Author: Song Xueqin, Yang Zongru
Source: Historical Review, No. 5, 2021
To achieve innovative development in the study of Chinese social history, it is necessary to overcome the tendency of "fragmentation", scientifically apply Marxist methodology, draw on the problem awareness of "overall history", and open up the boundaries between political history and social history research, so as to better return to the "big history" pursuit and "overall history" goal of social history revival since the new period.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his congratulatory letter to the establishment of the China Historical Research Institute: "Contemporary China is the continuation and development of historical China. To uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, it is all the more necessary to systematically study Chinese history and culture, and it is even more necessary to profoundly grasp the historical law of human development, draw wisdom from in-depth thinking about history, and move toward the future. The new era has put forward new requirements for the study of Chinese social history, but academic practice in recent years has shown that the problem of "fragmentation" that lacks overall observation is still one of the prominent problems hindering the further deepening of Chinese social history research. At present, the study of Chinese social history should provide historical reference and theoretical support for the smooth development of social construction in the new era under the premise of adhering to the goal of "overall history".
"Fragmentation" restricts research and development
Since the 1980s, the study of Chinese social history has made great progress, which has played an important role in promoting the overall prosperity of historical research and helping society to flourish. However, there are also some problems in social history research that deserve in-depth discussion and reflection, the most serious of which is the problem of "fragmentation". Therefore, theoretically understanding and clarifying the problem of "fragmentation" is of great significance to the further development of Social History Research in China.
Since the reform and opening up, the emergence of the problem of "fragmentation" in Chinese social history research is to some extent related to the regional shift in Chinese social history research under the influence of the "China-centered view". In the 1980s, the American historian Paul A. Cohen put forward the research orientation of "China-centered" on the basis of criticizing the Western-centered "shock-response" model and the "traditional-modern" model. In terms of research methods, he advocates the "horizontal" decomposition of China into multi-level regions from large to small to carry out regional historical research; the "vertical" decomposition of Chinese society into a number of different classes, and the promotion of the writing of lower social history (including folk and non-folk history). This paradigm has played a greater role in promoting the transformation of Chinese social history research from "overall social history" to "regional social history" in the same period, and all topics such as marriage and funeral, food, clothing, housing, education, medical care, rural etiquette, party bandits, and homeless thieves in a region have entered the researcher's field of vision. Macroscopic research is gradually declining, microscopic research is becoming more and more prosperous, and research is constantly refined, which has become a significant trend in the study of Chinese social history since the new era. However, at the same time, some problems have also been exposed, and the prominent point is that most regional history research results talk about historical materials on historical materials, and the research horizon is limited, and rarely consider the temporal and spatial background and complex factors of specific historical materials, and do not explore the internal logic of the changes of "small societies". As a result, the problem of "fragmentation" of research is widespread, which has aroused widespread concern and discussion in the academic community.
Putting the spatial dimension in the primary position of the research horizon is a significant feature of social history research, and it is also the basic concept or basic attitude followed by existing social history research. In the field of modern and contemporary Chinese social history research, the trend of localization or regionalization of vision is becoming more and more obvious, and it has almost become the mainstream paradigm. This orientation of regional history research through the excavation of local materials will carry higher academic value because it reflects on a "national" process based on the complexity and particularity of local experience. However, the regional orientation of social history research has also brought negative effects while enriching or deepening the original historical understanding. It has been argued that the "fragmentation" in social history research is largely due to regional case studies. It is true that the current social history research does have problems such as regional dialect areas, "only seeing trees but not forests", but regional social history research does not necessarily bring "fragmentation". The classic treatises on regional social history research at home and abroad have fully proved this point. This type of classical research derives theoretical insights based on regional case studies and does not fall into the trap of "fragmentation" due to the regionalization of research subjects. On the contrary, it is precisely from the specific region that we start from the specific region, see the big from the small, and extract concepts and theories of universal significance, which sets an example for the study of regional social history.
The problem of "fragmentation" is prominently manifested in the study of Chinese social history as the absence of "thought". The so-called "thought" is not a general knowledge reserve or theoretical cultivation, but a specific reflective ability and academic self-awareness. Researchers who go to the region must consciously find meaning and problems in local historical materials. However, it is not difficult to review the existing social history research results to find that many regional history studies are addicted to the accumulation of local historical materials and the description of "local knowledge", and lack analysis and theoretical abstraction of the meaning that various social phenomena can express and the inherent mechanisms of social change they contain. That is to say, the significant increase in the number of studies has not brought about a substantial breakthrough in historical understanding and theoretical construction, and the phenomenon of "academic involution" in the field of social history research has become more prominent.
