The Symbolic Order In Institutional Change

With the foundation of New China, the state gradually established a series of new institutions, including the census register institution, food supply institution, employment institution, medical institution, housing distribution institution, marriage and family institution etc. in order to realize the social stability and speed up the development of the society. The implementation of the institutions, firstly consolidated the society, secondly strengthened the state's control of society, because the long-term autocratic tradition and the depression of many years war, the weak civil society had to rely on the state, developed and changed in the same time, the study called "state and society united stage". During this period, the state realized plan economic order nationwide by the way of creating institution, including the initial definition of the work, identity and status of the lawyers occupational group, and formed a kind of substantive lawyer order. In this lawyer order, the lawyer in the long run is a public functionary, the study called "traditional gentry".After decades of development, the civil society began to separate from the state and came into "state and society separated stage", the civil society had become a self-organization system with independent field in Hayek's theory, while the order in this new field is inherited from plan economy order in the state, which contained the substantive lawyer order without any changes.This situation of state order identifying with society order (especially social field order) was thoroughly broken during the social transformation in China. As a typical developing country, China government promoted the overall social progress through the institutional change of abolishing the old order and building the new order, specifically led state new order into social field, the market economy gradually establishment was the obvious proof. With the establishment of the order of the market economy, the lawyer professional group's identity and status were redefined as freelancers "business status", it was also in this lawyer institutional change process of order replacement, lawyer professional group did lots of disorder behaviors, even containing illegal and criminal behaviors.The division of political country and civil society formed two different function fields, among them, the rational political country could make decisions in the short term, and perceptual civil society could change during the long-term accumulation, and made Cultural Lag phenomenon significantly in this field. Due to the existence of Cultural Lag phenomenon, the society order couldn't be replaced by the state order in the short term, meanwhile, state changed the content of the old plan economic order through leading institutional change process and redefining order, including of redefining the lawyer as freelancers "business status", this made an obvious fracture between the lawyer symbol's signifie and significant, and also made lawyer order in social field become a sign order without substantive content, this study called symbolic order. According to the theory of semiology and symbols interactionism, the symbol with fracture of signifie and significant still could play the role of complete symbol though "symbolization" and "inferring behavior", namely, the symbolic order in society was still playing an old plan economic order's social integration effect. So, in the face of new market economic order, the lawyer professional groups did lots of reverse behavior including of "jumped, jump out" the groups.Because the order mechanism closely contacted with the society order, it also became the key content of the study. In traditional sociological perspective, the mechanism the between order and the behavior was often considered as a natural process without particular research, at the same time, the existing sociology order mechanism study ignored medi-variation and was located in the macroscopic level, this weakened the explain ability of sociology for social issues. After Homans and Giddens introducing relevant achievements of psychology into sociology, the sociology strengthened the theory construction in the mesosphere level, and also in this theory background, the research made a mesosphere order mechanism model through referring to the traditional Chinese "harmony between the heaven and human" ideology and relative contents of western identity theory. In this model, the society order and social member common restricted the rational behavior, and depended on the rational behavior to push the change of order and the progress of the society. But in the mechanism of symbolic order, the individual rationality of the member slumped, the social behavior degenerated into a perceptual behavior under the single restriction of symbolic order, in turn, this kind of perceptual behavior still strengthened the symbolic order. In this symbolic order mechanism, it became a closed loop including "symbolic order-perceptual behavior" lasting, and seriously hampered the normal order replacement and social progress.In order to break the symbolic order that restricted lawyer rationality and hindered the progress of social order, the research concluded that efforts must to be made in two aspects: firstly, we must to guide social members to get individual rationality back, combining with the specific content of this study is to make lawyer members realize the essential contents of the lawyer work, through contrast way, make the lawyer know themselves, recognize the lawyer profession and recognize the relevant policies and regulations, make the lawyer make rational behavior in a rational level; Secondly, we must to keep the state and society institutional change simultaneously, avoid old society order remaining on account of Cultural Lag phenomenon, we must to place the new order designing by the state among grass-roots social organizations the content at first time, make social members informed of the relevant state policy, reduce "symbolization" and "inferring behavior" from happening.The study of symbolic order had theoretical and realistic significance. Theoretically, the conclusion enriched the order research, expanded the traditional "substantive order research" to sign order and symbolic order research. During the study, the study adhered to the perspective of middle turn and the analysis of dynamic, broke through the t limitations of the macro "order restricted behavior" and micro "behavior adjusted order" in the traditional order research, tried to combine the traditional Chinese "harmony between the heaven and human" ideology and western cultural "identity" into a middle variables and introduced into research process, researched order and behavior in a mesosphere level, namely "harmony between the heaven and human" ideology or "self-identity" theory level. Meanwhile, during the study of symbolic order mechanism, the study dynamically analyzed the relationship between the society order and the social behavior, revealed mechanisms of maintenance and reproduction, namely "symbolic order emergence-the individual rationality absence-individual perceptual behavior prevalence". Realistically, the study came into a system theory about the reverse behavior of lawyer professional group and symbolic order in order to provide theoretical support for the government dealing with the lawyer problems, and made the socialist legal system builders and social justice maintainers stable and harmonious. At last, the study about lawyer behavior and order could also provide some references for the other professional group which experiencing the "fission".