美籍学者黄宗智先生通过对华北地区和长江三角洲地区小农经济的研究,提出“过密化理论”,进而指出中国社会经济史研究中存在的“规范认识危机”和一系列悖论现象,对传统解释范式发起挑战,引起国内学者的热切关注和争论。本文力图回顾十年前的这场讨论,勾勒出国内学术界的主要见解及争议,并阐述黄宗智理论和实证研究的价值。中美中国史领域的这次对话使国内史学界得以将讨论中获得的一些有益的方法启示转化为我们自身创新的内在资源,并进一步发掘出其对新社会史研究的导向意义。 American scholar Mr. Huang Zongzhi proposed the theory of “densification” through the study of the peasant economy in North China and the Yangtze River Delta region, and then pointed out the “crisis of normative cognition” and a series of paradoxes existing in the research of Chinese social and economic history. Explain the paradigm to challenge, aroused the ferocious attention and controversy of domestic scholars. This article seeks to review this discussion a decade ago, outline the main ideas and controversies in the domestic academic community, and elaborate the value of Huang Zongzhi’s theory and empirical research. This dialogue between China and the United States in the field of Chinese history enabled the domestic historians to translate some useful methodological revelations obtained during the discussion into the intrinsic resources of our own innovation and further explore its guiding significance for the study of the new social history.