我國「公民社會」的學術研究圖像：期刊文章的內容分析初探

The Profile of Taiwan's 'Civil Society' in Academic Research: A Preliminary Study with Content Analysis of Journal Articles

「公民社會」（civil society），是一個看似簡單卻又難以界定的抽象概念，基本上，社會學、政治學、公共行政學、經濟學、乃至於哲學等學門，雖然對於此一概念各有不同的定義與詮釋，卻常被用以描述和解釋國家、社會、組織及個人之間錯綜複雜的關係。我國歷經1970年代的經濟發展起飛及1980年代後期推動的民主改革，激發了公民的活力，進一步促進公民社會的發展；而1990年代資訊科技發展與21世紀網際網路的普及化，不僅改變了人類的生活型態，公民社會內涵的探究也從「實體社會」延伸到「虛擬社會」。
在此一發展脈絡下，我國學術界長期以來是如何對公民社會進行研究或討論？在不同的政治與社會發展時期，我國公民社會的圖像有何特徵？在學術社群中所呈現的樣貌為何？這些問題迄今似乎仍尚未受到關注與析探，這也是本研究的初始動機。基此，本研究除了透過文獻分析梳理公民社會的概念內涵與理論觀點外，並針對臺灣在1987年至2020年間與「公民社會」相關的期刊文章內容進行文字探勘分析，初步呈現我國公民社會研究的多樣性和豐富性，期能對解釋我國公民社會發展的理論建構有所裨益。

“Civil society”is an abstract concept that seems simple but difficult to define. Basically, it is a combination of sociology, political science, public administration, economics and even philosophy. Although there are different definition and interpretation of this concept, it is often used to describe and explain the intricate relationships between nations, societies, organizations, and individuals. After Taiwan underwent economic development in the 1970s and democratic reforms in the late 1980s, the vitality of its citizens were stimulated and this further promoted the development of civil society. However, the development of information technology in the 1990s and the popularization of the Internet in the 21st century have changed human society, Now the exploration of the connotation of civil society also extends from the 'physical society' to the 'virtual society'.
Under this developmental context, how have Taiwan's academic communities conducted research or discussions on civil society for this long periods of time? In different periods of political and social development, what were the characteristics of the profile of Taiwan's civil society? What did it look like in the academic community? These issues seem to have not received attention and analysis so far. Based on this motivation, in addition to sorting out the conceptual connotation and theoretical viewpoints of civil society through literature review, this research also conducts text mining on the contents of journal articles related to 'civil society' in Taiwan from 1987 to 2020. Our preliminarily results presents the diversity and richness of Taiwan's civil society. The resultsof this research is expected to be beneficial to the theoretical construction of explaining the development of civil society in Taiwan.