A Sociological Study on the 'Affluent Society'

本研究的目的是澄清拥有和使用在工业化社会中日常生活中必不可少的许多商品和事物的含义。因此，本研究主要围绕以下几个基本问题展开。(1)在发达的工业社会中，商品对人们的意义是什么？我们所说的“富裕”社会的特征是什么，因为物质和商品的丰富？(2)人与物之间产生了怎样的关系？这是一种双重关系。我们观察到事物是可以人性化的。从机器人的例子中可以看出，但是，另一方面，人类可能被当作物品或可能像奴隶一样被对待（物对待人类）。(3)社会结构如何随着商品的溢出而变化？因为不同的经济发展和工业增长。在文化落后和社会分层方面，所谓的富国和穷国之间出现了相当大的分歧。(4)这个特定的主题需要什么样的社会学方法？必须对不同层次的研究加以区分。(a)行动理论适用于微观层面。(b)有关商品的生产、分配和消费的关系可以在中间层次加以描述，为此可以援引组织和社区理论。(c)宏观一级涉及国家和国际一级的关系，为此我们需要一种国家和国际关系理论。(5)另一条不同的研究路线涉及技术和价值的社会学问题。技术是商品生产和分配的基本要素，而价值在事物的意义和评价中起着不可或缺的作用。

The aim of this study is to clarify what it means to possess and to use the many goods and things that have become necessary in daily life in industrialized societies. The present study, then, centers on the following basic questions. (1) What is the significance of goods for the people of advanced industrialized societies. And what are the characteristics of such societies that we say to be "affluent", because of the abundance of things and goods? (2) What kind of relationships arise between goods and people? There is a double relationship. We observe that things can be humanized (humanization of things). As can be seen in the case of robots, but, on the other hand, human beings may be treated as things or possibly like slaves (thing-treatment of human beings). (3) How does the structure of a society change in connection with the overflow of goods? Because of different economic development and industrial growth. A considerable divergence arises between so called affluent and poor nations in terms of cultural lag and social stratification. (4) What kind of sociological approaches are necessitated by this specific subject matter? A distinction has to be made between various levels of research. (a) There is the micro-level to which action theory applies. (b) Relations concerning production, distribution and consumption of goods can be described at a middle level, for which the theory of organization and communities can be invoked. (c) The macro-level concerns the relations at the national and international level, for which we need a theory of the nation and of international relations. (5) A still different line of inquiry concerns the sociological problems of technology and values. Technology is the basic factor behind production and distribution of goods while values play an indispensable role in the signification and evaluation of things.