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海外中国研究丛书
Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942
In the early twentieth century, the Chinese state made strenuous efforts to broaden and deepen its authority over rural society. This book is an ambitious attempt to offer both a method and a framework for analyzing Chinese social history in the state-making era.
The author constructs a prismatic view of village-level society that shows how marketing, kinship, water control, temple patronage, and other structures of human interaction overlapped to form what he calls the cultural nexus of power in local society. The author's concept of the cultural nexus and his tracing of how it was altered enables us for the first time to grapple with change at the village level in all its complexity.
The author asserts that the growth of the state transformed and delegitimized the traditional cultural nexus during the Republican era, particularly in the realm of village leadership and finances. Thus, the expansion of state power was ultimately and paradoxically responsible for the revolution in China as it eroded the foundations of village life, leaving nothing in its place.
The problems of state-making in China were different from those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; the Chinese experience heralds the process that would become increasingly common in the emergent states of the developing world under the very different circumstances of the twentieth century.
The author constructs a prismatic view of village-level society that shows how marketing, kinship, water control, temple patronage, and other structures of human interaction overlapped to form what he calls the cultural nexus of power in local society. The author's concept of the cultural nexus and his tracing of how it was altered enables us for the first time to grapple with change at the village level in all its complexity.
The author asserts that the growth of the state transformed and delegitimized the traditional cultural nexus during the Republican era, particularly in the realm of village leadership and finances. Thus, the expansion of state power was ultimately and paradoxically responsible for the revolution in China as it eroded the foundations of village life, leaving nothing in its place.
The problems of state-making in China were different from those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; the Chinese experience heralds the process that would become increasingly common in the emergent states of the developing world under the very different circumstances of the twentieth century.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 23, 2020
从Huang 1985中的一章节出发，详细分析了State involution的原因、过程和无法解决的困局。现代国家在地方的扩张依然依靠前现代的统治手段，衍生出更多问题，但前现代解决问题的手段却在这一过程中被消减了。还穿插讨论了华北乡村内部的权力运行机制。引入文化的解释框架却止步于民间宗教的描写，整本书还是社会史的路径，略微有点文不对题。
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 12, 2007
Bogged down (or bolstered, depending on your point of view) by historical detail, but incredibly rewarding once the pieces fall into place and start to make sense.
November 1, 2011
If you ignore the elusive neologism, this book is a wonderful piece of work!
August 31, 2015
cultural nexus of power...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews