Representations Collective And Social Integration

In sociological history, one of Emile Durkheim's most important devotion is his study on moral requirements of social integration in the process of modern social classification. This can be regarded as Durkheim's special thinking about how to resolve the problems of modernity.It was from sociological viewpoint that Durkheim put forward his scheme of solving problems of modernity. He looked upon social fact as sociology's specific study object, and explained it as various social institutions. Durkheim pointed out that social facts are certain kinds of special patterns of behavior, thingking and sensation. Durkheim regarded it as the basic connotation of social institution which not only included perceptual institutions, but also included rational institutions such as laws, rules, finacial system, labor division and so on. But what Durkheim most cared for is perceptual institutions. The main purpose that Durkheim studied representations collective is to reveal the perceptual informal institutions'restriction to people's behavior of choice and how the perceptual informal institutions integrate social living. In fact, Durkheim regarded perceptual informal institutions as sociology's fundamental task and the fundamental way to solve modernity problems.Durkheim thought that social order will be in the state of integration or union only on base of moral individualism. This state can be called moral integration, which means all kinds of social elements on different levels ( institution, orgnization, individual )should be joined to form the state of combination or attraction on base of common institution, rules, outlook on value,etc. Generally speaking, Durkheim's scheme of solving modernity problems is such a scheme that religion should be substituted for society, and social authority should be set up through moral education. On this base, social order should be integrated and the new belief to garentee social stability and harmony should be built up. In Durkheim's point of view, among all the methods of moral education, professional groups'effect on individual by institutional education(especially by perceptual institutional education) is more important. He thought that moral rules generally took on in forms of conscience collective, so it's very necessary to research conscience collectiv and the corresponding social conscience. The two concepts of"conscience collective"and"representations collective"became to be important concepts of Durkheim's scheme of solving modernity problems. However, the concept of"representations collective"gradually substituted for"conscience collective".The concept of"conscience collective", which refered to social mass'belief and sentiment, was put forward by Durkheim in The Division of Labor in Society. However, in this book ,Durkheim only made a simple necessary explaination about the relation between"conscience collective"and"social common conscience", but didn't expound the theoretical essence of conscience collective. Afer that, He seldom used the the concept of"conscience collective", and it was substituted by another concept——representations collective. In the Rules of Sociological Method , Durkheim began to used the concept of representations collective to refer to social trends such as laws, moral rules, custom, religious belief, public sentiment and so on. Durkheim regarded it as the concrete form and foundation of conscience collective, and he expounded its function on social integration.In Durkheim's oponion, representations collective was characteristic with reality and perceptual figurativeness, and it originated from spirit conjunction of individual and existed in the psychology of social group. Durkheim thought that social phenomena were representations collective in essence. Representations collective took on such forms as laws, moral rules, custom, religious belief, public sentiment and so on. These forms are external and coercive to individual, so they had institutional significance on people's behavior choice and social integration. In spiritual essence, representations collective can be understood as perceptual common sense, i.e. the common sense on sentiment, aesthetic feeling, virtue, prevailing custom, symbol and so on. The perceptual common sense penetrates moral rules, custom, religious belief and social trends, and it has important basic function to groups'cohesive force and integration of social order.In Durkheim's oponion , moral education is the solution for modern problems. It can cultivate social group member's perceptual common sense. Perceptual common sense can survive in forms of institutions and become groups'common behavior disciplines, and play a role of moral authority in fact.The constuction of perceptual institutions on base of specific social orgnizations——professional groups is the key link of Durkheim's solution for modern problems. So Durkheim in all his life tried to advocate to build up structural modern moral systems, which not only can permit individual freedom, but also can promote group cooperation and eliminate social anomie. This solution is generally called Durkheimnism. It aimed at reconstrcucting social moral order and integration to solve western countries'social, economic and spiritual crises of 19 century by contructing professional ethics and civil morality through professional groups on base of perceptual institutions.Durkheim's theoretical scheme about construction of social organization and perceptual institution authority stressed the importance of representations collective's function of social integration. It has great inspiration for us to integrate social order in the field of aesthetics and virtue in contemporary China which is in the transformation peoriod of modernization .Under the circumstances that the worl is entering into the age of visual culture, as aesthetic common sense and prevailing custom authority, representations collective have important practical significance for social order's aesthetic integration. Visual culture's outstanding character of perceptual figurativeness not only has changed Chinese's thinking habit and pattern of behavior, but also provided necessary practical base for aesthetic integration of Chinese social order. Under the background of visual culture, many groups (including formal groups and informal groups ) culture such as enterprise culture, civil custom culture, groupie's culture, campus culture and so on take on different characters of group integration because of projection of perceptual figurativeness. As aesthetic common sense, representations collective of visual culture age mainly have effect on members of cultural groups through perceptual images. They can form some certain kinds of aesthetic prevailing custom, then become specific trends or prevailing custom authority which function through perceptual institutions, finally, the goal of cultural groups'integration could be realized. From the point of view of construction of Chinese aesthetic modernity, seeking for harmony of sentiment community's representations collective means seeking for harmonious and stable social order. That has great inspiration for China to extricat itself from the social order's rationl delimma.Now, China is in the process of constructing socialistic harmonious society. Under this background, representations collective as moral common sense and authority have important practical significance for the construction of modern moral system and the realization of social order's moral integration. In order to realize moral integration in China, the first problem needed to resolve is traditional morality's transformation to modern morality. As moral common sense, representations collective can form certain moral prevailing custom and authority which functions by means of perceptual institutions, on this base, we can set up Chinese modern moral rules system. As moral common sense, representations collective are generally reflected as moral custom of certain social groups, and they are comprehensive reflection of popular moral outlook, standar of good and evil, moral behavior mode and psychological habit, etc.The process of cultivation and functioning of moral prevailing custom is just the process that morality developed into institutions. The formation of certain moral prevailing custom and certain moral authority's setting up are two intimate aspects of the same problem. In the process of building up professional morality of socialistic harmonious society, good socialistic professional moral custom should be cultivated by reinforcing professional groups'representations collective. Professional moral authority should be built up in different fields, so they can function in the process of moral integration and maintaining harmonious and stable social economic order. In the process of civil moral construction, fine civil moral prevailing custom should be cultivated by means of reinforcing social members'representations collective, and socialistic civil moral authority should be set up and function in moral integration. All these are helpful to building up and maintaining harmonious and stable public order.Although Durkheim's theoretical scheme of moral integration is valuable, however , it is uncertain to be the scheme suitable to the national conditions of China. In the process of moral integration of contemporary China, we should not only emphasize law-making of moral rules (i.e. rationalization of perceptual institution ), but also should strengthen the construction of different social groups'perceptual moral institution, and combine it with the former construction, so we can solve the problems of moral integration that China is facing on base of unity of perceptual modernity and rational modernity.