Claiming Space and Collecting Objects: Mercantile Culture and Colonial Expansion in Early Modern World

空間佔有與物件收藏：前現代時期的商業文化與殖民擴展

10.30114/CGJHSS.200904.0001

王儀君(I-Chun Wang)

帝國建構 ； 殖民 ； 物質文化 ； 空間佔有 ； Early Modern Literature ； Mercantilism ； Colonialism ； Material Culture

長庚人文社會學報

2卷1期（2009 / 04 / 01）

1 - 18

英文

阿爾俊•阿帕杜萊(Arjun Appadurai)在《物質的社會意義》一書中強調，物質文化代表了人與物品的關係，也代表某個特定時代的價值系統和自我、群體與國家的關係。然而，就像阿帕杜萊所言，物質的價值來自時間的脈絡，因此物質的文化內涵可以解讀社會變遷和人群對事物的看法。尤其是，當物質文化和群體行爲即集體思維相關時，物質文化可以用以解讀社會與經濟活動的意義。因此，前現代時期的空間佔有、物質收藏，乃至於尋求其他國度的物質資源便涉及自我身分的建構，和對異質文化的抗拒。在西方的大航海時代，從劇作家佛萊契爾的《南島公主》到德來登的《安波那》，許多戲劇文學裡都以殖民做爲主題；這些劇本不僅呈現出人類對於物質的探索與追求，而且對比了人類的競爭與抗衡，而這些競爭的場域也正是求偶與宴飲的場域。在這些劇作中，物質的追求有如儀典，商業的經營有如戀物主義的延展。此一論文探討空間佔有與物質收藏，並且藉由空間佔有、東方城市與女性之物化，探討帝國建構時所涉及的殖民論述。

Arjun Appadurai in his illuminating book The Social Life of Things notes that material culture represents the relationship between people and the objects, and it bespeaks the value system as well as the core concept as related to self, community and the countries of a specific historical period (1-10). However, just as Appadurai indicates that the present value of any given object derives diachronically from its differential relations to its known past, present situations and future contexts. That is, the cultural meanings of the material may help decode the underlying meanings of established institutions, the possibilities of social progress or even mental potentialities of the people. Material culture as well as its multi-perspectives helps to approach economic and social activities, especially when material culture becomes interrelated to crowd behavior or collective concept of economical and political achievements (12-5). Certainly, among different aspects of material culture, locating space, claming territory, and searching for resources are almost equivalent to asserting identities and resisting cultural differences during the early modern period. In the age of great discoveries, a lot of dramas with colonial themes and representations of the interaction between the material and colonizers, such as Amboyna or Island Princes, successfully represent a world of lived experience where people cooperate for certain goals but simultaneously fight with each other for certain conflicts; hence the contested territory is the exact place for coupling and feasting. Object is connected with ritual and trade; in these dramas, trading couples with fetishism, and mercantile spirit sides with the basic desires of the humans. This essay will explore spatial activities of claiming spaces and collecting Oriental objects and discuss how in these dramas the material culture is involved with the discourse of constructing empire.

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