Women's studies (research), which rose abroad in the 1970s, was introduced to China in the early 1980s, and women's studies were recognized by both academic circles and women's federations in China. Of course, the academic circles and the Women's Federation have different backgrounds and motivations: both of them are keen to find a way out for the new women's problems arising from social transformation, but it is the interest and consciousness of a few female scholars in academic circles to conduct cultural reflection in discipline construction; In terms of the motivation and focus of the research on women's history, the Women's Federation pays more attention to summarizing the history of women's movements and collects and sorts out a large number of local and national historical materials on women's movements. At first, the academic circles paid more attention to the exploration of women's historical texts out of cultural reflection. 4. Due to the revival of the tradition of social history research in historians and the influence of yearbook school, Women in the Tang Dynasty became the earliest published history of dating women. Since then, a large number of works and articles that continued the social history in the 1920s and 1930s and focused on the description of marriage and family, handmaiden, prostitute and different classes of women have become the main content and writing paradigm of women's history as understood by historians today. Since the 1980s, the social history of the lower class, which has attracted the attention of the French Annales School, has not excluded women, but only regarded women as a member of the lower class groups, such as bandits, green gangs, hooligans, refugees, and vulnerable groups such as the elderly and children. It can be seen that the history of women in this period paid attention to three aspects-the history of women's movement within the framework of the political history (or party history) of the Women's Federation, the history of women's reflection or cultural reconstruction in women's studies, and the history of women's groups from the social history of historians.
In the early 1990s, with the "economic fever" and "cultural fever"-the voice of promoting traditional culture, women's attention was increasingly strengthened; Today's "promotion" and the cultural history at the beginning of the century all involve women, which are both inherited and unique in commercial speculation. The combination of "carrying forward" and "speculation" in women's themes is as follows: "Cleopatra" and "palace culture fever" have endless palace secrets and concubines vying for favor; Both "Brothel Culture Fever" and "Beauty Culture Fever" (including court beauties) have published a series of books on beauties, talented women, famous prostitutes (at that time, "talented women" were almost equal to "famous prostitutes"), nun culture, merry widow's "Four Big" and "Ten Big". What is even more popular is the promotion of "sexual culture", under the banner of emancipating the mind and opposing feudal pursuit of quality of life, and the signboard of "science" is hung; In addition to copying Gao Luopei's series of works on China's sexual art, he also wrote many books on the history of sexual culture. Because these unanalyzed explanations only repeat classics or copy foreign practices, it seems that readers will soon be lost in publications, and scholars with conscience will dismiss such publications as "cultural garbage". However, today, they still have positive value-turning decay into magic-and these publications can become historical materials for analysis and research. The author has always believed that "what should not be written is not the above-mentioned female characters, but why and how to write." The key here is the need for a suitable perspective and effective analysis tools. It can be seen that from the 1980s to the early 1990s, several groups with different social and academic backgrounds set foot in women's history-women scholars, historians, the combination of various fashion and cultural people and publishers, and the women's federation system. Their goals are different: to fill women's history in the field of women's studies and to construct experience about women's history; Or find another way to get rid of the historical crisis and expand the historical vision; Or find a way out between returning to tradition and commercial culture; Or write a monument for the recent winners and celebrities ... In the seemingly prosperous scene, there are actually differences in academic theory and academic background and difficulties in team integration. By the mid-1990s, new changes had taken place: when the women's cause of "carrying forward the tradition" dried up in the history circle-there were few women recorded in the history books, and the records of court women, talented women and famous prostitutes who repeated the history books were not studied. Even if they studied, they could not get rid of the stereotype of old historians, and readers were tired of it. Some serious historians who knew more about the development trend of foreign history began to add "gender" to their research fields. 7 Some famous writers, such as Tang Shi, seem to have used all the materials and topics, and female graduate students majoring in history have also turned to female topics in their papers; Scholars who study marriage and family history in social history began to pay more attention to women and gender relations; The application of new perspectives (such as ethnic women, Ding Yizhuang, etc. ), new materials (such as epitaphs, unearthed documents and archives) and new methods (such as oral interviews) have also brought new vitality to the writing of women's history. Modern women's history has changed the way of political history center and paid more attention to the life of the lower class. nine
