Chinese Social Organization Development In The Perspective Of Modernity

Modernization, undoubtedly, has become the most important pursuit of the times and also the most important practical pursuit as well, for contemporary China; and modernity is the overall logic that dominates China’s process of modernization internally. However, academia disagrees as to how to define modernity. The paper argues that modernity can be interpreted as a modern civilizational structure, given that human civilization develops with the change of structural features. This civilizational structure comes into being through a systematic construction of praxis on the basis of traditional civilization. As far as social body is concerned, it means that a normative social order system is established, in particular a normative mechanism has been formed to ensure social order. This mechanism works by shaping the way of thinking, the values system, and the behavioral habits, of people; meanwhile, maintaining them by turning them into a sort of regime building on structural model of organizations and institutional fabrics.Since modernity is a morden civilizational structure, it indicates that the traditional social order has broken down, and that a morden social order will serve as an alternative. Social Organization (SO), a structural force in modern society, is thus to involve itself in constructing a modern mechanism to ensure social order and even to help constructing a modern social order system. Therefore, seeing from the perspective of modern value orientation, SO is to play a big role in maintaining social order. SO, an important agency of mechanism to ensure social order, will play a unique, indispensable role in constructing the modern social order system. However, in the real situation, SO is faced with many troubles in its development process, and it is required urgently to make a systematic theorectical study on the cause of the problem. The paper thus analyzes the issue of SO development under the meaning framework of modernity, with a view to clarifying the role orientation, the function category, and the action features, of Chinese SO, in the transformation and construction process of Chinese society from tradition to modernity; and also to disclose the internal operational mechanism and the practical approach taken by Chinese SO. for the purpose of enhancing its development consciously and effectively.Specificly, (1) seeing from role orientation, SO is a constructor of modernity in terms of its values orientation. Chinese society, currently, is the process of transformation which centers on the construction of a modern social order, and SO is deeply embedded in the social order structure with modernity, as an order-making role player; (2) seeing from function category, the role identification of SO provides a premise for its role functioning, and what makes it function well is the publicity and the public life with public spirit as its cultural basis. This implies that the function category in maintaining social order will be multi-dimensional, including the functions in maintaining political order, social order, economic order and social governance, etc.; (3) seeing from action features, SO follows the way and logic of collective action, which generally includes the procedures of demands, expression, deliberation, contract, abidance, and evaluation, and the like.So, role, identification, and action, and the structural relations among them, constitute a logic framework for Chinese SO both in theory and praxis, in the perspective of modernity; among which, social order construction is the role orientation of Chinese SO in terms of the values of modernity; publicity is the fundamental reason that the role identification of Chinese SO is guaranteed; and public life in the way of collection action is the practical approach to realizing the role identification of Chinese SO. In brief, Chinese SO development in the perspective of modernity is not only a sort of values pursuit, but also a process of construction in institution, culture, and society, through praxis in everyday life as well.