荐读：Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” American Journal of Sociology 103 (2): 281–317. .

社会学理论里的根本对立，是什么？

——结构与行动？

——宏观与微观？

——和谐与冲突？

——物质与理念？

还是——事体/物体/实体与关系（entities/things/substance vs. relations）, 或者说：实体主义与关系主义（substantialism and relationalism）？

The key question confronting sociologists in the present day is not “material versus ideal,” “structure versus agency,” “individual versus society,” or any of the other dualisms so often noted; rather, it is the choice between substantialism and relationalism.

Emirbayer在这篇宣言作品里认为Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as consisting primarily in substances or in processes, in static “things” or in dynamic, unfolding relations.

并且，Emirbayer认为，目前社会学的主流，却是探讨things，而非relations。究竟哪些理论被批判了？——理论选择、结构主义、变量分析……这些都是先看things再看relations

Large segments of the sociological community continue implicitly or explicitly to prefer the former point of view. Rational-actor and norm-based models, diverse holisms and structuralisms, and statistical “variable” analyses— all of them beholden to the idea that it is entities that come first and relations among them only subsequently—hold sway throughout much of the discipline.

1. 什么是实体主义社会学？两种取向

所谓的实体主义社会学，就是只看能够自我维系的事体，将之作为首要的分析单位，再看由它牵出来的动态问题。

The relational point of view on social action and historical change can most usefully be characterized by comparing it with its opposite, the substantialist perspective. The latter takes as its point of departure the notion that it is substances of various kinds (things, beings, essences) that constitute the fundamental units of all inquiry. Systematic analysis is to begin with these self-subsistent entities, which come “preformed,” and only then to consider the dynamic flows in which they subsequently involve themselves.

根据John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley (1949)， 这种取向可以分为两种：

第一种：self-action的实体主义，就是说：“things ... as acting under their own powers”

在个体层面上讲，最典范的是方法论的个人主义，例如理性选择论。

One increasingly prevalent approach begins with rational, calculating actors but assumes the givenness and fixity of their various interests, goals, and “preference schedules.” ... pregiven entities are seen to generate self-action; even as actors engage in game playing with other actors, their underlying interests, identities, and other characteristics remain unaltered.

在社会层面上讲，最典范的是系统论和比较历史社会学，因为它们分析的是self-subsistent “societies,” 这些社会层面被认为是具有不能化约到个人层面的一些属性。

第二种：交互—行动（inter-action）的实体主义

乍一看，这种取向还是关注关系，但其实这种取向仍然保持了自己的fixed characters。

Entities remain fixed and unchanging throughout such interaction, each independent of the existence of the others, much like billiard balls or the particles in Newtonian mechanics.

最典型的，是当代社会学量化研究中的变量分析，被Abbott称之为“变量社会学”，因为并真正在“动”的，只是被定下来的“变量”而已（If anything, it is the variable attributes themselves that “act,” ...）。

The idea of interaction finds its home today in a viewpoint that explicitly or implicitly dominates much of contemporary sociology, from survey research to historical-comparative analysis. This is the so-called “variable-centered approach,” which features, as Andrew Abbott (1988, p. 170) points out, a compelling imagery of fixed entities with variable attributes that “interact, in causal or actual time, to create outcomes, themselves measurable as attributes of the fixed entities.”.

2. 关联行动（trans-action）与关系社会学

（实在是不好翻译，只是为了和上面的inter-action做区分）

这种关系社会学取向的行动理解，是不认为需要什么属性、元素的假定，不要考虑孤立设下来多个行动之间的再关联起来，而是本来就是关联起来的状态、属性也只有在不断变化的关联中才能被理解的状态。

Fundamentally opposed to both varieties of substantialism is the perspective of trans-action, “where systems of description and naming are employed to deal with aspects and phases of action, without final attribution to ‘elements’ or other presumptively detachable or independent ‘entities,’ ‘essences,’ or ‘realities,’ and without isolation of presumptively detachable ‘relations’ from such detachable ‘elements’ ” (Dewey and Bentley 1949, p. 108). In this point of view, which I shall also label “relational,”

简单地讲，从negative角度看，是（1）无本质 ；（2）无孤立；从positive角度看，所谓的trans. =（1）时间的过程（2）嵌入的脉络（3）复数的偶连

在这样的理解下，所谓的“个人”，总是嵌入在脉络的嵌入性而非孤立的，所谓的“社会”，并不abstract而非实切concrete，所谓的“个体”和“社会”，都只复数而非单数的。

3. 关系社会学的三个示范：权力、不平等与自由

究竟如何在实例中理解关系社会学？

首先以power研究为例，究竟它是an entity or a possession（如垄断占有），还是 changing figurations？

关系社会学是站在后者，认为在网络分析中、福柯、布迪厄的分析中，权力即关系过程。

Contemporary social-network analysts define power in similarly relational terms, as an outgrowth of the positions that social actors occupy in one or more networks (Knoke 1990). So too do theorists such as Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu.  ...  Bourdieu similarly argues for a relational view: “By field of power I mean the relations of force that obtain between the social positions which guarantee their occupants a quantum of social force, or of capital, such that they are able to enter into the struggles over the monopoly of power” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, pp. 220–30).

