The Ke-ju And Social Mobility In Ming Dynasty

There was a very important influence that Ke-ju test gave china which promoted themobility among stratums. The theory about the stratums and the mobility was prevailing inthe west. This article inspected state based the combination of the theory about it in the westand suzhou ′s history. According to the Chinese traditional theory, the society could bedivided into two main parts: the government officials and the masses. It contained fourstratums: the scholar, the farmer, the worker, the businessman. The social mobility was themove of person′s position which can be divided into vertical and horizontal mobility. It alsocould be divided into intera-generational mobility and inter-generational mobility if thinkingabout the factors of family. The vertical mobility paid special attention to the essentials ofscholar who connected with Ke-ju. The main channel of the mobility is Ke-ju system. In this article I discuss Ju-ren ′s family background — intera-generational mobilitywhen thinking about the upward mobility. Some Ju-ren ′s family background were selectedfrom and they were analyze in three stages: earlier stage, medium stage andlater stage of Ming Dynasty. I think that the Ju-ren of 90% around came from ordinary family(the masses), 10% around did from the government officials. There were some changes duringthe three stages: the former reduce generally, the latter increase generally. It was comparedwith PING-TI HO′s theory about Chin-shih ′s family background. And clarified that Ke-ju testopened the road for the ordinary people to change their social positions and talked over itslimitations. Meanwhile the channel which bore the weight of press (quantity) was limited andsome other reasons, generally formed the block of Ke-ju test which leaded to a phenomenonthat the scholars gave up Confucian frequently. The downward mobility was about the scholar ′s giving up the road of Ke-ju andselecting an occupation concerned with Confucian or not, like farmer, businessman, doctorand so on. Especially that the scholar gave up the Confucian to be a businessman was not onlyan important content of this change, but also an important of the mix of the scholar and thebusinessman. The four stratums′ limits were blurred. The businessmen were endowed withsome new characteristics and there were some changes of what people thought aboutbusinessman. The social and culture positions of the businessman were raised with thechanges. There were another object — "Prominent Family " that were paid attention by thesocial mobility research. There were some prominent families in SuZhou , so the activity ofcompiling genealogy multiply. It could be said that the compilation of genealogy was asymbol during the forming of the prominent families. The genealogies were compiled bypersons ( not the government ), more of them were the successful person in Ke-ju test. Therewere many factors that impel the prominent families to form and its development such as thehigh social position, the rich economy and culture foundation which were not lack. But thekey factor was Ke-ju. It also could be said that Ke-ju was the important effect during theprominent family maintaining. At the same time, the social mobility ′s increased relativelyleaded to the alternating between the flourish and recession. During the alternating itaccomplished the disposition anew on social resource like politics, culture, economy and soon.