At the end of 20 14, editor's note "Looking for China in History: An Epistemological Dialogue on Regional Historical Research" co-authored by Liu Zhiwei and Ge Sun was published by Hong Kong Friends Bookstore. Although the time was not long, it quickly attracted the attention and discussion of the academic circles. On September 20 16, the simplified Chinese version of the book was published by Oriental Publishing Center. In the focus of the dialogue, Liu Zhiwei proposed to move from "the history of the country" to "the history of the people", and Ge Sun also put forward an echo-"everyone". But at the same time, they also stressed that "human history" is not the bottom history and social life history. What exactly is "human history"? What's the difference between "everyone" and "people"?
In 2006 10, Professor Liu Zhiwei convened a group of young scholars to study the financial problems in Ming and Qing Dynasties. 14 After dinner, Mr. Liu and some young scholars gathered outside a coffee shop for nearly two hours and continued to exchange and talk happily until the coffee shop closed. Zhao Siyuan said that he raised all his questions when reading this book and asked Mr. Liu, "I feel very satisfied." There were many issues involved in the discussion that night, one of which was how to understand "from national history to human history", which led to historical writing, Shi Jianya's theory, the continuation and fracture of Ming and Qing Dynasties, clan, imperial examination and other issues. In a word, it was a warm night worth remembering. Participants in the evening discussion included (History Department of Sun Yat-sen University), Hou Peng (History Department of Suzhou University of Science and Technology), Siyuan Zhao (History Department of Shanghai Jiaotong University), Shen Bin (History Department of Peking University), Li Yiqiong (History Department of Zhejiang Normal University), Huang Zhongxin (History Department of Jinan University) and Guo (Econometric History Center of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies).
What is sorted out here is basically factual records. Of course, Mr. Liu, Mr. Siyuan Zhao and Mr. Shen Bin made some modifications and supplements on the basis of sorting out the draft.
2017-01-0610:15: 50 source: paper net (Shanghai)
From national history to human history
The so-called "human history" is not limited to writing the history of specific human activities, but writing all historical topics from the logic of human actions. If history is to be scientific in society, it is necessary to understand society and country from the perspective of human behavior, just like economics, sociology and anthropology.
Rao: Mr. Liu, the conversation between you and your husband in Searching for China in History is of great concern to many readers. Among them, your advocacy of "from a country's history to a person's history" has aroused great repercussions in academic circles, but it seems that there are many doubts at the operational level. How should we start to calculate "a person's history"?
Liu Zhiwei: I didn't bring it up first. What we have done in the actual historical research is actually like this. The so-called "human history" is not what I really want to talk about, but if we don't talk about it from here, we can't bring out the problems of universal imagination, institutional history, center and periphery, part and whole. These are the contents that I have talked about for more than twenty years. I like giving lectures rather than writing articles, so these are nothing new.
I really want to see the reactions of several young scholars I am familiar with. This book was published on 20 14 and has been read by many people. However, I think it will be understood as the activities and stories of people or countries, especially the lower classes and little people, which is really a feature of China's historiography. But there is no doubt that the logic of anthropology, economics and sociology, and the logic of cognition all start from people. I seem to have said in the book that economics starts from people's rational behavior and forms an explanation of the market, society and country; Anthropology is simpler, that is, starting from human reproductive behavior, it will never be said that it is starting from the country, but it is derived or deduced from the country. Even the study of being a man in our history begins with the country now, because people are derived from the country and regard the country as the subject of behavior. The people are only a part of this subject, a representative and a symbol, so it is still the history of the country.
In ancient times, history was originally a national category. Historians have recorded the activities of the country from the beginning, providing a kind of cognition and a set of rhetoric for the behavior of the country. Therefore, (China) history is originally a set of knowledge from a national perspective. If "history" is verbalized, its subject is the country, not the people. But if you tell this to economists and anthropologists, they will think it's all nonsense. One question that we have been struggling with is whether history should be scientific in society and whether it should be studied with the theories of economics, sociology and anthropology. If the answer is yes, we need to go back to the starting point of these disciplines and understand society and the country from the perspective of human behavior.
