The empirical position of the Central China Local School

The research of Huazhong vernacular School comes from rural experience and is rooted in rural experience. They scrupulously abide by the basic position of experience, take teamwork as the carrier, constantly crawl and fight in experience, from experience to experience, based on experience and beyond experience, and gradually explore a feasible way for the localization of Chinese social sciences in the process of summary and promotion.

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At the beginning of this century, the study of village governance in Central China turned to the study of the nature of rural society in the transitional period, that is, the social basic research of rural governance. This study attempts to understand the current situation of China's rural society and its regional differences through in-depth investigation of rural areas in different regions of the country, so as to understand the process, mechanism and consequences of laws, policies and systems entering different rural societies. And try to understand the rural society itself through the differences of top-down and outside-in policies, laws and systems into the rural society. And then to explore the issues of law, policy and system formulation. In this way, its research has entered the operational stage of thematic research and regional comparison. Since 2005, the study of village governance in Central China has devoted more academic energy to the dynamic overall social changes. In this way, the classic propositions of traditional sociology, such as intergenerational relations, marriage and family, kinship system, private life, husband-wife relationship, emotion, disputes, human feelings, public space, suicide and so on, have entered the field of research. new topics such as petition, land system, township operation, stratum differentiation, land expropriation and demolition, agricultural economy, mass line and so on continue to emerge.

In the course of the development of Huazhong village governance research for more than 20 years, a certain number of research achievements and theoretical viewpoints have been produced at each stage; each research transformation is based on inheriting some basic ideas, and it is necessary to break through the original field of vision and research field. so as to push the research to a new level. In the process of inheritance and development, the study of Huazhong village governance has gradually formed its own characteristics, accumulated some of its own experience, and created its own research paradigm, which is called "Huazhong vernacular School".

Huazhong Township School has its own basic positions, viewpoints and methods for Chinese social science research. The main purpose of this paper is to make a preliminary summary of the basic experience and position of the Central China vernacular School.

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"naive empiricism" is a basic impression of the Huazhong village governance study and its school. They believe that such a group of people go deep into rural areas to investigate, bear hardships and stand hard work, and master first-hand materials in rural areas. their courage and academic drive are worth encouraging and advocating, and the collection of materials is also necessary, which is the first step towards true learning. But at the same time, they also believe that this group of people went to the countryside with empty heads, entered the village without presupposition, and even despised the theory and hated the framework from the bottom of their bones, bringing back nothing but a pile of dead materials. Therefore, the experience of this group of people is simple, empirical, or even anti-intellectual. This is the biggest criticism and misreading of the Central China vernacular School. The fundamental reason for this situation is that the school is still in its infancy, and its main task is to train talents, so the academic achievements shown to the outside world are not too much and not systematic enough. not to mention the conscious presentation of the basic positions, viewpoints and methods of research.

"empirical study" is the basic position of Huazhong Township School, that is, the study of Huazhong village governance is based on experience, not on any other subject or object. Attaching importance to "experience" is indeed the consistent proposition of Huazhong village governance research and its school, and it is also the foundation of its school, the foundation of the strong school and the soul of the school. "experience" has been elevated to the supreme position in his research. However, the "experience" and "empirical study" understood by the Huazhong vernacular School are not the same thing as the "experience" and "empirical study" interpreted by the outside world. The outside world thinks that the "experience" of this school is phenomenon, material and policy, and its research is phenomenon description, material arrangement and countermeasure analysis, but not theoretical research. in the final analysis, the "empirical research" done by this school is not academic research. Therefore, in the face of these misunderstandings and misjudgments, it is necessary to straighten out and clarify. To straighten out and clarify, we should not only have a negative "broken" side, that is, to break the misunderstanding and misjudgment, but more importantly, we should have a positive "stand" side, that is, to lay out the basic position openly and openly.

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First of all, in the aspect of "breaking", we can clarify "what experience is not" in order to know "what experience is not", and then we can positively answer "what is experience" and "what is empirical research".

1. Experience is not a phenomenon, and empirical research is not a description of phenomena. Phenomenon refers to the external form of people or things in the process of development and change. The phenomenon in rural areas is the social form shown by the interaction of people in rural society in the process of production, life and social communication, as well as the process of occurrence, development and change of rural things under the action of human beings. The rural phenomenon in social science research mainly refers to the rural political and social phenomenon, which includes not only the phenomenon formed by the interaction between rural social members, but also the phenomenon caused by the interaction between social members and other things in rural areas. The rural social phenomenon can be static, dynamic, or even the process itself. The rural social phenomenon is not isolated, it is the result of the interaction between people or things, so it also shows some kind of connection.

