北美的教育社会学研究

一、什么是教育社会学教育学家和社会学家曾各自从不同的角度,运用不同的方法从事教育社会学的研究。一些教育学家将教育社会学作为教育学的一个分支,在研究中注重解决教育中的实际问题,以教育作为研究的焦点;社会学家则把教育社会学看成社会学研究的分支,在研究中主要着眼于解决实际社会问题。关于教育社会学的定义,F. J.布朗曾在其《教育社会学》(纽约普伦蒂斯-霍尔出版社,1947)中引用D. W.多德森的话说,“教育社会学的兴趣在于研究整个文化环境的影响……教育社会学对学校感兴趣,但认为学校只是整个社会的一小部分。教育社会学特别感兴趣的是找出操纵教育过程的方法(社会控制),以便更好地发展个性。”联合国教科     

帕森斯的社会学理论

美国著名社会学理论家帕森斯创立结构功能主义社会学理论大致有如下三个发展阶段。第一个阶段:社会行动理论在三十年代,帕森斯深入研究了欧洲经典社会学家的理论。他认为,各家社会学理论在分析人类社会行为方面有殊途同归的趋向、出现一种共同的基本概念格局,他称之为“社会行动理论”。1937年帕森斯发表《社会行动的结构》一书。在这本书中,帕森斯综合了维贝尔、迪尔凯姆、帕累托和马歇尔的理论,进而发展了自己的社会行动理论。他采用了维贝尔关于思想     

美国社会学发展新趋势

1986年5月,芝加哥大学社会学系教授詹姆斯·S.科尔曼在《美国社会学杂志》(AJS)上发表了题为《社会理论、社会研究和行动理论》的长篇论文,对第二次世界大战以来的美国社会学,提出了挑战。此后,美国社会学呈现出一种新的发展趋势。本文拟对此作一简单介绍。问题的提出第二次世界大战以来,有两位美国社会学家深刻地影响着美国社会学的发展。其一     

社会学——一门多范式的科学

此文的作者乔治·锐查(George Ritrer)是美国马里兰大学社会学教授。1975年在《美国社会学家》刊物上发表了这篇文章。当时这篇文章曾在美国社会学界引起了广泛的回响。锐查本人也因此名声鹊起。这篇文章虽然发表于十多年前,但他运用范式的概念对杂乱无章的社会学理论起了归类作用,不能不说是匠心独运。这篇文章的意义还在于告诫社会学家不要死抱自己的理论,要善于研究他人理论的长处来共同建设这门学科。他同时还澄清了对各种社会学方法滥用于社会学理论的现象。本文原长20,000字,现节为7,000字     

布迪厄的文化消费理论

皮埃尔·布迪厄(Pierre Bourdieu)是具有世界影响的法国社会学家,在国际社会学界广受重视,许多西方社会学者对他进行重点研究.S·拉什曾这样说过:"20世纪最近十多年社会学中最为发展的领域,无论是在美国、英国、德国,还是其它国家和地区,无疑当推文化社会学,而布迪厄是最有影响的文化社会学家."     

作为一种社会结构的市场

社会学理论中的市场 在此,我将要考察社会学家对市场所作的分析,尤其是他们如何尝试处理市场现象的复杂性的。首先要指出的是,社会学家对市场的关注要比经济学家少;但是也应该被强调的是,社会学理论和经济学理论或多或少是相互独立的。这一现象不幸的结果之一     

法国现代社会学的一些问题

探讨法国现代社会学的问题,一方面受到在现代社会基础上产生的浩翰社会学文献和遗产的制约,另一方面又因该学科对自身的传统及其在社会科学学术界的地位进行过分析批判而变得较为容易。当涉及社会学遗产及其批判价值问题时,应该强调指出的是,社会学家们往往按照自己的理论体系框架看待前人的著作。他们认为,社会学并不是易于确认的一种认识论分析的结果。孔德对19世纪的知识分子无疑曾产生过巨大的影响,但对德国和意大利的社会学却没有丝毫影响。在英国和德     

在参与性行动中改变世界——读费根、薇拉的《解放社会学》

在《解放社会学》（Liberation Sociology）一书的开篇,作者J.R.费根（Joe R. Feagin）和H.薇拉（Hernán Vera）就指出,社会学中存在着“集体遗忘症”：一是社会学家经常遗忘他们所从事学科的行动主义和激进的传统（activist and radical traditions）;二是社会科学中很多伟大思想家的激情和社会变革担当经常被遗忘或忽视（第ix页）。在集体遗忘症的状态中,人们很容易随波逐流地接受因即时效用而传播的常规性方法与观念。作者所说的常规性方法,主要指美国社会学的“工具实证主义方法”（instrumental positivism approach）,其“工具性”是它使社会研究局限在某种研究工具和技术所允许的问题上;其“实证主义”是它使社会科学家投入到模仿自然科学家的研究方法上。在“工具实证主义”的支配下,社会学家经常对社会学对他人的道德和政治影响无知无觉。     

