A harmonious society, that is, a society in which all people live in harmony according to their abilities, is a society with benign operation and coordinated development in the words of social operation theory. Sociology, in my opinion, is nothing more than a comprehensive specific scientific to study the conditions and mechanisms for the benign operation and coordinated development of society. As far as contemporary China society is concerned, a harmonious society is a society with benign interaction and coordinated development between economy and society, cities and villages, different regions in the eastern, central and western regions, man and nature, domestic development and opening up. From this perspective, we can also say that sociology is a comprehensive specific scientific that studies the conditions and mechanisms of social harmony or harmonious society. This is said in a positive direction. On the other hand, sociology is to study how to reduce the disharmonious factors and limit them to the smallest scope and limit.
From the perspective of social mutual construction theory, a harmonious society refers to a relatively stable and lasting action coordination formed by multiple social subjects-individuals and collectives (groups, organizations, classes, strata, etc.). ), as the representatives of the whole society, the society and the country, through the process of mutual construction of the meaning and effect of action, on the basis of recognition and understanding. In other words, a harmonious society is the best state of the relationship between social subjects and its modular structure, and its foundation is the harmonious relationship in social and natural. "Socialist Harmonious Society" indicates the nature and value orientation of the system structure of a harmonious society, and is a creative expression of Socialism with Chinese characteristics's practice and new modernity theory.
It should be pointed out that the concept of "harmonious society" has its specific meaning of the times, which is different from the original and spontaneous harmonious order in traditional society. This is because modernity has completely changed individuals, society, nature and their relationships. Society broke free from the reins of natural growth and slow evolution, and galloped towards the future in stumbling and shock. The original spontaneous harmonious order no longer exists. The modern social world faces various paradoxes: dilemma and hope coexist, risk and opportunity are born, and destruction and creation are reincarnated. Obviously, for modern society, the meaning of harmony goes far beyond the traditional paradigm. It should be said that social harmony is a prominent problem in the process of modernity, and it is an epoch-making problem that modern society has become the focus and needs to be solved urgently.
First of all, to build a harmonious society, we must establish several deep-seated concepts in our minds.
First, the concept of win-win and mutual benefit.
Why establish the concept of win-win and mutual benefit? Because the idea that runs through a harmonious society is a win-win and mutually beneficial idea. A harmonious society, or in layman's terms, is a win-win society. Specifically, all parties that make up our society and participate in our social development, such as our cities and villages, different regions in the eastern, central and western regions, economy and society, people and nature, domestic development and opening up, can achieve win-win and mutual benefit, rather than sacrificing one to benefit the other. Win-win and mutual benefit is the essence of a harmonious society and the essence of "people-oriented, comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development" in Scientific Outlook on Development. It is impossible to achieve social harmony at the expense of one party's interests and the other party's violation of harmonious society. Similarly, it is a "zero-sum game" on social development issues, and it is a concentrated expression of the one-sided, uncoordinated and unsustainable old-style development concept.
If we go deeper, we can also find that the deep concept of win-win and mutual benefit contained in a harmonious society and Scientific Outlook on Development conforms to the world trend and development trend of modernity from the old to the new [2].
The so-called old-style modernity is the kind of modernity that takes conquering nature and controlling resources as the center, social and natural is not harmonious, individuals are not harmonious with society, and nature and society pay a double price. At the turning point of the last century and this century, there are signs of a major turning point in the global social life landscape: human perversion of nature has caused more and more serious "green punishment"; The stimulation of human desire and the lack of resources lead to the struggle for the control of resources, which leads to the distortion of value scale and the deformation of ethical standards. So human's "war against the earth" became human's "war towards self-destruction" [3]. The old modernity has entered an obvious crisis period.
The so-called new modernity refers to people-oriented, double harvest between man and nature, and win-win between man and society. The relationship between them is harmonious and harmonious, and the natural and social costs are minimized. A series of great changes in contemporary international society have further promoted the questioning, criticism and reflection on the old modernity. People realize more and more that human's plundering of nature and self-slavery are incompatible with human's self-liberation. As far as its essence and purpose are concerned, modernity is not the liberation of science and technology, but the liberation of human beings themselves. As a huge productive force, science and technology is a necessary means to realize human liberation. The reason why science and technology are of great significance in the process of modernity should depend on its ability to serve people's perfection, social progress and the realization of human liberation goals, otherwise, any of its achievements are suspicious. In this way, in the world, in China, exploring new modernity has become an imperative world trend and trend.
