|
|
Freedman, Maurice ed.
1970 Family and kinship in Chinese Society. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Contents:
This book should ideally have been concerned with every major aspect of Chinese family, kinship, and marriage during the last hundred years or so, and it should of course have dealt fully with Communist China, but writers on all the necessary subjects are hard to come by. The company of sociologists and anthropologists working on China is small, and its joint competence to discuss China in the fullest sense of that noun is still further hampered by the inaccessibility of the People’s Republic. But while we are in the ridiculous position of virtually ignoring Communist China is nine and a half of the ten contributions, there is nothing in the criticism that material drawn from studies make in Taiwan and H. K. and among Overseas Chinese is an insecure foundation for general statements about Chinese society—except, of course, in regard to the changes brought about on the mainland since 1949. True, H. K. is British colony and Taiwan was under Japanese rule for half a century. The impact of foreign government can hardly be ignored, but, at least when we write about domestic and other kinship institutions, it is not too difficult to allow for the effect of the extraneous factor and to present an account of something that is genuinely Chinese.
The book leans very heavily
toward the countryside. It is a great pity, because the study of Chinese
society has for too long now been plagued by a prejudice in favor of rural
life. (Preface by Freedman)
本书开篇的两篇文章是有关家庭的。在“Development Process in the Chinese Domestic Group”一文中，Cohen认为汉语中的“家”，概念含糊。在他看来，“家”既可以指人，又可以指财产和经济活动实体。他认为家与英文的Family在其所使用的社会境遇中有着不同的含义。传统上，中国研究一般都是从研究家与居所之间的联系着手，如果婚姻是基于从夫居的标准类型，人类学家就会建构出四种主要家庭形式：核心家庭、联合家庭、主干家庭和父系联合家庭。他还提出了“chiaeconomy”这个概念。共同拥有家产的人，不一定参与统一的经济活动，从家产中得到的利益也不同。另外，他们也不一定住在一起，他们在经济生活上可能是相互独立的。以此，Cohen认为，影响家庭制度的经济与社会因素很多,对此Freedman表示赞同。接下来，Freedman概述了Mrs.Wolf(MargeryWolf)的论文“Child Training and The Chinese Family”。Mrs.Wolf的田野是在台湾做的。她认为在中国有关社会化的资料非常有限，而过去人类学界所提出的关于中国这个泱泱大国的习俗统一性的假说被证明是错误的。Freedman赞同第一点，但对第二点持保留态度。Freedman认为Mrs.Wolf所描写的台湾村落的关于育儿与人际关系的例子，从整体上讲使用于中国的一般家庭。他特别例举了Mrs.Wolf对家庭中兄弟间的关系：兄弟之间因生活资源而竞争，家里的长辈一旦去世，父系联合家庭便面临解体的危险。Freedman认为Mrs.Wolf的贡献在于她指出了孩童经历中相互竞争的根源。孩提时代，大的总是让着小的，但他们一旦长大成人，即期望小的屈从于长兄的决定或意见，对此，小的缺乏养成。她假定，如果小的从小就一直遵从长兄，中国联合家庭将会是另一番景象。她还注意到妯娌在兄弟关系间所起的负面影响，她们加速了原本就很脆弱的兄弟关系的瓦解。Mrs.Wolf的文章还表明，家庭成员之间的复杂的人际关系的研究，有力于我们进一步理解中国人的社交行为。Mrs.Taeuber (IreneB.Taeuber)的文章从人口学的角度研究中国家庭。她认为，家庭规模、耕种的土地以及土地租佃的种类之间有着密切的关系。家庭的规模与对土地的拥有量有关：至少在稻作地区，佃农一般是核心家庭而地主则倾向于大家庭。家庭规模与地理气候也有关系：大家庭在中国南方、四川盆地、北部平原和北部高原地区比较多见。JackM.Potter的文章“Land and
Lineage in Traditional China”.指出，在中国，并不是到处都有裂变宗族的例子，Potter的目的之一就想说明宗族分布的不均衡性。他对香港新界PingShan宗族的研究与Baker(1968)在SheungShui的研究相映成辉。Freedman就如下三点进行了评述。第一，PingShan的例子表明，宗族的结构呈不对称性，在此结构的不同层面，财富的积聚亦不均衡。第二点与第一点密不可分，Potter以及Baker的研究都详细地阐释了裂变制度、土地租佃、较高层的祖先祭祀以及祖先墓地的保留。第三，Potter选用的方法只能用来解释某些地区的复杂而难以了解的宗族现象。
针对Johanna M. Meskill的论文The Chinese Genealogy as a Research Source,Freedman认为此文综合地利用了各种资料来源（谱系、历史文献、政府文件及田野材料等），在方法论上具有新意。在阐释“clan”与“lineage”的区别时，Freedman说“lineage”一词限于永久性的组织群体，而“clan”可以用来描述基于父系的其他临时性的群体。Freedman的文章Ritual Aspects of Chinese Kinship and Marriage重点论述了风水对宗族与家庭的影响：父系亲属间对风水的竞争明显地体现于兄弟们的行为上，在兄弟间，“当他们成人后，存在着一种潜藏的竞争倾向。”ArthurP.Wolf的Chinese Kinship and MourningDress从中国人的丧服入手，分析了亲属制度。他的研究表明，兄弟分家后会对兄弟关系造成明显的变化，会瓦解兄弟间的平等关系。正如他所说的，兄弟共同拥有家产时，彼此间不能戴红孝悼丧，一旦分家后，他们则戴红孝，以防阴魂伤害自己，因为此时他们已经在生活上独立，参加其兄弟的葬礼可能会给自己带来晦气。这个观点认为中国亲属制度的结构迫使兄弟分道扬镳，使得他们为自己的权力与机会而相互妒嫉。
总之，本书收编了有关家庭与亲属制度研究的部分最新成果。尽管资料主要来自台湾与香港，不可避免地会有其特殊性，但它们毕竟是中国的一部分，因而有其不可忽视的学术价值。
Wu,
David Y. H.
1985 The Conditions of
Development and Decline of Chinese Lineages and the Formation of Ethni Groups. In The Chinese Family & Its Ritual
Behavior, edlited by Hsieh Jih-Chang & Chuang Ying-chang. Taipei:
Institute of Ethnololgy, Academia, Sinica.
