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International Master's Program in Science, Technology and Society Modual 4 Introduction to Science and Technology and Society Main Instructor Johan M. Sanne Assistant Instructor Christer Eldh Ericka Johnsson Petra Jonvallen Gender, Domestic Technology and Familistatism An Introduction to Familistatism Essay by Mei, Feng 梅峰 4th Feb. 2002 Rydsvagen 202A 584 32 Linkoping Tel:013-26 08 86 Mobil:070-292 70 12 E-mail:mei.feng@telia.com Content I. Introduction 3 II. Context 3 III. The introduction to familistatism 5 III-1. Mei, Feng's utopia idea of familistatism 5 III-2. Prof. Li, Zhi Chao's definition to familistatism 6 III-3. The several characteristics of familistatism analyzed by Prof. Li 6 III-4. The traditional domestic housework of familistatism 7 IV. Discussion 8 V. Conclusion 9 VI. Sources 10 I. Introduction I read the book of Judy Wajcman, "Feminism Confronts Technology", and get many ideas about the ideology behind gender issue, here I want to use her concepts to discuss the relationships among familistatism, demestic technology and gender. For the concept of "familistatism（家國主義）" has been mentioned only by myself and another Chinese professor from the communist China, Li, Zhi Chao（李志超）, almost simultaneously so far as I know, so I need to introduce this important concept in a more detailed way. Familistatism is based on the ideology of traditional Chinese familism, which has the concept of at least the extended three generation family, in order to take care of each others. Familism of course has connection with gender, and the recent domestic technology innovation do have tremendous influence to the present structure of family, and inevitable to the situation of gender. For gender, domestic technology and familistatism all have very great extent to discuss, so I will just abstract some of the views from Wajcman, about the feminist concerned housework to domestic technology, and try to looking for the ideology behind them which have shaped technology. Then I will try to compare the main ideologies after I have introduced the familistatism. II. Context Relieving the key oppression of women's burden of household work, which is privatized, decentralized, single-family and labor-intensive, has long been a major project of feminism, and considerable optimism has attached to the possibility for domestic technology to provide the solution to gender inequality at home. Arguments based on technological determinism play a central role in the mechanization of housework and the feminist streams of thought. Wajcman in her book examined some of the alternative approaches to individualized housework in order to challenge those arguments. "Cowan graphically captures the completely 'irrational' use of technology and labor within the home, because of the dominance of single-family residences and private ownership of correspondingly small-scale amenities. 'Several million American women cook supper each night in several million homes over several million stoves' (Cowan, 1979, p. 59)" (Wajcman, 1991, p. 87) In view of these shortcomings of domestic technology from Cowan and others, she introduced a more radical approach to transform the social context about the mechanization of housework from individual households to its collectivization. She mentioned that, both the early feminist movement and revolutionary socialists, call for the socialization and collectivization of domestic work as a precondition for the emancipation of women, they 'envisaged a completely professionalized system of housekeeping which would free women from the ties of cooking, cleaning and childcare. .........The socialization of the kitchen would expand to all other domestic work in a large-scale socialist economy' (Wajcman, p. 96) And they embraced the new forces of technology as making this possible. Despite all the other reasons beside the liberation of women from housework and the different individual choice of different class, there are a lot of socialized domestic works already existed and under experimented. Such as the establishing collective laundry systems in apartment blocks, communal eating facilities. And the infrastructure for the communal provision of domestic appliances, such as municipal wash-houses and laundries, communal wash-houses in the old tenement blocks, communal cr?ches and communal leisure areas. The alternatives of domestic technology which Wajcman extracted to challenge the arguments of technology determinism of the household work reveals that, "Yet there are always technological alternatives and any specific machine is the result of non-technological as well as technological consideration. A society's choices among various possible directions of technological development are highly reflective of the patterns of political, social, and economic power in the society." (Wajcman, p. 100) The above "patterns of political, social, and economic power in the society." for most of the alternatives of domestic technology are easily to be recognized as the model of communist society based on the ideology of communism. At least they belong to the socialist society based on the ideology of socialism. Despite of the advantages of labor and time saving of those communal household services, why then has the individualized household triumphed, especially in the US? ' "The single-family home and the private ownership of tools are social institutions that act to preserve and to enhance the privacy and autonomy of families" (Cowan, p. 59)' was the answer Wajcman had got. (Wajcman, p. 97) However the social shaping of technology in connection with the gender issues based on the ideology of capitalism could found a lot of evidences from Wajcman's book and other places too. And it seems that both communism and capitalism society could not satisfy the feminists' concerned about the status of the modern family under the recent innovation of technology. III. The introduction to familistatism III-1. Mei, Feng's utopia idea of familistatism I came from Taiwan, ROC. The constitution of ROC is based upon