Keynotes 5_1 readings: Bol; Hymes
Sima Guang (1019-1086) and Wang Anshi (1021-1086)
- a few notes on their controversial political approaches according to Bol (in Schirokauer, Ordering the World)
Sima Guang
- Background: family of landowners and officials in the north
- some family members advanced to an official position by using the yin-privilege
- Sima left local service for service position in the capital
- thought local administration should be in the hands of local wealthy families to preserve stability
- scholar of History
- author
of a chronological history of
- defended tradition but attacked the idealization of antiquity because ideas of the sages cannot simply be applied in political practice and could thus endanger a secure dynastic succession
- officials should be assigned to tasks they are most fit to fulfill competently
- he objected against an expansion of the army, because the military could become a threat to the state and deplete state coffers
- the ruler should be capable in employing men; he should have benevolence and knowledge and always remain supportive of those he has chosen for assistance
- the institutional activities of government should be separated from the world of the economy
- the social functions of the rich should be preserved because established social relationships guarantee stability and prosperity and thus should not be changed
-governmental activities should be limited
Wang Anshi
- family of landowners and officials in the south
- salaries of officials should be substantial because many officials depended on their salary to support themselves (like Wang himself)
- served at the local level longer than required
- thought that the local administration should be in the hand of officials instead of local families of wealth
- scholar of the Classics
- the ideal society should integrate government and society because in a perfect ordered society government institutions, moral and economic life of society would all have the same goal
- governmental policies should not replicate the policies of the sages but be organized in correspondence to them
- such an integrated political system should be self-contained and self-perpetuating
- with
expanded government activities government and society could become integrated
and the power of private wealth could be broken
Summing up Hymes:
Statesmen and Gentlemen
Change
and Stability in Song
-
population doubled
from the Tang to the Song
-
rice becomes the
most important food crop in
-
commerce expands,
merchants are more tolerated
-
paper money
-
mass production
of porcelain for imperial use, popular consumption,
export
-
growing book
industry
-
transformation
of the social and political elite on the national and local leel
-
access to power,
wealth, and prestige
-
categories of
elite members:
a.
officeholders (formal authority)
b.
prefectural examination graduates (access by family-guarantee
certificate; passed exam = formal certification)
c.
contributors to funds/land of Buddhist and
Daoist temples (social power: local, national)
d.
contributors to schools, libraries, bridges,
waterworks, gardens, dam maintenance (social power: reputation)
e.
organizers of local defense or local charity
or famine relief (local influence)
f.
friendship networks: membership in academic,
poetic, connoisseur circles, master-student ties)
g.
affinal kin of members of all categories (marriages
among elite clans)
Key question: Did the
exams bring into government a broad, continuous stream of ‘new’ men without
the ties of a family network into office and thus create social upward mobility?
Less than previously
assumed; a ‘social filter’ worked in the selection process:
-
patrilineal kin formed
corporate lineage networks that effectively provided mutual assistance and
cooperation;
-
agnatic, affinal, scholarly, personal connections helped to form further
networks
-
candidates for
official positions were recruited from clans with officeholders in their ranks
(clans were held responsible and liable for nominees from their ranks)
Ways to obtain an
official position:
“…the [social] rise
of a group amounts to the absorption of a region with its leading families,
into the elite network of the prefecture and the nation.” (p.80)