1800年前后欧洲与中国的国家、“经济”和性别关系

The State,the "Economy",and Gender Relations in Europe and China around 1800

本文探讨了18世纪末19世纪初中国和欧洲国家建设的比较逻辑,重点关注国家政策对家庭经济关系,尤其是对性别分工的影响。笔者建议将欧洲与中国的国家战略及可能影响家庭的统治意识形态进行对比,包括经济生存战略、劳动分配、性别和代际关系。国家建设模式的差别取决于不同的阶级联盟。欧洲的国家建设者更多依赖于商业金融家来巩固权力;这种依赖往往使他们作出让步,以鼓励资本积累。相较之下,清政府并不依赖于借贷或是私下与商人交易。在欧洲许多地区,国家与企业之间伙伴关系的相对重要性使得纺织业和农业生产趋向于市场导向和家庭专业化,从而动摇了自给农业。在漫长的18世纪的中国,纺织生产在国家鼓励下也得到了扩展,但总体而言,纺织生产作为农民家庭收入的一项辅助来源,未能超越自给农业。在欧洲和中国,国家对经济的干预使得国家权力与农村家庭联系更加密切。各国通过传播和推动家庭生产技术的性别化方法来影响性别分工。国家政策鼓励农户参与商品生产和销售。通过这些机制,国家政策改变了家庭按年龄和性别分配劳动力的决策。然而,就这些干预的本质和强度而言,无论是欧洲各国家之间,还是欧洲与中国之间,都存在显著差异。虽然中国的经济政策不太具有侵入性,有利于维护父权制农户的自主权,但这助长了中国政府的相对软弱性,这种软弱性带来的危险在19世纪愈发清晰。

This article explores the comparative logics of state building in China and Europe in the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries,focusing on the impact of state policies on the household-economy nexus,and on the gender division of labor in particular.We suggest similarities and contrasts between European and Chinese state strategies and ruling ideologies that arguably affected households,including their strategies for economic subsistence,labor allocation,and gender and generational relations.Contrasting patterns of state building hinged on different class alliances.European state builders were increasingly dependent on merchant-financiers for consolidating power;their dependency on financiers often led them to offer concessions to encourage capital accumulation.In contrast,the Qing state did not rely on borrowing from or on tacit bargains with merchant-entrepreneurs.The relative importance of state-entrepreneurial partnerships in many regions of Europe resulted in the encouragement of market orientation and household specialization in both textile and agricultural production,undermining subsistence agriculture.In China,textile production was also expanding with state encouragement during the long eighteenth century,but generally as a subsidiary source of peasant household income above its subsistence agricultural base.In both regions,state interventions into the economy brought state authorities into closer contact with rural households.States influenced the gender division of labor by disseminating and promoting gendered approaches to technologies of household production.State policies encouraged peasant households to increase their participation in the production and sale of commodities.Through such mechanisms,state policies contributed to the alteration of household-level decisions about allocating family labor according to age and gender.However,there was significant variation both among European states and,generally speaking,between Europe states and the Chinese imperial state,in terms of the nature and intensity that these interventions brought to households.While the less intrusive economic policy in China helped to preserve the greater autonomy of the patriarchal peasant household,it also contributed to the relative weakness of the Chinese state,the perils of which became clear in the nineteenth century.