The goals and tasks of a harmonious society and the concept of win-win and mutual benefit it contains not only conform to the trend of modern progress, but also inherit and carry forward the essence of China's excellent cultural traditions. China has the richest cultural and academic heritage in the world, among which the ideas about "harmony" and "harmony" are equally rich. Zhang Dainian, a famous scholar and professor of Peking University, once said in the 1990s that there are two basic ideas in China's excellent traditional culture: First, human relations and harmony; The second is the harmony between man and nature. The harmony of interpersonal relationship refers to the relationship between man and society, and the harmony between man and nature refers to the relationship between man and nature and social and natural. [4] Zhang Liwen, a famous scholar and professor of China Renmin University, also published the monograph "Harmonious Learning".
In a word, the goals and tasks of a harmonious society, as well as the concept of win-win and mutual benefit it contains, show that the ruling party has a new sense of modernity.
Second, the concept of "promoting social progress and reducing social costs"
Every social progress that people have seen so far is accompanied by social costs. Pure progress and ideal progress do not exist in the real society. There is no social progress without social cost in the world. Perhaps this is one of the meanings of Hegel's famous saying "history is evil"! The history of modernization is a history of continuous social progress and constant social cost. Based on this, sociology has come up with the deep concept of its own discipline: increasing and promoting social progress and reducing social costs. Here, increasing and promoting social progress means increasing and promoting the coordinated and sustainable development of society and the all-round development of individual members of society; Reducing social cost means that although social cost is inevitable, people can study ways and means to reduce the cost to the lowest limit and minimum range.
Our society is in the process of rapid transformation from traditional society to modern society. A remarkable feature of rapid transformation is the coexistence of social optimization and social problems, social progress and social cost. In the past 20 years, great social changes have taken place in the form of social transformation, whether it is changes in interest pattern, social relations and secondary system, or changes in values, lifestyles, cultural patterns, social control mechanisms and social affordability. All these indicate that on the one hand, the above social fields have been optimized to varying degrees, on the other hand, a large number of problems have appeared, some of which are still very serious; On the one hand, it is no exaggeration to say that the progress and achievements of more than 20 years have attracted worldwide attention and gained global recognition. At the same time, it has also paid various costs, some of which are still very heavy. Especially with the per capita GDP entering the period of 1000-3000 dollars, our society has entered an active period of uncoordinated factors and a period of frequent social contradictions. This is shown by the history of the same period in the world, and it is also what any political party that governs the country and society has to face. China is no exception, they also test the wisdom of China's * * * production party.
In such a period, China society actually has two prospects. One is that disharmonious factors are active and social contradictions are frequent, which can not be handled correctly for various reasons, leading to intensified contradictions, economic stagnation, social unrest and destruction in the process of economic globalization. This is a bleak prospect. There are precedents abroad. From1mid-1980s to1mid-1990s, this was the case in some major countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Brazil. The Global Industrial Development Report 1996 compiled by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization calls these countries "the lost decade". The other is that disharmonious factors are active and social contradictions are frequent, which have been correctly handled. At the same time of reform and development, the society remains stable and full of vitality, the economy develops rapidly, the living standard is generally improved, and the comprehensive national strength is rapidly improved. This is a bright future. We in China are proud that, thanks to Deng Xiaoping Theory and the reform and opening-up policy, China has surpassed many countries with better initial conditions in the same period and strived to achieve a bright future. The Global Industrial Development Report 1996 calls this decade in China a decade that has benefited a lot from the process of economic globalization. This result is envied by many developing countries in the world and excited by overseas Chinese.
