大众的肉类需求:漫长的19世纪期间,巴黎、纽约和墨西哥城的市场文化(一)
编辑声明:本文原作者为Roger Horowitz, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, and Sydney Watts, 原载于The American Historical Review, Volume 109, Issue 4, October 2004, Pages 1055–1083,版权归原作者及出版方所有。
本文为第一部分,共有四部分。
翻译:臧天骏
校对:沈心怡
终审:王玮骐
Meat for the Multitudes: Market Culture in Paris, New York City, and Mexico City over the Long Nineteenth Century
Roger Horowitz, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, and Sydney Watts
大众的肉类需求:漫长的19世纪期间,巴黎、纽约和墨西哥城的市场文化
1981年,在《国家供应商》(The National Provisioner)的独立日的特别版次上,自豪地吹嘘其国内肉类包装业已圆满完成大众的肉类需求。“只在我们这儿”,他们满怀信心地说道,“除此地之外,消费者再难寻另一他所有如此丰富且健康美味的肉了。”[1]牛肉贸易的民主化因此被视为该行业的使命,他传达着一种合法性,并且更广泛地表明着美国资本主义毫无争辩的优越性。饲养场和包装厂的技术虽得到了《国家供应商》在字里行间中夸张性的褒奖,但这也引起了大众对热带森林砍伐、未检测出的生长激素、大肠杆菌感染和疯牛病等种种问题的担忧。现如今的抗议也促使政府介入市场。此法与早年间厄普顿·辛克莱尔在其小说《丛林》(1906)中推动美国早期肉类监察需求的方式如出一辙。[2]
正如资本主义经济经历着繁荣与萧条的周期一样,塑造国家和公民社会之间关系的“市场文化”似乎也很容易随着民众的态度和恐惧而出现扩张和收缩的波动。本文研究了巴黎、纽约和墨西哥城的肉类贸易在国家干预和市场自由化之间的早期振荡期。虽然时间不同,但这些城市经历了三个共同的阶段:以家长式干预为特征的旧制度、市场放弃监管的激进的自由化时期、和随后在重建的管理制度下的国家权力机关的兴起。在每个城市,垄断性企业行会都引起了广泛的不满,但与他们扩大供应的急切目标恰恰相反,最终使得政府重拾干预的需求的并非是涨价和污染,而是构建自由市场的需求。新的管理制度体现了他们与以往家长式管理之间的一个重要不同,即关注点从确保充足的供应和输送到通过监管生产以保证产品种类和公众健康这一转变。以三个独立的研究议程提供的市场组织和消费文化的比较性研究为依据,我们绘出了在国家监管和个体经济活动之间变动的边界。[3]
学者们通常用“市场文化”这一术语来捕捉经济“理性”与嵌入这些概念和实践的社会关系之间的紧密关系。因此,对市场文化的研究采取了一种批判性的人类学视角,揭示了支配新古典主义经济学的所谓普遍公理的偶然性和政治性的基础。[4]这种方法激发了对欧洲工业化历史叙述的重大修订。因为它显示了早期现代企业家如何首先学习了“理性”的经济方式,以及为什么由此产生的市场会排斥工人、妇女和其他弱势群体。尽管有这些权力不对等的关系存在,历史学家也证明了:与货物的品质一样,消费者的普遍期望依然与市场有所关联。[5] 或许正是在此地,在商业、科技和消费文化各个领域的美国学家们为这个新兴的学问做出了他们最大的贡献。尽管当时并未使用“市场文化”这一术语,美国学者们已经注意到公司的结构和行为会基于市场、生产技术、原材料和消费需求的改变而发生变化。这些研究认为,市场是商品的制造者和使用者之间的谈判空间。商品的制造者和使用者之间,以及那些销售、宣传和设计他们社会的物质文化的人之间的谈判空间。[6]
