英文摘要
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Based on a documentary observation of Jiangnan village life in 18th and 19th centuries, this paper argues that Confucianism penetrated villager's everyday life mainly through private schools, folk discourses, and popular religion. In this ways, Confucian ideas, in a sense, began to influence their everyday life in the village. Accordingly, rather than scholars who focused on official propaganda and education, low-stratum intellectuals, who led lives similar to those of the villagers, played a central role in communicating Confucianism to commoners. Similarly, in this process power was simultaneously being reinforced and restricted in ways not only visible in the controls of the official ideology and gentry's cultural hegemony over the people that previous scholars have emphasized. As well, from a broader view of social life, related developments included adjustments in different kinds of village social cultures and social relations that ameliorate class conflict between poor and rich. Therefore, the effects of the penetration of Confucian norms into village life corresponded to historical changes. In this sense, the ”harmonization of ritual propriety and popular custom” of traditional historical discourse in the China might serve as a native historical category that could correct or supplement current conceptions that are principally derived from the Western historical experience and encourage the exploration of local knowledge.
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