【原】彼得·伯克：比较历史与比较社会学

彼得·伯克，代表作有《历史学与社会学理论（第2版）》等

Burke, Peter. 2016. “Comparative History and Comparative Sociology.” Serendipities: Journal for the Sociology and History of the Social Sciences 1 (1): 82–88.
 

在本文开篇，彼得·伯克指出这样一个现象，社会学更喜欢用比较研究方法，并且“走的更远”，历史学家则对这一研究方法保持更为谨慎的态度：

Sociologists take the value of comparison forgranted, while many historians remain suspicious of it. When they do practice comparison, sociologists are bolder, happily moving across great distances in space and time, like Michael Mann, for example. Historians are much more cautious hence this paper, without my intending it, has turned into a comparative study itself.

接下来，本文大体可分为三个部分（原文有五个小节），第一部分探讨了自十七世纪以来比较研究方法的兴起，以及历史学与社会学两门学科对待比较研究的不同态度；第二部分探讨了比较研究方法的优点与缺点；第三部分为小结，伯克对比较研究如何克服西方中心主义缺点表达了他的观点，并表达了他对于比较研究方法的态度。

一、比较研究：历史学与社会学的不同态度

 

十七世纪四十年代，比较历史研究方法被学者采用，对不同地区的反叛活动进行比较研究。十八世纪，孟德斯鸠将君主制与共和制视为两种不同的政治与社会制度，进行比较分析。亚当·斯密则对他所说的'mercantile system’和自由贸易体系进行了比较研究。十九世纪早期，国家之间的比较历史研究兴起（如兰克对奥斯曼帝国与西班牙帝国的研究；Joachim Lelewel对西班牙和波兰的研究）。

但是，准确来说，比较研究作为一种严格意义上的新的研究方法始于自然科学，并向语言学、社会学、文学和历史等人文社会扩展，约翰·密尔的法学研究，涂尔干的社会学研究、韦伯的历史研究都是典型例子：

If one take the comparative method in a moreprecise sense, however, it was a new discovery beginning in the natural sciences ( comparative anatomy, for instance ) and spreading to linguistics, sociology and literature as well as to history. In Britain, John Stuart Mill produced a classic discussion of the comparative method. In France, it was advocated by Durkheim, and in Germany by Weber, who considered himself a historian but has been described by posterity as asociologist ( favourably by sociologists but pejoratively by some historians ).

二十世纪初，比较研究方法被Henri Pirenne、Marc Bloch等历史学家赋予重要意义。在美国，Crane Brinton、Roger Merriman追随Bisaccioni的脚步展开关于“革命”的比较研究。二十世纪中期，1958年Comparative Studies in Society and History杂志创刊时，比较研究方法已经体系化了。

若把期刊刊载的论文进行一番分析，看一看有多少论文是社会学家写的、多少是历史学家写的，有多少论文本身采取的就是比较研究方法、有多少是编辑对一系列主题相似论文的专题组稿（历史学家VS社会学家），伯克认为这样的“比较分析”也很有意思：

It would be interesting to carry out an analysis of the articles, to discover how many are written by sociologists and how many by historians, and also how many are genuinely comparative rather than mini-monographs that the editor juxt aposes to others on similar themes.

从这一时期开始，比较研究方法就被历史社会学家广泛运用，大家最熟知的，Barrington Moore（中译本著作《专制与民主的社会起源》等）、Theda Skocpol（大家都听过）、Jack Goldstone（中译本著作《国家、政党与社会运动》《早期现代世界的革命与反抗》等），这几位主要研究的都是“革命”问题。还有Robert Bellah（中译本著作《德川宗教》《背弃圣约》等）也采用了比较研究方法，沿着韦伯的研究路径，研究日本的佛教和资本主义，而其他学者则对官僚主义和工业化过程进行了比较研究：

Since that time, the comparative method has been used regularly by historical sociologists, notably by three North Americans, Barrington Moore (1966), Theda Skocpol (1979) and Jack Goldstone (1991). Intriguingly, and in a repetition of the first use I cite here, all of them are concerned with revolution. Robert Bellah also uses this method, continuing Weber’s work with a study of Buddhism and capitalism in Japan, while other scholars have made comparative studies of bureaucracy and the process of industrialization.

然而，在历史学领域，对比较研究方法的运用在Bloch和Pirenne之后则后继乏人，原因嘛，当然在于历史学家觉得这一研究方法too young, too simple, sometimes naïve：

Many historians imagined comparison as a simple and doomed search for similarities and dismissed comparison, as some still do, with the phrase  'you can’t compare apples and oranges’ , an idea that irritated the Belgian classicist Marcel Détienne into writing his brilliant essay, Comparer l’incomparable (2000).

不过，伯克在这里也补了一句，最近也有所变化，一些历史学家也在进行比较研究：

Recent British examples include three distinguished contributions. Another classicist, Geoffrey Lloyd, has written about the study of the natural world in ancient Greece and ancient China. The global historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto both compares and contrasts the histories of North and South America. Sir John Elliott, a scholar with a high reputation among both conservative and innovative historians, has long defended comparison and recently published a book about the British and Spanish Empires.

