美貌与地位:中国人婚姻中的匹配与交换

Beauty and Status:Matching and Exchange in Chinese Marriage

婚姻关系中是否存在外貌—地位交换以及其他更加一般化的婚姻交换,这个议题在近年来引起了学术界的广泛争论。在回顾相关学术争论的基础上,本文对匹配与交换间的关系以及"婚姻交换论"的成立条件进行了深入的思考。通过对2010—2018年五期CFPS数据的深入分析,本研究并未发现中国人的婚姻关系中存在明显的外貌—地位交换,即便是人们通常认为的"男才女貌"式的婚姻交换也很少发生。但教育、职业、收入和家庭背景这四个地位特征之间在婚姻中存在较为明显的交换,主要是因为这四个特征的同质性较强,而越同质的特征之间越可能发生交换。因此,"婚姻交换论"是否成立取决于特征之间的相似性或可替代性,全盘否定或全盘肯定该理论的做法都是不正确的。

Status exchange in marriage refers to a marriage pattern in which one spouse compensates for his or her disadvantage in one status area relative to the other spouse with an advantage in another.Two prominent examples of marriage exchange discussed by the existing literature are race-status exchange and beauty-status exchange.Although the marriage exchange theory is well supported by the early studies,in recent years,its applicability has been questioned by some scholars.Protracted debates on the topic in question were launched in two top sociological journals of the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.This study reviews these debates and offers an in-depth theoretical investigation into the relationship between matching and exchange,and the premise of marriage exchange theory.In addition,we collect and analyze the data from the five waves of the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)(2010-2018)on beauty-status exchanges and other forms of marriage exchanges in China.We found little evidence of beauty-status exchanges in Chinese marriages and even the well-assumed exchange of“woman’s beauty for man’s talent”lacks sound empirical support.However,there are ample evidences of exchanges among the four status factors of education,occupation,income,and family background.As indicators of socioeconomic status,these four variables are homogeneous in nature,therefore can more easily substitute for one another.We argue that the validity of marriage exchange theory depends on the similarity or substitutability between the elements in exchange.Thus,we can neither completely accept nor reject marriage exchange theory.