岁晚谁可托: 老年史研究的过去现在及未来

An Odyssey of Old Age: the Past, Present and Future on the Studies of History of the Elderly

老年史是一个被史学界长期忽略的研究领域。由于各自的文化及社会环境不同,中西方老年史研究分别存在着不同的特点。总体上看,西方老年史研究和性别或妇女研究有着千丝万缕的关系,而国内的老年史研究则尚未形成完整的体系。不论中西,今天的老年史研究普遍存在着缺乏中西跨文化对比、格局欠缺、缺乏实际运用价值等问题。在分析本学科主要问题的基础上,本研究指出:在全球老年史研究渐入佳境的情况下,中国的老年史研究不应缺席。在未来,中国的学者可以力争在本民族老年通史、中西跨文化对比、总结应用价值等三个方面为老年史研究做出自己独特的贡献。

Through reviewing relevant literatures both at home and abroad,this study holds that the history of the elderly is a research field which has not been given enough attention from historians for a long time.Due to different factors from the culture and social environment,there are different characteristics and paradigms in this kind of studies between China and the West.Generally speaking,for studies of the West,there are lots of connections between the study of the history of the elderly and the study of gender and women.However,for studies in China,such studies are usually randomly selected and they still lack a comprehensive paradigm.In both China and the West,there are still many problems,such as the lack of cross-cultural comparison between China and the West,the lack of grand perspective and the lack of practical value and so on,in these kind of studies today.Based on the analysis of the main problems of the past and present,this study argues new studies on the history of the elderly in China should not be absent as the history of the elderly is getting better and better worldwide.In the future,Chinese scholars can make their unique contributions to the history of the elderly studies in three aspects,viz.,the general history of the elderly in China,the history of the elderly from a cross-cultural comparison perspective between China and the West and the summarization of the historical experience for application values for the future.