In the historical concern under the background of women's studies, gender was introduced in the early 1990s, and after several years of digestion and integration with the mainland, it was applied to the study of women's history in the medium term. On the one hand, it is put into practice in China to explore the formation and change process of the local gender system and its performance characteristics, on the other hand, it is considered in the discipline construction of female-social gender history. From the analytical framework of "discovering women's history" in the early 1990s to the local "pursuit of gender, history, history and culture", (Du, 1998) turned from pure research to discipline-curriculum construction and academic inheritance. (Cai et al., 1999) This indicates that the study of women's history and the development of discipline consciousness in China have entered a new stage, and they have begun to wean and grow from the embarrassing position of women's history as a political vassal, historical ornament and commercial selling point for a long time. (See Cai's preface, 1999)
Reviewing the history of Chinese and foreign women is precisely to provide resources for today's discipline construction that can be inherited and used for reference. The discipline of women's history can't be just a simple study, but the determination of a discipline coordinate system (although the study of women's history is interdisciplinary, it can only cross other disciplines by establishing its own academic coordinate; Today's women's history should be the intersection of women's studies and history, not just a branch of traditional history or even social history, so as to establish the theoretical framework and basic methods of this subject, so as to achieve the goal of rebuilding historical knowledge, changing the historical research model and institutionalizing knowledge inheritance, that is to say, disciplining includes research (knowledge production) and teaching (training talents). The construction of the discipline of women's history under the background of women's studies must be consciously promoted by a group of scholars with conscious gender awareness, surpassing and innovating in inheritance and reference, and exploring the development path of the local discipline of women's history from a global perspective. Get out of the dilemma of theoretical method
Facing the research trend of women's history and China's historical heritage, domestic women's history scholars are faced with multiple puzzles in theory and research methods when inheriting, drawing lessons from and innovating to establish the local women's history discipline, such as: Can gender use local research? How to combine historical materialism with gender perspective? What new methods can be used for reference? ..... old and new alternate, Chinese and foreign meet, anxious in confusion, struggling and breaking through in exploration.
One of the puzzles is whether we are eager to "transcend" gender and return to "neutral" and "objective" "great history of mankind", or whether it takes a long time to study women's history from the perspective of gender? In the 1920s and 1930s, when male scholars brought "women" to the surface of history, they appealed and alerted the world with a heroic ambition to transform society and realize modernization. However, today's indifference and discrimination against women's history is surprising. One of the reasons is the lack of reflection on the hierarchical construction and value orientation of historiography, academic self-isolation and the retrogression of historians' humanistic care (even the lack of eager and deep concern for women-nation-modernization during the reform and the May Fourth Movement), which has caused the gender blindness and prejudice of orthodox historiography. Traditional historiography regards political history, diplomatic history, economic history and its subsequent social history as authentic historiography, while women's history is a secondary history, a history of problems and a marginal history, which cannot be established independently, but at best is a branch of social history. The second reason is the one-sided understanding of western women's history theory, especially the misunderstanding of feminist history with gender as the core analysis category. They think that the female-gender perspective is one-sided or even extreme, which runs counter to the objectivity principle of history and even deliberately creates gender opposition. They accept the "demonization" and "stigma" of feminism, and even disdain to understand the current development of feminist history, including the progress of foreign women's history and the latest achievements of Sinology. The discrimination against women's history by mainstream historians directly leads to the anxiety and fear that women historians (mostly female scholars) are marginalized. Therefore, before "adding" women, they are eager to "surpass" women and gender, not to mention the localization and re-creation of gender perspective. Any new discipline needs to pay a price and take risks in order to achieve something. The task of consciously writing women's and gender history for and with women is far from complete. After the mission of the discipline construction of women and gender history is completed, it is necessary to "transcend" gender and return to the "great" history of "people" (or "sex people"). 23
Second, is it the "harmony of yin and yang" of the unity of man and nature, or is it an artificial hierarchical combination? Globalization corresponds to regionality and nativity, and they are not binary opposites. In the study of women's history, gender, as a core concept and analytical category, is essentially highlighting the structural relationship of gender power in history. At this point, some domestic researchers often reject it on the grounds of local particularity, thinking that "imported goods" cannot explain the situation in China, and "harmony between Yin and Yang" is the analytical basis that is often used to resist "power". As a matter of fact, few people deconstruct the construction process and hierarchical nature of ethical and philosophical assumptions such as "Yin-Yang-Gankun", and China people lack basic critical thinking on the essence of "Yang respecting Yin and restraining Yin damaging Yin" in gender relations. Female historians should have undertaken the task of deconstructing the hierarchical power structure of gender culture. If the hypothesis of "harmony between yin and yang" is used to exclude gender analysis and deny gender power relations without analysis and criticism, its essence is to spare or even beautify the dross of the "oppression-liberation" model constructed by scholars in modern times, which will deny the research results of women's history under the background of modernization.
