時間生態學：時間社會學的新研究概念建立之嘗試

Ecology of Time: An Outline of A New Concept of Time-Sociology

「時間」無疑是社會學當中相當重要的研究範疇。然而，時間社會學在發展過程當中始終存在著一個問題：理論研究與經驗研究之間的斷裂。社會學的時間理論往往太過抽象，既無助於開創經驗研究範疇、也難以透過經驗研究加以檢視。在經驗研究方面，社會學的時間研究也始終缺乏一個適當而紮實的理論基礎，因此研究常僅是描述性的，無法給予批判性的分析。有鑑於此，本文旨在發展一個導向經驗研究的時間理論。本文首先將從社會學的基本概念出發，重新將時間界定為一種透過對諸行動者的社會行動加以協調，使行動者彼此的互動能依其意向在需要的時間點得以發生的參照機制。藉此定義，時間便可視作一種能透過經驗觀察加以研究的社會事實。接著，本文嘗試援引生態學的觀點，提出「時間生態學」此一概念，強調時間在根本上牽涉到行動者彼此之間行動協調的公平性問題，因此人們需要一個公平的社會環境，讓當中的行動者可以互惠地滿足自己的時間需求。而時間生態學的研究任務，即在於透過對時間的經驗觀察，進行批判性的分析。最後，本文試圖奠基在時間生態學的構想上，進一步建立一個時間生態模式，以作為時間社會學未來可能的經驗研究框架。

Time is admittedly one of the most important topics worth discussing in sociology. However, the gulf between the social theories of time and the empirical researches in time is a significant problem which has hindered the progress of the sociology of time for long. The theories of time are often too esoteric to contribute to empirical research or to be inspected by empirical research. The sociological empirical researches on time are therefore short of theoretical foundations all the while, so that their achievements can only give descriptions instead of critical analyses. In view of this deficiency in time-sociology, the purpose of this paper is to outline an “ecology of time” to joint the theoretical dimension of the social studies of time and the dimension of the empirical time research of sociology. The idea of the ecology of time emphasizes that time can be construed as a referential mechanism that enables social interactions to occur at a required time point by coordinating the social actions of different agents. For this reason, time is concerned with the fairness of the coordination between the social actions of different agents. The task of the ecology of time is to investigate the facts of the temporal coordination between social actions of different agents empirically and critically. Finally, this paper will also attempt to build a time-ecological model as a possible frame of the subsequent empirical time research of sociology.