Contents:
本文对Freedman的宗族模式提出了质疑，Freedman（1958，1966）的宗族论认为宗族在中国广东与福建盛行的主要原因是：稻作农业、共同拥有土地、政府控制微弱以及边陲社会。Dr.Wu以新几内亚海外华人社会为例，说明华人以亲属制度和文化传统调适于新的环境。Wu认为，了解中国文化行为的关键在于研究其社会群体发展的过程，而不是群体结构本身。对于Freedman的宗族伦理，Pasternak曾提出勃论(1972)，认为在稻作农业与水利灌溉的形成过程中，非亲属之间的合作是重要的因素。这是因为生态及社会因素的影响，而不是父系宗族的规则。Freedman认为共有土地是中国宗族存在的基本条件。对于东南沿海盛行单姓宗族，他认为是由于稻作农业、生产合作、边陲社会之故。宗族聚居主要是为了自我防范外族的侵扰。与Freedman的伦理相反，Pasternak对Pingtung，Tatieh的研究表明，非亲属间的合作在稻作、灌溉、防范外敌等方面起着重要作用。HuangShu-min从语义学及历史学的角度审视了Freedman的宗族论(1981)，他认为中国文字长期以来在语义上都难以区分宗族、氏族、姓、宗，这些都不同程度地包含在宗族论中。Wu的研究支持了Huang的观点，认为移居海外的华人首先确立的是地缘群体，而不是宗族组织。Wu对新几内亚华人的研究发现，当地最早的社会组织是商会而不是宗族。他的研究表明稻作农业并不是宗族存在的先决条件，通过经商发家的家庭，可以修建壮观的祠堂，捐资祭祖，以壮大宗族。这就是富裕地区宗族盛行的原因。宗族组织是中国家庭文化的一部分，是历史传承的社会习俗，并不是边陲社区的结果。
Dr.TanChee-beng的观点:
Freedman与Skinner是中国研究的两位大师。Freedman是从宗族看社会，而Skinner则突破了社区研究的局限,从一个较大的区域内以经济看社会。他认为，相比之下，后者的方法更能说明中国的现实状况。
Freedman的主要贡献：从宗族看中国社会，提出了一个宗族模式：A－Z模式。指出宗族与经济、政治的关系与国家是联系在一起的，从稻作、灌溉、国家控制、边陲地带等方面阐释了中国东南地区宗族比较发达的原因。他认为宗族是个corporativegroup，是草根社会反抗国家权力的组织，宗族精英在国家与宗族之间起着纽带的作用，是宗族与国家并存的重要条件。
陈其楠是从房支来看社会的。外国学者往往会忽略房的作用，但实际上中国人更注重房的重要性。Tan认为房并不等于宗族的概念，因此从宗族看中国社会是有其局限性的。陈虽然反对Freedman的伦理，但却把祭祖活动的单位看作是宗族组织，他忽略了房与宗族，宗祧与宗族的概念的区别，宗祧（descent）祭祖应该是在宗族组织中进行的。
张小军认为宗族是草根社会的精英分子为了进一步发展自己的势力而有意识地再造的。Watson也认为修族谱就是一种政治行为（politicalact）。陈认为最先修族谱的倡议者和推动者肯定有其意图（intention）。Tan认为，陈与Freedman可能没有查阅很多的历史资料，从而过于强调宗族组织的重要性。实际上，宗族宗族组织的存在很多地方可能只是为了祭祖，而平时根本显现不出。宗族也可能不一定都是corporategroup。区分宗祧与宗族的概念很重要。另外，Tan认为Freedman的研究忽略了女性的角色。MargaryWolf的研究提出了与以往人类学研究不同的观点，她认为女性在宗族活动中起着举足轻重的作用。
Baker, Hugh D. R.
1968 A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui. London: Frank Cass & Co. LTD.
Contents:
This book is, with minor alterations only, my thesis, entitled A lineage village in the new territories of Hong Kong, approved in 1967 be the University of London for the Ph.D. degree. It is the result of field-work carried out in the New Territories of Hong Kong from the autumn of 1963 to the spring of 1965 under the auspices of the London-Cornell Project for East and South-east Asian Studies.
Description of the lineage in the preceding chapter has perhaps given the impression of a virtually static and unchanging institution set in an equally immutable society. It would be wrong to suppose that the lineage either in its ‘internal organization or in its external relationships was ever constant; none the less, from the return form evacuation in 1669 until the leasing of the New Territories in 1898, change was apparently in degree rather than in kind----that is to say, the lineage may have seen changes in its internal balance, as wealth and fertility saw fit to confer their world may have fluctuated from time to time, but in large it still retained the same attributes of internal organization and it still pursued the same policies of aggrandizement which were determined by its standing as a single-lineage settlement in a wider society which continued to be composed primarily of other similar settlements.
In general though, the lineage must have grown steadily more powerful, until the first half of the 19th century saw its greatest academic successes, and, judging by the amount of building and restoration which is known to have taken place then,
Probably it’s greatest wealth too. As regards wealth and power, it is not easy to say whether the lineage was expanding or losing during this period. My impression is that, in the local situation, it was probably benefiting from the decline of its neighbor the Lung Yeuk Tau Teng lineage, and perhaps too from the Weakening powers of the Hou Ping Kong lineage. The leasing of New Territories brought the lineage for the first time into direct contact with the West. It is probable that a few men had found their way to the cities of Hong Kong and Kowloon before 1898, but a small trickle of men began to flow out of the village in search of work when once communications had made the cities more accessible. The revivification of Shek Wu Hui in 1925 may be seen to be a result of differences between the two sides of the AngloChinese border.
The Japanese occupation was another factor setting the stage for drastic change.
The immigration caused by civil strife in China coincided with the opening up of opportunities of Chinese workers overseas, and particularly with the boom in the Chinese restaurant trade in Britain and Western Europe. Lineage members were eligible for British passports, and had no difficulty in getting overseas to engage in this trade.
The vegetable-growing revolution which succeeded the wide-scale immigration rapidly affected Sheung Shui.
Material prosperity, the influence of the West, and the swamping effect of immigration have combined to set in motion a process of deterioration which threatens to annihilate the lineage as an effective until of social organization.
The movement away from working the land, which has been seen to have
contributed materially to the prosperity of the Liaos, has at the same time
been a movement towards urban occupations, and the attitudes which these
engender have just been detailed. Ritual, already truncated by economic
hardship during the Japanese occupation, has been no better served by material
prosperity. Not only has wage-earning deprived individuals of much opportunity
to engage in ritual observances, but the growing materialism and opportunities
for investment of capital have succeeded in diverting money which erstwhile
would have been spent on ritual. There is a growing feeling that money spent on
expensive ritual ceremonies is money wasted.
In the kinship-ritual sphere there has been a steady deterioration in observance of traditional forms and ceremonies, and since kinship and ritual are in this case mutually reinforcing, it follows that a decline in one must affect the other—a blow to ritual is a blow to kinship solidarity.
The use of an extensive kinship terminology is dying. Young people educated in the school have little time or inclination to worry over precise degrees of relationship, and in any case their increasing concern with the outside world prevents their having the same wide circle of acquaintance amongst kin in the village that their parents had.
Where kinship is often not as strong a tie as residential proximity, the presence of outsiders in the village also strikes at lineage unity. In any event, solidarity of the kinship group is no longer necessary in the same way that it was prior to British rule, for the protection from external threats which the united lineage afforded is now guaranteed by a government system which seriously attempts to control society even at the level of the smallest village, and which has a police force capable of so doing.
That there can be such a smooth development form community based on kinship-ritual principles to non-kinship community indicates as underlying unity of structure. Real leadership of the lineage village has been seen to have been in the hands of men who would have been leaders in any community; the ties of close residence, which in the non-kinship community are of importance, have been seen to have been developed and institutionalized in the form of Earth Gods, despite and as well as the ties of kinship; community temples unconnected with kinship-ritual matters flourish beside ancestral halls; community defense institutions of the nature of the Village Watch can work as well in a non-lineage environment as they have in the lineage past.