The period of strategic opportunities in China from the beginning of the new century is roughly consistent with the period when per capita GDP enters 1000-3000 USD. Practice shows that China's social transformation has a dual mission, that is, the transformation from former modernity to modernity, and the transformation from old modernity to new modernity. In the new century, the latter transformation has become increasingly prominent. In this process, many factors coexist and interweave at the same time, forming various complex social effects. With the worldwide expansion of social risks and economic globalization, various disharmonious factors in China society have entered a new active and frequent period. Various old and new disharmonious factors frequently appear in front of people: natural disasters, urban-rural division, regional disparity, polarization between the rich and the poor, unemployment, criminal offences, production accidents, labor disputes, ethnic contradictions, new infectious diseases, demographic changes, high-tech shocks, moral decline, standardization emptiness, lack of trust, mental illness, cults, terrorism, ecological crisis, financial crisis and so on. Our society still has the above two prospects and two possibilities. These problems require new responses from our current social policies, political systems, services and management systems. The proposal of a harmonious society and Scientific Outlook on Development is also the new response of the ruling party to the new disharmonious factors in China society.
Since objectively speaking, the proposal of a harmonious society is based on the coexistence of social optimization and social problems, social progress and social cost in China, and the process of building a harmonious society is actually a process of constantly promoting social progress and reducing social costs, then we should consciously establish such a profound concept subjectively, and consciously reduce social costs while promoting social progress in action.
Third, the concept of modern governance, especially the concept of good governance [5]
No harmonious society can come automatically. We can only rely on the continuous attempts and efforts of social governance, especially good governance. Governing society by the state and social forces, public and private sectors, government, social organizations and citizens is also the best tentative choice to build a harmonious society at this stage.
To understand the concept of modern governance, especially the concept of good governance, we have to go back to a very popular concept "publicity" in social sciences at home and abroad. In modern times, the state functions caused by the separation of state and society and the division of society into public sphere and private sphere are divided into two major functions: governance and management. The issue of openness is once again highlighted. In modern times, publicity has become an important topic in public management, political science, sociology, institutional economics and many other disciplines. From the initial and contemporary significance of publicity, publicity and harmonious society are inextricably linked.
For the content of new publicity, some scholars have summarized it into five points: (1) publicity is an important analytical tool to describe the basic nature and destination of modern government activities. It means that the government, as the grantor of the people's power and the executor of the entrusted power, should formulate and implement public policies based on the common interests of society and the will of the people and the protection of citizens' interests. (B) publicity as a modern administrative spirit. Including the spirit of democracy, law, justice and public service. (3) Propaganda as a value concept. It emphasizes the openness of government affairs and citizen participation, emphasizes that the operation of public sector should reflect people's sovereignty and the legitimacy of government actions, overcome the pursuit of private interests and departmental interests, and emphasizes the institutional fairness of government actions. (4) As a fair and just publicity. This is not only a kind of value ethics, but also a requirement of public administration. The government is required to respond to the public's demands as much as possible, with a sense of social responsibility, so that citizens have equal rights and opportunities to participate, reflecting social fairness and justice. (5) As a rational and legal propaganda. Take publicity as a kind of rationality and morality, and emphasize the supervision and criticism of public opinion. [6] We believe that the core content and the most important significance of publicity in modern society are publicity and rationality, that is, "the idea of a well-ordered constitutional democratic society." [7] The governance and service of public affairs, that is, managing the country and society with the concept of modern public affairs, is the most important link of public affairs and the embodiment of its core content in practice. At the same time, it also gave birth to a field that can change the structure of modern society, that is, the field of public affairs that is different from the traditional field of public power.
This new type of propaganda plays another role in areas where both the government and the market are out of order. It separates a public sphere from the civil society which belongs to the private sphere in essence. This kind of public sphere can mobilize and absorb a lot of social resources, handle all kinds of public affairs and provide public products and services to the society, promote social justice and social equity, play an effective role in places where the market and the government cannot effectively allocate resources, and play a fundamental role in institutional innovation and social and political reform. Where the market and the state fail, unstable and disharmonious factors will lurk, which may seriously lead to social unrest and vicious operation. Without an effective mechanism to arrange roles, building a harmonious society is a castle in the air. New propaganda is an important adjustment means and basic guarantee for building a harmonious society.
The most important internal relationship between publicity and harmonious society is fully reflected in the core content of publicity, and the governance of public affairs includes the relationship between good governance and harmonious society.
