【Editor's Note】
Shi Yang (Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences): You once wrote "Fishing, Hunting and Hunting and the Livelihood of the People in Northern Qin and Han Dynasties", which not only expounded that the state "created" farmers by means of granting land, but also particularly emphasized the initiative of the people at the bottom in their livelihood choices, and the conflict between this initiative and the state's national policy of "going to the peasants". In the new book "Pet", although it focuses on political issues, it integrates initiative with "the relationship of relations", "sense of presence", and "joint force theory", etc., and deeply demonstrates the practice of relevant theories. I think that re-reading socio-economic historical materials with these perspectives will lead to many new discoveries, and perhaps new growth points in future research in this field. In the traditional study of the social and economic history of the Qin and Han Dynasties, the focus is mostly on the productive forces, means of production and production relations, and the group (or class, group, etc.) is used to grasp the research object for a long time to describe the context, structure and even the model. However, in recent years, many scholars have realized that this approach has a major shortcoming, that is, the absence of "people". The study hardly sees how specific people seek advantage and avoid harm, let alone how people move between different groups or industries. In essence, it depicts a template that is not elastic. When explaining the process of the formation and disintegration of the Qi people's system, the general public mostly only passively accepts the manipulation, with no face, but no vitality. However, in fact, the historical data has seen that the people's dynamic performance in the pursuit of profit is quite rich, and it has been submerged for a long time. Here I would like to ask Teacher Hou, in the state of relatively poor continuity of historical materials, how can social and economic history more richly present the color of "people"?
Hou Xudong: Indeed, the core of historical research is the various people who have existed in the past, from the emperors and generals in the capital to the ordinary people in the countryside, and even the untouchables and the poor. The study of economic history, especially before the Tang Dynasty, seems to be concerned by not many scholars now, as can be roughly seen from the scope of the paper published in The History of China's Economy. I'm interested in the issues and have been thinking about how to do it, even though very little research has actually been done. I am afraid that it may be necessary to work from two aspects, one is the repositioning of positions and methods (reflection on the theoretical assumptions of researchers), out of the Western-centered theoretical framework, and instead to refine the theoretical framework from The Practice of Chinese History, economic anthropology may provide some inspiration, from Moss's "Gift", Malinowski's "Navigator in the Western Pacific", russian scholar Chayanov's "Peasant Economic Organization", Karl Polanyi and other eds Market in the Early Empires (1957), Marshall Salins, Stone Age Economics (1972/2009), etc., to Mr. Liu Zhiwei's speech "Dynastic Tribute System and Economic History", Journal of Southwest University for Nationalities, 2010.1, there is an article "The Development of Western Economic Anthropology Theory", which can be referenced. The key is how to look at the relationship between market exchange and other phenomena, and what is the logic of exchange? Pay attention to the connection. Huang Zongzhi once said: Go to the most basic facts to find the most powerful analytical concepts. We must first discover and identify the most basic facts through historical materials, and based on this, we must think about how to analyze them. Of course, the most basic facts are, it seems simple, but it is not simple. The fundamental question of what the facts are is a lot of thought.
For China, I am afraid that it is necessary to break the framework of political, economic, cultural and social separation (this is actually the classification concept and perspective introduced from the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the source is Western historical experience, and it is quite far from the situation in China, including the judgment of the relationship between the economic base and the upper construction, and may not apply to ancient China), breaking through these existing frameworks, will reopen the broad field of research, re-think from the roots of how the ancient Chinese people existed, how to survive, How does the state play a role in this, and how can people, things and state existence be connected to form a system that maintains and continues to exist? With the help of these new problems, new research should be generated, and the accumulation should be more, and a new understanding of China should be formed. These new problems also shift from the top-down look, as well as from the perspective of the state and the system, to the bottom up, focusing on the relationship between the production and consumption of the people, the distribution of products with the participation of the state, storage and allocation, redistribution and the state from the perspective of people (not only the producers - the people, but also the various officials who deal with the people, as well as the emperor), and the relationship between the production and consumption of the people, the distribution of products with the participation of the state, the distribution of products, storage and allocation, and the redistribution and the state, and the system of the flat narrative is concretized in the practice of life. Replace monotonous institutional analysis by studying the complex interactions between different people and institutions. In the future, it is also necessary to integrate different perspectives of thinking, explore and reconstruct the relationship between them, and construct a fuller picture of a certain era.
On the other hand, new information also provides realistic possibilities. A large number of excavated written materials, and even other archaeological materials (such as the production and flow of objects shown by various artifacts, etc., which may also need the support of scientific and technological archaeology), have created conditions for top-down and microscopic revelation of the above problems. Of course, early research may only be a close-up of some parts, it is difficult to fully expand the overall situation, the scale of research has become smaller, from large freehand to brush strokes, even if there is a rupture in the data, the use of other similar data to fill the missing ring, it is more reliable than the data with a larger space and time distance used in the study of the whole country. It provides more possibilities for breaking through the idea of selecting essences and collecting essences. Who says a few drops of water don't contain certain qualities of the sea?