If the progression from lineage village to village is to be thoroughly worked out, it will surely not be for many years to come. At present Sheung Shui is in a transitional stage, where the unity and strength of the lineage as a kinship-ritual group is losing ground before the lineage as a community group. It cannot be said when the lineage as a community group will eventually give way to the non-lineage community, but it will no doubt be a slow process of attrition which brings it about. The Liaos should by then have had ample time in the process of wearing from the lineage breast to accustom themselves to less sheltered conditions.
1986 The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the
eastern New Territories, Hong Kong. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Contents:
This book is a detailed study of the social history of a portion of the New Territories of Hong Kong from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century. By combining material gathered from field observation, interviews with villagers and documentary analysis, the author traces the rise of the lineage as an institution in this part of south China and sets it in the context of village organization and inter-village alliances, thereby challenging current and long-received ideas on Chinese rural society. As a local history, the book describes the development of the ‘great surnames’ in the area into an aristocratic tradition, and the subsequent challenge to their authority by their tenant villages. As a study of the lineage and the village as institutions, the book relates the village to territorial worship and the lineage to villagers’ concern to establish their rights of settlement, to hold land, to build alliances, and to acquire official recognition.
This book began as an attempt to outline the political history of the land population of the eastern portion of the N.T of HK up to approximately 1900. It was meant to be a history of the rise and decline of lineages and villages, of their alliances and rivalry, and of the domination by some of them over others. As a background, I thought I should describe the changing social and economic circumstances, and long-lasting, though not static, frames of mind. However, the background has become the major portion of this book, and it is now more than a political history: it has become an essay on the social milieu out of which territorial arrangements were created and maintained over several centuries.
The material that has gone into this book has come largely from what I have for some time called the Oral History Project at the CUHK. The project has collected much historical material, consisting broadly of records of inscriptions found primarily in temples and ancestral halls; information gathered through interviews, in the main with villagers; observations at village festivals and other celebrations; and written records, consisting chiefly of books and manuscripts that were used in the villages, including handbooks for various ceremonies, religion texts, genealogies, accounts, medical texts and land deeds.
1965 Chinese lineage and society: Fukien and Kwangtung. London: University of London, The Athlone Press.
Contents:
This book draws on the newer literature, on older writings which I had not previously used, and on my field work in 1963.
As for anthropological field research, there are abundant opportunities for work on lineage organization and topics germane to it. The groundwork for the study of New Territories rural society has already been laid by Miss Barbara E. Ward, Miss Jean A. Pratt, Professor Jack Potter, Mr H.D.R. Baker, and Mr. R. G. Groves. Other anthropologists will certainly follow them, and I should like to help dispel the notion that the N.T. have been so far affected by British rule and modern changes in population and economic life that they are no longer capable of being useful to anthropologists interested in the study of traditional Chinese institutions. Of course the N.T. have been profoundly changed since they were brought into the Colony of HK, Of course they are not a mere fossil of the nineteenth century. Of course they show many ‘modern’ problems worth investigating (especially as they arise from the industrial and agricultural revolutions of the last decade and a half), and we should be very foolish to ignore them. But old lineage still exist; power is exercised within them; land is still held in ancestral trusts; rites of worship continue to be held in ancestral halls….. We may see something of what went on under the Chinese Empire, but, just as important, we have the chance of understanding how lineages adapt themselves to the modern world. This book does not follow that he think the lineage to be the paramount form of Chinese local grouping, or local grouping to be the chief topic in Chinese society of anthropologists to study. He is aware of the need for anthropologists to take a larger view of Chinese society and to raise their eyes to wider limits than those of the village. He propose to reconsider the problem of how corporate descent groups in China fitted into a complex society, looking at that society from the point of view of the local group.p-ix.
C. K. Yang’s study on Nanching, Miss Pratt’s study on a small Hakka lineage of some forty families in the New Territories and Gallin’s study on a Taiwan village are new cases, which rise again the problem of the emergence of single-lineage communities. One of the three village is a single-lineage community: the small Hakka community in the New Territories. Nanching is in an area where single-lineage settlements are common, but is not itself one. The Taiwan village is mixed and fairly recent. Now, people have tended to interpret multilineage villages and shallow lineage organization in China as being the result of a breakdown of single-lineage communities by migration, the southern part of the country displaying a higher degree of deep and single-lineage settlement because of its relative immunity from invasion.
It must be true that migration and the different conditions in which it took place account in some measure for the pattern of distribution of large localized lineages in China. But it would be a great mistake to think that the only direction of change is that in which what were originally in lineage terms homogeneous local settlements became heterogeneous. On the contrary, the process is reversible, singe-lineage settlements emerging from mixed ones. P-6.
The process of the decline and elimination of agnatic groups becomes even more interesting to us as soon as we realize that it can be seen at work not only in the relations between different lineages, but also in the relations between different segments of one localized lineage. Again, geomancy may ‘explain’ why segments disappear, and political and economic pressure account for their elimination.
It might be argued that there is an important difference between clan and lineage in the ways in which they are genealogically justified. In general terms, the genealogical information on a local or higher-order lineage is relatively complete and relatively fixed; that on a clan grouping is comparatively tenuous and subject to change.
The Chinese term tsu is applied to both lineages and clans; so too are tsung and tsung-tsu; the Chinese nouns be themselves are not unambiguous pointers to the precise nature of the groups and quasi-groups for which they are used. Yet Creel has recently argued that in ancient China the terms hsing and shih( which in modern Chinese are both translatable as ‘surname’) indicated precisely the distinction between clan and lineage which needs to be made in the analysis of modern Chinese agnatic organization. ‘The hsing was a large and rather loose “common descent group”, showing an attitude of solidarity which in a specific situation might or might not produce united action. But the much smaller shih was, in the fullest sense of Max Weber’s terminology, a “corporate group”’. Freedman suggests that there is in fact a clear linguistic distinction in Chinese between what we call clans and lineages than we have thought.
Land has a further bearing on lineage structured that I have not hitherto considered. Large settlements could continue to develop only when it was possible to reach the furthest fields within an economic time. Where, in the absence of large stretches of cultivable land in the immediate village area, people wanted to make new fields, they had to set up house elsewhere. And in broken agricultural country, villages must of necessity have been small. It follows from this argument that in the course of the settlement of the region the early occupation of the best continuous stretches of land made it difficult for later comers to build their villages into equally large units. P-36.
In Lineage organization, Freedman suggests that segmentation was likely to be asymmetrical when the lineage was so differentiated that it embraced groups of unequal social status. A segment may emerge which marks out a special identity for its members in contrast to the other members of the larger segment which encompasses them all, even though these other members are not likewise organized in a formal segment. Evans-Pritchard’s classic work on the Nuer set anthropological minds working on systems of symmetrical segmentation and exercised a dominating influence on ideas about lineages. The Nuer was concerned with a society in which social homogeneity and the absence of political centralism could be shown to be associated with a kind of political and legal order made possible by the balancing of segments. P-38.
The essential point about the Chinese case is that political and economic
power, generated either within or outside the lineage itself, urges certain
groups to differentiate themselves as segments and provides them with the
material means to persist as separate entities through long periods of time—as
long, that is to say, as their common property is held intact. P-39.
