In 1997, Jared Diamond, a professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, published Guns, Germs and Steel. The book quickly became an internationally renowned book and became an enduring bestseller, and many of the big issues it explored, such as the role of geographical factors in the development of civilization, became a long-term focus of debate. Even this year, the popularity of the book after its re-publication has not diminished, and it has been scored more than 9 points on Douban.
In January 2022, CITIC Publishing Group published Jared Diamond's "History of Mankind" series, including classic works such as Guns, Germs and Steel, The World Before Yesterday, Collapse, and Upheaval, which discussed many issues related to human nature, evolution and conquest, environment and society, tradition and modernity, crisis and the future.
In 2020, the dialogue collection "Treat Yourself as a Method" by anthropologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany and writer Wu Qi exploded in a state that surprised the author himself. The words "squire", "small world", "reproduction of people" and other words mentioned by the two in the rambling conversation are not strict academic concepts, but they have the potential to trigger more sociological imagination, thus crossing the barriers of scholarship and causing continuous resonance in the space of public opinion. In the two years since, Xiang Biao has also become the most frequent scholar in public discussion in China.
If Xiang Biao, who became famous for his "Zhejiang Village" research, has an "anthropological imagination", then Diamond, whose research horizon spans natural science, history and sociology, is good at using a "geographical space imagination". Although their disciplinary perspectives are different, they both have a similar global concern, focusing on the historical context behind a particular issue, which may make their work naturally closer to public concerns.
On April 21, Beijing News Book Review Weekly and CITIC Publishing Group invited two authors who have attracted much public attention to be guests in the live broadcast room of Beijing News Book Review Weekly And Cultural Living Room, and launched a dialogue on "Today and Tomorrow of Human Society". Qiu Yu, a researcher of the "100 Talents Program" of Zhejiang University, was specially invited to host the dialogue activities. The exchange between the two scholars, starting from Diamond's motivation for writing, gradually deepened, involving multi-level reflection on the epidemic, globalization, and historical views.
Scan the QR code and watch the live replay.
Starting from the "Aalisque Question": To what extent do geographical factors affect the "mobility" of civilization?
Readers familiar with Guns, Germs, and Steel know that Diamond's book begins with a "Question of Aegis."
In 1972, Diamond met Ari, a New Guinean, while walking on the beach on an island. He asked Diamond a number of questions, one of which became the main motivation for Diamond to write the book: Why, historically, did white people come to New Guinea with material wealth, writing, tools, and governmental organizations, but the natives of New Guinea did not make these things at all?
Although he never saw Yali again, Diamond spent 15 years searching for an answer to this question. In Guns, Germs and Steel, he gives a now-familiar geographically-based explanation. Diamond also uses geographical factors to explain the difference between the development of Chinese and European civilizations - Europe's coastline is tortuous, the islands are fragmented and dotted, and it is easy to develop into independent societies, while China's coastline is smooth and does not have a particularly large peninsula, which is particularly easy to form a collectivist culture.
Jared Diamond.
The "cultural-geographical" interpretation of the "Asian Question" remains a valuable perspective in many of the current issues. Xiang Biao has paid great attention to the issue of "mobility" (especially the mobility of the population) in recent years, and in the dialogue, he said that Diamond's research perspective has greatly inspired him. Diamond has always considered the movement of people (migration and migration) to be an interesting topic, and the book Guns, Germs and Steel also mentions the case of Zheng He's voyage to the West. People in different civilizations often have different immigration impulses, which has a lot to do with geographical factors. Western countries have a very familiar colonial history, and China's population movement also has a very long history. Diamond proposed: "From prehistory to the 15th century before the colonial expansion of Europe, the greatest immigrants were Chinese. "In contrast, Africans have historically been relatively less mobile.
Diamond imaginatively pointed out that this may have something to do with the "island" in the vision of different civilizations. "If you stand in Singapore and look out, you'll see Sumatra. Looking out from Sumatra, you will see Java. And from Java, you can see Lombok. From Lombok, you see Flores Island, from Flores island you see Timor Island, and from Timor Island, although you can't see Australia, you can see the dust cloud of The Australian fire. The presence of the island stimulates shipbuilding and the knowledge that "there is a place to go." In contrast, people living in Africa, South America don't see too many islands.
Xiang Biao also complements this view, with his perspective more focused on the cultural significance of "flow". Xiang Biao believes that when we talk about migration or migration, the "infrastructure" that people rely on to move is also an unavoidable problem, such as China's Silk Road and the trade routes based on the sea in the process of capitalist global expansion. The problem behind this is the "power" behind mobility.
"Mobility is full of struggles between the strong and the domination, and the struggle of the weak for freedom. Throughout history, a very important motivation for people to begin to flow has been to escape from domination and enter a new world. From this point of view, it is also a way of fighting. ”
Xiang Biao also reminds us of the contemporary phenomenon of mobility. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the movement of people is strictly regulated and controlled, and these policies and technical equipment that assist control can be called "non-mobile infrastructure" to systematically suspend and manage people's movement and redistribute social mobility. For example, we have a large number of citizens staying at home and quarantined, while allowing for rapid movement of staff in key positions.
Item soaring.
In the shadow of the epidemic, we are facing a contradiction about globalization
The global COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for more than two years and has profoundly affected our society in political, economic, cultural and other aspects, one of the widely discussed effects is that it has further shaken people's vision of the globalization process.