"Governance" is a new development of governance, and the boundaries between the public sector and the private sector and their respective internal boundaries tend to be blurred. The essence of governance is that the ruling mechanism it emphasizes does not depend on the authority or sanctions of the government. "[8] The Global Governance Commission defines governance as the sum of many ways in which various public or private individuals and institutions manage their affairs. [9] There are three essential differences between governance and rule: First, the subject of rule can only be the public power department, and its authoritative source can only come from the government. The main body of governance can be the public sector or the private sector, and the cooperation between them. The source of its authority is not mainly the government, but the continuous interaction between the cooperative subjects; Second, the direction of power operation in the management process is different. The power dimension of rules is a one-dimensional operation process from top to bottom, while governance is a multi-interactive process, which realizes the governance of public affairs through cooperation, coordination and determination of the same goal. Third, governance follows formal rules, systems and procedures, while governance is based on trust and follows the rules and procedures agreed by the subjects. It can be seen that governance is more suitable for a complex, pluralistic and dynamic society in rapid transformation than rule, and the multi-interactive power operation process is more conducive to the construction of a harmonious society.
"Good governance is the latest slogan put forward by the World Bank, which has become the dominant idea of the World Bank's policy of providing loans to the Third World". [10] According to Cynthia Hewitt de alcantara, good governance is proposed to promote the reform of planning and bureaucracy in many countries, which is more technical and less political. [1 1] Yu Keping defined good governance as "a social management process that maximizes public interests." . The essential feature of good governance is that it is the cooperative management of public life by the government and citizens, a new relationship between political state and civil society, and the best state of both. "... he regards good governance as an ideal state of governance. Then he summarized the basic elements of good governance into six points. [13] In short, "good governance is essentially the return of state power to society, and the process of good governance is the process of returning government to the people". [14] Good governance is just a state of governance.
From the above basic characteristics of public governance, we can find that public governance is a process and a model, and this process and model itself is an attempt and effort to build a harmonious society. Good governance is the governance process of a harmonious society, the best realization process of the conditions and mechanisms for building a harmonious society, and almost two aspects of building a harmonious society at present.
Second, to build a harmonious society, we must specifically study the conditions and mechanisms of a harmonious society.
Specifically, it is necessary to study the conditions and mechanisms of a harmonious society from the aspects of interpersonal relationship, resource allocation, social identity and social structure, that is, individuals, groups and society. Here are some key points.
First, as far as interpersonal relationship is concerned, in order to form a harmonious interpersonal environment, we must speed up the cultivation of the main body of a harmonious society, mainly through the mechanism of human socialization and individualization [15] to train our social members into new people with ideals, morality, culture and discipline; Through continuous socialization, members of society can properly play their roles, get their due share from society through their own efforts, and do their best and get their place; Through the main means of socialization and individualization, the members of society are trained to be a learning person who keeps learning and studies for life, so as to meet the requirements of modern learning society.
Secondly, in the allocation of resources, this is mainly through the establishment of social stratum system, a social incentive mechanism, to stimulate social vitality on the basis of reasonable social differences, and to distribute social resources and social opportunities to members of society as fairly as possible; Through the social mobility mechanism, all members of society have the opportunity to rise from the lower class to the higher class through their own efforts. All these make members of society win more and benefit each other, and social interests can be coordinated.
Third, as far as social identity is concerned, it is the ideological and psychological basis of social unity and social integration. We must deal with the relationship between social members' self-identity and social identity, especially pay attention to the roles of cultural identity, value identity, goal identity and multi-ethnic identity, and give full play to their positive functions. At present, we should also attach great importance to the positive and negative impacts of globalization and informatization on China's social identity. It must be said that a society with serious problems in social identity cannot be a harmonious society.