As to facts, I think I am now more secure; indeed, there is a great deal o merely repetitive evidence that I have not bothered to set out in detail. But the conclusions remain, as in some measure they always must, temporary. In choosing significant facts about a society arranging them to make an argument, the anthropologist is given the freedom of the prisoner’s cell. He is a captive of the ideas which come of a discipline at a given stage of its development, but within the range of those ideas he can wander at will. In this imaginary goal the walls are constantly being reordered and broken down to be rebuilt; but there are always walls. P-153.
In Clan, Caste, and Club Professor F.L.K. Hsu has built up an argument about the Chinese ‘clan’ within the framework of a comparison between the civilizations of China, Hindu India, and the United States. The picture he paints is in certain crucial respects at variance with the one I have offered in both Lineage Organization and this book. Starting with different ideas and asking different questions, he reaches a different goal. In the perspective he has chosen, it is necessary for Hsu to establish in the first place that the family and the ‘clan’ are the central and characteristic modes of organization of Chinese society. The Chinese approach to the world, characterized by ‘situation-centeredness or mutual dependence’, flows from the key modes of social organization. The family is the ‘basic school of all cultures’, but it is particularly potent in China, while the Chinese ‘clan’ extends the principle of mutual dependence out into wider society---the ‘clan’ is the ‘immediate and direct extension’ of the family.p-156
The final point I shall extract from Hsu’s argument takes us back to the relations between lineages. ‘Clan’ fights occur in the extreme south and central parts of China, he says, but in the rest of the country they are very rare. It hardly needs to be said that Hsu’s model of the Chinese lineage and mine are so different that they almost appear to mock each other. The difference between them cannot be due simply to the fact that Hsu is generalizing for China while I have largely confined myself to the south-east, for Hsu explicitly builds facts from that area into his account. The divergence springs from the use of evidence that hostility is based on the claim to superiority; so far from that superiority being unstated, it is constantly and ceremonially asserted. I have argued that ancestors can in certain conditions be hostile; Hsu makes them utterly benign. P-158
But it is not so much the separate facts as the total pictures which are in conflict. For Hsu the lineage and family look like relatively closed and comfortable works beyond the frontiers of which individuals are nervous to tread. Peace, harmony, and security prevail within; outside there is danger. In fact, on my showing, competition and conflict are inherent at all levels of the social system; brother contends with brother, segment with segment, lineage with lineage, the lineage with the state. But there is also harmony because each contender must be united against its opponents—war without and peace within. In fact, there is no simple key to Chinese society; its lineage organization is one important feature of it; and the significance of that feature cannot be understood in isolation from the other institutional and ideological bases of the society.
It is generally agreed by writers on China that the kind of extensive lineage system we have been examining is above all characteristic of the south-eastern and parts of the central regions of the country. These are irrigated rice-growing areas, and it is clear from both the evidence on other parts of Asia and the data on China that this form of agriculture allows dense populations to build up on small surfaces of land. Moreover, and more to the point, I suspect that there is a positive correlation between extent of irrigation and the degree to which land is held in joint estates(the corporate lands of lineages and their segments).
Is it because mature and productive irrigation works have a corresponding distribution? The logic behind the question is this. Intensively irrigated and owned rice paddies have initially required a great investment of labor but the rewards to this investment are extremely high, and it allows the system of cultivation to be intensified in response to growth in the number of people living off it. To produce such a system, groups of men have had to co-operate, it has been built up piecemeal over time, but co-ordinated labor has been required at most stages of its evolution. P-160.
Presumably, it would be possible to correlate, at least in Taiwan and the N.T, the incidence of high productivity, mature and elaborate irrigation works, large-scale lineages, and high proportions of ‘indivisible’ estates. Certainly, a casual inspection of the data on productivity in the N.T. today suggests clearly enough that the powerful lineages were situated where the land yielded most. Of course, the argument has assumed that joint estates lie at the heart of lineage organization. They are not its simple does not grow and differentiate itself internally without an elaborate hierarchical series of land-holding segments. But there another side to the question of the special position of the southeast on the lineage map. Has it anything to do with pioneering on the frontiers of China?
I think it will be clear form some of the things said in this book that Chinese are not all patrilineal in one simple sense, and that different lineages in China take on different forms, fulfil different tasks, and are differently articulated with society at large.
The title of Revolution in a Chinese Village, Ten Mile Inn, by Isabel and David Crook raises some expectations which are not fulfilled by the book, for, although it was published a decade after the establishment of Communist power on the mainland, it in fact deals with a village in a northern area of China which had been under the control of the Communists since 1940, and it takes the story of social change only up to 1947, the year in which the Crooks arrived in the village. The Crooks assure us the ‘communist party members and other leading spirits of the village were constantly on the watch against a possible re-emergence of clan-factionalism which had once helped to keep the peasants divided and to maintain the feudal landlords and rich peasants in power. When we turn to C.K.Yang’s study, A Chinese Village in Early CommunistTransition, we are in the part of China that primarily concerns us here, and in the presence of a Communist government victorious throughout the mainland. But, as the title of the book indicates, it deals only with the initial period of Communist control, and little can be drawn from it about the full impact of the new regime. As one would expect, Yang stresses the enhancement of the social standing of women and speaks of the coming to power of young people. The ‘formal structure of clan authority’ broke up, not because of specific government orders against lineages as such but as a result of ‘the whole devastating revolutionary process of remaking the village’s political and economic life’. The lineage ‘elder’ councils’ were helpless in the face of the new situation; they ceased to convene. Since there was no longer any lineage property, the position of lineage business manager was ‘practically abolished’.
Another writer, W.R. Geddes, was able in 1959 briefly to restudy the village first described in Fei Hsiao-tung’s Peasant Life in China. But since Fei’s account of the village, lineages were shown to be very shallow, small, and unimportant, what Geddes can now tell us about them is not highly significant from our present point of view, even when he says that ‘the tsu has declined to a state of very little importance indeed.
In the initial period of commune-ization one might well have been tempted to assert that the lineage had disappeared for ever on the mainland. Its material and religious apparatus having been dismantled, what could remain of it? How could it survive as a political entity once it had been submerge in the massive commune? But some part of the underlying structure of Chinese society has again been allowed to become apparent in recent years. According to Skinner’s argument, the area of the individual commune has been revised to make it coincide with, or at least approximate to, that of the ‘standard marketing community’. I think we may assume, therefore, that in the southeastern part of the country the very small lineages as teams and moderately large ones as brigades have often been given some organizational expression within the latest social framework devised for rural China. Of course, the large local lineages, both on account of their sheer size and because of their history of power, will have suffered greatly, while higher-order lineage organization must have vanished very quickly from the map. P-176
Groups of male agnates still occupy the villages inhabited by their forefathers and are regarded by the state as forming legitimate units in economic and political life.
The state has not, of course, abandoned its determination to watch over and intervene in village affairs. It is unlikely that a lineage will be able to offer effective political resistance to the state. It will surely be prevented from forming dangerous alliances with other lineages. where all land is common, segmentation and power on the basis of some common land is ruled out. It is possible that individuals may, through education and by dint of acquiring political experience and standing, create positions for themselves which rest on their ties with the external world of power, and having done so, strive to assert themselves and their families against their fellows. But it is unlikely that they would be able for long to escape the sanctions of a vigilant political apparatus designed to repress unwanted social differentiation and dangerous local power. If men go on living where they were born, the lineage as a local group can maintain its continuity through time. Has marriage reform(a key feature of the remaking of Chinese society by the Communist state) disrupted the pattern of patrilocal residence by formally equalizing the rights of men and women? Has the lineage remained an exogamous unit? Are marriages still ‘arranged’ and therefore political? If we try to think our way through the Chinese propaganda and the information supplied by indifferent reporting, we may perhaps guess that the marriage system is still of kind to link some local lineages within a restricted geographical range and express the state of relations between them. ‘Free choice’ in marriage is an established legal right; it is another matter to assume that it is a constraining social fact.p-177.
