Social change

Author: Lin Liyue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: The study of Chinese social and economic history or Chinese social and political history was one of the more popular topics in Taiwanese historical research over the past fifty years. Social change was one of its subtopics. To explain this subtopic, one must first discuss the general framework of social and economic history or political and social history research. Broadly speaking, this research has the following characteristics: , it does not take Marxist theory as a framework, and it is no longer concerned with the issues debated during the 1920s and 1930s social history debates, such as production methods, class competition, historical stages, and social nature. On the one hand, this is because the older scholars who came from the mainland to Taiwan overwhelmingly opposed Marxism or tended to approach history from source materials without applying existing theories. On the other hand, it is also because the political environment did not allow scholars to freely access and publish works and opinions aligned with Marxist theory, and most of the debated topics could not continue in Taiwan. Second, the theoretical void thus created was largely filled by Western sociological, political, economic, and anthropological theories, as well as the doctrines of some Japanese scholars, with research focusing more on issues such as social economic organizations, structures, functions, stratification phenomena, social mobility, and change. Third, in terms of materials, a combination of documents and unearthed artifacts was used, rather than relying solely on traditional documents. Before the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwanese scholars generally had few opportunities to access newly unearthed artifacts and similar research in China after 1949, and discussions of social history often continued to revolve around traditional documents. Fourth, works like Guo Moruo, Lü Zhenyu, and Jian Bozan, which discussed the comprehensiveness of ancient Chinese society from a theoretical perspective, no longer appeared, and there was a tendency to analyze and discuss social phenomena in different eras, regions, and social strata in more detail. This also led to the expansion of research into new areas similar to social studies. The concepts and methods for exploring these new areas were largely derived from the recently popular cultural history, and discussions of past social history issues were no longer the same. The first half of this volume features more senior scholars, while the second half features more middle-aged and young scholars, also showcasing more new topics and a more diverse style.