It is particularly noteworthy that in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese social history, many researchers often choose their hometown as an observation window or field investigation object based on the convenience of obtaining archival materials, and conduct microscopic research by excavating archival historical materials in a place to prove the implementation of a certain national policy in the locality. Although this is a relatively convenient research method, the problem is that some of the research results are not based on the particularity of local experience, revealing the complexity and diversity of systems or policies in the implementation process, and no new historical understanding has been drawn, regional history research is simply described as a projection of national research, and researchers "know more and more things in a smaller and smaller scope, and eventually disappear without a trace in the ocean of facts."
"General History": The Original Intention of the Rise of Social History Research
As far as the laws of academic evolution are concerned, the rise and development of new historiography in the 20th century is, to some extent, the replacement of political history by social history. As a new paradigm of historiography, social history is more manifested as a "new attitude" and "new method" towards history. Understanding social history at this level is also a lack of comprehensiveness in the traditional historical field of view, which requires theoretical changes and responses to the demand of expanding the field and content. Early researchers of social history achieved the purpose of studying "general history" by rediscovering the value of those "scraps" and exploring "marginal" issues obscured by previous political history. As a concept as opposed to "fragmentation", the "general history" in the study of social history is intended to emphasize the logical connection between regional history and the macroscopic, overall socio-historical process. Judging from the development process of social history research in the East and the West, "general history" is a common original intention.
From the perspective of the development of European and American historiography, the rise of social history stems from the challenge of the Ranke school to make politics the main object of historical research. It is on the basis of criticizing and breaking the monopoly of political history that Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, the founders of the French school of annals, advocate the inclusion of economic, social, cultural and other contents in historical research, and draw on social science theories and methods to construct a "more comprehensive and closer human history", a history covering all human activities. Jacques Le Goff, the third representative of the school, elaborated on the totality of social history: "The history demanded here is not only political, military, and diplomatic history, but also economic, demographic, technological, and customary history; not only the history of kings and great men, but also the history of all people; this is the history of structure, not just the history of events; this is the history of evolving, transformative movements, not stagnation, descriptive history." There is an analytical, illustrated history, not a purely narrative history; in short, a general history. ”
The almanac has greatly expanded the scope of historical research by the annals of "general history", and more and more research has begun to pay attention to events outside the chronology such as "The Touch of the King", to the society of non-Western peoples, and to the history of medical and health care. Although the topics are broad and diverse, even trivial, there is a common concern behind them: to focus on historical factors outside the political "center" in pursuit of a comprehensive reflection and complete understanding of human history. Therefore, no matter how social history research goes to the "margins", the core motivation is a "general history" appeal.
Establishing a comprehensive overall history is also the goal and pursuit of Chinese social history research. In the mid-1980s, in its reflection on the "crisis of historiography", Chinese historians proposed that the narrow content and monotonous style formed by Chinese historical research over the years should be changed, and the study of the history of social life should be revived and strengthened, "returning the content of history to history". In this context, social history has received widespread attention from the academic community and has quickly become a very important research direction. As one of the earliest advocates of Chinese social history research, Feng Erkang proposed to carry out social history research in order to expand the field of historical research, restore the integrity of historical research objects, give history flesh and blood exposition, and use this as a breakthrough point in the development of history.
In October 1986, the editorial department of Historical Research, together with the Department of History of Nankai University, held the first national seminar on Chinese social history, and published a commentator's article "Returning the Content of History to History" in the first issue of the following year, calling on the historians to "expand their horizons, revive and strengthen the research on the development of social life", thus effectively promoting the rise and development of social history research in China
Although in the subsequent exploration of social history theory, the academic community has diverged in the understanding of the definition of social history, such as "monograph history theory", "general history theory", "paradigm theory" and "perspective theory", the general consensus is that totality is an important feature that distinguishes social history from other forms of historical research, and social history research should implement the overall consciousness. Relying on the emphasis on the perspective of "bottom-up" and the purpose of "overall history", the study of Chinese social history is supported by diverse historical materials and all-round research horizons, re-examining the research fields of political history, economic history, cultural history, and intellectual history, and promoting the in-depth development of political and social history, social and economic history, social and cultural history, and social and ideological history, so that Chinese history can build a relatively complete theoretical framework and knowledge system.