The various references to geomancy in the Chinese mainland press make it plain that, while the regime may think, or pretend to think, that its problem is to eradicate superstition , its real task is to reconcile people to a uniform level of living and to persuade those who have lost in the race for academic and political advancement that their social worth is not thereby diminished. In the traditional society men strove to beat their lineage-mates and other neighbours in riches and standing; in a modified form their preoccupations survive today. There is no need to exaggerate the continuity of institutions and ideas from the old to the Communist society; they still seem to be able to speak for themselves. P-183.
Contents:
Slender as the data are, they furnish in the first place a hypothesis in the interconnexions between social differentiation and the scale of the localized lineage. It seems on the whole that the larger lineages were the more highly differentiated internally in terms of social status. Now, this is not merely to say that as a lineage grew in numbers its members were likely to differentiate themselves progressively; what probably happened in essence was that social differentiation and growth in numbers were constantly reinforcing each other. Increasing differentiation in status brought benefits to the lineage as a whole, which provided incentives for people to stay within it. Growth in membership created the possibility of adding to the corporate resources, which furnished the basis for further social promotion. P-126
The essential feature of land tenure in Fukien and kwangtung was the important role ascribed to the corporate holdings of lineages and their segments. When the landlord was often the agnatic group of which the tenant was a member, and when being a member of such a group meant having a prior right to tenancy, the poorer people had every reason to stay in the community rather than go to try their luck elsewhere. In other words, the surplus economy of the region, mediated by the institution of collective ownership, created a fund of property which tended to keep lineage members at home. When corporate land was either rented out to members of the corporation or circulated for use among them, the privilege proved a centripetal force.
The benefits derived from corporate property were not, as we have seen, equally distributed. The elite of a lineage, exercising its power, probably pocketed more than its fair share. Yet the humble member of a lineage owning large corporate resources was still in a better position than his analogue in a poor lineage, for he had greater security, greater prestige vis-a-vis the outside world, and at least the hope that in time he and his descendants might make their way closer to the central position from which benefits were controlled. We thus have the economic facet of the paradox by which the contrast between high and low status reinforced the integrity of the lineage. P-127
Not all lineages owned corporate property and some had little. Perhaps they were unfavorably situated from an agricultural point of view and could never produce important surpluses. Perhaps even when the surpluses were produced the first step in the reciprocating system was, for some reason beyond our knowledge, never taken, so that increasing population and increasing corporate property were not set going in a series of mutually promoting events. The small, relatively undifferentiated lineage was one characterized not only by an absence of rich people but also by a lack of lineage property. P-128
A lineage with corporate resources large3 enough to keep its members in the village might, of course, stimulate the growth of its population to the point where increasing numbers outpaced the accumulation of common property; there was presumably some optimum size beyond which benefits decreased to the point of promoting emigration.
In order to explain why some lineages rather than others managed to hold their members together I have adduced the factor of common property. We may well wonder why rich individuals should place their wealth at the disposal of their lineage or one of its segments instead of leaving it to be enjoyed exclusively by their immediate descendants. Chen Han-seng assures us that the ‘sense of family responsibility’ is such in China, and especially kwangtung, that while ‘the individual family likes to enjoy the prestige of a big land owner, it considers it just as important to strengthen the economic status of the main stem of the family, that is the clan, as to bolster up the security of the direct descendants’. But I do not think that this explanation by itself takes us far enough. In the discussion on ancestor worship I pointed out the intimate connection between the endowment of ancestral halls and lineage segmentation: a new segment came into being when property was set aside to finance a hall for it. At the same time I argued that lineage segmentation in this fashion was an aspect also of social differentiation, in the sense that any section of a segment which wished to mark a new identity for itself on the basis of its superior status vis-a- vis other sections could turn itself into a sub-segment by establishing a hall. Property vested in the new genealogical unit and added to the fund in succeeding generations was, therefore, not so much directed to the support of the ‘clan’ as to the maintenance of what, in the first place, was a small unit in the ‘clan’. P-129
The argument that in the south-east lth4e existence of large-scale localized lineages partly depended upon the maintenance of corporate property and that this property was probably made possible at an earlier stage of settlement by the relatively high productivity of the land, is one which may have a bearing on the more general problem of the uneven distribution of large localized lineages in China. …Large scale localized lineages by no means appear throughout the rice-growing areas of China, but is may be that the cultivation of rice was one of the conditions predisposing local communities of agnates to build themselves into large settlements. Of course, measured against the other sources of wealth drawn upon during the history of a successful localized lineage, the surplus from agriculture may seem unimpressive; all I am suggesting is that it may have been the surplus accumulated in a highly productive rice economy in the first place which helped to set going the system of corporate property which in turn promoted the development of large agnatic communities.p-130
The benefits to be derived from membership of a differentiated lineage in the south-east were not, of course, only economic. Carried to its full extent differentiation in status created and retained within the community men whose social position as scholars and bureaucrats conferred prestige and power upon their lineage as a whole. Not only, therefore, could the lineage accumulate tangible property in which the humbler men shared to some extent, but it might also build up a collective reputation for learning and gentility which was in fact based on the activities of very few members but which spread its light over all the others. Seen from the outside a lineage was a corporate group which, at least in certain circumstances, was taken to be undifferentiated. Facing his glorious agnates the poor tenant farmer deferred and was humble; facing the outer world he might stand as a member of a group endowed with general prestige and general influence. In a lineage which contained only poor farmers and small traders an individual was humble not only in his own right but also by virtue of the meagerness of the status of the lineage as a whole. P-130.
There were legal and political benefits to be derived from remaining a lowly member of a powerful lineage. In theory the state dealt with its individual citizens or their closest kin, but in practice it treated them as members of organized local communities.