Third, is it a single "status" analysis, or is it to introduce and create more conceptual categories? Because women's history has long been influenced by political history and social history, "status" analysis is the most important or even the only conceptual category. The essence of analytical category is what is the focus and value of history, that is, what constitutes the content of women's history. In previous studies, either women were regarded as victims and the oppressed dragged down the society, or women were regarded as family talents and included in social history, which all involved women's "status"-society and family; However, the omni-directional gender scanning from the perspective of female ontology and gender relationship was abandoned. This is due to the limitations of previous theories and methods. Today, many concepts such as "gender", "difference" and "initiative" have been introduced into women's history, and a single status analysis is pale and powerless.
Fourth, should we stick to positivism or use a variety of new methods? China historians seem to have forgotten the fact that a set of positivist historiography traditions constructed since the beginning of the 20th century was originally introduced from abroad, but after establishing their own local authority, they not only forgot what they have always been, but Chen Xiangyin also stopped seeking change and innovation. The specific manifestations are: too superstitious about historical materials, lack of inspection, interpretation and analysis of literature materials as re-expression; Use description and induction instead of specific and complicated analysis and explanation; Too much admiration for the previous generation of historians. On the one hand, the study of women's history under this academic tradition lacks originality, follows predecessors and is repeated by peers. Taking Soong Ching Ling's research as an example, more than 40 books and 500 articles have been published, most of which lack originality and repetition. Repetition and lack of freshness reflect the obsolescence of methods and the singleness of perspectives. The application of interdisciplinary, multi-perspective and multi-methods, especially the introduction of gender perspective, is an urgent need for the construction of women's history. Localization and mainstreaming
As mentioned above, women's history establishes its own disciplinary orientation at the intersection of women's studies and history, inherits excellent traditions and introduces new theoretical methods for local studies, and enters the mainstream of education while producing knowledge.
1. Inheritance, introduction and localization: 30% in World War I.
Inherit what? All the research results in the past should be taken as the starting point for examination and investigation from a gender perspective, including original historical materials. It is necessary to inherit the historical research on women since the 20th century, including the achievements of sociology and anthropology, such as Fei Xiaotong's "Native China", "Fertility System" and other research on gender system and relationship, but it needs to be surpassed at the height of the times. As for the rigorous tradition of empirical historiography, the methodology of historical materialism is still a very useful tool. We should continue to explore the communication and combination of historical materialism, class analysis and gender perspective, and increase the observation dimension and explanatory validity.
Introduce what? At present, the concept of gender is not introduced from the west, and it is not used in some fields. Gender has become a social concern and academic concern with global significance, and only when it is given a specific cultural (ethnic and racial) meaning can it become meaningful. The understanding of globalization and localization of female history is based on this premise. As scholars of women's history in China, we must try to apply the concepts of gender and patriarchy to China to observe and understand the performance and operation of gender system in China. Another example is the concept of "difference". How is the performance in China? For example, what is the significance of the differences in women's personal status in the family-women, wives and mothers in the family role, wives and concubines in the eldest son's birthright, first mothers, concubines and stepmother, and seniority in the generation-and how do they work in life? What are the differences between women as a group in class, nationality, region, urban and rural areas and education ... Gender differences are also very biological and essentialist ... both need to be explored and answered locally.
