Sociologists explore theory construction and risk governance
The information age is called the "past-truth era" by some scholars, as the complexity of information available has exceeded our processing ability and re-constructed reality. Photo: FILE
Scholars shed light on new ideas and new perspectives in sociology, discussing its future development at a webinar on theoretical sociology in late September.
Chinese sociologists have long been emphasizing social reality and empirical research, said Cheng Boqing, dean and professor at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University. In recent years, sociological research in China has entered a new stage, transitioning from Western discourse-centered to more independent special research such as network theory, spatio-temporal sociology, and uncertainty and risk studies. Fundamentally, theoretical research in sociology should focus on urgent problems facing China's social development.
Researchers should understand the overall picture of social and historical changes from perspectives of space and time, said Xie Lizhong, a professor from the Department of Sociology at Peking University. For a long time, theoretical research has lagged behind empirical research in the field of sociology. The lack of 'grand theories' leads to gaps in coordination in social reality studies.
It is difficult, in practice, to develop empirical sociology from empirical research to middle-level theory and on to grand theory, an approach to theory construction proposed by American sociologist Robert King Merton (1910–2003). However, theory construction in sociology is more versatile than this. Sociologists can first form a grand theory, then from it deduce the middle-range theory, and then guide empirical research. In this scenario, middle-range theory and grand theory can be verified and improved with empirical research, Xie continued.
As the network society and the information age have changed our lives, sociology is also meeting a series of new theoretical thinking, said Liu Shaojie, a professor at Renmin University of China. For a long time, the empirical standpoints of sociology have been viewed as the successor of European philosophical empiricism. However, in the information age, conventionally widely used local empiricism and structural empiricism have shown their limitations. The information age regards information as a production object, a major resource, and intrinsically connected to the control of power. This represents a new experience, where information transcends local space by using information technology to launch internet activities, featuring absence, delocalization, transmissibility, flow, indirectness, and no boundaries.
Some scholars call the information age the "post-truth era." Zheng Zuoyu, a professor from the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University, noted that people are witnessing the explosive growth of information. The complexity of information available has exceeded our processing ability. In this context, reality has been re-constructed in a different way. In the internet age, education and mass media are two major social systems that construct "contemporary reality." The knowledge we have received will influence our lived experience. For example, as mass media pushes information to us with the aid of big data and algorithms, we cannot comprehend the full picture of the world, thus entering a post-truth era.
The report to the 19th CPC National Congress proposed a series of new ideas and measures to strengthen and innovate social governance, a major academic growth point for sociology in China in recent years.
Current social governance research focuses more on technical operations and lacks the construction of grand theories. Merely focusing on the technical level tends to hinder social governance research, and can ignore theoretical thinking on deep social structural issues. In the future, we should analyze the innovation of social governance from a macroscopic perspective and pay more attention to structural issues, Cheng suggested.
Finding, or even creating certainty in an uncertain world has become an important research subject for sociology, said Wen Jun, a professor from the School of Social Development at East China Normal University. As mobility increases, various boundaries have blurred and uncertainties have increased, which poses new challenges for sociological research. The scope of sociology has been constantly expanding, particularly in the study of risk and uncertainty.
Sociology has made two major contributions to risk research. It makes people realize that risk is closely related to society and deeply rooted in social life. It also distinguishes between the concepts of "risk" and "uncertainty" and channels risk governance to uncertainty governance, Wen added.
The research scope of "uncertainty" in sociology includes the uncertainty and impact of human knowledge and technology, the uncertainty of social identity and cognition, the uncertainty of life experiences, the uncertainty of social relations, and the uncertainty of development environments. Building solid systems is the key to dealing with uncertainty. We need to provide acting subjects with the expected guidance and protection, and a social system to deal with uncertainties. In addition, we should actively explore ways for governance to be resilient, Wen concluded.
Edited by YANG LANLAN