社會演化與人群分類：族群做為語意

本文嘗試由系統理論的概念解釋族群現象的一些議題，其基本的假設在於，社會的構成原則不同，則人群分類原則也就不同。以功能分化為構成原則的現代社會中，常用的人群分類（階級、民族、種族，當然也包含族群）只是做為語意，並非人群本質上的差異。而人群語意的功能，是把具有某些特性的群體概念帶入溝通，達到歸因和期望的效果。族群出現與否，取決於觀察時所採用的區別，是偶連的。而族群語意的內涵，牽涉功能系統的「涵括／排除」條件，以及符碼的「正值／負值」分配機會，此二者與現代社會的不平等議題相關。族群正是指出在社會中處於相對不平等狀態的人群語意，並藉由自我描述賦予這「一群人」特性。

關鍵字

系統理論；自我生產；自我指涉；二階觀察；社會演化；族群性；族群語意

並列摘要

This essay tries to explain some ethnic phenomena with concepts of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. The theoretical assumption is that the categorization principles of human groups transform with the fundamental structures of societies. In modern society, which is constructed on the basis of functional differentiation, the classification types, including class, nation, race, and ethnic group, merely refer to semantics instead of a way to categorize the actual people essentially. That is, in this classification, the characters of specific groups are involved in the process of communication. The emergence of ethnicity is contingent on the distinction adopted by the observer. Moreover, the ethnic semantics is related to the inequality issues in modern society, which can be observed on two levels. The first level of inequality is concerned with the inclusion/exclusion conditions of access to communications in functional systems. The second level of inequality is related to the probability of positive value/negative value in the self-observation of systems. Ethnicity is therefore a group-semantics which describes the formation and the character of a group of people treated unequally in the society, and the group character given by self-description in the communications.