西方乡村性研究进展

Progress in Western Rurality Research in China

在梳理20世纪60年代以来乡村性研究的社会、学术背景的基础上,聚焦于乡村性的社会建构流派及其对中国乡村转型与乡村地理研究的启示。社会建构流派将乡村性看作是社会、文化建构的过程与产物而非先存的事实,重点关注乡村转型过程中的权力关系与差异性。由描述性流派、乡土流派向社会建构流派的过渡可以看作是从关注乡村性物质层面转向想象层面,由追求乡村性的本体、核心机制向探索乡村性的认识论问题,也就是从追求"乡村性是什么"到研究"不同社会群体如何认识乡村性""不同社会群体多样化的乡村性话语和体验"。而目前的中国乡村性研究主要关注乡村性指标及其模型建构,相关研究对于各级政府全面地了解现存的乡村问题并合理地制定乡村发展、复兴政策规划具有重要的实践意义。在西方乡村研究中,乡村性指标由于暗含线性发展观、无法解读乡村变迁的机制和过程而饱受批判。在中国乡村急剧变迁的今天,现代化乡村发展话语占据着主导地位,而在这一过程中不公平的权力关系和霸权话语对部分农村、农民的边缘化基本没有提及。在这种社会与学术背景下,乡村性社会建构流派对于解构乡村性主导话语、揭示乡村变迁过程中的权力关系及不同社会群体间利益冲突与协商具有重要意义。

Rurality is the core concept of Western multi-disciplinary rural studies, especially rural geography. The combination and conflict among rural sociology, agrarian political economy, rural geography saw the diversity and abundance of rurality topics. The evolution of academic trends in social science and the transformation of rural society respectively in the terms of theory and practice pushed the development of rurality studies. In popular discourse, rurality simply represents different features, which distinguish the rural from the urban, like lifestyle, economy structure, land use and so on. The ways of ‘knowing＇ rurality are under the constantly fluid condition： from the ontology of rurality and the macro social economic structures at the early stage to the existence of rural ‘others＇ finally to the hybrid complexity of modernized rurality. With the deepening of rurality studies, a series of hot topics came into being one after another： rurality index, discourse of rurality, social difference, daily performance. Though approaches to rurality are various, the power relations and social differentiation rather than the social spatial features became main research directions with the influence of cultural turn and rocketing-up of post-modernism in rural studies. In another word, against the background of the multi rural interests, the representation and reproduction of rurality rather than ‘objective＇ rural index have a great importance to understand the representative and material production and reproduction of rurality and politics of rural change under the context of modern capitalism. This review, based on social and academic background of rurality studies, focuses on the social construction of rurality and its burgeoning trends in Chinese rurality studies. The social constructionist treats rurality as the process and product of social, cultural construction not the existed reality, stresses on power relations and otherness. The transition from the former approaches to the social constructionist could be viewed as the transformation from materiality of rurality to its representation, from the rurality itself and macro structural dynamics to the ‘knowing＇ means of rurality. The present China rurality study focuses on rurality index and its quantitative models, the concerned researches contain important practical meanings for governmental departments to understand rural problems and make the reasonable solutions for rural planning and rural regeneration. In western rural studies, due to its indication of linear development view and lack of interpretive potential for rural change, rurality index is criticized greatly. In nowadays rural China, the modernization discourse of rural development dominates, while the unequal power relations and ‘othering＇ of disadvantaged peasants are overlooked at some degree. Under such social, academic context, social construction of rurality could provide alternative and critical lens to deconstruct dominant discourses of rurality and discover power relations and interest conflict among different social groups.