Looking For The Cultural Deposits Of Chinese Social Change: Research On Sun Benwen’s Family Thought

Sun Benwen is a famous sociologist and psychologist in China, who is the biggest influence of early sociologists and one of scholars of the largest book in China. His academic practice is closely related to early development of Chinese sociology and made irreplaceable contribution to the development of Sociology in the China. He advocated and promoted localization of Chinese sociology, and left the precious thought wealth for future generations. In recent years, domestic and foreign scholars began to pay attention to the research about Sun Benwen, which has been abundant. These research mainly involve personal life, academic contribution, theoretical system, academic group, the social construction thought and so on, and under each aspect also has a lot of more in-depth and systematic studies. Though there are some discusses about the Sun family thought, compared to other aspects of the research on Sun Benwen, the attention about Sun Benwen’s study in family thought is clearly not enough, Whether in the system and the depth, or in digging the value and contribution of Sun Benwen’s family thought. Therefore, Sun Benwen’s family thought need a systematic and deeply analysis and interpretation.Through a lot of reading and analysis of books and papers about Sun Benwen, especially discussion on research of their family, and referring to the conclusion of the related study of the domestic and foreign scholars on Sun Benwen, the author found that the states of Sun Benwen about defining the basic concepts of marriage and family, analysis of the chinese family system analysis, interpretation of the marriage and family problems and changes in chinese family system always adhere to the an inherent logical thread that the cultural and psychological factors are taken as the core factors to analyze and explain these problems. Based on that, referring to other scholar’s family sociological thought, I agree the unique of Sun Benwen’s family thought, and summarize its merits and contributions, and reveal its defects and deficiencies.In terms of the basic concept of marriage and family, Sun Benwen think marriage and family are social combination, which is construct of affection and li. Affection is a kind of psychological factors and the li is a cultural criterion, so marriage and family are social behavior which takes the psychological and cultural factors as the core factors. He recognized that family life is the starting point of human life. Family function contains biological, social and economic functions, but the central function is individual socialization and the transfer of social culture, which cultivates personal interaction of psychological traits and cultural foundation, and promotes the development of human culture, and establishes common life on which the formation of human society depend.In the analysis of the system of chinese kin, Sun Benwen analyses the basic structure of the Chinese family system through taking family, clan, kin as the basic unit of analysis according to the fact of China. And he summarizes the characteristic of the system of chinese kin that takes the filial piety as the center and the family as the standard. And he dialectically treat Chinese family of the advantage and weakness. And he interpreted that the essence of the Chinese family system is a cultural pattern which is composed of family ethics of cultural characteristics from the perspective of cultural analysis. And he explains the affect which this cultural pattern has on individual attitudes, social behavior, and social organization. Thus forming the unique characteristics of family theory research.In the interpretation of the systematical changes of chinese family, Sun Benwen analyzes the modern western family of systematical change and the reasons for the problems, so as to highlight the uniqueness of the systematical change of China’s family. He studied not only the trend and causes of the systematical changes of chinese family, but also the analysis of the problems of marriage and family. In his opinion the change of family system in modern China is cultural and social psychological changes, duing to chinese culture and western culture contact and the people’s attitude changing, and kin problem is caused by cultural dissonance and attitude change in the change. And he advocates cultural adaptation and the transfer of attitude for the problems of the family.In Sun Benwen’s family thought, whether it is the analysis of the basic concept and function of the family, or the analysis of the structure and characteristics of the family system, or chinese family system changes and the analysis of the problem, he always adhere to taking the cultural and psychological elements as the core factors, which makes his family thought kept consistent in logic and with the cultural determinism and psychological reductionism that the system of his theory highlights. At the same time, his family thought is very characteristic because of only paying attention to the analysis of cultural and psychological factors. In addition, his family thought presents obvious theoretical defects due to excluding factors such as material factors and family structure, so that the depth of his family study according to the fact of China is very insufficient. Nevertheless, in the family study, Sun Benwen adhere to the sociological perspective as the center and family problems of our country as the standard, dynamic analysis method combined with the static, highlighting its theory of consciousness, so as to promote the study of family social Chinese and highlight the application value of family sociology, which is worth learning and recognition. In addition, Sun Benwen analyze the changes of modern Chinese family depending on cultural and psychological factors, which is advantageous to grasping the trend of transformation of today’s chinese family and adjustment and governance of cultural and attitude’s dissonance caused by it.