the -ism of 'the three principles of people' by our national father Dr. Sun Yi Xian. The third principle -'The live of the people'- almost completely based on the ideology of socialism. At the ruling period of Jiang's Family between 1945-1988, although they did not following this ideology completely as what they announced, but at least they did not deflect from it too much. However, I know a lot of communist realities about our brother China Mainland, I know much about capitalism, and I know the reality of the Social Democratic ruling Sweden too. Here I want to introduce the concept of "familistatism", which is based on the traditional Chinese familism to compared with the capitalism based on individualism, and the communism based on collectivism. The present two exponents of familistatism, as you could see are from different parts of China. I got this concept after I have studied in Sweden, the well know welfare state, who have really accomplished the traditional Chinese Confucius' utopia idea of "Da Tong world ( 大同世界, you can probably say that it means everybody has the same good life) ". But unfortunately Sweden seems to have big problems to sustain her proud people's home. And I used the word "family state" to substitute "welfare state", in order to incorporate the traditional Chinese familism value with the Confucius' utopia goal of the modern Swedish welfare state, while which is mainly based on the traditional western ideology of individualism. My idea of familistatism wishes to looking for a way for the Chinese, I will be very happy if it could be a mirror to the western society too. I refuse any revolution concept about our lovely Chinese culture. I wish to use the concept and practical methods of welfare state to solve our conventional problems, which have been faced with the impact of industrialization and democracy of the western society. And I strongly believe that the innovation technology of informational society, social democracy and free education etc. will be the best medicine for us to accomplish a better quality of familistatism. As for the radical individualism and collectivism will need a further scrutiny to get the better part of it. III-2. Prof. Li, Zhi Chao's definition to familistatism Almost at the same time, Prof. Li, Zhi Chao, from the famous University of Science and Technology of China, published his article "Familistatism and Chinese Culture" in Chinese, I will introduce here about his idea of familistatism. He used the word "familistatism", in contrast with me, from the historical analysis to the traditional Chinese political, economic, social and technological civilization. And defined the traditional Chinese society from the Qin Dynasty（秦朝）as a society of familistatism which is mainly based on the philosophy of Confucius for over 2000 years. His main purpose on this article was trying to let Chinese understand that we have had a glorious culture compared with the same period of the world at most of this 2000 years. And we should still follow this magnificent tradition and try to understand how we could shape it into the contemporary society. He analyzed that just as the feudal and slavery systems came simultaneously to different society after the common phenomenons of ancient militaristic communistic society, so are the capitalism and familistatism came simultaneously to different society after the feudalism. The Chinese familistatism after Qin Dynasty based on Confuciusism and Hsuntzuism（法家）already had a very good political and moral system about the theory of state, while this theory of state was found only after the feudalism in Europe. As the Confuciusism is the main stream of traditional Chinese culture, and the main ideas of Confuciusism are, "order the family first（齊家）" which mainly belong to the category of moral, and "then manage the state（治國）" which mainly concern about the political system. So Prof. Li used these main ideas of "family" and "state" to describe the Confucius dominated Chinese society as "familistatism" as compared to the western capitalism. III-3. The several characteristics of familistatism analyzed by Prof. Li 1. The main social structure of the familistatism society are family and state, and the families are led by the state. Chinese aristocrat have vanished after the Song Dynasty（宋朝）, and the civilian could possibly be the aristocrat by their effort. 2. The economic structure of familistatism mainly based on the agriculture, and helped by the industrial and business sectors. It is mainly private owned economy and helped by the state owned industries, and it seems resemble to the nowadays socialism. But as a matter of fact, although the private owned land have the critical merger phenomenon, but still it is different from the feudalism for property and politic power are separated, so the landlord of capitalism and familistatism is the same. The industrial and business sectors are too small to compare with the capitalism society today, so it is difficult to become capitalism, but it is easy to be socialism. 3. The core ideas to the theory of Confucius based on love, justice（仁義）and education, it catched exactly the very basic concepts of human development for survival and developement, for human being are socially live together so they must love each other and there must be justice to punish the deviant. The socialized knowledge and virtues need education to transfer to the successive generations in order to keep the development of human being. 