Pasternak, Burton
Contents:
我到 Tatieh ，是打算搜集在土地改革的影响下，有关传统中国乡村的 民 族 志的。我之所以选择 Tatieh，是因为它地处台湾南部客家人聚集的地区，人 人都说，客家人无疑是台湾‘最保守的汉人’。不仅 Tatieh 在空间上与其他村落相隔离，而且它自身也是一个相对整合的社区。Chungshe 在地貌，人 口以及邻近城市工业中心 等方面与 Tatieh 是极为相似的。早期我在 Tatieh 的调查，引起我对灌溉技术的社会关系的兴趣。最近 Chungshe 的灌溉革新 与 Tatieh 的情况完全不同，这促使我去探究革新的社会效应。我发现， Chungshe 的宗族组织远比 Tatieh的发达， 宗族内向来没有发生过械斗。
Tatieh 和Chungshe 无论在语言，家庭，家庭之间的联系，以及社区整合的 性质上，与其他中国乡村都有着诸多的共同点。尽管这两个村落的人都是由中国南部迁来台湾，但它们现在的社会组织却表现出同一文化传统的不同因素。 其主要区别在于：在 Chungshe, 父系亲属关系在社会关系的性质与形式 方面一直扮演着重要角色。
Tatieh 是一个多姓聚集社区。 作为一个仪式，社会，政治及经济单位， Tatieh 始终是高度整合的。合作性宗族在早期曾经有过，但无论在结构上还 是在财产的控制上，从未有过进一步的发展。促使Tatieh 范围内的父系宗 族 早期发展的，主要是各种合作性的跨宗亲行会之间的协作。这些行会通过团结不同宗亲的家庭，阶级与宗族，起着维系社区整合的作用。非地域的继嗣群最终形成并把促使不同客家社区结为继嗣群。
Chungshe 也是一个多姓聚集社区， 两百年前由源自福建省操闽南方言的 先 祖创建。其中有一个继嗣群长期以来在社会、政治及经济上处于支配地位。它的发展要比 Tatieh 村的任何一个继嗣群完美，与 Freedman (1958,1966) 与其他学者( Baker 1968; Potter 1968, 1970) 所描述的东南模式，即 强大的， 地域性的，合 作性的 父系继嗣群极为相似。没有证据表明有将 Chuangshe 与其他社区联系起来的higher-order(如非地域性的)继嗣群的存在。跨宗亲的 行会以及 Tatieh 村类似的 组织，在 Chungshe 是不多见的， 而更多地凸显 出与贫富，居住，父系亲属关系差异相关的裂变属性。
在Chungshe村，父系亲属关系的凸显还表现在其他方面。在婚姻 方面， Chungshe 人比 Tatieh人更易于排斥姻亲亲属，家庭仪式活动通常影射出姻亲与血亲之间的明显界限。由 于经济原因， Chungshe 人更趋于收养同宗的孩子为继承人。
这两个村落的差异，不能 以城市化或现代化之程度 或族源的不同， 简单 地 作出解释 。它们之间的差异更可能是社区创建与发展所特有的 某些 社会、地理、经济特点的结果。 尤其重要的是物质资源的性质 与获取、维持、保 护土地及水利资源的方式。我认为，用于诠释 Tatieh 与 Chungshe 之间差异 的假设，在华南具有普遍性意义。这些假设易于我们了解多姓宗族社区可能
形成 、父系继嗣群衰落的条件， 并可揭示各类继嗣群可能形成的条件。
作者对 Tatieh 和Chungshe 村在农业、家庭关系、家庭与外界的关系、仪式 类 型 以及村落整合等 方 面 的差异，进行了详细论述。作者提出了两个 假 设：1)在广阔的边陲地带，人们对生计资源的竞争较小， 小 继 嗣群往往趋 于发展 为单姓宗族社区，但为了开垦资源、防御外 族入侵或强 化多姓宗亲 社区的发展之目的，则需要跨继嗣群间的合作 ；2)因聚合而形成的 higher -order (非地 域性的) 继 嗣群似乎与在居住地域分散、人口数 量较少， 继嗣 群 长期面对 强大的共同仇敌的情况相关。
Tatieh 是个高度整合的社区； 村民积极参与村落事务，具有强烈的团结感； 而 Chungshe 则不同，各种纠纷与矛盾大大减损了其作为村落的整合作用。
在 Tatieh 村，头人是从几个宗族中推选出来的， 多少年来一直起着重要的 调和作用。 在 Chungshe 村，1945年前头人是从村里的强宗大 族 中产生的 ，在当时头人还起着重要的作用。但自‘归流’（1945）和‘土改’（1953）后， 头人由其他宗族的人担当，其作用就明显下降。
在Tatieh,许多合作团体或者跨宗亲的行会起着促进家户合作与村人团结的 作用；而在 Chungshe，为数极少的此类行会则趋于反映，偶尔强化社区内 社会与经济分化。
在Tatieh,由于社区内注重合作，淡化父系宗亲关系，社区内空前团结。村 内 及周邻客家社区之间合作的重要性显而易见。 在 Chungshe 村，人们一直 不太注重社区内的团结及与其他社区的联合。Chungshe 的宗族是裂变过程 的产物，与 Tatieh 的宗族不同，Chungshe 的宗族在很大程度上仅限于本村 内。
Anderson (1970)认为，艇户中之所以缺乏宗族组织是因为他们没有土地；他们仅有的就是船，而船所能装载的人数是有限的。另一方面，宗族强大的权力与稻耕农业密不可分：“在华南，宗族在稻耕农业区极为盛行，而在艇户区，尽管中华文化依旧保留，宗族却消失了”。
我认为，重要的不在于人们是有田还是船，而在于宗亲之外的人与人、家庭与家庭之间是否需要合作，或至少鼓励合作。跨宗族之间的合作绝不仅仅适合于蛋民。所有的中国农民也不是仅仅只在自己的相对孤立的田地里劳作。他们孤立的程度取决于农作物的种类、田地的分布、灌溉的性质以及其他的因素。农民与艇户都会在不同程度上合作开发资源，但在某些情况下则会防御他们开发这些资源。
总而言之，在所有中国乡村，存在着两类多少有些对立的行为模式、制度和信念。其一是广义上的合作与凝聚；其作用是巩固社区。其二是各自为政与裂变；其后果是强化分化与突出差异。中国的乡村就像一首变奏曲；其特点取决于哪个音律是主旋律。然而，其他的音律无需默然，其中任何一个都可以在时机成熟时上升为主旋律(p-159)。
Woon, Yuen-fong
1984 Social Organization in South China, 1911-1949: the Case of the Kuan Lineage in K’ai-P’ing County. The University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies.
Contents:
In this study I use the Kuan lineage of K’ai-P’ing as a case study to show the effects of demographic, economic, administrative, and educational changes after the Treaty of Nanking(1842) on matrilineal kinship as a principle of social organization in South China.
Since Freedman (1958,1966) published his two monographs on lineage and society in south China, there has been a growing body of literature on localized lineages. However, most of the fieldwork was done either in the New Territories of Hong Kong (Baker,1968; Brim,1969; Hayes, 1964; Johnson, 1971; Nelson,1969; Potter,1968; Pratt, 1960; Watson,1975) or in Taiwan( Gallin, 1966; Pasternak,1968). Studies done on South Chinese villages on the mainland (e.g., H.S.Ch’en, 1936; T. Ch’en, 1940; Kulp,1925; C.K. Yang, 1959) lack historical depth. None of them set village life in a wider social or political context, nor have they dealt in great detail with the effect on lineages of social change during the critical period from 1911 to 1949. Information on the lineage during this period is now available only through interviews with informants who were alive at the time. In this book I shall try to reconstruct a segment of pre-Revolutionary Chinese society, to map out the ethnographic profile and historical development of the Kuan Lineage under the impact of rapid social change, and to construct, as systematically as my data allow, some generalizations about social organization and change in this part of China.
