20世纪海外中国家庭研究述评

A Review of Chinese Family Research by Overseas Scholars in the 20th Century

海外中国家庭研究是海外中国研究的重要组成部分,也是中国家庭研究的重要组成部分。从19世纪末诸如明恩溥等欧美传教士开始对中国家庭的研究,到20世纪20年代随着社会学和人类学进入中国开启了学科意义上的家庭研究,至今已经超过一个世纪。海外中国家庭研究有的主题一以贯之,比如家族和宗族;同时新的主题也不断呈现,比如家庭现代化、家庭个体化等。无论是民国时代的许烺光、林耀华、费孝通,20世纪六七十年代的弗里德曼、沃尔夫,还是最近时期的怀默霆、阎云翔等,都以他们的研究和里程碑式的著作极大地推动了中国家庭研究。

An important part of studies both on China and Chinese family,Chinese family research initiated family research in academic sense and has lasted for more than 100 years since the European and American missionaries,such as A.H.Smith,started studying Chinese families in order to learn about the Chinese society in the late 19th century,and the returned overseas undertook their research with a view to reconstructing the Chinese society in the 1920s when sociology and anthropology were introduced into China.The scholars focused on some consistent themes,such as family,lineage,clan,and also some new themes,such as family modernization and individualization.The studies and works by famous scholars,such as Francis L.K.Hsu,Lin Yueh-Hwa and Fei Hsiao-Tung in the Republican Era,Maurice Freedman,Myron Cohen,and Margery Wolf in the 1960s and 1970s,and Martin Whyte and Yunxiang Yan after the 1980s,have promoted the family studies in China significantly.