不过，历史学著作大体上都包含着或多或少的比较意味，总体而言，历史学倾向于对同一时期的不同地域、宗教或社会群体进行比较研究。但是这也存在问题，伯克以他自己的研究为例：

I had to face this problem in my essayon the patricians of Venice and Amsterdam in early modern times, since theapogee of the two groups occurred at different moments, that of the Venetiansin the 15th and 16th centuries and that of the Amsterdammers in the 17th century. I decided to study them over the same period, the 17th century, in order to see how the two groups, who were both involved in international trade, responded to the changing economic situation.

伯克认为，今天，对于不同时期的不同文化之间的比较研究需要历史学家去进行。在比较研究中，存在着不同形式和层次的比较。通过比较研究，能够发现研究对象的相似与相异之处，还能在相似中寻找差异，在差异中寻找相似或功能相等物（functional equivalents）。

并且，在比较研究中还可makes absences more visible，比如Werner Sombart的研究：为什么美国没有社会主义？（Why is there no socialism in the United States?）以及其他一些研究：

To the example of Sombart we might add those of Durkheim’s follower Marcel Granet on the absence of notions of sin and law in China; Joseph Needham on the absence of a Scientific Revolution, again in China, leading to a great debate on the 'Needham question’ （李约瑟难题）; or Ross McKibbin’s essay, inspired by Sombart,  'Why was there no Marxism in GreatBritain?’

二、比较研究的优点与缺点

笔锋一转，伯克突然问了这么一个基础性问题：为什么要进行比较研究？比较研究的用处或优点为何？伯克认为有两点，第一，比较方法可以使研究摆脱狭隘视角与观念立场，伯克引用了Elliott的话：

'Even imperfect comparisons can help to shake historians out of their provincialisms’.

比较研究能够在特殊中发现普遍性，比如，近现代以来，不同类型的国家都有一个相似的趋势，那就是民族主义文化建构：

As a recent study by the French historian Anne-Marie Thiesse points out, the process of the creation of national identities, with their stress on the unique qualities of each nation, is aprocess with many common features.

伯克还引用英国社会人类学家Jack Goody的分析，指出，比较研究有助于西方人摆脱西方中心主义观念，摆脱collective narcissism的心态：

More generally, he（Jack Goody）has denounced what he calls the 'theft of history’, that is the description by western historians of humanism, individualism, capitalism, modernity and so on as if they were completely western discoveries or inventions, ignoring parallels in China, the Islamic world and elsewhere.

So the first argument in favour of comparison is a rather general one, that it discourages collective narcissism.

第二，比较方法有助于我们检验解释（并且，如前文所述，通过比较，我们能够注意到significant absences）：

Whenever we offer historical explanations of anything, we depend on implicit comparison.……As Goody puts it: “Comparison is one of the few things we can do in the historical and social sciences to parallel the kind of experiments the scientists do”.

说完比较方法的优点，还得在说些比较方法的问题。首先，比较法创造了人为事实，在概念层面进行虚幻的比较。例如关联史学派的批评（伯克认为批评有道理，但connected history与comparative history不是相互替代，而是互相补充的两种研究方法）：

A recent critique comes from the supporters of connected history or histoire croisée especially, but note xclusively, in France. Their sharpest criticisms concern the creation of artificial entities such as Protestantism and capitalism, homogenizing what is, in fact, varied.

第二，比较研究容易忽视行为与制度的文化背景。例如，马林诺夫斯基批评弗雷泽在《金枝》中忽视了文化语境，从而误解了制度的功能和实践的意义。

第三，比较使得历史实践变得静态化，但是，历史使一个发展过程，比较往往只是选择了历史的截面。

第四，各种**中心主义视角（西方中心主义、民族/种族中心主义等等），用自己有的来比较别人没有的，例如韦伯的宗教与资本主义精神比较研究，容易不自觉陷入西方中心主义。Robert Bellah通过研究就指出，日本存在佛教资本主义精神：

However, as the American sociologist Robert Bellah has argued, a similar ethos may develop in different religions. Writing during the rise of Japanese capitalism in the 1950s, which Weber did notlive to see, Bellah claims that there was a Japanese Buddhist equivalent to the Protestant ethos.

三、小结

 

那么怎么克服西方中心主义这一问题呢？伯克认为，可以采取这样一种原则，即the principle of rotation：把不同区域轮流作为比较的标准，这样能够帮助学者从西方以外的概念和视角反观西方文化。

最后，伯克表达了他关于比较研究的看法：

To summarise, my basic argument is that comparison is risky, but that lack of comparison is even more dangerous. It is dangerous because it encourages us to take for granted ideas that need to be tested.

In short, a comparative approach helps historians to test their explanations and also to liberate themselves from current assumptions in their own culture, thus taking a few steps towards the polyphonic history that is needed in our increasingly multicultural age.