编者随笔

“社会学是什么 ?”这是每一位初识社会学的人经常的发问 ;因而也有了英格尔斯《Ｗｈａｔｉｓｓｏｃｉｏｌｏｇｙ？》一文 ,其实 ,社会学除了深奥、繁复的理论 ,更是在我们身边无处无在地实践着。本期推出的主题报告便有了“生活中的社会学”这一主题。从消费、儿童玩具、旅游、身处的办公室 ,到与人接触的中的“面子”都有所涉及。从理论中来 ,到实践中去 ,这就是我们所处生活中的社会学。笔者曾在２年前与《大众旅游的社会学批判》一文中提及的美国当代著名的社会学家乔治·里茨尔有所接触。在其《社会的麦当劳化》(乔治·里芡尔 ,１９９…     

英克尔斯论世界社会学及其四种基本研究方法

当代社会学正在日益走向国际化。然而,社会学这跨越民族界限、国界和洲界的发展趋势将给社会学学科本身的演变带来何种影响和结果?美国著名社会学家、美国胡佛研究所高级研究员、斯坦福大学社会学教授英克尔斯在今年八月至九月举办的沈阳社会学高级讲习班上发表了自己的见解和评价。英克尔斯首先指出,世界各国的社会学家以往进行社会学研究时基本停留在传统的五种社会学分析层次之上,即个体分析层次、人际社会学分析层次、小群体分析层次、制度分析层次和社会体系分析层次,而当前世界变迁的浪潮正在促使社会学家走向另一种全新的社会学分析层次——世界性社会学分析层次。与这种世界变迁浪潮和世界性社会学分析层次相关联的“世界体系”和“世界社会学”也应运而生。     

Advancing wellbeing research: would Americans be happier if they lived like Australians?

International comparisons of emotional wellbeing rarely account for the situational and social context of the experience of emotions (such as happiness or pleasantness) associated with everyday activities. A small number of studies have revealed the emotional context of the daily time‐schedules of Americans. Knowing the emotions people associate with patterns of experience opens up the possibility of modelling how national emotional wellbeing might change, should policy persuade people to alter their routines. We compare time‐use patterns in two countries with relatively similar cultural and institutional contexts, Australia and the United States, to see how people in the United States might feel if they altered their routines to live more like Australians. We find that such a change could yield a reduction in unpleasant time in certain categories, such as paid work, but at the cost of losing more pleasant time in other activities, including socialising. We also find that men and women are likely to have different responses to policies that alter general behaviour. This paper highlights the need for future research to explore the emotional diversity, emotion work, and gender gaps in the emotional wellbeing of nations.     

The politics of gendered emotions: disrupting men's emotional investment in privilege

This paper explores the implications of the neglect of emotions in critical masculinity studies and profeminist masculinity politics. This neglect in part results from feminist and profeminist critiques of the literature on emotional inexpressiveness as a tragedy for men that ignores male privilege and men's social power. To focus on men's emotions is seen by some profeminist commentators as psychologising men at the expense of sociological understandings of men's social power. However, in neglecting the place of emotions in men's lives, critical masculinity studies has overlooked the ways in which men's emotional attachment to privilege can perpetuate oppressive gender relations and male violence against women. By exploring men's emotional investment in unequal gender relations, the article outlines ways in which emotions can also be used as a catalyst to disrupt men's attachment to male privilege.     

My own flesh and blood: stratified parental compassion and law in Korean slavery

This article examines the relationship between human emotions and slavery in Chos?n Korea (1392–1910) by examining legislative processes as well as private practices concerning the status of the offspring of a yangban man and his slave-status concubine. The legislative discussions and decisions on the topic at the royal court often subscribed to the notion that these children were also the yangban’s ‘flesh and blood’ and called for compassion, a Confucian emotional norm expected of parents. When yangban fathers manumitted their slave-status children, they recorded their feelings in the same affective language expressed in the legal discourses. Yet, because slaves were among the yangban’s most valuable possessions and yangban elites regarded the maintenance of social hierarchy as the key for social order, legal paths for manumission were narrowly defined and emotional norms did not always dictate parents’ actions. By investigating the larger legal framework related to slave-status children of yangban elites alongside specific cases, this study seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the historical impact and practices of emotional politics in relation to slavery. It finds that the yangban fathers’ very primordial human emotion towards their own children was stratified by social and economic conditions and selectively applied.     