当代对新古典主义范式的批评者们转而重温了一场稍早的辩论。其中以研究理性经济决策的“形式主义者”为一方;而以更广泛地关注生存时的物质活动,尤其关注于那些被认为互惠和再分配比市场交易更重要的社会的“实体主义者”为另一方。 经济史学家卡尔-波兰尼(Karl Polanyi)在1944年出版的《伟大的变革》(The Great Transformation)一书中为此次辩论梳理了结论,即现代资本主义制度和市场理性代表了对早期经济组织形式和精神的彻底改变,这与早期的经济组织形式和思维方式完全不同。[7]虽然随后地研究通过论证在这三段式分期的前后一致性充实了这个概念;但事实上,学者们反而在确定分期的具体时间上,愈发莫衷一是。[8]而且,亚洲工业经济的成就对西方现代化的一元模型产生了挑战,这敦促着人们意识到市场文化的多样性。[9]在本研究中,我们致力于寻找在几段革命性社会政治变化中的民意波动起伏,并以此来替代那个线性的、结论性的“伟大的转变”。
在18世纪晚期和整个19世纪,巴黎、纽约和墨西哥城快速的城市化和工业化促使政府应对一些枯燥且政治化的问题:怎样为民众提供新鲜且美味的肉才是最好的方式?国家应该在多大程度上对其人民的基本生活需求负责?肉类贸易的哪些方面需要监管和监督?肉类贸易中公民社会与国家权力之间的关系的法则——艾拉·卡兹纳森(Ira Katznelson)所说的“自由主义的基本原理”——在许多层面上都有所不同。[10]这些边界首先是地理上的,即监管者和承包商都想要去控制的供应链的地理位置。围绕着谁更有资格来监管贸易问题上出现了相关的斗争,公会屠夫拥有着专业知识与经验;而国家则通过其公正性来行使权力。位于市场交易外的医学专家们最终宣称其同时拥有知识与公正性,尽管他们的权威只有在19世纪时才逐渐得到承认。消费问题又形成了另一个边界,因为城市居民对一块好肉的需求,通常通过成千上万的个人商业交易来表达,可以迅速凝结成强大的政治运动,改变公共和私人权力的平衡。[11]
在这三个城市——虽说是在不同的时间,也在不同的情况之下——自由化理想领导下的政治革命都以一个新的自由市场来取代家长式的状态,即供需关系取代了政府直接通过法令对肉类的供应,并将市场从卡特尔(垄断联盟)与行会垄断中解放出来,这些新组建的政府探求着更民主的劳力储备和商贸中更高的透明度。关于市场中的自由该如何按所推测的那样促进供给和在竞争的条件下保持合理的价格,不同构想之间的关系十分紧张。在每个事件中,家长式的模式与新自由化政治经济模式在牛贩和屠夫这些角色上发生了直接的冲突,在制定健康安全标准的时候尤为如此。自由贸易使得市场混乱、价格飞涨、供不应求,这一现象促使消费者和公众健康专家呼吁对重新进行监管。
这些案例是探索生产者、消费者和国家监管者如何看待这些供应需求和应对市场变化的理想情境。作为在各自国家有着特权地位的主要城市,巴黎、纽约和墨西哥城仍然有着相对充足的鲜肉供应,其中以牛羊肉为大宗。拥有政治影响力的精英阶层成为了贸易中最为挑剔的顾客。虽说这些中上阶级的顾客们不太可能仿效那些为食物而游街暴动的行为,但凭借着自身微妙的人脉关系,他们也会让当权者意识到加强鲜肉供应的重要性。贫困的市民虽然倾向于次一等的牛肉补位,但这也足以让他们参与到“肉类供应”这一政治事务。而定期供应新鲜牛肉的困难则是从食品供应本身的来源出发,强化了其在日常政治事务中的共鸣,并为考量随后各城市在自由主义改革下的转变提供了依据。[12]
历史分期,与典型事件一样,也是历史的对照性研究中免不了的话题;而要理出一份合理的年表,必须先摒弃这“老三样”:即1776年、1789年和1810年发生的,象征着美国在自由主义的发展中的领袖地位的三次民主革命。[13]与之不同,本文会遵循美国共和主义史的最新编写成果,将美国独立以后的半个世纪视作旧的特权制度的一部分。直到19世纪40年代《杰克逊法令》(Jacksonian politics)取得成功之前,纽约的公共市场制度仍然维持着一种与君主制法国的公会和殖民地“新西班牙”的垄断经营制度相似的肉类卡特尔(垄断联盟)制度。法国率先进行了自由化尝试,在1791年颁布了《阿拉德法案》(1791 d' Allard Law)取缔了行会,并终止了对肉类企业的特权。[14]但革命军队的暴乱和经济危机让巴黎人民迅速放弃自由市场,最终拿破仑通过设置市政屠宰场才解决了肉类贸易中的混乱。墨西哥城的自由化尝试持续的时间最久,反对西班牙重商主义的呼声在1813年的一份自由贸易宣告中达到了高潮。在贩肉大商人不断抵制对重拾市政管制的尝试下,不受管控的贸易持续了将近一个世纪。
