唯物史观与中国社会史书写的兴起

Historical Materialism and the Rise of Chinese Social History Writing

现代性的中国社会史研究与书写,是在西方实证社会学和马克思主义唯物史观的影响下兴起的。其发展则从最初的社会总体史探究逐渐衍为社会形态发展史(通史)和社会生活史(专史)两大支流。这一过程不但大大拓宽了人们的历史视野及史学研究内涵,也直接促进了传统史学向现代历史科学的转型。特别是唯物史观的引领,使关注社会宏观历史发展规律和民生事业的休戚成为社会史书写最为普遍的进步倾向。至其所显现的历史学与社会学结合趋势,还具有现代史学初创期的跨学科研究特征,正是以此为起点,历史学开始突破旧史学的藩篱,在进一步吸纳和借鉴现代人类学、民俗学、考古学、经济学和统计学等方法的基础上,较快开启了由传统人文学术向现代社会科学的蝶变。

The research and writing on the social history of modern China have emerged under the influence of western empirical sociology and Marxist historical materialism.The development of this field has evolved from an initial exploration of overall social history into two main branches:the developmental history of social forms(general history)and the history of social life(specialized history).This process has not only significantly broadened historical perspectives and the connotations of historical research,but also directly facilitated the transformation of traditional historiography into modern historical science.Particularly under the guidance of historical materialism,focusing on the macroscopic laws of historical development and the common welfare in social history writing has become a prevalent progressive tendency.The trend towards the integration of history and sociology in this field also displays the interdisciplinary research characteristics of the early stages of modern historiography.Starting from this point,historical studies began to break through the old academic confines,rapidly turning towards modern social science by further incorporating and utilizing methods from modern anthropology,folklore,archaeology,economics,statistics,and so on.