斷裂的生命之網：1910年代台灣在來米種改良的商品化與社會生態轉變

The Rift in the Web of Life: The Commodification and Socio-Ecological Transformation in the 1910s Taiwan's Indica Rice Variety Improvement Project

朱華瑄(CHU Huahsuan)

殖民 ； 市場 ； 環境變遷 ； 農業現代性 ； 生態馬克思主義 ； colonization ； market ； environmental change ； agricultural modernity ； ecological Marxism

台灣社會研究季刊

125期（2024 / 08 / 31）

127 - 179

繁體中文;英文

臺灣總督府於1910年代施行全島在來米種改良事業，以米種標準化及去除赤米為兩大主軸，目的在於使臺灣在來米成為更適合日本米市交易的商品。本文藉由近來社會科學中有關自然商品化之討論，以《臺灣日日新報》為資料來源，探索臺灣在來米種所承載、媒介的人類與自然共生之關聯，以闡釋改良事業如何使臺灣稻作社會生態在商品化的邏輯下開始產生鉅變。本文指出日本米市由於其歷史特性而產生對米穀標準化需求甚高的交易制度，臺灣在來米種所具有的生物多樣性，在生產、加工、交易等面向上均導致相當的商品化障礙，而1910年代米種改良事業的相關論述，明顯表現出以市場利潤為衡量作物價值，並以經濟要素同質化人、作物、風土環境的傾向。在此價值系統置換下，農民與作物的有機連結、萬物共生的生命之網逐漸斷裂消逝。回顧農業現代化浪潮，在來米種改良事業或可標示臺灣稻作社會生態轉向以服務人類商品經濟為主的重要歷史時刻。

The Government-General of Taiwan implemented the island-wide Indica rice variety improvement project in the 1910s, with variety standardization and "red rice" elimination as the two principal measures to make Taiwan rice a suitable commodity for the Japanese rice market. Employing political economy discussion on "the commodification of nature" and utilizing the Taiwan Daily News as the major data source, this article examines the human-nature symbiosis mediated by varieties to examine how the project greatly transformed Taiwan rice's social ecology. This article points out that the Japanese rice market since the shogunate period had developed a trading system which was highly in line with modern economy demanding for standardization of commodity quality. However, the biodiversity of Taiwan rice varieties created obstacles in production, processing, and trading to meet the demands. The project's discourses therefore highlighted the market profitability as the primary values of the crops and homogenized the socio-ecological specifics of all species and natural entities with economic considerations, making the "web of life" in rice-farming gradually broken and disappeared. Embedded in the great wave of agricultural modernization, the 1910s project signifies a turning point of Taiwan rice's social ecology being subjugated to serve the commodity economy.