From the history of a country to the history of a person is a reflection on the profession and discipline of history as a historian, but such reflection is natural to me. I do my own research and engage in academic research. I started from economics, so for me, when I entered the field of history, I was actually very sensitive to this cognitive way with the country as the main body. Some of the earliest books I read, such as Marx's historical works, such as Eighteen Fog Months in louis bonaparte, are undoubtedly about human history. I think they are very exciting and have had a far-reaching impact on my view of history. If we step into the door of so-called historiography from the beginning, it is self-evident to move towards "human history"
In the past, when I talked about "human history", I would mention the so-called downward history, the history of the working people, the history of the people, the history of the lower class and the history of the lower class. I regard all these categories as objects of self-reflection, and I think these are the historical categories of the country. The so-called lower class, people, grassroots and rural society, all these languages are actually a set of national discourses, so we should first put the "state" aside and return to physical life, which is the starting point of my so-called epistemology.
I explained three reasons for talking about this topic in the book "Postscript":
First, "looking for China" means that my research does not regard "China" as a self-evident historical subject, which is the position I want to express before the dialogue; Secondly, since China is not a self-evident historical subject, the "history" in which we look for "China" is not the history of "China" logically, but the history constructed by human behavior, and China must be recognized in this history; Thirdly, since "China" is known through history, both national history and local or regional history are equally important and have the same significance in whole or in part. There is no need to regard China as a whole and the region as a part. From this perspective, the issues of universality and integrity can be raised.
This is my consistent position. I have never written a history of people myself. But I think the institutional history I am talking about is to understand the operation and evolution mechanism of the system from the perspective of human behavior, so as to understand the system. So when I say "human history", I am not limited to writing the history of specific human activities, but writing all historical topics from the logic of human actions.
When discussing, I often like to quote a sentence from Marx and Engels in German Ideology, which I think is the core content of historical materialism. Only from this sentence can we understand the meaning of the so-called material conditions: "The first premise of any human history is undoubtedly the existence of living individuals, so the specific facts to be confirmed first are the material organization of these individuals and their relationship with nature." I think this is the most basic principle of historical materialism. From this perspective, there is the so-called problem of food, clothing, housing and transportation. Next: "Any historical record should start from these natural foundations and the changes that have taken place in the historical process due to human activities." This is my understanding of the history starting from people.
Operational problems of "human history"
If we want to talk about the pursuit of historical paradigm, Lv Simian and Kishimoto Miyuki do have the same pursuit. Epistemologically, history is understood through structure rather than power relations.
Rao Jia Rong: I noticed that you have been saying these things in class for more than 20 years. When I want to ask, what is the academic history behind the concept of "human history"
Liu Zhiwei: Judging from Liang Qichao's new historiography, he proposed to break the relationship between monarch and minister, and advocated people's history and people's history, but this level is different from what I emphasized. Advocating people's history and people's history emphasizes the protagonist on the historical stage. Later, Marxist historiography prevailed, and we basically turned it into a question of heroic history or slave history. It sounds different, but I thought it was actually the same. In the 1960s and 1970s, we advocated studying the history of working people. In my opinion, we actually want to be the history of the working people with emperors and princes. When we talk about history from a downward perspective, we turn to writing the history of ordinary people's daily life, which is China's orientation in talking about social history. The problem is that the history of ordinary people's daily life is about how they eat and wear, and it is a kind of social life history-social life history is of course meaningful, but this significance must return to such a level: it helps us understand a big history, that is, what the so-called social facts are. The social fact is not whether we drink coffee or boiled water. When we drink coffee or boiled water, we are in a structure as actors, and we are an active person. I am interested in the concept of agency, because I want to trace the structure of agency.
Zhao Siyuan: In memory of Mr. Wang, he thought that Mr. Lu had really practiced Liang Qichao's new historiography. He particularly emphasized that Lv Simian had a book, Social History of China, which was very strange. It is called the social history of China and the institutional history of China. That is to say, in the framework of Lv Simian, institutional history and social history are the same thing. The reason why social history and institutional history can be the same thing is because he thinks that institutions are a set of things made in the process of social operation. It's a bit like what we discussed tonight. In epistemology, we know history through structure rather than power relations.