Sun Wenbo (Chinese Min University National College): You emphasized the transformation of historical research from "substantive thinking" to "relational thinking", starting from the perspective of "relationship process" and "relationship relationship", in order to advocate new analytical methods, so as to reflect on and re-grasp the previous research on political history and institutional history. In the process of reading and learning, individuals deeply feel the complexity and profundity of specific history. The subject of historical research is the human being, the society formed by the population and the "plural" relationship. Based on this, the above argument seems to be the rational road from social history to political history and the pursuit of "institutional seeing people" when discussing the operating mechanism. I wonder if this is appropriate?
Hou Xudong: It doesn't hurt to say that. However, I am quite skeptical about whether the phenomenon referred to by "society" existed in ancient China, and I hardly use the term "social history". Expressions such as political history and institutional history are actually categories that require introspection. It is not a premise or starting point that can be used directly, but it cannot be discussed in detail here. At present, the sub-classification of Chinese history has its origins, some from the general distinction of ancient historians (dynastic history, political history or institutional history), and more are new concepts or classifications introduced from the West in the process of modernization of historiography from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (economic history, cultural history, social history, intellectual history, etc.).
The idea in the book is to use the perspective of relationships to embrace/connect the traditional history of politics, institutions and political culture, while changing the way the past is observed. From the perspective of people, the relationship between people and the system is analyzed, how people (emperors, officials and people) deal with the system, and the so-called "circumlocution" contains not only how to act under the domination of the system (the continuous setting of the eunuch emperor/subordinate official, the continuation of the story of The Garden Lang), but also the disregard and transcendence of the system (Jin Changliu serving the emperor), the transformation of the system, and the expression and competition around the system (wrapped in public and private discourse). It may be said that the study of "system" is supplemented and enriched by the study of "the relationship between man (plural) and institution" (not "the relationship between system and man").
For political history, there are more aspects that may be transformed. A fundamental difference is that the starting point of observation is different from the perspective, from the "inverted cinematic" method of selecting several events according to the results and connecting them into clues, to "looking at the times" and paying attention to the multiple possibilities of Li Meng's "causal relationship of small events" and the past. Behind this is actually a difference in the view of history: a linear or teleological view of history is transformed into a polyphonic, multi-line or forked view of history. The process of relations and the relationship of relations are only ways to specifically reveal the relationship between phenomena.
The relationship between favor and letter-ren is both a phenomenon found in reading historical sources and, as a Tsuliang, which leads me into such thinking; as a result of analysis, it is also presented as an example of this line of thought. This is a process in which the research object and the researcher's thinking intertwine, promote each other and unfold. Gadamer (1900-2002), the culmination of German hermeneutic theory, pointed out:
The real historical object is not an object at all, but a unity of oneself and others, or a relation in which there is both the reality of history and the reality of historical understanding, and a veritable hermeneutic must reveal the reality of history in the understanding itself. (Revised Translation of Truth and Method, translated by Hong Handing, The Commercial Press, 2016, 424 pp.)
The process of study of this problem is what Gadamer calls a "hermeneutic cycle."
Sun Wenbo: When researchers at different historical stages put forward new ideas and concepts, they are mostly affected by the specific era in which they live. Take, for example, Marx Weber's classification of China as a "bureaucratic state of domestic property." Generally speaking, in the historical period when politics has a huge weight in society, people, including scholars, will have a real understanding of the relationship between light and dark. So, are there more reasons why previous research has focused more on "bureaucracy" than "domestic property"?
Hou Xudong: It should not be excluded that the connection with the situation of the scholars' lives is indeed not a straight line in the 40 years since 1978, and the forces of all sides have fluctuated a lot, which will make the scholars living in it have different feelings, and then bring it to the choice of Weber's theory. Weber's doctrine itself is extremely rich and offers enormous space.
Of course, we cannot ignore the preference of Chinese scholars for the book "Confucianism and Taoism", because after all, it is an analysis of China, and this book has a German translation of Hong Tianfu's "Overseas China Series" in 1993. Before the publication of Yan Kewen's translation in 2010, there was no good translation, and scholars who study Chinese history are afraid that not many people who have seriously read "Economy and Society" have carefully read "Economy and Society". The analysis and generalization of Chinese history in the two books are different, with Confucianism and Taoism focusing on bureaucracy and Chinese society, rarely touching on the emperor or family property system, while the "dominant sociology" in "Economy and Society" is discussed under patriarchy when analyzing the "Chinese Empire". This should be related to the different concerns of Weber's two books.
More worth pondering, how do we view ancient empires? What is the implication of Weber's view? For now, I think that Weber's statement of "family property bureaucracy" still grasps the characteristics of the ancient Chinese dynasty of the Qin Dynasty quite accurately, although there are many errors in the specific details, but it does not hinder the insight of the theorists.
Sun Wenbo: As far as possible, historical research deals with the historical process and related issues that have been basically completed. Ideally, the history we come into contact with would be inherently complex and informative. And reality requires us to try to generalize and generalize in the most concise words. In this sense, the study of past political history and institutional history has made great contributions in providing solid knowledge of the discipline of history. In other words, is it not contradictory that we adjust the perspective and analysis mode of historical development to be enriched with traditional research?
Hou Xudong: The human experience is complex and multi-directional, which can be described as a lot of noise, and the expression of history does not necessarily pursue the most concise. In my personal opinion, everyone can become a historian, and can record and illustrate the past, whether it is the macro history or the small history of his own private family. Pluralism is probably the natural state of future historical research. We want to use language to describe the past, which must include forgetting and memory, generalization and induction, the past of the same period, in the eyes of different historians, the moving points may not be the same, and the spring and autumn of the pen have their own emphases.
Indeed, the knowledge accumulated in past research is the foundation that future generations cannot bypass, not only political history, institutional history, all the achievements of predecessors, if they do have gains, should and must become the basis for future generations to move forward, otherwise they will repeat their work, and even take detours, wasting time and energy, needless to say. This is from the perspective of results, as for the analysis angle and interpretation method, some are in a state of complementarity, and some need to replace the former, can not be said to be without contradictions. It is true that there are differences in the angle of observation, which will lead to differences in the results of observations. Some blind spots or blind spots under the previous thinking may be illuminated under the observation of the new angle, but the new observation will also have its own dead ends and blind spots, which is certain, there is no god's omnipotent perspective. It can be said that it is on the basis of the relatively full development of political history and institutional history research in the past, and through continuous reflection, that the blind spots and problems of existing ideas will be discovered. The proposal of a new perspective cannot be separated from the existing perspective, and there is also a close relationship of dependence, which is a relationship of dependence and (trying) transcendence, and whether it is truly transcendent or not is determined by the reader's continuous reading and thinking.
The "linear view of history" pointed out in the chronology, more generally speaking, in the present and the ancient, is almost an unconscious practice of observing the past tense, and for me to see it, it is an attitude that needs to be abandoned, and at least it should be placed in a rather secondary position in looking at the past tense.
Sun Zixin (Ph.D. student in the Department of History, Tsinghua University): The relationship between the favored or trusted monarch and the subordinate that you proposed is more applicable to the vertical relationship between the monarch and the head of the government. In contrast, regarding the interpersonal union in society (all classes) at that time, Ryūfu Mitsubu pointed out the existence of the custom of renxia (that is, the fiduciary relationship between people) and examined the impact of this custom on bureaucracy. What do you think of the interpersonal relationships within society and families at that time? Can the mechanism of petting be used to explain the unfolding of the underlying history (the lives of ordinary people)? (Discernment involving the profit-seeking nature of pets and people)
Hou Xudong: It goes without saying that Ryūo Masouchi's research has opened up a new field and has a profound influence on Japanese academic circles. However, the Renxia custom he revealed, for me to see, is not a common phenomenon in interpersonal integration, but only a combination method popular in the late Warring States period and the early Western Han Dynasty, and as for the more general way of interpersonal integration, it needs to be explored separately.
The issue is quite complex and currently insufficiently researched, and part IX of the little book deals with it a little, referring only to the situation within the family. This needs to be understood in conjunction with changes in family structure and relationships within the family, and can be considered from different perspectives. On a practical level, the role of maternal relatives that I have discussed in the past is larger, and it can also be seen that the maternal kinship relationship (including the uncle-nephew relationship) plays a greater role, and the relationship between father and son is relatively distant, which is not only seen in ordinary people's homes, princes and even royals. In addition, judging from the laws of Qin Jian in the unearthed Sleeping Tiger Land, the issue of crimes between parents/children is also an important part of the national norms, including the meaning of the word "slave", the custom of killing the first son studied by Mr. Qiu Xigui, and the existence of the pawn wife and the beard, etc., put together, it also makes me realize that the relationship between the husband/father and the wife in the family is quite different from today, and it is worth careful study. At that time, polygamous (or polygamous concubine) families were quite common, with many children, complicated relationships, and often situations of unequal relatives, and there were many records of conflicts and murders in the princes' lists and biographies of princes in the "Records of History" and "Book of Han", revealing a lot of information. To some extent, the relationship within the family has become a hotbed for the official government, the imperial court and the emperor to nurture the relationship of trust and "favor". There are often "pets" in the extended family, and the "pet" mechanism can be used to some extent to analyze its history. Of course, family situations vary widely, and relationships within the family are more complex, and a more detailed account of the unfolding of their history may require a more appropriate conceptual tool.
Interpersonal unions outside the home, as far as I know, may be the most common "covenants" established for various purposes, from the "white horse covenant" between Liu Bang and the chancellor, the "covenant" between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu, to the "covenant of serving the communists in the Han Jian of the Phoenix Mountain in Jiangling, Hubei Province", and the "covenants" or "constraints" established within various scopes should be the popular way of regulating behavior among people after exceeding the scope of the family at that time. This covenant is closely related to the "alliance" in the pre-Qin period, especially in the Spring and Autumn period (Lü Jing, "Study of the Oath of Alliance in the Spring and Autumn Period", 2007, a very systematic and in-depth study of the "alliance"). There are still many places worth exploring about the "covenant" itself, and the relationship between dynastic rule and the "covenant" may not be explored empty-handed.