转换的耕作:从农业史到食物体系史

Shifting Cultivation: From the History of Agriculture to the History of Food Systems

本文的目的是为了运用一个新的完整的概念来研究农业历史,这一概念使得农业生产与销售、分配等有机地联系起来。原因有两个:其一是因为许多从事农业史的学者将自己限制在农业生产之中,以至于他们不能有效地把握农业因素与其它社会因素之间的关系。其二是因为在现代生活中随着农业的地位越来越变得相对下降,特别是在研究者将农业孤立于社会和经济生活之外的时候,越来越少的学者有兴趣来研究农业史。由于强烈地受到由诺贝尔奖得主威斯利·里昂提夫所创立的投入产出分析理论,特别是戴维斯和高登博格将其运用于农业史研究中的影响,作者展示了系统的概念,提供了大量的例子说明如何将系统的概念应用于实际之中,忠告从事农业史研究的学者遵循。作者认为,只有这样,我们不仅能够写出更加准确的农业史,而且会吸引更多的研究者进入这一领域。

The author makes the case for a new integrated approach to the study of agricultural history, which approach explicitly connects matters pertaining to agricultural production, broadly conceived, to those pertaining to distribution and consumption. He does so for two principal reasons: (1) because most scholarly approaches to agricultural history have focused so closely on production itself that they have not been able sufficiently to appreciate the relationship between the a-gricultural sector and other sectors of society; and (2) because, as agriculture becomes relatively less important in modern life, fewer and fewer students are interested in studying agricultural history, particularly when it is studied in isolation from other realms of economic and social life. Drawing heavily on the economic approach known as input-output analysis associated with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief, particularly as it was adapted to agriculture by John H. Davis and Ray A. Goldberg, the author lays out his 'systems' approach to agricultural history, provides a series of examples of how the approach might be applied, and exhorts other a-gricultural historians to follow suit. According to the author, they would in so doing not only write better agricultural history, but also attract more students into the field.