A Study Of The Patriarchal Welfare In Song Dynasty

The Folk welfare, including the clan’s welfare, community welfare, guildwelfare and charity welfare, plays an important role in Chinese traditional society. Asthe basic type of Chinese folk welfares, clan’s welfare is an organization based on thepatrilineal kinship. It can not only provide economic security and psychological needsfor individuals, but also has a great influence on the units of each clan. In the SongDynasty, great changes have taken place in Chinese traditional clan system. A newclan, with the characteristics of popular and public style, came to earth. And the Freeestate of the clan’s fields were becoming more and more popular that had a greatinfluence on the later generations. So is there a true sense of the welfare during theSong Dynasty? How did the clan guarantee the basic necessities of people’s lives andthe needs of reading? How did the clan do for the poor and special people? What arethe specific form of welfare offering? This is a problem which is worth of payingattention to and researching. This paper, combining with some relevant historicaldocuments, aims to analyses the clan’s welfare system of the Song Dynasty from asociological perspective.This study firstly analyses the reasons, contents and functions of the clan’ssystem, by using the disciplines of Sociology, History, Economics and so on. Then itgives us a clear concept of clan’s welfare in Song Dynasty based on the related lawsand shows an example of "Fan Yi Zhuang" to express the formation of Song’s clanwelfare–establishment, expandition, legislation and completation. It also points outthat the clan’s welfare is made up of educational welfare, pensional welfare and thewomen’s welfare. After that, this paper leads us to the objects, reasons, influences ofeducational welfare, pensional welfare and the women’s welfare respectively. Finallyit points out the important roles the clan’s welfare plays in the folk welfare systemand its inspiration to today’s welfare construction, and emphasizes that thecomprehensive and diversified ideas are needed so as to perfect the social securitysystem and construct a social welfare system shared by all the people.The basic conclusions of this study are that the clan’s welfare is based on thepatriarchal clan’s system in Song Dynasty. The clan’s organization, as a kindredcommunity, economic community and welfare community, has been playing an important role in giving a great contribution to the non-governmental welfareconstruction. China is on her way to a well-off society and we need somecomprehensive and diversified ideas to perfect the social security system and improvethe level of social security. The goveronment should make sure that the welfareservice system does need the help of the public departments, profit organizations,non-profit organizations, families and the communities. And besides, the family, asthe basic unit in the social structure, plays an important role.