China Social Science Review

No.2, 2024

 

Sociology for the Digital Society: Understanding, Reflecting, and Engaging

(Abstract)

 

Zhao Wanli

 

A digital society is a product of the interaction between contemporary science and technology and society, and a reconstruction of human society based on emerging digital technologies. Understanding the formation mechanisms of a digital society requires recognition of both the technological logic of scientific advancement and the institutional logic of capitalist globalization, as well as understanding how these logics are interwoven and layered. Within the ideology that dominates the development of Western digital societies, digital capitalism attempts to embed digital technologies within the capitalist system, using technological innovation to expand and multiply capital. This approach fails to resolve issues of technological discipline, capital exploitation, and labor alienation inherent in capitalism, and gives rise to various new problems associated with digital modes of production and lifestyles. Deep involvement in the rapid development of the digital era and China’s digital society, participating in the construction of a digitally modern Chinese civilization and a digital social governance system, and promoting the coordinated development of science, technology, and society in the digital age represent new opportunities and topics for the development of sociology in China.