“社会底蕴”：田野经验与思考

如何认识中国乡村社会获得秩序的内在运行机制？根据长期在中国农村的田野调查经验，笔者提出“社会底蕴”概念。这一概念是指在历史变迁中，中国社会自发保存的那些具备相对稳定特征的“恒常”。根据从生活的智慧、家本位文化、道德伦理、人缘口碑等方面对 “社会底蕴”及其与现代性变迁之间的互动机制的初步探讨发现，在社会变迁的历史进程中，深具传统特性的社会底蕴并非以一种消极对抗的形式出现，而是不断与新的历史条件相结合，并由此生发出建设性和包容性的面貌。而对这一“底蕴”的认识，与我们今天对社会科学方法论的理解与反思不无相关。

On Social Ground: Fieldwork Experience and Thoughts

 How to understand the internal operational mechanism of Chinese society? As the core question of Chinese sociological scholar’s efforts of building up the subjectivity of China’s sociology, this question faces simultaneously three challenges: the research object, the research method, and how researchers define themselves. As a result of this effort, and based on our fieldwork experiences in both rural and urban Chinese societies, we intend to answer this question from an unusual angle. We coined a concept of “social ground”, referring to those“unchanged/stable subjects” in the history of Chinese society. This paper tries to explore this conception from such perspectives as the wisdom of life, family oriented culture, morality, popularity and reputation, in order to understand the concept against the transformation of modern Chinese society. Our research finds out that the social ground which has always possessed the traditional characteristics does not oppose the transformation of the society. On the country, it combines with the new historical conditions and thus produces new possibilities of history while keeps its deepest historical meaning.