近代以来的社会变革与地方宗族——以陕北米脂县马氏宗族为例

Local Clan and Social Change in China in the Twentieth Century—A Case of the Ma Family in Mizhi County,Northern Shanxi

清末民国初年马氏宗族通过土地经营成为地方强大的宗族,建立祠堂、祠田、族规、族学等,形成完备的宗族形态,并以其财富和权力造就了独特的地方文化体系和社会结构。20世纪二三十年代,由于人口增多、频繁的分家、经营不善、吸食大烟等原因,导致族内一些家庭败落,族内的富户利用种种手段兼并族人的土地,出现明显的贫富差别。但宗族内部的经济分化并不足以对宗族结构及生存造成危害。四十年代陕甘宁边区革命政权进行土地改革,通过分土地、减租减息、高额税收等使马氏宗族作为经济实体走向了衰落。宗族结构随之涣散,旧有的优势和权威一去不返。中国共产党领导的乡村革命有力地打击了地方宗族的势力。马氏宗族的衰落是近代以来地方宗族与政治变革以及国家权力关系的一个缩影。

From the late Qing to the early Republic,the Ma family gradually became a grand local clan by managing land and formed a unique local culture and social order by establishing ancestral hall,concentrating clan land,establishing clan law,and setting up clan school.However,there was a gap within the clan between the rich who got more land and the poor who lost their land due to family expansion,frequent division of family property,ill-management and opium abuse.Nonetheless,the internal economic discrepancy was not big enough to devastate the basic structure of the clan and to threat its existence.It was the Communist policies of land reform,rent reduction,and heavy taxation in the 1940s that destroyed the Mas' economic foundation.As a result,the Ma clan disintegrated and its privileges and power were gone with its economic advantages.The Communist rural revolution destroyed the organization of local clan and its patriarchal power and the decline of the Ma family could be viewed as a compelling example of Chinese social and political changes in twentieth-century.