The 1980s was an important stage of development in the field of Song historiography in North America, during which the "Theory of Tang and Song Revolution", which originated in Japanese academic circles, was introduced to North American academic circles and gradually became well known to scholars. In 1982, Robert Hart ⁃well published his famous article "The Demographic, Political, and Social Transformation of China between 750 and 1550" in the Harvard Journal of Asian Studies. Based on william Skinner's theory of economic space, he proposed a framework for the transformation of the Tang and Song dynasties that ran through the economic, social, and political fields, and this framework also became an important theoretical paradigm in the field of Song historiography in North America.
In January 1986, the Sung Dynasty Statecraft in Thought and Action was held in Scottsdale, Arizona. In 1993, the University of California Press published a selection of papers from the conference, Editingthe World: Approaches to State and Society in SungDYnasty China, edited by Robert Hymes and Conrad Schiro⁃kauer. This is "Sorting the World: The State and Society of the Song Dynasty", translated by the author and published by Kyushu Publishing House. The book contains 10 essays on the history of the Song Dynasty, written by Liu Zijian, Han Mingshi, Xie Kanglun, Paul J. Smith, Peter K. Bol, Linda Walton, John W. Chaffee, and Wm. Theodore de Baby, Richard yon Glahn and other famous Sinologists in North America. The collected papers involve the politics, economy, society, ideology, philosophy and many other fields of the Song Dynasty, and discuss the very important issue of the Song Dynasty's rule of the country from many angles.
Orderingthe World, although a collection of essays on different topics, revolves around a theme of how Song statesmen and thinkers viewed the relationship between the state and society in an era of significant change and crisis, and the impact of such relations on social behavior and political action, especially organizational or institutional.
In the introduction, Xie Kanglun and Han Mingshi summarize the main changes in the field of social and political history of the Tang and Song dynasties. The authors clearly divide this change into three processes. The first process was proposed by Shi Jianya about population growth and a decline in government control. The second process is China's economic and social transformation known as the "Tang and Song Dynasties Revolution." The third process is Hao Ruobei's theory of elite localization from the Northern Song to the Southern Song Dynasty. These three processes are the basic consensus of the authors of the various articles in this book, and this book is based on these three processes (mainly the third process).
Throughout this book, there are several features:
First, the question of "scripture" is raised and discussed as an aspect of song dynasty political discourse and action. The authors of this book acknowledge that the Song people rarely used the term "Jingshi", but they believe that some of the discourses of the Song Dynasty have significant similarities or connections with the "Jingshi" problems of the late Ming and Qing Dynasties, so they use this word to refer to the positive actionism of the Song people, which undoubtedly has certain reference value for our understanding of the political thought of the Song people.
Second, attach importance to the study of the history of the Southern Song Dynasty. Of the book's ten articles, the first three of which deal with the Northern Song Dynasty and the last seven involve the Southern Song Dynasty, it is clear that the research focus of this book is on the Southern Song Dynasty, reflecting that the editors of the collection of essays were influenced by Hao Ruobei's thought, which also became the direction and characteristics of the research of Song historians in North America in the 1990s and beyond. Of the three articles on the Northern Song Dynasty, two are related to the Xifeng New Law and are very long, reflecting the importance the authors attach to the issue of the Northern Song Dynasty's change of the law.
Third, analyze people, events, and so on from different perspectives. For example, Li Xinchuan, which is generally regarded by domestic scholars as a historian with a rigorous attitude, Jia Zhiyang's article places Li Xinchuan in the context of the Southern Song Dynasty to discuss his historical thought. For Wei Weng and Zhen Dexiu, domestic academic circles generally discuss the two as the two most accomplished theorists in the late Southern Song Dynasty after Zhu Xi, while Liu Zijian and Di Peili's article discusses the jingshi thought of Wei Weng and Zhen Dexiu, allowing us to see the positive and pragmatic aspect of the two. By discussing the tea horse trade and the Green Shoots Act, Shi Lemin shows us the different development paths of the Tea Horse Division and the Tiju Changping Division, which helps us to better understand these two departments and understand the New Law of Xifeng from a new perspective.
Fourth, a new view of theoretical thought. The characters studied in this book, such as Zhu Xi, Wei Yiweng, Zhen Dexiu and others, are all famous theoreticians, but this article can jump out of the traditional research and show us the other side of the non-rationalism in the thinking of these traditional rationalists, and the discussion of the theoretical thoughts of traditional non-rationalists such as Li Xinchuan and Dong Xun shows the complexity of their thoughts and also enriches our understanding of the theoretical thoughts of the Southern Song Dynasty.
In addition to the various articles, the introduction to this book is worthy of attention, and some of the views and ideas put forward in it have become the focus and direction of later research in the North American Song historiography. For example, the introduction points out that Zhu Xi's main goal is to define "Taoism", which naturally affects his understanding of "Taoism", which means that Zhu Xi's definition of "orthodoxy" excludes other thinkers, and even some people who also absorb or agree with the Ercheng theory. An analysis of Taoism, for example, points out that after Zhu Xi, and even among those who considered themselves his disciples, "Taoism" was again seen as encompassing a very wide range of interests and concerns (it is certain that some of these Daoist ideas can also find their origins in Zhu Xi). For example, the concept of "public space" used to describe the Qing Dynasty appeared in the Southern Song Dynasty. When discussing the specific discourses of the Song people, using Pokock's "interpretive language" analysis, for example, when discussing the concepts of "public", "private", "state", "society", "Taoism" and so on, the editor repeatedly emphasizes the difference between the understanding of the Song people and the understanding of these words by modern people, reminding us to pay attention.
After the publication of Ordering the World, it quickly became an influential work in the field of overseas Song history research, and was frequently cited by scholars. Compared with the great attention of overseas academic circles, for a long time in China, the book Ordering the World has hardly received any attention, not only has not been mentioned in the review of academic history, but also in the study of specific related issues, few people have referred to the articles in the book, which to a certain extent makes the research in related fields in China take a detour or do a lot of repetitive work.
Today, as a collection of papers published nearly thirty years ago, the problems raised in Ordering the World have not been completely solved, and some of the ideas are still worthy of attention, so the book is not only not outdated, but still brings us a lot of inspiration.