滕尼斯与齐美尔:社会伦理同文化伦理的分流

作为德国社会学的两位奠基人,滕尼斯和齐美尔奠定了截然相反的两种现代伦理生活格局。伦理世界观的分流源于他们各自对时代处境的体验以及对思想史的独特解释。从近代自然法的角度出发,滕尼斯的社会伦理的核心是重建政治社会的秩序与风尚,一切价值最终都要融入社会;与此相反,齐美尔的社会学思考从一开始就以对社会伦理的批评作为前提,他将超越社会的个体生命视作伦理的目的,对他来说,生命不仅意味着身处社会之中的个体具有饱满个性,而且从自身孕育出客观的、适用于他自己的伦理责任。从帝制时期到魏玛时期,德国社会伦理同文化伦理的分流、交织与合流为我们提供了一条理解德国社会学史的清晰主线。     

女性主义视野中的"身体写作"

严格意义上的"身体写作"与女性主义理论密切相关;中国当下的"身体写作"误解了西方女性主义理论的精神,与女性主义理论本身一样有着致命的缺陷;"身体写作"附和着消费主义的时代,在文学精神上有待超越和突破.     

Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman: Legitimators of the Sociological Investigation of Human Experience

By originating and developing the sociological investigation of human experience, Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman have shifted social phenomena at the edge of awareness to the center of attention, and have legitimated their study for contemporary sociologists. Both Simmel and Goffman describe these subtle social phenomena by distinguishing their perceptual boundaries and crossover elements, pointing out their common features when their statuses differ, and reversing their traditional location in means-end and cause-effect chains. But Durkheim's influence on Goffman's basic conceptions of interaction, individual, and society differentiated his interpretation of these social phenomena from Simmel's. Moreover, Simmel's and Goffman's explanations of these social phenomena evolve in different directions, revealing the antithetical goals toward which spiritual transcendental Simmelians and cynical reductive Goffmanians would lead sociology.     

The Analysis of the Borders of the Social World: A Challenge for Sociological Theory

ABSTRACT: In order to delimit the realm of social phenomena, sociologists refer implicitly or explicitly to a distinction between living human beings and other entities, that is, sociologists equate the social world with the world of living humans. This consensus has been questioned by only a few authors, such as Luckmann, and some scholars of science studies. According to these approaches, it would be ethnocentric to treat as self-evident the premise that only living human beings can be social actors. The methodological consequence of such critique is a radical deanthropologization of sociological research. It must be considered an open question whether or not only living human can be social actors. The paper starts with a discussion of the methodological problems posed by such an analysis of the borders of the social world, and presents the results of an empirical analysis of these borders in the fields of intensive care and neurological rehabilitation. Within these fields it must be determined whether a body is a living human body or a symbol using human body. The analysis of these elementary border phenomena challenges basic sociological concepts. The relevant contemporary sociological theories refer to a dyadic constellation as the systematic starting point of their concept of sociality. The complex relationship between at least two entities is understood as the basis of the development of a novel order that functions as a mediating structure between the involved parties. Based upon empirical data, I argue that it is necessary to change this foundational assumption. Not the dyad but the triad must be understood as the foundational constellation. This implies a new understanding of the third actor, which is distinct from the concepts developed by Simmel and Berger and Luckmann.     

‘Facework’, Flow and the City: Simmel,Goffman, and Mobility in the Contemporary City

This paper contains a re‐reading of Simmel and Goffman with an eye to the mobility practices of the contemporary city. The paper offers a ‘new’ perspective on mobility in the contemporary city by re‐reading two sociological ‘classics’ as there is a need to conceptualise the everyday level of flow and mobility in the midst of an intellectual climate dominated by grand theories of networks and globalisation. In the re‐reading of Simmel and Goffman, the aim is to reach an understanding of how contemporary material mobility flows and symbolic orders and meanings are produced and re‐produced. You may argue that other academic disciplines such as anthropology and human geography have made important contributions to this understanding. What has not been done, however, is to show how these two sociological thinkers can move beyond mere application to this field of study. With their sociological sensitivity, they rather carry important insights that will benefit the sociology of mobility. Arguably Simmel and Goffman offer the opportunity to connect the global flows to the everyday level of social practice, as well as linking more basic/classic sociological theory to contemporary issues of mobility. The reason to ‘look back’ is therefore to capture some of the past's ‘sociological imagination’ and relate it to an important social phenomenon of the present.     

The hybrid self and the ambivalence of boundaries

The paper outlines the main features of the contemporary discourse on hybrid subjectivity, a discourse which is internally differentiated along ‘organic’, ‘intentional’, and critical social theory lines. It then examines how these discourses can be applied to our understanding of hybrid cultures and identities. The article focuses on two central claims underlying the intentional approach: one, that cultural boundaries are theoretically and empirically problematic; and secondly, that a hybrid position provides the potential for an enlightened and critical world-view. In response, two contentions are articulated that will provide a more nuanced understanding of the hybrid self. Drawing on the work of Simmel and Park, the paper, in contrast to the intentional account, highlights the ambivalence of boundaries; secondly, a critical investigation of the enlightened hybrid consciousness is offered which suggests that this new form of consciousness underplays the role of prejudice and ambivalence. As a result of these discussions, the article demonstrates that the discourse on hybrid identity raises key theoretical issues either ignored or insufficiently addressed by existing scholarship.     

西美尔的女性文化论

西美尔提出女性低下的社会地位在于女性面临文化困境,必须以女性的完整性、统一性为基础建立女性文化,实现真正的由最好的支配,这不仅对女性有利,更是对人类有利。     

The Thin End of the Wedge: Foreign Women Professors as Double Strangers in Academia

The impetus for this study was an observation that many of the first women to obtain chairs at European universities were foreigners. Our initial attempt to provide a statistical picture of this proved impossible, because there were numerous problems deciding the contents of such concepts as ‘first’, ‘university professor’ and ‘foreigner’. We have therefore focused on four life stories. It turns out that being a ‘double stranger’— a woman in a masculine profession and a foreigner — is not, as one might think, a cumulative disadvantage. Rather, it seems that these two types of strangeness might cancel out one another, permitting these women a greater degree of success than was allowed their native sisters. This situation however, provides little psychological comfort, hence the metaphor of the wedge: opening the doors but suffering from double pressure.     

思想的冒险与精神的忧郁——论齐美尔对现代性的思考

面对现代社会发展带来的问题,如哲学的不景气、文化现象的货币和女性卖淫等,齐美尔均以其冒险的思想使之获得再生和合理性解释.思想的冒险并没有带来精神上的振奋,齐美尔的犹太身份使其人生,特别是学术道路几经坎坷,但对现代性"看破红尘"后的寂静,才是他精神上忧郁并陷入悲观主义的真正原由.     

Zygmunt Bauman's poisoned gift of morality

Bauman's attempt to develop a sociological theory of morality turning around fundamental premises of Durkheim's approach fails in the last analysis, since in Bauman's view the 'moral party of two' does not constitute a social situation. It is argued that the necessary condition to think sociologically about morality is the concept of reciprocity and thus one can arrive at a view of morality in postmodernity consistent with Bauman's earlier theory of practice. If Bauman's idea about responsibilty as the core of morality is transformed to the idea of an appeal of history to compassion and is supplemented with the idea of reciprocity as an emerging norm it is possible to outline a sociological theory of moral practice according to postmodern conditions.