Return to "Big History" and "General History"
In traditional historical research, politics is often "center" and society is "marginal"; central is "center" and local is "marginal"; the upper level is "center" and the lower layer is "marginal"; macro trends are "center", while thematic and regional topics are "marginal". Under the slogan of "looking down" and paying attention to the people, social history research emphasizes the history of marginal groups in historical periods, that is, the history of the lower classes, the history of the margins, and the history of minorities. It is obvious that the upper and lower are relative, the center and the periphery are interdependent, and isolated research lacks attention to the interrelationship between each other and with society as a whole, which can easily lead to fragmentation of research. To achieve innovative development in the study of Chinese social history, it is necessary to overcome the tendency of "fragmentation", scientifically apply Marxist methodology, draw on the problem awareness of "overall history", and open up the boundaries between political history and social history research, so as to better return to the "big history" pursuit and "overall history" goal of social history revival since the new period.
The first is to scientifically apply Marxist methodology. In the current research on Chinese social history, taking regional units such as villages, townships, and counties as research units or research cases has almost become the mainstream paradigm. However, from the perspective of academic practice, the limitations of this paradigm are also very obvious, which is highlighted by the lack of organic interaction between micro-empirical evidence and macro-abstraction by researchers, and the loss of universal explanatory power due to the particularity of individual cases. It is in this respect that Marxist methodology has direct theoretical enlightenment for transcending the limitations of microscopic case studies.
Whether they study the entire history of human society or its components, Marxist classic writers place special emphasis on starting from the object of study as a whole, focusing on the interaction between the object of study and its components, and combining the part and the whole to explore the understanding of regularity. Therefore, Marxism emphasizes the simultaneous examination of history from two different dimensions, macro and micro, and pays attention to the integrated relationship between the two dimensions. Its profound enlightenment lies in the fact that only by examining the historical process from the perspective of micro-macro interaction can we better understand history. The application of dialectical thinking and scientific methods of Marxist historiography to the study of Chinese social history will undoubtedly help researchers overcome the bias of case studies and realize the benign interaction between micro-empirical evidence and theoretical abstraction.
The second is to reasonably learn from and absorb the awareness of the problem of "overall history". There are different views in the academic community on the relationship between case studies and "general history" in social history research. Some people believe that holistic research must first be based on individual case studies, and thus advocate starting from the micro, as much as possible from point to surface, present the historical complexity, and then integrate the fragmented and complex situations to draw a more macroscopic historical judgment. But the question is, can the combination of countless individual cases pile up a complete history? To what extent is it possible?
Fei Xiaotong's reflections on the limits of his "type comparison method" proposed in the study of village communities in his later years illustrate this problem. "The concept of 'type' that I proposed in the 1960s certainly helped me solve the problem of how to understand the large number of rural pairs and different structures of a large country like China," he said. But then I realized that no matter how many types I studied, even all the various types, if all these types were added together, I could not come up with the whole picture of 'Chinese society and culture', because the results of Jiangcun, Lucun, Yicun, Yucun, etc., which I studied, have never gone out of the community at the level of 'rural community'. The whole of 'Chinese culture and society' is not equal to the total number of these many rural areas combined. This understanding has a strong enlightening significance for the study of social history, and it reminds regional history researchers that when choosing a topic, they should consciously pay attention to the relationship between historical phenomena or research topics and the overall process of social change. For the study of Chinese social history, to draw on the problem consciousness of "overall history", it is necessary to pay attention to grasping the social characteristics of each era and the internal relationship between the times, grasping the causes and processes of the occurrence, development and decline of various social ideas, and then exploring the connection between various social phenomena and social development changes, as well as the internal relationship between government policies and the interests of various social classes, and so on.
The third is to break through the boundaries between political history and social history research. Marx pointed out: "All real progress in modern historical writings has been made when historians have gone from the appearance of the political situation to the depths of social life. "Historical developments at home and abroad have repeatedly proved that the interaction between national politics and social life is omnipresent. From the perspective of "bottom-up" social history, the operating mechanism of "politics" can be more deeply understood; using "politics" as a tool to understand social history will also have innovative insights. To put it simply, linking the arrangements of the national political system with specific social life, taking social life as the starting point, and considering the interaction between politics and social environment, social structure, social culture, and social governance is an important way to deepen and improve the study of social history.
"Political and social history are two sides of the same process. If the two are separated, the joy of social life will be lost in half, and the meaning of political movements will be lost in half. "But in the current study of Chinese social history, the separation of political history from social history is still extremely common. Politics has the significance of "overall history" for social history, and the study of "political-social history" should become a feasible path for the study of Chinese social history to achieve innovation. Under the premise of adhering to the materialist view of history, drawing on the theories and methods of political science, sociology and anthropology, and cutting into social life from a broader political phenomenon, we can deepen the study of social history.
Author Affilications:School of Marxism, Chinese Min University