The Kuan lineage was one of the most important emigrant communities in
K’ai-P’ing County, one that sent thousands of sons to North America between the
1860s and 1923. This ethnography also examines the relationship between
overseas Chinese in North America and their home communities in South China and
the implications of North American public policies such as the Oriental
Exclusion Act for that relationship. For example, immigration policies resulted
in certain donation and investment patterns among the overseas Chinese,
patterns which, in turn, contributed to the economic modernization of market
towns in China and the preservation of the Confucian mode of social
organization in the form of lineages in rural areas. It is hoped that this
study will make a contribution not only to the study of emigrant communities in
South China but to ethnic studies in North America.
Yang, Martin G
1947 A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. LTD.
Contents:
This book presents a living account of rural China as seen in its
cultural and social setting ---a rural village. This book is the first of its
kind to tie together the various phases of rural life in China in a thoroughly
coherent and understanding story.
Those who read the book will be immediately impressed with the fact that rural China has a culture vastly different from the Americans’. We know from experience that we cannot transplant our culture to Asia. If we have a scientific basis of understanding how the culture of the Chinese works, we should be able to give to China more intelligent assistance in the task of agricultural reconstruction. Dr. Yang’s book can, in my estimation, make a great contribution, which will assist us in aiding, in such ways as China may desire, in the planning and the development of a more productive and scientific agriculture; for he has laid before us a new and scientific key to an understanding of the rural culture of China.
Dr. Yang’s book is important to all workers in the field of agriculture from another angle. It is a fine example of a new approach by which the methods of cultural anthropology are brought to bear in an agricultural community. (Introduction by M. L. Wilson)
It is gratefully observed that China in the past half century has had the privilege of being studied from a cultural point of view by numerous Western scholars. The writing of this book is a small part of one of these projects. The writer hopes that his work may contribute something to the cultural understanding between China and America.
The village of Taitou has been selected as the object of the first study because the writer was born and reared there, and lived there until he entered high school. Until recent years, he has returned to the village at least once each year, the periods of his visits varying from five days to several months. He has maintained his contacts with is relatives in Taitou and has kept himself informed about the daily life and significant happenings in the village. Therefore, this study is a record of facts which have been personally seen, heard, and experienced.
From a dynamic point of view, a society is made up of the complicated interactions between individuals in a primary group and between groups in the larger organizations. The actual life of a society, as well as of an individual, is like a stream starting from its source and flowing its toward a larger body of water. It is also a process of diffusion or radiation, the relationships being more loosely integrated the further removed they are from the primary source. An effective method for studying the life of a rural community is to start with the interactions between individual in the primary groups, go on to those between the primary groups in the secondary group, and finally those between the secondary groups in a large area. An important consideration is that in each of these areas, the life must be presented in its entirety, not in fragmented pieces.
In taitou we find that the family is a primary group. It is true that in a large family there may be two or three smaller basic units, such as a married son with his wife and children, who form a small exclusive group within the family pattern. But so ling as all members live under the same roof and work and eat together, the family is a unified, primary group.
The village is the secondary group. Between the family and the village, there are various transitional groupings----clans, neighborhoods, and the associations of families on the basis of similar social or economic status or school affiliations, and religious groups. Beyond the village is the market town, which draws all the villages together in a loose but nevertheless distinct relationship. It represents the large area, and the transitional links between it and the village are the groups of small villages and the groups of families which are of one clan but which are scattered in two or three neighboring villages. The interactions in these groups are sometimes different from those in all other kinds of groups and cannot be ignored. Based on the above method and findings, the present study is organized as follows: first, the physical environment, the social pattern, the people who live in the community, their means of livelihood, and their standard of living are described. Thus the reader first sees the village as a static community. However, the foundations of the social life lie in the interactions of the individuals within the family. To explain the Chinese conception of the family, a typical farm family in Taitou is described in respect to the interactions between the family members, economic and ceremonial activities, the rearing and training of children, the caring for the old, and the significance of marriage.
Beyond the family, life extends to the village; therefore, the next description has to do with village life. In this section it is apparent that the life of the village is much less significant than that of the family. Although the village is a unity with a unified life of its own, and a clearly defined leadership, it also has smaller groups within its own organization. The next section of the book, therefore, has to do with village organizations, neighborhood activities, extra-village associations, village conflicts, and village leadership. Since the clan organization plays now and then a significant role in regard to individuals as well as families, it is necessary to devote some space to its form and activities.
Rural life beyond the village is seen in relations of the village to the market town. It is also seen in the relations of the village to neighboring villages in the same market town area. No attempt is made to divide these relationships into economic, social, political, religious, or educational aspects, since the writer’s purpose is to present the picture as an integrated whole.
In conclusion, the relations between the village and the places beyond
the market town area are briefly mentioned, special emphasis being paid to the
recently developed relationship with Tsingtao. The writer believes that it is
possible to picture the daily life of a rural community with the framework this
outlined. Kand to make the picture real, through the eyes of a person who
actually grew up in the community and experienced most of the social life
described, the study is concluded with story of a villager’s boyhood. The
writer feels justified in saying that the information given in this study is
reliable and that the life picture thus presented is preserved in its wholeness
so far as possible; he hopes that the rural community of Taitou will be
culturally understood by the readers. (Author’s preface).
Watson, James L. ed.
1984 Class and Social Stratification in Post-revolution China. London: Cambridge University Press.
Contents:
The evidence presented in this book suggests that there have been two
distinct processes of class formation in China since 1949. During the 1950s and
1960s a rigid class hierarchy, based on prevolutionary conceptions of society,
prevailed in the rural areas. Associated with this hierarchical system was a
notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ class labels inherited in the patriline. In effect,
the state had created a new underclass in the countryside as living reminders
of past exploitation. In the urban sector a very different process of class
formation prevailed, on e based on the principles of accommodation. During the
1950s the Party needed the technical skills and managerial expertise of the
former bourgeoisie; there was no alternative short of the virtual abandonment
of many industries and enterprises. In the cities, therefore, the main priority
was to build a new class of technocrats who supported the goals of the
Communist Party. Mao Zedong himself went to great lengths to accommodate the urban
bourgeoisie and their descendants. When these efforts failed (in the wake of
the Hundred Flowers campaign), the policies of accommodation were suspended and
Chinese cities were racked by class struggles. Confrontation became the guiding
principle of urban politics until the late-1970s. since the fall of the Gang of
Four, however, central authorities appear to have abandoned the rhetoric of
confrontation in both urban and rural areas. Given the nature of politics in
China it is impossible to predict whether the emerging class system will
continue to develop according to the nonconflictual principle of accommodation.
Social scientists who study Chinese society must be keenly aware of policy
changes over time. The ability of central authorities to intercede and take
control of local affairs is the single most salient feature of life in China.
What appears to have been a clear pattern of class formation in the late 1950s,
for instance, was suddenly and dramatically altered by Mao’s 1962 pronouncement
on the need for class struggle. The Cultural Revolution also brought sudden,
and sometimes catastrophic, changes for bureaucrats and technocrats who had
been unaffected by earlier campaigns. It would be foolhardy in the extreme,
therefore, to comment on the processes of class formation in China without
reference to the intrusive power of the state.
