发明传统与制造边界:美国“博雅学院”的类型概念起源

The Invention of Tradition and the Making of Boundaries:The Origin of Liberal Arts College as an Institutional Type

“博雅学院”并非美国高等教育系统中自始就存在的机构类型,而是20世纪初一批学院采用“传统的发明”策略,主观建构出的概念。当高等教育机构转型升格为“大学”被视为符合现代潮流时,阿姆赫斯特等学院却选择另类发展路径,发明和利用旧时学院的传统话语和资源,以大学为“他者”作出概念性区分,建构了“职业主义-培养全人”、“庞大而失去灵魂的喧嚣场所-小型亲密的共同体”和“异质的群体-优雅的同伴”等象征边界分类。至20世纪30年代,“博雅学院”的类型概念已得到社会的普遍承认和接受。

The liberal arts college was a concept constructed by a group of colleges in the early 2oth century using the strategy of"the invention of tradition".When the transforma-tion into a"university"was considered to be in line with modern trends,colleges such as Amherst had taken alternative paths,inventing the traditional discourse and resources of the old-time colleges to make a conceptual distinction.It included the construction of symbolic categories such as"professionalism vs whole-man education","huge and soulless noisy place vs small intimate community"and"heterogeneous group vs elegant companion"By the 1930s,the type concept of the liberal arts college had become widely accepted.