مطالعه ابر پروژه از دیدگاه تئوری تعارض اجتماعی

Extensive studies show that mega project has close connections with globalization and civilization, but little articles make social logical analyses of mega project. Traditional conflict management lays stress on projects leading to conflicts while neglecting the fact that conflict can also result in mega project in a social context. This paper studies the relationship between mega project and social conflict by exploring mega project from the perspective of the social conflict theory, and develops a conceptual model of mega project, which includes three propositions: (1) mega project is the outcome of social conflict; (2) it functions as a safety valve in society; and (3) it has close relationships with the level of political centralization and economic development. At the end, this paper puts forward some suggestions about the construction of mega project.

In recent years, the research of mega projects or civil mega projects has become the central issue in the international project circle. People have never paid so much attention to mega projects as in the contemporary era, and the construction density of mega project also hit the highest point in history, which owned firstly to the flowing of multinational organizations and global financial capital (Zhao, 2006), secondly to the improvement and spread of engineering technology, and thirdly to the globalization of culture and intellectual elites (Olds, 2001). Especially after the 1990s, with the increasing fierce competition in the tide of globalization, many countries take mega project as an important tool to lift the status in global political and economic systems. Not only are the rising industrialized countries like China and India fond of mega project, but also the traditional industrialized countries like Britain and French are willing to construct mega projects to realize the revival of cities' industry, function and image. So as it can be seen, the research of mega project has reached a new stage in the context of globalization (Zhang et al., 2009). However, the study of mega project can't catch up with its pace of development. Although many experts produced fruitful literatures about mega projects, there are still a lot of puzzles on front of people: many countries know that the costs of mega projects are always over the budget and that the construction times are often delayed, but they are still keen to work on it even with deficit, which seems to contradict with the principle of profit maximization. Why do some mega projects appear very reasonable and operable in the stage of feasibility study, while in practice it faces a lot of difficulties, and even the decision makers may change its original plan under pressures, just like the construction of Narita Airport in Japan? Why can a mega project cause a lot of disputes, although it has been finished for a long time like the Three Gorges Dam in China? To answer these questions, people should not only consider single factors just like economic effect, political effect or cultural effect, instead, a comprehensive point of view is needed to study a mega project, so that they can fully understand the essential attributes of a mega project and thus to effectively guide the construction of a mega project. In fact, besides its inherent project property, mega projects also bear social attributes, which is the dominant feature in social context. Mega projects and social conflicts positively interact with each other, a mega project may cause social conflict while it is also regarded to be an effective way to solve social conflict. The interaction between a mega project and social conflict influences politics, economics, environment, regulate and other aspects of society, eventually pushing the society to move on. With these considerations, this article tries to research mega projects with perspective of sociology by picking the social conflict theory as the method to reveal some properties of mega projects which are not noticed before. This paper begins by introducing the research status quo of a mega project and sociology, especially mentioning the social conflict theory. Next, it gives mega project an interpretation in sociological sense to explain the relationship between a mega project and the social conflict theory. Based on above analyses, this article puts forward three sociological propositions about mega projects, and each of the propositions will be clearly illustrated or explained with empirical method. Combining the three propositions, this article develops a conceptual model of mega project in the perspective of social conflict theory. At last, this paper gives some suggestions about the constructions of mega projects.

Mega project has been the hot pursuit of many cities and areas with its glorious appearance and versatility. As thereare flowing of global finances, technologies and talents, more and more mega projects are being constructed around the world, and this trend will definitely keep for a long time. At this background, the researches of mega projects also become more and more popular. Some scholars study the micro factors like technologies and investments, more experts connect mega projects to society, economics and environment and other macro factors. Once being put at the background of the entire society, the range of study for mega projects is vigorously widened, and maybe that's the reason why there are various studies of mega projects. This article takes the advantage of sociology to discuss mega projects from the perspective of the conflict theory, proposes a conceptual model of a mega project and gives 3 propositions: (1) a mega project is the outcome of social conflict; (2) it functions as a safety valve in society; (3) it has close relationships with the level of political centralization and economic development. Based on the analyses and the model, this article gives 3 suggestions on the construction of a mega project: (1) consider the “second important factor” before the construction of the mega project; (2) the decision making, construction and maintenance of mega project should be considered from the perspective of life circle; (3) the construction of mega project can be summed up and improved with the discipline of failure science. The purpose of this article is to help people have a more comprehensive knowledge of mega projects, and take notice of the future constructions of mega projects. There also exist some limitations in this paper. The paper uses a method of generalization and induction, lacking quantitative analysis. The conclusions in two tables are subjective without enough persuasive arguments. The concept model of mega project is abstract and can't be used into practice. Other problems existing in this paper also need improved. Sociology is an interesting discipline, and using it to explore project can gain useful conclusion. In the future, more works can be done around the model this paper proposed, including clarifying which kind of social conflict can lead to a mega project, with which mechanism mega projects and social conflicts interact with each other, etc.