现代性的歧路:清末民初的社会达尔文主义思潮

自进化论传入中国,斯宾塞的社会达尔文主义提供了一条物竞天择、适者生存的富强之路。斯宾塞的竞争进化论,与中国文化传统中儒家的经世致用、法家的富国强兵相结合,形成了近代中国物质主义与功利主义的狂潮。社会达尔文主义颠覆了两千年来中国传统的礼的秩序,代之以竞争为核心的力的秩序,并产生了以强者为主导的新国民人格。然而,这一去价值、去伦理的力的秩序,在清末民初产生了严重的政治后果,它造就了民国,却毁了共和。五四知识分子痛定思痛,重新思考中国的复兴之路,开始了从富强到文明的历史转变。     

Islamism revisited

While contemporary Islamism is a response to the domestic political situation in many Muslim countries, as well as to US and western policies in the Muslim world, it is also about religious assertion and the forging of an alternative ideology, not only as a means of empowerment but also as a means of establishing a particular social order. The debate is as much an internal one as it is a global one and in many ways mirrors the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for political and cultural independence.     

Planning theory revisited*

After brief personal recollections of the origins of planning theory, the author poses the question of why, after five decades of active theorizing, it is still impossible for people engaged in writing planning theory to agree on a formal definition of their subject. Four possible answers are explored: the problem of defining planning as an object to be theorized; the impossibility of talking about planning disconnected from actual institutional and political contexts; the several modes of doing planning theory and the dilemma of choosing among them; and the difficulty of incorporating power relations into planning discourse. The paper concludes with a brief comment on three themes that should be made central to theorizing; the production of the urban habitat, the rise of civil society, and the question of power.     

An urban slum revisited

William Foote Whyte. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943.xii + 284 pp. $5.00.