再以不平等研究为例，究竟它是人力资本/族群主义（作为占有的固定的属性）还是群体关联参考下的结果？

Emirabayer援引Tilly关于不平等的研究，指出“bonds, not essences, provide the bases of durable inequality.” ，例如对于象征、位置、情感资源的争取过程中的精英与非精英间的关系变化。

最后以“自由”为例，它是human will，还是the unfolding dynamics of situations？关系社会学是站在后者。

4. 关系社会学三项挑战：边界、动力、因果性

如何推进关系社会学研究呢？

要关注三个问题：边界、动力与因果性

所谓边界问题，就是要看transactions的流动如何在连续不连续中划出一定边界单位。但少量不承认，既是网络、流动，又何为确切的边界呢？但若无边界，社会学研究又要如何收尾呢？

The problem of boundary specification, of moving from flows of transactions to clearly demarcated units of study, from continuity to discontinuity, is perhaps the most frequently encountered of all challenges to relational analysis. Social-network researchers, for example, continually grapple with the question of where to draw lines across relational webs possessing no clearcut, natural boundaries. 

如此一来，要考虑到两种方式：一种是唯实论（realist）：只看行动者的经验来看actors眼中的边界在哪里。另一种是唯名论（nominalist）：承认观察者假设，但也假设——检验。

 According to one set of network investigators, two basic strategies exist for demarcating boundaries: “realist” and “nominalist.” The first takes the point of view of the actors involved, treating a network “as a social fact only in that it is consciously experienced as such by the actors composing it.” The second proceeds from the concepts and purposes of the social-scientific observer instead, taking the correspondence between “the investigator’s analytically drawn boundaries and the subjective awareness of these boundaries by participants [as] an empirical question rather than an assumption”

例如，布迪厄在研究“实践的场域”（显然是关系社会学式的），就是唯名论 的方式。

Thus, Bourdieu’s concept of a “field of practice” falls squarely within the “nominalist” side of this distinction: its boundaries are drawn in accordance with the observer’s (and not the participants’) frame of reference.

第二个问题是network dynamics

如果是原来的实体主义，会认为动力在于自身的属性，但如果站关系网络角度，网络自身的动力又在哪呢？Emirbayer否定了要从静态网络的结构特性入手，而是从关系的过程性入手。

Closely related to the vexing issues of boundaries and identities is that of network dynamics. Paradoxically (for a mode of study so intently focused upon processuality), relational sociology has the greatest difficulty in analyzing

一些研究提供了有力的启示，比如Burt的“结构洞”研究，说明是关系自身的形构提供了其演变的动力。再比如之前推送过 John Padgett and Christopher Ansell (1993) 对美第奇家族何在保持经济与军事上的中心人角色的关系位置研究的时候，认为在于the “flexible opportunism” made possible by certain actors’ “structurally anomalous” locations within social networks marked by deep structural holes.

第三个问题是因果性

A third related challenge facing the relational approach concerns causality. How are network dynamics to be accounted for? How are shifts in the content and direction of transactional flows to be explained? 

关系社会学在这方面的困难在于：你总不能写一个句子，是没有主语（名词）、没有形容词（形容一个fixed）的吧？

为此，Emirbayer建议，要从“action language” 入手， we shall not use nouns and adjectives to refer to [transactional] processes, events, etc.，做一些转换，The narratives of their responses (together with the situations within which these occur) help to explain how causes actually produce effects in history. 比如：

“their disadvantaged position led to heightened competitiveness”

——should thus be translated as ——

“they responded to their disadvantageous situation by acting more competitively.”

此外，Tilly提出的关系/情境机制也可以作为因果性的解决办法。

Tilly provides an example of the sort of mechanism one might now be looking for: “The relationship among an activity, the set of agents that control the means that might make that activity possible, and the bargaining that goes on between the agents of the activity and those who hold the resources, produce unexpected sets of structures that themselves constrain the next round of action. . . . The causal mechanism lies in the bargaining that comes out of resistance to release the resources that are already committed to other ends. . . . The general cause lies in that struggle over control over wanted resources” (Tilly 1993, p. 6).

最后有个规范性问题（事实/价值），我略过了。

（Sociological理论大缸第215期）

 链接：

第214期 关系/形式网络与历史社会学：革命与国家形成（Annu. Rev.2017)

第213期  网络分析作为社会学理论？形式主义vs.关系主义

第100期 什么是agency？关系、时间与能力（AJS，1998）