Xiang Biao mentioned in the dialogue that we are encountering a kind of "contradiction of globalization" in all aspects. On the one hand, at the technical level, the degree of global interconnectedness has reached an unprecedented level, and on the other hand, at the ideological and emotional level, there are deep doubts about globalization in different parts of the world. Finally, at the practical level, whether dealing with COVID-19 or dealing with global climate issues, we are increasingly aware of the urgency of global collaboration. However, this global collaboration is facing serious challenges. Xiang Biao believes that first, trade and exchanges driven by competition and self-interest are increasingly falling into a "dead end", and many production and trade activities will return to the local area under the influence of various factors. Second, many of the existing institutions that help international collaboration are in crisis, making cooperation more difficult.
Diamond also agrees that the COVID-19 pandemic has once again reinforced the consensus that in the face of global problems, we need global solutions and close international cooperation. However, he also pointed out that from a larger perspective, "the new crown epidemic is actually a relatively small problem". "I think the world is still facing a much more serious problem than COVID-19, especially climate change," and this issue may have received relatively less attention.
Diamond mentioned that a very important step to alleviate the global climate crisis is to establish a "fairness" in global resource consumption.
"The way Americans and Europeans consume water, electricity, metal resources and food is unsustainable. At present, the world does not have enough resources for developed countries to continue to consume in this way. However, Americans and Europeans have told Africans and Indians that as long as you work hard, you can have an American way of life. No, that's not possible. Because the world doesn't have enough resources. He believes that if we want the world in 50 years to be a happy future for mankind, we need to create a world where the level of consumption is "more equal" between European and American countries, Asian countries, and African countries.
Xiang Biao also stressed that we need to pay more attention to the role of the "global South" when dealing with such problems. "The modern narrative does present us with a rather distorted picture that everyone should aspire to have the way of life that Europeans or Americans do. But historically, this way of life, built on gunfire and germ colonization, is morally problematic and ecologically unsustainable. Xiang Biao argues that the Global South now wants to provide a new global answer, and this answer actually has its intellectual history (the "Global South" is composed of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and developing countries in Asia. Thinkers such as Gandhi in India, Zhang Taiyan in China, and Takeuchi in Japan have all made in-depth criticisms of Western industrial civilization from different perspectives and have proposed a new imagination that organizes our personal and public lives, and "we can try to restore this tradition."
Is history a science or a moral story?
Many would classify Diamond's writing as "big history" because he sought to explain the macroscopic processes of the occurrence and evolution of human civilization. In the dialogue, the two scholars also talked about each other's views on "history". In Diamond's eyes, history was a science, and he sought to "make history more scientific than the history that historians seek." Diamond believed that history could be seen as the basis of science, that we could see the existence of universal historical lessons.
Diamond cites the example of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides to illustrate this point. Thucydides is generally considered to be the first historian to record the war between Athens and Sparta in the 4th century BC, and in Thucydides the Peloponnesian War that broke out between Athens and Sparta essentially stemmed from a lack of "signals". Neither Athens nor Sparta, as city-states to fight and protect Corinth, made it clear to each other what their "bottom line" lay. The same thing happened in World War I and World War II, when Britain went to war with France, also because Britain did not give a clear "signal". "If you don't signal, the other person will be surprised by your behavior. This is a universal lesson in history. Diamond argues that this lesson of history was told from the time of Thucydides and has since been repeated in different ways throughout millennia of history. It was the universality of this difference that gave him the confidence to develop historical research into science.
Xiang Biao put forward a different view on this. He believes that history cannot be a science in the strict sense, but it is important because history is a human activity, and we cannot be separated from the question of "whose history". "The history of the conquerors and the victors cannot be the history of the victims and the defeated." From this perspective, Xiang Biao believes that history is more like a "moral story", empowering people to understand their position and guide them to act. He argues that we desperately need to give people like Ari a "sense of power" and a richer historical narrative to the world.
The works of both scholars have sparked extensive discussions from all walks of life outside of academia, and how they write is also a concern for many readers. In this regard, Xiang Biao emphasized the problem of writing driving force. "The most important thing is that there must be a desire to communicate when writing." In particular, he mentioned that for young people growing up in Asian countries, it is very important to cultivate this impulse to write, because "we tend to think of writing as a performance that must follow a certain framework, a certain genre, a certain formula, to prove that you have the ability to master a certain writing style, or to write for authority, to get some reward you want."
In view of the current writing environment, Xiang Biao also believes that the social media era is a double-edged sword for scholars' public writing. On the one hand, readers often lack the patience to read in-depth articles and books. On the other hand, the development of information and the improvement of education level have actually cultivated a more diverse and wider readership. Young people are hungry for new ideas, new analyses, new languages, which also creates more opportunities for scholars to engage in dialogue with the public through writing.
Diamond's feelings are more focused on the writing process. As a scholar in his nineties, he had a very traditional habit of writing with an automatic pencil instead of a computer. At the same time, because the topic of writing involves many fields, in addition to a lot of reading, he will constantly talk to experts from all walks of life to draw inspiration. Diamond believes the most important thing is thanks to Robert May, who was president of the Royal Society. May believes that our writing should be divided into two stages, in the first stage, we should write all the ideas we think of on paper, and then organize it in detail. In the second stage, we convert them into beautiful words.
Reporter | Liu Yaguang
Edit | Lu Wanting
Proofreading | Zhao Lin