Used Book: *The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order* [90% New]

【Editor's Recommendations】
★ Edited by Liang Wendao, Liu Yu, Xiong Peiyun, and Xu Zhiyuan – one of the "Ideal Mirror Series" (010) – maintain an open mind and a non-utilitarian perspective to appreciate the richness and complexity of the world. This book features a special introductory essay by Liu Yu titled "The Crisis of the West?". ★ "The Great Disruption" is a work that is not only important but also ambitious. It attempts to build a bridge between conservatives and liberals, thereby injecting vitality into stale and stylized debates and making discussions more grounded in reality. —Virginia Postrel, renowned American political writer ★ Where there is freedom, there is usually a way out of social crises, because freedom allows and encourages trial and error and correction, thus avoiding stagnation. In this sense, the "decline of the West" arguments made by Westerners every now and then, rather than being a gloating "doom-mongering," are more akin to a warning bell from a position of security. Fukuyama's "The Great Disruption" is no different. —Liu Yu (Department of Political Science, Tsinghua University)

【Content Introduction】
"The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order" Since the mid-20th century, major Western developed countries have successively entered the so-called post-industrial era. During this period, technological progress, centered on information technology, brought significant changes to the traditional operating models and organizational methods of the economy and society. Existing social norms and cultural values were also severely impacted. This was universally manifested in developed Western capitalist societies by a substantial decline in crime rates, divorce rates, and out-of-wedlock birth rates, as well as a noticeable decrease in social trust. Fukuyama summarizes this deterioration of indicators related to "social capital" as the "Great Disruption." What caused the Great Disruption in developed societies? Is this an unavoidable destiny for the transformation of capitalist societies? And how did they emerge from the Great Disruption? This book explores these questions. In Fukuyama's view, although the continuous expansion of individualism in capitalist societies has led to varying degrees of dissolution of traditional authority and social norms, reciprocal altruistic cooperation, spontaneously generated from individual rationality and competitive relationships, remains the cornerstone for forming various forms of social connections and social capital. Under new technological conditions, the flattening of social organizational structures has promoted the rise of social networks, making social capital even more important for building social order, but hierarchy still retains an irreplaceable role. Fukuyama believes that even in the face of significant technological, economic, and social transformations, social order will always emerge from both existing hierarchies and spontaneous sources. The Great Disruption is inevitable, but the reconstruction of social norms is always to be expected. He cites several pieces of evidence, such as the gradual fading of the chaos of the Great Disruption in developed capitalist societies after the 1990s and the renewed accumulation of social capital, to support this conclusion. In this book, Fukuyama, as always, expresses confidence in capitalist society and its institutions. He believes that the current post-industrial capitalist economy will generate a continuous demand for social capital, and in the long run, it also has the ability to provide a sufficient amount of social capital to meet its needs. He even expresses optimism that technological development can help humanity achieve the wholeness of human life. The historical cyclicality manifested in the social and moral spheres needs to be, and ultimately will be, overcome by humanity's strong capacity to reconstruct social order itself.

About the Author
Francis Fukuyama, a Japanese-American scholar, holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He previously taught at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and served as Deputy Director of the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Staff and a researcher at the RAND Corporation. His works include "The End of History and the Last Man," "Trust," "America at the Crossroads," and "The Origins of Political Order." He currently resides in California.
Tang Lei, Associate Research Fellow at the Center for International China Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an expert member of the Translators Association of China. His main research areas are the sociology of knowledge and overseas China studies.