Organizing authority: Office, rank, and status in Tang China.

摘要

This dissertation studies the organization of the Tang government and the two components in its ranking systems: substantive office and titular office. The role and function of the Tang titular ranking system, critical to our understanding of Tang society, is largely neglected in existing scholarship. Premised on the Weberian concept of bureaucracy, the dissertation analyzes the role of titular rank and its interaction with substantive rank in the functional context of Tang bureaucracy.; Chapter one examines the idea of government from the Han to the Tang, and demonstrates that in the Tang conception, government was to be rationally organized with functional goals. The next two chapters analyze the organization of substantive offices in the Tang central and local government, demonstrating that two principles—administrative functionality and imperial centrality—underscored the hierarchy of Tang substantive ranking system. Chapter four discusses the titular ranking system, where relation between titular rank and social status is illustrated. It shows that titular rank, while initially determined by an individual's family background, was linked to one's performance in substantive office, and thus functionally integrated into the bureaucracy. The concluding chapter argues that it was through the titular ranking system, whereby social status was translated into mechanical measurements, that the Tang state was able to thoroughly incorporate an independent social force into its bureaucratic framework. Thus, the titular office system represents the Tang response to an historical quandary, namely, how to re-establish a centralized authority after the devolution of political power and the resultant rise of great clans in medieval China. The implication of the titular office system is that the dynamics from the interaction between titular and substantive offices during the Tang fundamentally modified the conception of social status and imperial power for the next millennium in China.