4. Since the Qin Dynasty（秦朝）, Chinese familistatism already had free and prosperous industrial and business sectors. The capital cities already havedevelopment the population to around 100,000 even before Qin Dynasty（秦朝）. The state owned enterprises also run the industry of salt, iron, wine and tea etc. so even the industrial and business sectors of familistatism were small compared with nowadays capitalism, but still the scale is not smaller than the other countries of that time. 5. The power of the emperor and the bullies（君權與豪強）were the main historical problems to the familistatism society, after the emperor began to corrupt, the bullies started to tease the civilian, and revolution followed until the new dynasty reappeared. III-4. The traditional domestic housework of familistatism As Wajcman pointed out that the diffusion of domestic equipment into househol, the routine domestic work time for women has been declined in many western countries, but "While routine domestic work has declined, the time spent in childcare and shopping have substantially increased." (Wajcman, p. 97) Limited by the materials and time, I would like to used my common sense and experiences to the conventional three generations extended families in ROC to look at some of the differences of housework for women as compared with the single-family household of capitalism under the modern innovation of technology for ROC still preserves some of the traditional familistatism characters. The increased childcare time for women, usually transfer to their mother for some of them still live together. And what Wajcman have never mentioned is the "oldercare time", which the traditional "good virtue" Chinese women will still perform, of course have not changed too much for the oldercare system could not yet catch up with the industrialize society. IV. Discussion You could see that Prof. Li described the historic Chinese culture as "traditional" familistatism, but I based upon this existing traditional Chinese culture, further assemble the modern practices and methods of welfare state to make my utopia idea of "future" familistatism. As I have mention before that the main problems of "traditional" familistatism is democracy, socialism and free education etc. which we indeed need to learn from the warfare states. Democracy could make the main problem of emperor corruption and the following revolution vanished, and free education and socialism will make a more equal society and peaceful family. I also found many brand new ideas for the "future" familistatism, such as the family vote compared with the solely citizen vote, unseperation right of family, etc. The detail content of the "future" familistatism of course need a great effort to explore. Although what I have done is trivial but still it shows the possible way for Chinese to the future prosperity. Although the arguments of technology determinism seems to create a new unlimited era to the society, so are the arguments of the social shaping to technology create restriction to technology, especially the dominant ideologies of capitalism, socialism, familistatism and communism. Here I want to make some comments to the existing ideology, but assumed that all these ideologies have democracy basis. The disaster of radical capitalism which call on communism as the resulting solution have been fixed by socialism to different extent, the crash of radical communist countries proved that the extremely collectivism completely against the human nature. The social democratic welfare state face with the big economic burden, proved that the extremely individualism do use too much resources of the earth, make the birth rate declining enough to threat the successive of the race, and the 50 % rate of one-people house in Stockholm crashes the family system which is the fundamental social nature of human being. As for the lonely corpse which have been founded after a long period of dying in the modern city, seem to tell us that our selfish enough privacy we have had to our parents who had raised us with so much sacrifice will be punished by the same consequence in the future. And the familistatism need the culture of democracy. So, should I get this conclusion that the social democratic welfare state should try to accept the concept of familism, and the traditional familistatism should learn the democracy culture of welfare state? V. Conclusion In this essay, by way of looking at the problems which feminist have issued based on the innovation of modern domestic technology, I found that the ideologies do play an essential role of shaping technology from the book of Wajcman. But she has not mentioned too much about the situations in East Asia, so I introduce the familistatism ideology of traditional China and add the idea of my "future" familistatism for the resolution. As we could see that there are no perfect ideology, and all of the ideologies has their merits and drawbacks, but still you shall try to looking for a best suited ideology to your own society. And I suggest the reform to the existing condition in stead of a completely revolution, for you could not avoid and even disgust your own tradition. You just need to looking for the sick places of your society, and search for the best medicine to cure it. But the saddest points is that, the radical Chinese almost completely distrust their own glorious culture, just learn everything from the West, especially the easiest learned sick places such as homosexual, but the exact essence of western culture like education and democracy, it seems that it is very hard to let them fully understand it. As for the West, they are too proud to learn from the East, some of them even deem themselves as the essence of civilization, against them means against civilization. The pride of them let them totally forget their barbarian ancestor as compared with the civilize East just several hundred years ago. In this essay, I could just remind the reader with the lost familistatism ideology which could also shape the technology in the domestic household technology feminist concerned. As for the relationships among familistatism, technology and gender, then deserve a more elaborate effort to do further researches. I just mention here a very rough experience about their relation, I wish I could have done more if I have had the chances later! VI. Sources Li, Zhi Chao, 李志超 Dec, 1999, "Familistatism and Chinese Culture 家國主義與中國文化 ", Cultural China 文化中國, 1999, 12, No. 23 Mei, Feng, 梅峰 Dec, 1999, "Familistatism and Familism 家國主義與家庭主義", Paper of the course "The Swedish Model" Wajcman, Judy, 1991, "Feminism Confronts Technology", Penn State Press |
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