In looking to the future of sociological research in China, the essays
in this book point to one problem in particular which bears special attention:
the rural-urban dichotomy. The economic and social gap between those who live
in China’s premier cities and those who are destined to stay in the countryside
has, if anything, grown wider in the past thirty years. Although official
ideology has consistently held that ‘good class’ peasants rank relatively high
on the social scale, in reality they have always had low status compared to
urbanities. The main strategy of social mobility for young peasant women is to
marry urbanities who will take them out of the villages. Marriage to a peasant
male is seen as the prelude to a life with ‘no future’. The problems arising
from China’s rural-urban dichotomy were discussed at length during the
conference which preceded this volume. It was agreed that restrictions on
rural-to-urban migration had had profound consequences for China’s commercial
and political elite were noted for their close links to people in rural areas.
furthermore, it was common for local systems to compete among themselves in the
export of labor and talent. The relative fluidity of the social hierarchy in
late-imperial Chinese society was due, in part, to the absence of restrictions
on migration. Social mobility was inextricably tied to geographical mobility.
During the past thirty years, however, it has become more and more
difficult for rural peoples to leave their native places and pursue careers in
the cities. Area-specific ration cards, residence registers, and police check
points at key road junctions have been introduced to stem the tide of
rural-to-urban migration. These changes have had an important effect on the
emerging patterns of social stratification in china. Prior to the revolution
the educated elite did not reside exclusively in the cities. This is no longer
the case. State policies have ensured hat future class divisions will
correspond closely to residential patterns.
It is obvious that a great deal of basic research remains to be done in
China. We know more about the formal structure of social institutions than we
do about the lives of ordinary Chinese people. Furthermore, as the essays in
this volume demonstrate, there is often a discrepancy between the expressed
goals of political campaigns and the practical consequences of social
engineering. In this China is by no means unique. However, until field research
becomes more acceptable, international understanding of the Chinese revolution
will continue to be rudimentary at best. (Introduction by Watson, James L.)
Yang, C. K.
1959
The Chinese Family in the Communist
Revolution. Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Contents:
Yang认为，中国共产党的统治的目的不仅仅限于获得对国家的政治统治，而是重构中国政治、经济与社会生活的整体结构。头十年（1949－1959）的统治主要涉猎中国社会的体制改造，包括对民族资产阶级的思想改造、通过土地改革来改造经济体制、农业集体化、消灭地主阶级及改造城市工商阶级、加强并改造教育体制、改革传统家庭等等。而这本书主要是关于传统家庭变迁的。他认为，共产党把家庭的改造看作是传统中国社会转型过程中基本措施之一。这表明中国共产党的领导已经充分地意识到，在传统中国社会结构中，家庭及庞大的亲属体系的重要作用。从经济的角度讲，家庭一直是社会生产的最重要的组织单位，因为家庭不仅是农业，而且也是工业和商业投资与运作的单位。在传统社会生活中还没有哪个方面不与家庭发生联系并受到影响的。在中国社区，尤其是在乡村，在家庭之外很少有社会组织或协会能满足个人的社会需求。亲属关系已渗透到基本的经济关系体系之中，而非亲属关系的传统习俗则可以被看作是亲属关系传统习俗的扩展。这就是半个世纪来传统中国家庭和亲属制度在社会生活的地位。现在这种状况仍广泛地存在于乡村社区，而且在一定程度上也存在于城区的部分地区。
Hsu, Fransic 1947 Under the
ancestor’shadow.
作者首先就“西镇”的生活，尤其是生活方式及宗教生活进行了分析，并分析了西镇文化在该社区个体人格的形成过程中所起的作用。在分析了当地的人格形貌之后，他指出这种人格形貌对整个汉人社会的代表性。
他认为祖先灵性信仰使中国民间社会在历史、现在、未来之间架起一座桥梁，给予人们一定的心理安全感和社会进取心。在他看来，中国的社会结构是以家庭为基础的，社会关系是以父子关系为轴，这种结构和关系可以推及宗族与国家的内部关系， 在其制约下，中国人的性格因素首先是服从，他们保守，不爱好变迁，不鼓励个人主意，不走极端路线，与美国人形成很大的反差。
Watson, Rubie
1985 Inequalitiy among brothers: Class
and kinship in South China.
中国的宗族长期以来一直是人类学家所关注的主题，但先前的研究对继嗣体系与更为广大的社会经济架构之间的关系的研究却不多。Watson在运用历史资料及其田野材料的基础上，描述了香港新界一个具有600年历史的村落的社会历史，论述了从14世纪的几个家庭到1700年发展成为一个区域性村落的过程，在此过程中，宗族起到了关键性的作用。尽管在传统中国，以兄弟情义与平等为美德的父系观念占居主导地位，Watson的研究却表明，在地方与富商精英阶层的形成、发展与持续过程中，宗族实际上起着主导作用，虽然地主与富商阶层的经济作用有所削减，但他们在政治上仍然起控制作用。因此，尽管在先祖眼里，宗族成员之间是平等的，但在土地拥有与政治权力等日常生活中，他们之间是绝对不平等的。Watson 检视了一个单一宗族内部阶层之间关系的动态，指出这些关系是如何随着有酬帮工的发展而变化的。
Watson 试图说明少数地主与富商精英分子是如何支配着“社区的兄弟” 以及中国宗族村落内部阶层与宗族之间的动态关系。他重点讨论了继嗣体系与经济、政治之间的复杂关系，突出了同一个宗族中有两个不同阶层构成：不到百分之十的地主与富商阶层与小农佃户阶层，他们之间虽然可称兄道弟，但在经济与政治权力上他们是绝对不平等的。
Yang Martin C. 1947 A Chinese
Village: Taitou, Shangdong province.
Yang 认为“家”是Taitou 的基本组织，因此他的描述是从家开始的，第二级是村落。在家与村落之间有许多过渡性组织－－氏族、邻里、宗族组织等。在村落之外就是集镇，它将邻近的村落联系在一起，集镇代表较大的区域，它与村落之间的临时纽带为小村落的群体。本研究对Taitou的自然环境、社会类型、村民的生活方式以及生活水平等均有所论述。为了解释中国的家庭概念，作者以Taitou一个典型家庭为例，描述了家庭成员之间的互动交往、经济与仪式活动，儿童养育，老人赡养以及婚姻意义等方面。村落之外的乡村生活是通过村落与集镇间的关系来反映的。
Faura, David
1986 The
structure of Chinese rural society: lineage and village in the eastern new
Territories , HK.
本研究详细地描述了香港新界东部地区从15世纪到20世纪早期的社会历史。在分析田野观察、访谈及文献资料的基础上，作者追溯了本地区宗族作为一种制度兴起的历史，并把宗族置于村落组织和村际联盟的场合之中。Freedman 认为拥有财产和共同祭a祖是宗族的特性，对此，Faura 提出异议。在新界，很多宗族都在广州拥有共同的宗祠，这些宗族的成员有族谱，共同参加宗祠的祭祀活动，但不会一起参加共同的经济活动。 另外，许多邻村可能会集体在公共宗祠祭祖，但他们可能不属于同一个宗族。在Faura 看来，Freedman 的问题是他没有把定居的权力作为一个关键性的概念分离出来分析，如祭祖的权力、衍生于他是这个宗族的后裔，在村落里起房的权力，在山上割草的权力以及在村边垦荒的权力等等，均因为他在村落里有定居的权力。
对土地的权力，尤其是对定居权力的讨论，以及村民地域社区概念中所反映出来的祖先祭祀，是对Freedman 宗族论的补充。