Liu Zhiwei: Going back to the English meaning of the word "system" may be easy to understand. System, this "system" is not a system in the sense of our traditional system history, but actually a system. At this level, institutional history and social history can be interlinked.
Zhao Siyuan: So when Mr. Wang told us about Lv Simian, he emphasized the book very much.
Liu Zhiwei: Lv Simian is a very important historian. In fact, an academic source of my family research is Lv Simian's A Brief History of the Family System in China. I think-perhaps a little exaggerated-that China's academic circles have not surpassed him in understanding China's clan system, although more than one hundred years have passed. His book is very wonderful. In fact, he has talked about everything we talked about. If we have surpassed him, it is nothing more than that we have done some fieldwork, but we have not surpassed him in the most basic and principled interpretation mode.
Zhao Siyuan: But the trouble is that Lv Simian's things can neither be incorporated into traditional historiography ... For an inappropriate analogy, they can neither be incorporated into Mr. Meng Sen's method of writing Qing history nor into later Marxist historiography.
Liu Zhiwei: Some places can be linked with Marxist historiography, but his achievements are actually more than that. He surpassed the popular Marxist historiography in the 1950s and 1960s.
Zhou Jian: When I first saw the proposal of 20 14 "Human History", I discussed it with Liang. We all think this proposal is very influential. We both thought of "methodological individualism" advocated by Mr. Kishida Wenxiong. She may emphasize "subjectivity" and "order" more, while you emphasize practical operation.
Liu Zhiwei: You mentioned Lv Simian, and you mentioned Kishimoto Miyuki. In fact, we all come from the same place ... If we want to talk about the pursuit of historical paradigm, we do have the same pursuit. Of course, "mechanism" should talk about "order", and "order" also needs "mechanism". There are indeed similarities between the two. The "structural process" I use is actually this level. Why don't we "construct" This thing doesn't mean people build houses.
But that sentence doesn't broaden our understanding. I still think this is a direction for us as historians to reflect on the transformation of historical paradigm. It is not an objective change from what history to what history, but more our reflection on the historical paradigm and our pursuit of future historical research.
Back to the practical level just mentioned, it is actually very simple, that is, the science history Club. As long as you are really a social science method, you must adopt the method of taking people as the logical starting point. This is the basic theoretical framework of social science I just mentioned, and it is definitely not based on the state. Specifically, when you see any system, the first thing you have to ask is how the system came into being, what kind of situation those people are facing, what problems they want to solve, what purpose they want to achieve, what methods they have adopted for this, why they think this method can succeed, and what they can do under the existing regulations and framework. If they can do one thing, they will start a new situation. As long as you think so, it must be human history. We are concerned about the history of this country, not how this system was formed, not what changes were caused by China people's actions, nor a set of mechanisms and processes, but the rules and regulations of this system and how people implemented or resisted them. This is the history of this country.
Zhao Siyuan: At the operational level, what I want to say is that, for example, in the study of institutional history and economic history, we do not naturally presuppose that these people must be organized into our known organizational forms. We just want to know what kind of organization they want to set up, or how they want to do things. In the process of doing this, they will naturally form some kind of structure (and system).
Liu Zhiwei: There is something wrong with the previous sentence. Don't presuppose their organizational form. In principle, from the standpoint of political correctness, it seems right, but this presupposition is necessary. Without this premise, our whole social science will collapse. Social science is actually based on this presupposition. Without this presupposition, it will become pure storytelling, and there will be no "structure".
Zhao Siyuan: Yes. My understanding is that if we talk about the history of a country, from the standpoint of a country, the problem is that it presupposes that people organize themselves naturally and then act.
Liu Zhiwei: This is not what the organization looks like. We don't presuppose. In fact, there will be a certain way of organization, which is for sure. There must be a structure.
Zhao Siyuan: This is the presupposition of social science. It is self-evident that countries mentioned in traditional history must have some form of organization, which is what we want to "break". I don't know if my understanding is correct.
Liu Zhiwei: You always use "a certain", and "a certain" is something we have to preset, but we can't preset the specific one.
Hou Peng: The state is the representative of natural legitimacy. It seems that after leaving this country, history cannot be written. This limits our imagination. The national viewpoint seems to constitute the whole meaning of our history. Besides, people are meaningless.
