阿波罗遭遇浮士德:面对一种乡土之变——重读《乡土中国》的新观察

Apollo Meets Faust: Facing a Kind of Local Change——A New Observation While Rereading “Earthbound China”

重读费孝通的《乡土中国》一书,其对乡土之变的发问,重新设定了我们理解过去中国、当下中国和未来中国关系的一个全新的起点。今天的乡土中国正在面临着一种乡土性之变,即所谓静态和秩序的阿波罗遭遇到动态和躁动的浮士德,或者说稳定性遭遇到不确定性。新乡土性意味着人心之变,同时表现为社会之变以及文化之变。所谓“新遇到旧”,意味着一种乡土中国在基层的草根式生长模式的转化,由此而生成一种旧乡土和新乡土之别,以及新旧二元变奏的乡村构造——“旧”的东西在顽强地应对各种“新”的形式的出现,同时尝试着各种可能的自我适应性的转化。也正是因为这样一种生活变奏,才真正保证了乡土社会自身的韧性力量的生发,即如费孝通描绘的乡土社会的总体性结构中一种生命力的动力性根源。

Rereading Fei Xiaotong’s “Earthbound China” and his concerns about the changes in the countryside have set a new starting point for us to understand the relationship between China in the past, China now and China in the future. The earthbound China itself is facing changes of its rusticism. A new rusticism means a change of human mind which are also embodied in changes of its society and its culture. New meets old implies a transformation and creativity of the local growing model of the grass-root unit, by which a rural construction emerged from diference of the old rusticism and the new one, as well as the new and the old in a binary variation.