How to localize? Applying the analytical categories of "gender" and "difference" to the history of China, we can take the Chinese nation as an example to do multi-level exploration;
The first layer: Look at the system norms-how are the gender division of labor, in-laws and families, sex and other systems artificially regulated? What is the content? 25
The second layer: Look at what the relevant subjects who build the gender system have done to build the gender system. What roles do they play in the production, circulation and acceptance of gender system respectively? What is the relationship between them? For example, the patriarchal clan system (race), the patriarchal-imperial country and the upper-class men who are not divided (isomorphic) between home and country, how did they initially become accomplices in building a patriarchal gender system? How does it change with time? Specifically, how does "family" strictly define and formulate gender identity, birthright, ethics, norms and so on? How did "China" formulate laws, decrees and standards to promote "virtue" and punish "evil deeds"? How do cultural people who dominate the "discourse power" produce gender discourse-including the generation and interpretation of institutional discourse, the definition of male and female temperament, the ethical and moral values of good and evil between men and women, and the discourse about women's ideas and sexuality, physical medicine, lust and beauty? And how can these words be put into concrete operation and continue to construct realistic gender? It is also necessary to explore how men and women, as the main body, form their full recognition of gender identity, division of labor, temperament, partial derailment and even rebellion.
The third layer: Look at the actual operation and performance of the gender system. The establishment and manufacture of systems and norms are not completely equal to the existence in real life. There are time, region, class and other factors. As far as the gender system itself is concerned, there is a relationship of "economic rights". The so-called "Jing" here refers to the basic principles that remain unchanged in system and value; "Force" refers to the contextualization and elasticity of "Jing". The relationship between economy and power is similar to the relationship between purpose and means, strategy and tactics. Due to the economic power relationship of gender system, the identity and actual situation of women (men) as a specific or group become complicated; In addition, the decentralization of power between classes and generations-on the complex relationship between seniority and gender-enables women to find living space in the patriarchal gender system and then play a certain role. How do men and women live in the gender relationship restricted by the gender system? Including production, daily mood, sex, fertility, interpersonal communication and so on? Need to explore and answer one by one. However, the original narrow family category and single status analysis can hardly cover such rich and complicated female life and gender relations.
Also, what are the notable features of gender categories in China that are different from other cultures? How should we examine the chronological stages of the evolution of the gender system in China for thousands of years? What are the existing materials of women's history and new materials that need to be discovered? How to interpret the existing and undeveloped materials? ..... and so on, all need to be solved in the process of inheritance, introduction and localization.
2. "Independent Project Establishment" and "Two Enters": Mainstreaming Operation
As mentioned above, the discipline orientation of women's history must find a balance point and connection point between women's studies and history. First of all, it needs a separate women's history project, as an independent category in a certain period of time, giving financial and human input, carrying out research and teaching activities, and considering entering-cooperation-dialogue with mainstream history.
The current practice is to set up a separate history project in the discipline construction of women's studies, because it is impossible to set up a women's history project in history for a long time. Since the launch of the sub-project "Women's History" in the project "Developing Women and Gender Studies in China", a series of activities, such as translation introduction, sorting out results, reading discussion, training teams, compiling teaching materials and publishing picture books, have achieved initial results. In particular, the successful convening of the international symposium on "Women and History in Tang and Song Dynasties" held in Peking University on 200 1 strongly proved the possibility and necessity of women's history entering the mainstream historiography, and had a positive impact on historiography. 29
As soon as we entered the mainstream of education, we began to explore new courses in women's history in colleges and universities. Its approach may be to add gender history and culture courses to general elective courses in colleges and universities to guide students to link blind gender discrimination with historical and cultural traditions in reality and improve gender sensitivity; Or offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the degree education of history department, for example, add the content of women and gender from dynastic history or special history as a new perspective, new dimension and new method of historical research to teach students gender, and then transition to independent enrollment of master students and doctoral students in women's history. It seems that this road is not smooth sailing, but it is foreseeable that it is not a dream for women's history to enter the mainstream of history and education as long as women historians make unremitting efforts.