On The Transformation And Reconstruction Of Chinese Social Norm

Social norm is the creature of productive activities and social living activities for the sake of people's common life, which is a familiar phenomenon in almost every field of the society. It is the common values and rules that are used to restrict and direct people's behaviors, to regulate the relations of people in the productive and living fields, and it demands prevalent abidance. The essence of social norms is the' reflection of social relationships in a concrete and direct way. It includes conventions, etiquette, morality, institutions and laws, by which comprehensive governance and social order maintenance are ensured.However, there are different contents, forms and control modes of social norms in the different societies and different eras. Social development is bound to arouse the changing of social norms, and the changing of social norms will undoubtedly affect the prospect and destination of the individuals, the society and the nation. Being directed by Marxism and Mao Ze-dong Thought, integrating theory with practice and history with logic, using literature method, comparative method and case study method, this paper probes into the historical process of the transformation and reconstruction of Chinese social norms.Firstly, it unscrambles why the human society need norms, expounds the law of the evolution of social norms and the function of each kind of social norms, reveals the characteristics of social norms. It proves that social norms, on the one hand, can integrate social structure, coordinate social relation, maintain social order and promote social progress, on the other hand, it may interfere the social development. Then, it points out that the social order maintenance effect of social norms is achieved through two mechanisms: one is called as 'principal mechanism', another is 'coordinative mechanism'.Based on the general study of social norms, this thesis probes the establishment, the attributes and its modern values of Chinese traditional social norms in the second part. Chinese traditional social norms were based on the self-sufficient smallholder economy. Its mainstay was the patriarchal clan system and its core was the Confucianism ethics, with which the family, society and nation were organized, the feudalism patriarchal clansystem and ethic-governed order was maintained. The Chinese traditional social norms took on the characteristics such as entirety, generalized morality, high rationalism, obturation and conservativism. As to its modern value, the paper holds that people-oriented, equality-focused, group-standard, affectivity and morality culture, are all what is needed in building our socialism market economy.The third section points out that since the Opium War (1840), Chinese modernization began, and modern western civilization was gradually introduced into China, then, traditional social norms lost its power and began to take modern shape. The norm transformation is based on three factors: tech-norms, institution norms and value norms; the author also analyzes the limitations, complexity and setback of norms transformation and gives the objective and subjective causes for the failure of transformation. The rules of transformation is revealed, that is, the old social system must be replaced by a new one so that a powerful new government, which stands for the ultimate benefits of the majority of mass and instructs the modernization on its own, can be established.The fourth section points out that CCP (Chinese Communist Party) shoulders the great but arduous historical mission and promotes the norm transformation. The traditional socialist social norms are characterized by unit-state relation, generalized politics, ideal realism, and new obscuration. This thesis points out that in the beginning of socialist construction, china took class-struggle-norm-culture as the mode of social control, which maintains social order and insures a peaceful life for the general public. However, as time goes, the class-struggle-norm-culture brought more and more problems and hindered social de...