What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile ...
What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnation story is simply wrong, or perhaps that technology was irrelevant to how imperial society worked? Or does it imply that historians of technology should ask better questions about what technology was, what it did and what it meant in pre-modern societies like late imperial China?
In this book, Francesca Bray explores subjects such as technology and ethics, technology and gendered subjectivities (both female and male), and technology and statecraft to illuminate how material settings and practices shaped topographies of everyday experience and ideologies of government, techniques of the self and technologies of the subject. Examining technologies ranging from ploughing and weaving to drawing pictures, building a house, prescribing medicine or composing a text, this book offers a rich insight into the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of everyday life and the workings of governmentality in late imperial China, showing that gender principles were woven into the very fabric of empire, from cosmology and ideologies of rule to the material foundations of the state and the everyday practices of the domestic sphere.
This authoritative text will be welcomed by students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those working on global history and the histories of gender, technology and agriculture. Furthermore, it will be of great use to those interested in social and cultural anthropology and material culture.
作者简介
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Francesca Bray is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
目录
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Introduction: the power of technology
Part I: Material foundations of the moral order
1. Machines for living: domestic architecture and the engineering of the social order in late imperial China
2. Instructive and nourishing landscapes: natural resources, people and the state in late imperial China
Part II: Gynotechnics: crafting womanly virtues
3. Women’s work and women’s place: textiles and gender
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(更多)
Introduction: the power of technology
Part I: Material foundations of the moral order
1. Machines for living: domestic architecture and the engineering of the social order in late imperial China
2. Instructive and nourishing landscapes: natural resources, people and the state in late imperial China
Part II: Gynotechnics: crafting womanly virtues
3. Women’s work and women’s place: textiles and gender
4. Structures of feeling: decorum, desire and a place of one’s own
5. Tales of fertility: reproductive narratives in late imperial medical cases
Part III: Androtechnics: the writing-brush, the plough and the nature of technical knowledge
6. Science, technique, technology: passages between matter and knowledge in imperial Chinese agriculture
7. A gentlemanly occupation: the domestication of farming knowledge
8. Agricultural illustrations: blueprint or icon?
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原文摘录
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我的第一个论点是:技术在中国历史上至关重要,其产生影响的方式及其入胜,又极其复杂,我们不过刚刚开始对其进行全方位探讨。如果我们采取人类学的视角,认识到技术同时具有象征性、社会性以及物质性功效,那么我们就可以重新审视其重要性。我尤其想强调的一点是,关于日常生活的宏观政治与微观政治间的交互作用、以技术为介质的治理运作与治理的表征等问题,我们都可以从晚期帝制中国的材料中获得丰富的启发。
第二个论点是,当我们以这种方式来聚焦那些福柯称之为“自我的技术”(techniques of the self)和“主体的技术”(technologies of the subject)时,我们就有机会形成对性别问题的新洞见,包括当性别制权(gender regimes)转化为物质活动时所显示出来的动力形态;同时,这也能让我们看到,性别原则是如何交织在帝国关键性的构造经纬当中。
我的第三个论点涉及到时间、历史、叙事以及在“分流讨论”(divergence debates)中技术所占据的一席之地。技术史也经常会出现与比较历史学或者社会学类似的情形,即它们被打上欧洲中心主义的目的论印记:这些学科动用“技术”来阐释历史变迁。他们采用一种关于“进步”的叙事来度量欧洲以外的社会,而且将西方的过去作为衡量标准。变迁的模式是线性的:一个社会或者沿着既定的路线去进步,或者与进步背离分流,或者停滞不动。大量关于中国技术史(和科学史)的研究一直在试图解释一个问题:为什么中国没有延续一条与欧洲相同的路径?什么时候中国曾经领先?如何领先的?什么时候中国的领先地位被取代了?为什么被取代了?其结果便是,在许多研究晚期帝制中国的历史学家眼里,“技术”一词变得污浊不堪:不光因为这一词语与西方的强权关联在一起,因此遭到鄙视并带来误解;另一原因是,“技术”这一词语所提出的问题,对于他们所关注的要点来说显得无关紧要甚至疏离。 (查看原文)
按:這章是本書中唯一一篇原創的文章。其餘章節都曾經在別的刊物上發表過,所以應該算是比較特別的一篇。現放上自己作的讀書會摘要,期待能夠拋磚引玉。裡面有些未能解決的人名譯名,也請豆友多多指教。 Bray, Francesca. Technology, Gender and History in Imperial China: ...
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1 有用 weictsai 2014-07-25 23:38:42
中研院近史所讀書會2014年6月閱讀書目
1 有用 许季山 2015-11-01 13:49:54
看到大教授为了出书东拼西凑也蛮心疼的。
0 有用 Gecila 2020-05-03 11:44:45
对于旧作的重新回顾和整理
0 有用 蔡小芋 2020-11-22 08:12:54
看了新的这本可以略过technology and gender了
0 有用 Zzzzzzxx 2017-09-23 12:59:13
跟 technology and gender 重合不少