals into society through the possession of urban locational resources constitutes the basic problem of urban sociology.The disciplinary norms determine that the research task of urban sociology is to reveal how society is organized through cities,and its research positioning as a branch of sociology is also to explore social order from an organizational perspective.From the research experience of urban sociology,it can be seen that the branch disciplines of sociology are not simply using sociological theories and methods to analyze a certain social phenomenon or problem,but are based on the social order issues that sociology focuses on,discovering new research problems from specific types of human practice,and constructing their own knowledge system accordingly.