为了研究这些变化,本文从旧政权的家长制政府的制度和习俗开始,此处的重点是比较
供应地区和行会组织、国家监管形式和屠夫及牛商的公司控制之间的比较,以及消费者表达其偏好和主张其权力的方式。消费者表达他们的偏好和宣称他们的权力的方式。第二部分侧重消费者对垄断行为的不满,以及这种不满如何凝聚成市场自由化的政治压力。在每个案例中,不受约束的市场与生存、健康和卫生的原则发生冲突。正如第三部分所解释的,文化上特定的消费者期望形成了对自由主义制度的普遍厌恶,导致了对市场监管的各种尝试。这些经历与自由主义的共同点表明,持续需要由一个公正的团体进行监管,并继续对肉类供应商施加规则和控制。
《旧制度下的城乡肉类贸易》(THE RURAL-URBAN MEAT TRADE OF THE OLD REGIME)假设纽约、巴黎和墨西哥城在牛肉供应网络和商业市场组织的形式非常不同。但每个不同的体系都应付着相同难缠的问题,即确保运往市区的家畜的稳定供给。所有的这三个案例中,取得政治许可的卡特尔(垄断联盟)掌握着实际的垄断权,并限制着肉类交易的组织和有效性。控制的侧重点在每个案例中有所不同,这是基于批发和零售组织不同的结果。牛肉批发市场由主中心,屠宰场和零售点组成。肉类相关的政治事务由在这些不同地方的生产者,顾客和管理者对个人利益的追求而形成,并且以市场文化的期望为依据。
这三个城市都有着对肉类均有着巨大的需求,并且急需政治与经济上的资源来应对饥饿。巴黎,三者中最大的城市,在大革命前夕有着50多万的居民,包括由贵族和富商组成的大量的精英阶层,以及流动人口与贫苦的工薪阶层。[15]墨西哥城,新西班牙的总督首府,以“千殿之城”闻名,但其占绝大多数的11万人口在19世纪早期却住在拥挤的租屋和简陋的棚房内,住在优雅的西班牙式的市中心之外。纽约,尽管不是首都,却在19世纪早期成为美国的第一大城市,在1840年其拥有着三十多万的人口。[16]
在法国,贵族的法令将肉类市场委托给行会主和屠夫商人,赋予他们在边远市场购买牛肉和在有执照的巴黎商店和摊位内出售新鲜肉类的特权。在墨西哥城,西班牙殖民政权同样将以abasto de carne(肉类供应权)为称的垄断权力给予杰出的商人。在美国,由市政局而不是联邦政府负责物资供应,纽约市议会把工会的权力实际上授予了获得执照的屠夫,他们拥有对零售的执行权,但不会影响牛肉的供应。这些政治经济结构确保了可靠的供应和稳定的场所控制,但它们都限制了肉类贸易进出口的流动性,从而形成了一个僵化的经济环境。
家畜供应自然地在旧制度下形成了规章制度,因为肉类贸易必须在动物供应充足下进行。家长式的政权在法国和新西班牙扩大家畜市场的监管控制来确保运往大城市的肉类的充足供应 。巴黎每年要消费15万~20万头家畜(5万~6万的公牛和母牛)[17],很多都来自诺曼底省和利穆赞省,尽管有时产量较低,王室会授权在远到瑞典和爱尔兰的地方购买家畜。[18]根据法律,所有在巴黎地区的牛群必须在索镇和普瓦西这些城镇附近的两个由警察监管下的供应市场进行售卖。[19]在墨西哥城也是基于一个与巴黎类似的,家长式的家畜供应链。牛群在波斯湾与太平洋海岸山麓的大农场里养殖,然后被装载到中央高原产区动用复杂的工作网络来进行中间加工和饲养,然后被装载到中央高原产区动用中间商和饲养场的复杂工作网络进行养殖。[20]总督思索着为焦虑的民众确保定期的供给,要求用船将牛群运输到墨西哥湾,将其安置在首都的公共牧场之中,直至供应转好,从而赋予了该市的批发商人相当大的市场权力。
不同于法国和新西班牙严厉的家长制,纽约市郊有着广阔的牧地,使其能够在政府的最小监督下获得供应。独立经营的家畜商人掌握着贸易,他们从 北部 的威彻斯特和杜克塞斯县收集牛群,或从新泽西的农场运送牛群。[21]牲畜也来自新英格兰,而在1820年前后,其采购主要来自于以俄亥俄州为首的西部地区。[22]但与巴黎和墨西哥城相同,批发贸易也是受到严格限制的;纽约的家畜贸易只会在牛头酒馆这个坐落在第24街道和列克星敦大街的牲畜场的后面进行。[23]
[1] The National Provisioner 185 (July 4, 1981): 5.
