摘要
本文试以共同体的视角重新分析费孝通的《乡土中国》。乡土社会是以土地与人之间形成的象征关系为基础的共同体。在封建国家崩解之后,地方宗族衰落,乡村呈现出共同体的格局。共同体具有相对稳定性的文化,行动不依靠文字可以直接传情达意,以长老统治为权力结构,以礼俗伦理作为秩序的基础。在自我为中心的差序格局的结构中,个人和共同体成为互相嵌入的整体。在迈向现代社会的过程中,共同体自身面临许多绵延与变革的困境。从共同体视角来分析乡土社会有助于理解费孝通先生所提出的其他社会理论和社会建设方案,并加深我们对于乡土共同体的现代化问题的理解。
From the Soil —The Foundations of Chinese Society,published in the 1940's by Fei Xiaotong,is considered an important work for understanding Chinese rural society. Up until today,it is still the foundation for understanding the basic social conditions of pre-modern China. By making a comparison with the theory of Gemeinshchaft by Ferdinand Tnnies,this essay tries to analyze Fei's main social theories and shed light on his thinking about Chinese modernity. According to the theory of Ferdinand Tnnies,Fei defined Chinese rural society as a community in his From the Soil.Tnnies' theories reflect traditional Germanic views with regard to human being's basic state of existence. Gemeinshchaft is the concept of a small scale German community which is considered as not a given,but is one which forms naturally because of human interrelationships. A community has a genuine,enduring life and can be understood as a living organism in its own right. In Tnnies' thinking,this direct mutual affirmation is found in its most intense form in three types of relationships: namely,( 1) that between a mother and her child;( 2) that between a man and a woman as a couple( understood in its natural or biological sense); and( 3) that between those who recognize each other as brothers and sisters. The relationship between mother and child is the one most deeply rooted in pure instinct and pleasure,and at the same time reflects the subtle shift from a physical to a purely spiritual relationship.For Fei,to people in Chinese rural society,soil is a metaphor for mother: land and people creates a symbolic relationship just like that between a mother and her children. He calls this the xiangtu( rural) community. The xiangtu commuity bond is based on soil and men,rather than directly on a relationship of person to person. This notion of the xiangtu community is derived from the theory of Tnnies. In Fei's view,there are two types of societies: In the words of the German sociologist Ferdinand Tnnies,the first type is called Gemeinschaft and the second Gesellschaft. To the French sociologist Emile Durkheim,the first is an example of mechanical solidarity and the second an example of organic solidarity. Using our own terms, we would identify the first type of society as one based on ritual and customs( li and su),and the second as one based on law and reason( fa and li). The relationship between first type of society as one based on ritual and customs( li and su) and Gemeinshchaft is expressed clearly. The xiangtu community is a consanguineous community which is based on the virtual kinship between land and man. A tie to a specific place( diyuan),or region,is no more than a projection of consanguinity and cannot be separated from it. 'Being born and dying in the same place 'fixes the relationship between place and people. Therefore,birth,that is ones bloodline,determines ones ties to a location. The xiangtu community, is more closed, and mobility is low,so geography and blood is often one and thesame. In sum,the notion,xiangtu community,in borrowing from the theory of Gemeinshcaft,refers to the concept of village community which has not yet turned into civil society. Symbolically,the relationship of land and man is the same as what the relationship of the mother is to her son in Chinese rural society.The concept of the xiangtu community is a definition of an ideal,and what it connotes cannot be extended to cover entire China. Instead,it is restricted to a certain time and space. Historically,the stage of community appeared after the collapse of the Chinese feudal system,and maintained stability before the development of the Bao-jia system. Spatially,Chinese traditional society can be divided into two parts. The xiangtu community is one element of local,self-governing groups. Before the disintegration of the feudal system,xiangtu society belonged to class society which revolved around the aristocracy. Xiangtu communities appeared within local self-governing groups after the disintegration of the feudal state. With regard to the basic level administration in China, Fei thought that in the traditional Chinese power structure there were two different layers: on the top was the central government; at the bottom,were the local governing units whose leaders came from the gentry class. The authority of the central government was limited. The central authorities hardly interfered with local affairs which were managed within the community by the gentry. Spatially,the xiangtu community was far away from government authority. The power of the government for a long time lay outside the xiangtu community,and the xiangtu community maintained its own closed space and stability.Xiangtu as a community developed a knowledge system from natural feelings. Fei,affected by Max Weber,was inclined to study Chinese society within the perspective of the Sociology of Knowledge. In From the Soil,in addition to the knowledge system formed by the educated gentry,Fei actually mentions the system of knowledge which was based on the natural affection between the land and the people,and how this knowledge system influenced the internal order of the community.Farmers in the rural areas of China live on the'mother-like'land,and within the constant living on and working the land,they obtain a natural knowledge system from the land. Based upon the constant familiarity of local nature,an easy cognition of plants and animals exists. Due to slow social changes,relatively stable characteristics were maintained,and people in rural China were cultivated by a set of traditional knowledge which included customs,morality,and experience accumulated from generation to generation.The xiangtu community takes the village as its unit,and a Chinese village often consists of several extended families. The Chinese family is a