Chapter 62 Chapter 11 Cultural Revolution 1

1 The best way to explore the cultural revolution is to start with family and family relations, that is, from the role structure of gender and generation.Although in most societies, human relations and gender relations are extremely resistant to various sudden changes, they are not static.In addition, although the appearance of various cultures in the world is different, generally speaking, the basic pattern is similar within a large area.However, it has also been argued that, in terms of socio-economic and technological aspects, there are great differences between Eurasia (including the left and right sides of the Mediterranean Sea) and the rest of Africa (Goody, 1990. XVII).Therefore, although polygamy has almost disappeared in Eurasia (except for certain privileged groups and the Arab world), it is still in the ascendant in the African continent. It is said that more than a quarter of the marriages are polygamous marriages Relationships (Goody, 1990, p. 379).

Having said that, although there are many human races, there are still several common features, such as the existence of the formal marriage system, and the exclusive privilege of enjoying sexual relations with spouses (the so-called "fornication" is condemned by the whole world. a great crime).In addition, there is the dominance of the husband over his wife (“husband power”), parents over children, and the elder over the younger generation in the marriage relationship; the family combination includes several main members, etc., and so on, which are all phenomena in the world.Regardless of the closeness or distance covered by the kinship network, regardless of the complexity and simplicity of mutual rights and obligations, basically, there is a core cohabitation relationship in the inner layer—that is, a couple plus children—even in the outer environment. Here, the family or group living together is larger than this.It is generally believed that under the influence of the bourgeoisie and the rise of various individualistic ideas, the nuclear family gradually separated from the original larger family and kinship units in the 19th and 20th centuries, and then evolved into the standard form of Western society.In fact, this is a lack of understanding of history, and a great misunderstanding of the social cooperation relationship and its theoretical basis before the industrial age.The existence of the nuclear family did not begin in modern industrial society. Even in social systems with standard communism, such as the so-called "joint family" (zadruga) practiced in the Slavic countries of the Balkan Peninsula, "every woman's hard-working objects are Family is the narrowest definition, that is, husband and son. Beyond this, they take turns taking care of the unmarried and orphans in the extended family of the neighborhood" (Guidetti/Stahl, 1977, p. 58).It is true that the existence of the nuclear family does not mean that the peripheral kinship is similar.

However, in the second half of the 20th century, the long-established core basic arrangement began to undergo drastic changes, especially in the "developed" Western countries (however, even in the Western world, the distribution of regions varies).England and Wales may be the most dramatic exception—in 1938, only one in 58 weddings ended in divorce (Mitchell 1975, p. 30-32); Every two newlyweds broke up (UN Yearbook 1987)—this trend began to accelerate in the 1960s, when the laissez-faire started; at the end of the 1970s, 10 out of every 1,000 married couples in the two places mentioned above divorced. The figure is five times that of 1961 (Social Trends, 1980, p. 84).

This phenomenon is of course by no means limited to the UK.In fact, in some countries where traditional morality is strongly binding (such as Catholicism), the change is more obvious.The divorce rate figures (annual divorces per 1,000 people) in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands nearly tripled during the 15-year period 1970-1985.What's more, even in countries that have traditionally imposed less restrictions on this type of bondage, such as Denmark and Norway, the divorce rate nearly tripled during the same period.Something unusual has obviously changed in Western marriages.According to the medical records of a gynecology department in California, USA in the 1970s, among the women who went to see a doctor, "the number of married women has obviously decreased greatly, and the willingness to bear children has also greatly decreased... There is obviously an attitude towards adapting to the relationship between the sexes." changes.” (Esman, 1990, p. 67) Even if we go back to California 10 years ago, it may be difficult to find the new phenomenon of women seen from this cross-section.