Fourthly, in terms of social structure, a reasonable social structure is the basis of social harmony [16]. It determines social stability, harmony and coordination in the form of social roots. Social structure also restricts the social actions of various social subjects in the way of path dependence, and stipulates the scope and achievable limits of the subjects' activities in the form of intermediary conditions. In short, social structure always constructs and shapes social actions in one way or another. At the same time, we should also emphasize that social structure and social action are mutually constructed according to the viewpoint of contemporary sociology, including the viewpoint of mutual construction of our society. On the other hand, social action affects and reorganizes various social structures with its own dynamic practical activities, such as the formation of development concepts, the formulation of development strategies, the introduction of social policies and the implementation of institutional reforms. In other words, social action always constructs and shapes the social structure in one way or another. In the mutual construction of social structure and social action, which is the main construction function depends on the specific situation. Generally speaking, the role of social structure is the foundation of social development. However, when a society cannot develop without changing its original structure, social actions to change its original social structure play a major role. For example, China faced such a situation after ten years of turmoil during the "Cultural Revolution", and social actions such as Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up policy played such a role. Similarly, in the case of almost the same social structure, which one develops faster, the role of social action can also be the main one. For example, in the process of economic globalization, a developing country depends on two conditions: initial level and economic policy. As far as the initial conditions are concerned, there is a big gap between China and the eastern European countries of the former Soviet Union. Compared with Latin America and the Caribbean, there are also many differences. However, China has benefited a lot from the process of globalization, and the degree of benefit has greatly exceeded that of countries with better or similar initial conditions, which really created a miracle. China can do this mainly because of the implementation of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up policy, that is, subjective factors.
It is based on this view that social structure and social action are mutually constructed that we propose to construct a reasonable social structure to promote the establishment of a harmonious society. The realization of a more harmonious society will further promote the formation of a reasonable social structure, and the two will have a virtuous circle.
Thirdly, it is feasible to build a harmonious society by starting with a harmonious community in practice.
Harmonious society and harmonious community are inextricably linked. In terms of size, what we usually call society is a big society, not the whole society, and the community is a small society and a part of society. The whole harmonious society is composed of many small harmonious societies. As far as the social sector is concerned, the whole society consists of three major sectors: the first sector, government organizations, the second sector, economic profit-making organizations, the third sector, non-profit social organizations and communities. Generally speaking, it belongs to the third sector. The whole harmonious society should be achieved through the harmony of these three departments and the harmony between these three departments. Judging from the development trend, as I said when introducing propaganda, governance and good governance, a harmonious community will reduce the management cost of the government and play its positive role where the government and the market fail. From an abstract point of view, society is highly abstract, invisible and intangible, while community is concrete, visible and tangible. Therefore, it is not only necessary but also feasible to build a harmonious society from the perspective of building a harmonious community.
The situation is different with different community types. For example, rural community is a problem of community development, and urban community is a problem of community construction. Therefore, the construction of a harmonious community should distinguish between different situations. Now there are virtual communities on the Internet, and the situation is even more complicated. This paper focuses on urban communities, especially urban communities.
I think the current construction of harmonious urban communities in China involves a goal. That is, the layout of the community.
Recently, I participated in the final evaluation of four topics of Beijing community survey and saw the latest achievements in this regard. For example, one of the achievements, on the basis of empirical investigation, points out that there are two trends of community stratification and community mixing in Beijing's current urban development. The so-called community stratification is the phenomenon of community differentiation, with obvious differences between rich and poor communities. The so-called mixed community means that the rich and the poor live together in a community. Thus, the community is further divided into four ideal types: homogeneous status, homogeneous identity, heterogeneous status and heterogeneous identity. According to the results of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis, some policy suggestions are put forward for the management of different types of communities. The project itself is well done.
But this topic, like other topics, makes people feel that this development is natural and reasonable, so it also raises a question: what will be the result of our community development? In my opinion, the American-style community layout will soon form a sharp division between the rich and the poor, or the Indian-style layout-a sharp contrast between the rich and the poor, which is in line with our harmonious society. Is there a problem with our social policy orientation? We can think objectively that whether a city can have a harmonious atmosphere is because of the sharp contrast between rich and poor communities, that is, strong and weak communities. We must understand that when the poor and vulnerable groups attribute their unhappy situation to the deprivation of the beneficial groups, the danger of conflict lurks in society and their hostility and hatred will spread. Social risks are most likely to break out in the social groups with the lowest tolerance, which constitutes a huge social hidden danger that endangers social stability and affects social development. We should also think about it. Can this layout help the socially disadvantaged groups to reduce the enormous pressure from economy, society and psychology, but increase their pressure? In this regard, we should learn from international experience and lessons.
I think building a harmonious society, harmonious community and harmonious community layout are inseparable. This also involves the question of what is our characteristic community in China.
I think it's time to formulate appropriate social policies to ensure the rational distribution of communities in the system.
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