Rural social phenomenon is the main component of experience, but experience is not just a phenomenon. First of all, phenomenon is an objective form. Philosophically, it is the normal expression of the main aspect of the principal contradiction of things or relations under certain conditions. Expression itself can be either a distortion of the facts or a real embodiment of the facts, so there is a distinction between the illusion and the truth. However, social experience is the subject's grasp of the main aspects of the principal contradiction and the product of the blending of the subject and the object. In other words, "looking at the essence through phenomena", experience is the essence of things or relations. It is not an objective existence like phenomena. It requires the subject to grasp the principal contradiction and its main aspects of things or relations through subjective efforts, based on phenomena and through surface phenomena. Without the blending of subjective and objective, experience will not appear naturally. In a word, experience needs to be felt and understood by researchers.

Experience is not the surface connection between phenomena, or the surface correlation. At the philosophical level, things or phenomena never exist in isolation, but are related and contrasted with each other. However, this way of existence between phenomena does not necessarily constitute experience. The relationship between phenomena is universal, so it is disorganized, and almost all phenomena can be related. For example, there is a connection between A, B and C, which is interlaced with each other, but it does not naturally form a regular chain connection between A-B-C. Experience is a chain connection, a chain connection between the principal contradiction behind the phenomenon and its main aspects. That is, the main aspect of the principal contradiction behind one phenomenon can be deduced from the main aspect of the principal contradiction of another phenomenon, and can be deduced further. Experience is the generalization and presentation of this derivation process.

To sum up, the phenomenon is the objective form and the disorganized relationship between things or relations, while experience is the subject's perception of the chain connection between the main aspects of the principal contradiction behind the phenomenon. Therefore, empirical research is not an objective description of the phenomenon, but a summary, refinement and summary of the chain relationship behind the phenomenon.

two。 Experience is not material, and empirical research is not material arrangement. Phenomenon, as an objective form and its relationship, is a frame, which needs to be filled and characterized by material, and material is the most basic material. If the phenomenon is not filled with material, the phenomenon will not be plump and three-dimensional, and it will not be able to be expressed. In the field of social science, there are two kinds of materials, one is quantitative materials, the other is qualitative materials. The former mainly expresses and explains the objective phenomena and their relations through data, tables and models, and what it pursues is an objective, static effect that removes subjective factors as far as possible. The latter mainly describes and depicts the phenomenon and its relationship in the form of story exhibition, event process, feature sketch and so on, in order to show its whole picture and the dynamic process of interaction.

Materials are more colorful and disorganized than phenomena. as the material of research, it requires researchers to select, sort out and process the materials according to the needs of the research. Therefore, not all materials may be collected, and not all materials collected will be used in research. In this sense, the material is objective, but the use of the material is not objective, and the use of the material is subject to the study. This will inevitably lead to such a research, which first has a theoretical framework, and then collects materials in the phenomenon, through the cutting of materials to prove or falsify the existing theoretical framework. Then, in this kind of research, the material may be a handmaid, dress up and toss about according to the needs of the researcher, and there may be a disconnection between research and fact and between theory and experience. In this kind of research, the material is dead and has no life of its own, because the material is not part of the real phenomenon, especially the real experience. The material has its vitality only through experience.

Material is not experience, experience is not material. Material composition phenomenon, experience is the chain connection behind the phenomenon, then the relationship between experience and material is the connection between the skeleton and the physical body. Chain connection is pure reasoning, withered and scrawny, and only by adding the physical body can it show its exuberant vitality. That is to say, only when experience is explained, described and demonstrated through materials and phenomena, will it be more sufficient, more persuasive and more exactly what it is. Without the proof of materials and phenomena, the presentation of experience will not be so strong and powerful, so naturally, it is more likely to be specious. When the material does not have the experience to which it is attached, it will be at the mercy and tailoring of the above research. Therefore, the real research should be to collect materials on the basis of experience, so that the experience is true and the materials are reliable. In this way, empirical research is not only the arrangement of materials, but also a step of demonstrating experience. Only the study of material arrangement is not an empirical study.

3. Experience is not a policy, and empirical research is not countermeasure analysis. Policy refers to a series of governance measures issued by the party and government, as well as their political and social consequences. Countermeasure analysis is to analyze some problems in the process of policy formulation and implementation, and put forward perfect countermeasures. the general writing is composed of performance, problems, consequences and countermeasures. Another situation of countermeasure analysis is the research mode of "I note the six classics" that exists within the discipline of "scientific socialism", that is, to demonstrate the rationality of the major policies and measures issued by the party and the state. Countermeasure analytical research is generally considered to be not academic, without intellectual challenge, lack of profundity, and has no contribution to theory. This kind of research is done by the policy research departments of the party and the government, and if scholars also devote themselves to it, they will be disdainful. Some people think that the Huazhong Township School pays too much attention to the rural policy, so it is regarded as policy research and despised.