Liu Zhiwei: Yes. For example, if I choose you as my research object, it means that you are useful for me to understand this country and the subsequent parts or links of this country. For example, "the death of the king" is a very clear preset. He is not a random person. The question is, when we talk about people now, will we still think about personal life history and life history? This is just a figurative statement. In fact, as I just said, I never do personal history research, write personal stories, and no one even shows up, but I think I do human history.
Zhao Siyuan: Many times, reviewers or editors will ask you about the representativeness of this case. The implicit logic here is that the reason why you want to do this research is because this case has its importance in the existing national history, so you do it.
Liu Zhiwei: If you say this is a special case, it is meaningless. However, if you say that it is the history of human beings, people with life and body, the environment, relationships and structures they created, and see how they moved, then I don't know the country, but a relationship, a structure formed by human activities, and the country is just one of these relationships or structures. On the other hand, the state is an omnipresent existence above us, but it is omnipresent and we don't need to use it to interpret it. On the contrary, I infer this country from these people. Note that I'm not talking about induction, but deduction. Our big difference is to sum up from different activities, but I think this is a deduction.
Zhao Siyuan: This is repeatedly criticized by Teacher Ke (David). We don't want to do a lot of regional research, and then one plus one equals two, and then look for the greatest common divisor.
Hou Peng: Teacher Liu said that the change of this concept is clear when you say it. However, for those of us who want to do this research, the most important thing is to do empirical research. The basic idea of all positivism research is to grasp its social facts, including your concern about humanism, and reduce it to some social facts that can be studied. Therefore, the purpose of making institutional history and regional history is to restore humanism to a social fact. Liu Zhiwei: Only in this way can it become a social science. ) including the region, Kishimoto said that the region has a methodological side. When we talk about regions from the perspective of methods, we pay more attention to people's ideas and practices.
Liu Zhiwei: Yes. So the logic of my dialogue begins here, so I say this starting point is not the most important. I am more concerned about how to know China in such an epistemological way. This search is not to study many fields and find a greatest common divisor. If we just pursue the greatest common denominator, we will be disappointed in the end. Because the result is negative. You can find any one (the greatest common divisor), and I can give a counterexample.
Zhao Siyuan: My understanding is that when we do a case study, the starting point of asking questions is to understand how a certain group of people form a structure, or how it works. This is the starting point for us to do a case. This is the biggest difference between us and those who regard the case study as a case study of China.
Liu Zhiwei: So I will say in the future that everything we do is a whole, so you don't have to worry about whether the research object is a whole. For example, is the Forbidden City a whole? You question that we should study a village to understand China, why not study the Forbidden City to understand China? The Forbidden City is a special case in all aspects and has no so-called representativeness. This is my logic.
Shen Bin: I think if you want readers to know more about the history of the country and the history of the people, maybe the criticism of this cognitive theory by the history of the country needs to be divided into two levels. Just now, Mr. Hou and Mr. Philip Burkart talked about these two levels respectively. The first level means that from the development of our historiography or historical writing, it is always a writing system supported by state power, so we need to rely on collective actors like the state to confirm its position (and significance) on the gradient of this value system, which is a level. However, deeper than this, Philip Burkart mentioned just now that we assume that all people can be defined, written and studied only in this structure and only by relying on collective actors (countries). What everyone can understand now is the first level, that is, history is a manifestation of state power. Now we can "break" this. However, the second level must be emphasized separately. Why? If we don't emphasize the second level, even if we "break" the country as a collective actor, other collective actors will be taken out as self-evident writing objects, such as clans. In other words, we can't take a specific collective actor as a self-evident (logical starting point) to analyze individual actions.
Liu Zhiwei: I don't quite agree with that. Collective actors, individual actors, governments, countries, villages or society can all do this.
Zhao Siyuan: I guess what Shen Bin means is that in traditional history, whether to choose a theme depends on its importance in the historical context. Of course, what kind of power relationship is the most important in a certain era is different in different times. For example, it can be considered as a country, a woman or a working people. This can be changed, but the problem is that it does not regard the state or workers or women as a structure, but as a power relationship. Suppose people think that women are the most important among these power relations today, then all subjects related to women have innate importance. But in the traditional era, it is generally believed that the state is the most important power relationship. Therefore, when it comes to the history of the dynasty, only with dynasty politics as the boundary will this theme be considered to be of innate importance.