[2] Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Berkeley, Calif., 2003); Maxime Schwartz, How the Cows Turned Mad (Berkeley, 2003).
[3] Roger Horowitz, "Negro and White, Unite and Fight!" A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-1990 (Urbana, Ill., 1997); Meat in America: Technology, Taste, Transformation(Baltimore, forthcoming); Jeffrey M. Pilcher, The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise,and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917 (Albuquerque, N.M., forthcoming); Sydney Watts, "Boucherie et hygiene a Paris au XVIIIe siecle," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 51:3(July-September 2004); "Meat Matters: The Butchers of Eighteenth-Century Paris" (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1999)
[4] E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963); Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, N.J., 1977); William M. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-1900 (Cambridge, 1984); Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago, 1998); Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York, 1998); John Smail, Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1999); Victoria E. Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830-1870 (Baltimore, 2000); Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Steele France (Berkeley, Calif., 2001).
[5] The paradigmatic work in economic and business history comes from Philip Scranton, especially Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925 (Princeton, N.J., 1997). Other studies include the essays in Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, eds., His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology (Charlottesville, Va., 1998); Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York, 1989); Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (Baltimore, 2000). On the politics of consumer culture, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003); Margaret Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, 2005).
[6] Economic historian Douglass C. North has dismissed the assumption of rationality as inappropriate for understanding historical change and called instead for an examination of the effects of institutions on economic behavior. See his Nobel Prize address, published as "Epilogue: Economic Performance through Time," in Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson, and North, eds., Empirical Studies in Institutional Change (Cambridge, 1996), 347; as well as Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990). The historical literature on market culture simultaneously intersects with a rising insurgency by economic psychologists, feminist economists, and others who have probed the numerous situations in contemporary Western society that defy seeming economic rationality, particularly within the domestic sphere. Important works include Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (New York, 2001); Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," in Robin M. Hogarth and Melvin W. Reder, eds., Rational Choice (Chicago, 1986).
[7] The terms formal and substantive appeared in Karl Polanyi, "The Economy as Instituted Process," in Polanyi, Conrad Arensberg, and Harry Pearson, eds., Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (New York, 1957), 243-70. For a recent summary of the debate, see Richard R. Wilk,Economies and Cultures: Foundations of Economic Anthropology (Boulder, Colo., 1996),5-13.
[8] Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III, eds., The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays (Cambridge, 1993).
[9] Robert W. Hefner, ed., Market Cultures: Society and Morality in the New Asian Capitalisms (Boulder, Colo., 1998).
[10] We draw from Katznelson's essay, "Working Class Formation and American Exceptionalism, Yet Again," where he argues for "a shift in the angle of vision away from the state as such to the character of the rules and institutions that govern the transactions between the state and civil society." Rather than see liberalism as a stable set of ideas and practices, Katznelson suggests that the most fruitful line of comparative inquiry would be at the level of its "grammar," the rules and relationships that were focal points for recurrent crises and reformulation, and through which scholars could explore "whether critical moments in American political development have coincided with such moments elsewhere." The essay may be found in Rick Halpern and Jonathan Morris, eds., American Exceptionalism? US Working Class Formation in an International Context (London, 1997), 36-55.
