国民性与社会性格:集体表征或群体谬误
作者简介:周晓虹,南京大学人文社会科学资深教授(江苏南京210023)。
基金项目:
本文为国家社会科学基金重点项目“重建以来的中国社会学学科发展与话语体系建设”(23ASH001)、南京大学“双一流”建设卓越研究计划“社会学理论与中国研究”项目(NJU-ZYR-01005)的阶段性成果。同时在人口学讨论方面受到郭未教授帮助,特此致谢。
摘要: 有关国民性与社会性格研究的臧否,一直是社会唯实论者和唯名论者争论的焦点。在社会心理学百余年的历史中,产生了诸多以群体心理为主题的卓越研究,其中尤推戴维·理斯曼的《孤独的人群》。理斯曼以18世纪前后的两次大革命和20世纪上半叶开始的消费革命为界碑,将西方的历史分为三个时段,其间的人口增长呈现出底部相对平缓、中部陡升、顶部再度平缓的S型曲线,依序为“高增长潜力”“过渡型增长”和“初期人口减少”三个阶段。与此相应,人们也呈现出传统导向、内在导向和他人导向三种性格类型,而消费主义宰制了当代美国人他人导向的社会性格。值得关注的是,在略晚开启但更为迅疾的中国社会转型中,人口增长模式和社会性格嬗变之间似乎也呈现出相似的关联趋势。
Nationality and Social Character: Collective Representation or Group Fallacy
Abstract: The evaluation of nationality and social character has always been the focus of controversy between social realist and nominalist.In the more than 100 years of history of social psychology,there have been many outstanding studies on the theme of group psychology,especially David Riesman’s Lonely People.Taking the two Great revolutions around the 18th century and the consumer revolution beginning in the first half of the 20th century as the boundary stone,Riesman divided the history of the West into three periods,during which the population growth showed an S-shaped curve,specifically saying that the bottom is relatively flat,the middle is steep,and the top is gentle again,in order of “high growth potential”,“transitional growth” and “incipient decline” three stages.Accordingly,people also present three character types: traditional-direction,inner-direction and other-direction,and consumerism dominates the other-directed social character of contemporary Americans.It is worth noting that in China’s social transformation,which started slightly later but was more rapid,there seems to be a similar correlation between the population growth pattern and the transmutation of social character.