“超级机制”与文化地理学研究

The concept of super-organism in the study of cultural geography

超级机制或超机体概念是人类学家提出的概念,后被美国伯克莱地理学派引入到文化地理学研究中。尽管该概念自引入之初起,就伴随着学术讨论,但是它在上个世纪的英美地理学中有着重要的影响。新文化地理学与传统文化地理学的分歧之一也在此概念上。本文列举了在美国和中国文化地理学研究中,超级机制的适用性和局限性,并探讨了超级机制指导下,文化地理学的研究方法在何种情况下是因果分析,何种情况下是非因果分析。进而指出,超级机制概念在分析宏观区域文化一致性上具有解释性,在分析微观尺度区域内的人地关系上也具有一定适用性。新超级机制理论在学术界的讨论过程中提出了一些修正,在分析社会文化时超级机制不适用。

The super-organic concept, which had been suggested by anthropologists, was introduced into the study of cultural geography by scholars of Berkeley School, an influential school of the study of cultural geography in the United States. Wilbur Zelinsky,a geographer of Berkeley School, gave the features of super-organism in his book Cultural Geography of the United States. It is the super-organism that shapes the cultural landscapes on the land of America. This concept, however, has been seriously criticized by the New Cultural Geographers although it had ever-great influence on the traditional studies of cultural geography. The discussion here is focused on the usability and limitation of the concept of super-organism. The correct using of the method of causal analysis, the different usability of the concept of super-organism in the studies of different scales of the cultural landscapes or different social perspectives are the major questions discussed in this paper. Some case studies by Chinese geographers have been mentioned in this paper. They show both the critic standpoint and positive attitude to the super-organism in these case studies. And the authors address that either positive or negative view-angles have their reasons for existence in cultural geography, even the New Cultural Geography leads the trend.