Liu Zhiwei: But ... I don't really doubt this, such as the importance of female themes.
Zhao Siyuan: The crux of the problem lies in whether the starting point of our question is from the power relationship or the structure.
Shen Bin: The behavior of the people who make up the structure.
Liu Zhiwei: I think I used Shi Jianya's example to illustrate the problem, but no one seems to notice that I am talking about Shi Jianya.
Zhao Siyuan: You mean Shi Jianya was misunderstood by historians.
Liu Zhiwei: Of course, China historian 100% misread it.
Zhao Siyuan: What they read from Shi Jianya is 100% criticized by the science teacher.
Liu Zhiwei: What they read from Shi Jian Ya was Ji's regional model, that is, the dynasty was divided into several regions, and the economic zones were divided by the dynasty according to natural conditions, and then the dynasty set up jurisdiction institutions in different administrative regions. It cannot be said that this understanding is wrong. But this is a typical national historical logic. Shi Jianya is actually not like this. He starts with everyone's behavior. Of course, the person he refers to is a rational economic man. In fact, Shi Jian's most important theory is his beach theory, which is hardly mentioned in the history circle of China. Zhao Siyuan: This is what Chen Chunsheng told us about Shi Jianya. If you don't understand his beach theory, you can't understand Shi Jianya's logic. Otherwise, you will think that Shi Jianya has divided a certain area into nine markets. Shi Jianya's beach theory is actually the most basic theoretical method of economics, which is to purify and homogenize all conditions-the beach is homogeneous and the people who are active on the beach are evenly distributed. Assuming that each of us is rational, I don't know you, and I won't be too close to you, but I won't be too close to him, so I will definitely take an appropriate position, which will definitely be a balanced distribution. In the case of balanced distribution, an old lady sells popsicles here and an old lady sells popsicles there. In order to compete for the market, there will be a question of which way to move, but there will definitely be another balanced distribution. Shi Jianya's hexagonal honeycomb market network is derived from this logic. This is very typical, starting from people's behavior, to establish a relationship or structure. Shi Jianya's most important contribution is here. This is not his original creation, but he borrowed geography. The interpretation of China's reunification is his contribution.
I just went to the place where he did research last month, and I walked around to know that it was really like this. His advantage is complex environment, such as water network, estuary and mountainous area, which can only be established by homogenization. He ran to that place in Chengdu Plain, which happened to be this "ghost". Therefore, he naturally related what he observed in an empirical field of anthropology to this abstract model. So I think he is a typical historical explanation based on human behavior. I've been talking about this for twenty years, and I still can't help talking about it. I also want to thank Ge Sun, who has been forcing me to write. I said whether I like talking or not, and she said, let me tell you.
Shen Bin: I think it may be easier to understand when you talk about a country's history and a person's history, if you distinguish between two levels. First, when you talk about "human history", you actually talk about it at the philosophical level; Second, it is closer to the level of methodology. In social science, there are two paths. One is neoclassical economics or Weber's sociology, which is methodological individualism, starting from the subject of free will in a certain structural environment; The other is Durkheim's methodological collectivism, which emphasizes that social facts can not be reduced to the individual psychology of actors, but can only be explained from social facts, no matter which path is in line with the history of "starting from human behavior" that you advocate.
Liu Zhiwei: The title "From national history to human history" is easily misunderstood. This is just my reflection as a historian. We should return to the history of the people from the history of the country, not the logic or method of understanding. What I reflect on is that from the beginning, what we have learned is the history as a country.
Zhao Siyuan: The core of traditional historical writing is power relationship, not structure.
Shen Bin: Not those who form the structure.
Liu Zhiwei: If you can clearly explain the mechanism of doing things and why it is important, you must understand how people do that and what people do under that mechanism. (Zhao Siyuan: Anthropologists don't ask why they study villages. Therefore, the word "mechanism" will not be mentioned in the history of the country, because it does not need to understand the structure from our personal behavior. When I talk to you, I feel that we are fellow travelers. In fact, whether you are conscious or not, you want to know about this system anyway, and you will definitely think about how this thing is made.