The number of people living alone (i.e. people without a spouse, nor any larger family members) has also started to skyrocket.The number of people living alone in the UK has remained constant for the first third of this century, accounting for about 6% of the country's total households, and has slowly increased since then.But from 1960 to 1980, the rate of living alone jumped from 12% to 22% in 20 years.By 1991, it was as high as a quarter of the total number of households in the country (Abrams, Carr Saunders, Social Trends, 1993, p. 26).In many large cities in the West, the population living alone even accounts for half of the total number of households.In contrast, the traditional Western model of the nuclear family, in which married parents live with their children, is clearly on the decline.In the United States, the proportion of nuclear families dropped sharply from 44% to 29% in 20 years (1960-1980).In Sweden, almost half of the babies born in the mid-1980s were born to unmarried mothers (Worlds Women, p. 16), and the proportion of nuclear families dropped from 37% to 25%.Even in other developed countries (Canada, Federal Republic of Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom) where half of the nuclear families were still present in 1960, by 1980 the proportion of nuclear families had dropped sharply to an absolute minority.

In some extreme cases, even the nuclear family's nominally typical status has been lost. In 1991, 58% of black families in the United States were supported by single women, and 70% of black children were born by single mothers.Compared with 1940 figures, only 11.3 percent of "non-white households" in the United States are headed by single mothers, and even in urban areas it is only 12.4 percent (Franklin Frazier, 1957, p. 317).Even in 1970, it was only 33% (New York Times, May 10, 1992). Dramatic changes in public perceptions of sexual behavior, sexual partners, and reproductive relationships have been strongly associated with family crises.Changes in this area can be divided into two aspects: formal and informal. The major changes in the two can be traced back to a certain age, and they began to grow with the social changes in the 1960s and 1970s.From the point of view of formal changes, this is an era of great liberation between the sexes, whether it is heterosexual relations (mainly in terms of women's freedom, which used to be much less than that of men), homosexuality, and other forms of non-sexuality. Traditional culture has been greatly freed from shackles.The vast majority of homosexual behavior in the UK began in the second half of the 1960s, and it no longer constituted a crime, a few years later than in the United States-Illinois was the first state in the United States to lift the ban on sodomy, and it was legalized in 1961 ( Johansson/Percy, p. 304, 1349).Even in Catholic Italy, divorce was legalized in 1970 and reaffirmed in a referendum in 1974. In 1971, the sale of contraceptives and birth control materials became legal in Italy, and in 1975, the new family law replaced the old law that had survived the Fascist period.Finally, abortion was officially legalized in 1978 and confirmed by a referendum in 1981.

With the increasing leniency of the law, some behaviors that were originally prohibited are naturally more convenient to implement now, and the publicity effect obtained is therefore not trivial.However, between the decree and the increasingly loose sexual relationship, it is better to say that the latter recognizes the existence of this new atmosphere than that the former caused the latter to lift the law. In 1950, only 1% of British women had lived with their future husband for some time before marriage; in the early 1980s, this number jumped to 21% (Gillis, 1985, p. 307).But no matter how many, unmarried couples live together or not, it has nothing to do with the legislation at that time.Behaviors that used to be regarded as forbidden by repeated orders are now not only permitted by law and religion, but also accepted by customs and morals and neighborhood discussions.

All kinds of trends, of course, do not flow to the whole world to an equal degree.Although the numbers have risen in countries where divorce is permitted (assuming that the act of formal dissolution of marriage has the same meaning in all countries), the institution of marriage itself is particularly unstable in some countries. In the 1980s, the marriage system was relatively stable in all Roman Catholic (non-communist) countries.Divorce rates are lower than average in the Iberian Peninsula and Italy, and even in Latin America.Even in the self-proclaimed Mexico and Brazil, the former has only one divorce for every 23 weddings; the latter is even lower at 33:1 (though Cuba is even lower at 40:1).In addition, there is South Korea in Asia. Considering the speed of its economic development, it can be said that the concept of marriage is still surprisingly conservative (11:1).Japan is even more strange. Even in the 1980s, the divorce rate was less than a quarter of that in France. Compared with men and women in the United Kingdom and the United States who are ready to divorce at any time, there is a world of difference.Even in socialist countries at that time, the number of divorces varied according to national conditions, but it was generally lower than in capitalist countries.Among them, the Soviet Union is the only one that is different, and it is a major exception: the eagerness of the Soviet people to break their marriage vows is second only to that of the United States (UN World Social Situation, 1989, p. 36).It should come as no surprise that the degree of change varies from country to country.But the phenomenon that the same change can cross national borders and permeate the "modernized" world is really worthy of our discussion.The most astonishing phenomenon is the global popular culture, or more definitely, the youth culture, which shows similarities in appearance and similarities in spirit.