[11] E. P. Thompson has provided the most influential analysis of consumer politics through the "moral economy" of the crowd. Although this notion has been adopted as a handy yardstick for measuring collective violence of all sorts, Thompson used it as a mode for analyzing consumer expectations (not necessarily actions) that were bound to a paternalist model of food marketing where governments intervened for the public good. Conflict arose among producers, consumers, and public officials as this market culture (characterized by the moral imperatives that bound a paternalistic state to its people) confronted a liberal regime of the free market in grain. Meat, by contrast, as a good of heterogeneous nature and elastic demand, rarely incited riots but nonetheless remained a source of popular concern and, at times, collective action. Consumer expectations focused on the quality of this perishable rather than on price alone, along with economic structures such as the consistency of cattle supplies and the organization of distribution of this basic foodstuff to the urban populace. The elements of a "moral economy of meat" thus found expression under the old regime in popular consensus as to the legitimacy of cattle wholesaling and meat retailing practices. See "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (February 1971): 76-136; "The Moral Economy Reviewed," in Customs in Common (New York, 1993),261.
[12] Beef was primarily consumed fresh because of its inadequacy as a cured product. Unlike pork, which takes well to curing because of the shorter, less dense muscle fibers and the distribution of fat throughout the flesh, beef is rendered hard and tasteless by the process of salting and drying.
[13] See Joyce appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); William J. Novack, The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), esp. chap. 3.
[14] In March 1791, the National Assembly issued the d'Allard law, abolishing guilds across France. In June of that year, the Le Chapelier laws forbade workers' associations altogether.
[15] According to a report to the procurator general, the butchers acknowledged "une augmentation de leur debit d'une cinquierne depuis quelques annees." Bibliotheque Nationale de France (hereafter, BNF), Collection Joly de Fleury, mss. 460, folio 191; A. Husson, Les consommations de Paris (Paris, 1875), 157; M. Lachiver, "L'approvisionnement de Paris en viande au XVIIIe siecle," in La France d'Ancien Regime: Etudes reunis en l'honneur de P. Goubert (Toulouse, 1984), 345-54, 352
[16] U.S. Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of the United States: Population (Washington, D.C., 1872), 51.
[17] Livestock provisions included sheep, cows, steer, veal, and a nominal number of pigs. For statistics on cattle entries in 1637, see BNF, Collection Joly de Fleury, 1428, fols. 1-14, published in Arthur-Michel de Boislisle, ed., Memoire de la generalite de Paris (Paris, 1881), 658-59. For later statistics, see Marcel Lachiver, "L'approvisionnement de Paris en viande au XVIIIe siecle," in La France d'Ancien Regime, 345-54; and Bernard Garnier, "Des boeufs pour Paris: CommerciaLisation et elevage en Basse-Normandie (1700-1900)," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest 106, no. 1 (January-March 1999): 101-20, esp. 104-05.
[18] Jean-Marc Moriceau, L 'elevagesous l'Ancien Regime, XVIe-XVIlIe steeles, (Paris, 1999); Bernard Garnier, "Les marches aux bestiaux: Paris et sa banlieue," Cahiers d'histoire 42, no. 3-4 (1997): 575-609.
[19] Manuscript collection, "Commerce de la viande dans les marches de Sceaux et de Poissy, 1705-1725," Archives Nationales de France (hereafter, ANF), G7 1668-70, fols. 157-213; see esp. letter dated March 1, 1724, fol. 161; ANF, G7 1677; F12 fol. 59.
[20] Francois Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda, Alvin Eustis, trans. (Berkeley, Calif., 1970), 95, 116, 123; Herman W. Konrad, A Jesuit Hacienda in Colonial Mexico: Santa Lucia, 1576-1767 (Stanford, Calif., 1980), 175-82; Doris M. Ladd, The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780-1826 (Austin, Tex., 1976),49.
[21] J. Ritchie Garrison, "Farm Dynamics and Regional Exchange: The Connecticut Valley Beef Trade, 1670-1850," Agricultural History 61 (1987): 1-17.
[22] Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick, A History of Agriculture in the State of New York (New York, 1933), 374-76. Thomas De Voe, "The Introduction and History of Cattle in America," unpublished manuscript, 169-78; undated article, "The Butchers and Drovers Bank" (c. 1877) in folder, "Notes and Clippings about Butchers"; entry for Ernest Keyser in folio volume, "List of Butchers in New York City"; all Thomas De Voe Papers, New-York Historical Society. David C. Smith and Anne E. Bridges, "The Brighton Market: Feeding Nineteenth-Century Boston," Agricultural History 56 (1982): 3-21.
[23] The World, February 3, 1877, De Voe Papers.