persistent corporate group on account of its symbolic consanguinity with the land. The principal axis is the vertical relationship between father and his son,and because of this,the extended family can be expanded to clan. The structure of a clan includes family communities of which fertility is the foundation of its existence. The extended family is a combination of kinship and 'neighborship'. When the extended family is expanded to clan associations,they will possess not only fertility,but political,economic,religious and other functions. Different from the core family found in the West,human emotions can be obstacles in Chinese extended families. In order to maintain stability,human emotions are limited; there are only differences between men and women,and order between the elders and the younger are emphasized.The xiangtu Community depends on li and su( Rules of Ritual and Custom) to maintain order.This kind of order is not the result of government management by laws,but by the rules of behavior accumulated over the generations and which constitute the entirety of order. The concept of li is not imposed by outside powers,but derives from a reverent sense of self cultivation. People living together constantly are 'cultivated'to know the knowl-第七卷edge of li and su. It comes from feelings of intimacy. These feelings occur over time and in many ways when there is regular contact. When a variety of legal conflicts appear in the community, the concepts of of li and su and morality are the regulating principles. The ideal state ordered by the principles of li and su is one in which everyone obeys rules,and there is no need for supervision by outsiders. The symbolic system between people and lands cause the inherent kinship system. The knowledge of the xiangtu community increases with age. The older a man is,the greater his authority.This is because authority is based on knowledge.Thus,the xiangtu community tends to promote rule by elder males.Chinese rural people often are seen as selfish and immoral. Fei's idea of 'chaxu geju '( System of hierarchy) is a response to this opinion. Chaxu geju is a metaphor which compares the relationships among the members of the xiangtu community with the ripples formed from a stone thrown into a lake. The stone is the individual at the center,and as each circle spreads out from the center,the center becomes more distant,and at the same time more insignificant. With this pattern,we are also faced with the basic characteristic of Chinese social structure. The significance of of chaxu geju is that each person is part of a web of relationships. The ripple-like metaphor expresses the relationship in which individuals and communities become integral to each other. The individual is not a ripple but the entire result of the ripple. Chaxu geju depicts the horizontal relationships within the community,of which the hierarchical structure is an inherent factor. The concept and metaphor of the 'ripple'was inspired by Pan Guangdan.The background of this monograph is the time when Chinese social structure had been rapidly changing for nearly a hundred years. Before the Opium War,the xiangtu community could be regarded as a closed,autonomous community,but after the modern world began to enter China,the bottom rung of the Chinese society began to exit the community. When the community wanted to move towards civil society,a wide range of problems continuously emerged during the transformation.The rural construction movement wanted to change the 'stupid 'nature of the people in the countryside through literacy,but this failed. However,in the eyes of Mr. Fei,the key to this problem was not changing the human nature of people in the countryside,but changing the condition of the community,and realizing its modernization.The traditional power structure in the xiangtu community was knowledge held by the elders, but when that knowledge is not renewed, the local power structure and ritual order would be in danger. The elders in the community used to regulate various legal conflicts,aiming to maintain the protection of traditional customs,and in this way the order of the community was maintained by everyone. When social changes happened,these changes accelerated the process of the break down of the closed nature of the countryside, and, the modern judicial system in the countryside developed special secondary effects. It undermined the original order maintained through ritual,but did not effectively establish the rule of a new,reasonable order. The families were falling apart, and their function as a corporate group was disappearing,but they had not yet fully disintegrated.People's needs could no longer be met via the internal gifts of relatives,and at the same time,the blood status hindered the development of business.People could only turn to people outside the community to develop business. On the one hand,the warmth of the community was lost; on the other hand,it hindered the development of trade.In order to deal better with this difficult turn in the community and society,Fei holds some suggestions from Liang Shuming's uncovering a scheme from traditional Chinese documents. The process of change from the Gemeishcaft to Gesellshcaft in his view is universal and comparable in human society,so,he supports constantly looking for the blueprints of modernity within the comparison of variouskinds of social changes and ways of thinking,especially between China and Europe. The point of the disintegration of the feudal system in Europe,and that of China at the time of the Opium War are the same that in both we see the breakdown of community. Combing Tonnies' and Richard Henry Tony's thinking,Fei puts forward his own scheme for modernity.Fei believes that there is a need for 'Culture Heroes',like with Martin Luther's overall ideological shift. In the rapid social transformation of China,Culture Heroes would stand up to guide the rate of change,to create or advocate suitable systems of knowledge,and to keep community morality and warmth.
出处
《民族学刊》
2016年第4期47-55,113-116,共13页
Journal of Ethnology
