重构现代中国书籍的文化生产模式——评高哲一《现代中国的印刷之力》

Reconstructing the Cultural Production Mode of Modern Chinese Books:A Review of Robert Culp's The Power of Print in Modern China

高哲一著《现代中国的印刷之力》(The Power of Print in Modern China)以20世纪三分之二时间里的商务印书馆、中华书局、世界书局为研究对象,几代知识分子通过编印教科书、辞典、古籍丛刊、大型丛书等出版物,用工业化的生产方式塑造了现代中国人的思想与文化。晚清民初书局采用合作式文化生产模式,20世纪30年代则演变为资本主义商业竞争性的生产模式,新中国成立后转变为协商式文化生产模式。作者擅长使用现代社会科学理论,建构起完整的现代中国出版编辑史的框架结构。然而,该书占有材料略显不足,选取史料稍欠严谨,使得某些论述没有得到充分的展示和发挥。作者的类型学划分难以贯通全书,为了重构理论甚至不避曲解史料之嫌。尽管如此,该书对中国现代出版史依然做出了独具特色的结构性阐释。

In The Power of Print in Modern China,Robert Culp focused on the history of The Commercial Press,Zhonghua Book Company and World Book Company during two-thirds of 20th century.In this period of time,several generations of intellectuals wrote and edited textbooks,dictionaries,classics and book series,which shaped the thinking and culture of modern China by means of industrialized printing.The publishers had adopted a cooperative mode of cultural pro-duction from the late Qing Dynasty to the early period of the Republic of China,then a capitalist commercial competitive mode in the 1930s,and a negotiated mode after the founding of the People's Republic of China.The author was expert in using modern social theories,and construc-ted an complete framework of modern Chinese publishing history.However,the materials refer-enced in this book seem to be slightly insufficient and less rigorous.As a result,his arguments were not fully displayed and developed.His typological classification was inadequate to explain all situations in the book.Even more,he could be suspected of misinterpreting some of the historical materials for the sake of reconstructing his theory.Nevertheless,this book still made a distinctive structural interpretation of modern Chinese publishing history.