Infant-Mother Attachment at One Year Predicts Children's Understanding of Mixed Emotions at Six Years

Data from the six-year follow up of a longitudinal study investigating intergenerational patterns of attachment and the effects of early relationships upon subsequent social, emotional and cognitive development are presented. Around the time of their sixth birthday, 63 children participated in an affect understanding task, involving cartoon diagrams depicting social and emotional dilemmas. As predicted, performance on this task, assessed in terms of mixed-emotion understanding, was predicted by security of the infant-mother attachment relationship (as assessed in the Strange Situation at one-year) and security or autonomy in the mother's representations of, and reflections upon, her attachment history (as assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview of AAI–during pregnancy) prior to the child's birth. Regression analyses suggested that the infant-mother attachment data significantly enhanced the prediction of an advanced understanding of mixed emotions at six-years, even after controlling for variations in the children's age at time of testing, as well as child and parent verbal skills. The inclusion of earlier assessments of the child-father Strange Situation assessment (at 18-months) did not enhance the model; nor did the attachment status of the mothers or fathers as observed in their prenatal AAIs. Discussion concerns the contributions of early attachment processes, including family conflict, to the ability to verbally express an understanding of mixed emotions in a task depicting hypothetical social and emotional dilemmas.     

Reconstructing the social constructionist view of emotions: from language to culture,including nonhuman culture

The thesis of social constructionism is that emotions are shaped by culture and society. I build on this insight to show that existing social constructionist views of emotions, while providing valid research methods, overly restrict the scope of the social constructionist agenda. The restriction is due to the ontological assumption that social construction is indissociable from language. In the first part, I describe the details of the influential social constructionist views of Averill and Harré. Drawing on recent theorizing in psychology, I suggest that their fixation on language makes these approaches inadequate to the analysis of the social construction of human emotional experience. In the second part, I extend the argument to other species, suggesting that these social constructionist views are incapable of accommodating the fact, ascertained by primatologists, that animals have cultures, and that part of animal culture concerns the social molding of their emotions. I conclude that a reconstructed social constructionism should be regarded not as inimical to, but as part and parcel of, a nonreductive biology of emotions.     

Social process theory of emotion: A dynamic systems approach

In this paper we apply a dynamic systems perspective to infant emotional development. We propose that emotions are not states but self-organizing dynamic processes intimately tied to the flow of an individual's activity in a context. We review data on the relationship between emotional actions and the social context, in particular the development of smiling and laughter. These data are more adequately explained by our perspective than by other theories of emotional development. We provide a model for how emotional processes in early infancy become embedded into sociocultural systems, and suggest new avenues of research on emotional development.     

What's Social About Social Emotions?

This paper presents a new approach to the demarcation of social emotions, based on their dependence on social appraisals that are designed to assess events bearing on social concerns. Previous theoretical attempts to characterize social emotions are compared, and their inconsistencies highlighted. Evidence for the present formulation is derived from theory and research into links between appraisals and emotions. Emotions identified as social using our criteria are also shown to bring more consistent consequences for social behavior than nonsocial emotions. We conclude by considering ways of validating and refining our classification.     

Children's Emotionality and Social Status: A Meta-analytic Review

Over the last 15 years, the role of emotions in children's peer relations has received greader attention. The purpose of the meta‐analytic review was to determine the magnitude of the relation between negative emotionality (NE) and positive emotionality (PE) and social status. Based on 54 independent samples, the overall effect size for the relation between children's NE and social status was in the moderate‐to‐small range, and this effect size was similar across all types of NE (i.e., general measures of NE, anger, fear and sadness). Based on 10 independent samples, the overall effect size for the relation between children's PE and social status was in the small range. We found that the assessment method for anger significantly moderated the relation between anger and social status, and the context in which PE was observed significantly moderated the relation between PE and social status. This article concludes with a set of recommendations for the next generation of research on children's emotional and social competence.     

Social workers' emotional labour with families in poverty: Neoliberal fatigue?

This study examines the emotional labour of social workers serving families living in poverty. Based on in‐depth interviews and focus groups, the study concentrates on frontline social workers' emotions when faced with increasing levels of poverty, growing caseloads, and neoliberal social policies in Israel. Findings highlight 3 interrelated aspects of the emotional labour of social workers involved with impoverished families: (a) the emotional flooding social workers experience in their professional routines, (b) the various practices of emotional labour they use to cope with the emotional backlash of their encounters with these families including emotional numbness, emotional Othering, and emotional splitting, and (c) confirmation of the harmful influence of institutional policies on their emotional well‐being and ability to respond effectively to the increasing demands of their clients. Based on Hochschild's theory of emotional labour, we maintain that social workers' emotions should be studied in the context of a specific social, institutional, and political background.     

The impact of a child protection investigation: a personal reflective account

Researchers who undertake parental perception studies agree that the views of the parents can offer valuable insights in relation to child protection work. Respondents to such studies and others who have shared their experiences of child protection investigations are usually mothers. Taken together, this body of work sheds light on some very private, emotive and often painful experiences of child protection intervention and its impact. This article lends my voice to this literature and gives further insight into the ways a mother can experience a child protection investigation. Drawing upon one incident – a swelling on a baby's head – this article draws attention to my feelings and emotions as the baby's mother. Despite a co‐operative social worker–client relationship and case closure, my analysis draws attention to issues concerning power imbalances and the concept of ‘secondary victimization’ to explain the awfulness of my experience and my convoluted emotional disquiet. The article proposes that more attention is directed to the negative feelings and emotions experienced during the investigative process through further research.