家庭本位的“关系”实践:私人书信中的家庭主义图像(1972—1995年)

Family-oriented Practice of Guanxi:Evidence from a Family’s Private Letters(1972-1995)

作为一种社会生活史资料,私人书信在人文社会科学研究中逐渐受到关注。本文基于一对伴侣在1972至1995年间922封私人书信的分析,力图通过民族志的整体性叙事方式,呈现其与家人在尝试“商调回沪”过程中的“关系”实践过程。这一过程包括“商调回沪”的具体策略、所涉及的关系网络、行动者的心理变化及其价值观的重塑等。本文发现,即使经历了一系列社会运动的思想改造,两位通信人的核心价值观始终都以家庭为本位。换言之,社会运动中的道德教化并未能转化为他们的道德行为,具有家族“偏私性”的家庭主义仍然在制度安排的夹缝中持续存在。

Private letters as a type of historical data of social life have attracted attention in humanities and social sciences research in recent years.Through a holistic ethnographic narrative,this study presented 922 personal letters written between 1972 to 1995 by a couple who and whose families during that period were in a concerted effort to negotiate a job transfer back to Shanghai so the family could be united.The letters revealed Guanxi in action such as adopting specific strategies and networks,psychological changes and value alterations of the people involved,and so forth.Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s,the three generations of direct families remained very close.Despite the numerous socialist movements during the period,familism stayed as the core value of the couple,who were family-oriented and family happiness was the ultimate goal of their life.“Family”in this study contains two levels of connotation.First,it refers to an idealized“small family”,that is,a nuclear family composed of husband,wife and their children.Second,it refers to a conflicting yet interdependent“big family”composed by parents and siblings(including married siblings and their spouses).We further argue that the compulsory and coercive moral education of the socialist movements failed to reshape the moral behavior of the social actors while familism with family“partiality”continued to exist in the cracks of the mandatory institutional arrangements of the state and successfully resisted the statism.