社会分层机制的网络嵌入视角初探

社会学关于社会分层机制的研究,主要存在结构-功能视角、个人建构视角、网络分析视角和制度分析视角,它们彼此之间在方法论上存在系列的对立。当代西方社会理论的方法论综合,为我们提出一种综合性视角提供了重要启示。这种综合视角可以称为网络嵌入视角,其最主要的特征是主张社会结构与个人能动对于社会分层的影响都是以社会关系网络为中介的,从而可对当前我国制度结构转型背景下复杂的社会分层机制提供全面的描述与适当的规范评价。

Toward the Network Embeddedness Approach to the Mechanism of Social Classification

There are four main approaches to the mechanism of social classification in sociology, including the structure-function approach, the individual-constructing approach, the network analysis approach and the institutionalism approach. All of those oppose each other in terms of their methodology. Nevertheless the contemporary western integrating social theory gives us many lessons to develop an integrating approach, the network embeddedness approach, whose most prominent trait is arguing the effects of both social structure and individual action on social classification are mediated by social networks among relative actors. This kind of approach could describe roundly and evaluate normatively the complex mechanism of social classification in present china being in the course of the transformation of the institutional structure.