Las bases teóricas del campo de la complejidad

Keeping order was a sharp problem for the Sung government. The early establishment of a centralised administrative system, with its fragmentation of circuit authorities and its multiplication of

bureaucratic checks, was of course designed to avoid the kind of breakdown of central authority which had finally destroyed the T'ang. So too was the concentration of military power in K'ai-feng and the constant changes of military command. These policies, which allowed the maintenance of a stable state system, also brought many problems of their own. In the administration, the expansion of bureaucratic procedures required a large and expensive official machine; the difficulty of obtaining and controlling specialist sub-bureaucratic personnel remained a problem throughout the dynasty. The army had

corresponding troubles. The policy of bringing the ablest troops to

even heavier drain on manpower to the north and northeast?made the regular provision of supplies to the capital and thence to the border armies imperative. The problems of feeding and controlling the central and the border armies aside, the policy weakened the provincial army

as "rarely being given training, despite their lack of experience of K'ai-feng to form the Imperial army ),as well as the

all too effectively. Its members were described

war. Most did labour service and no more

important. As described above, in Hang-chou, special squads of soldiers were posted to guard facilities like canals and water supply works and keep them in order, functions which would otherwise have had to be performed by paid or corvee labourers. Nevertheless, as early as 978, when Chekiang became part of the Sung empire, T'ai-tsung found it advisable to station ten units (chih-hui ) of the Imperial army in Hang-chou as the south-east third command ( ^

The provincial army was inadequate to keep such an important territory secure. But though more and more the Imperial army came to be

quartered (chiu-liang ^?f\ ) in the prefectures or circuits, and under

their command, this was mainly a device to shift the burden of furnishing army supplies from the centre to the provinces. The best soldiers still went to the capital or to the borders. The quality of those available

for keeping local order remained low.

The standard pattern of the local police organisation, to which some 3

of these provincial troops were assigned, was a dual one. Early in the dynasty the old office of subprefectural sheriff (hsien-wei ) was revived, and a sheriff was appointed to each subprefecture. His

function - as usual put in fairly open terms - was "to command and train the local militia, and to put down lawlessness and prevent violence ^

^ "-4 The militia (kung-shou ^ ^ ) were recruited under the service system (i-fa ~y'Tx )» They came from the third grade of household under this system, or exceptionally from the second, and their service, originally lasting till old age, was reduced

to seven years in 1033 on the recommendation of Fan Chung-yen.

This was still an extremely long period and many servicemen saw their families ruined. The numbers varied. Originally a large

subprefecture would have fifty militiamen; this was reduced with peace in 968 to thirty, but needed to be increased again until by 1076 these subprefectures had 140 militiamen.^* In addition, there were village elders (ch * i-chang ) who were servicemen like

the militia but chosen from the second grade households rather than the third. As well as deciding small disputes over property and similar affairs, they were meant to prevent small-scale crime. Under them they had low-ranking servicemen chuang-ting ^};h “J* . They seem to have handled a fair spread of the day-to-day running of village life: one source assigns them "only disputes, crime, fires and street-repairs".^

Complementary to these locally-recruited servicemen were the patrolmen (hsiin-chien ) . These officers headed patrol offices

(hsiin-chien ssu ) established in each subprefecture of K'ai-feng prefecture, and elsewhere in areas covering several sub-prefectures.

Since the officers subordinate to the patrolmen were those appropriate to the army unit Jtu it is probable that the nominal strength of each post would have been, as in these units, eighty men. Above these posts were general patrol off icers (tu-t * ung hsiin-chien shih )gTj

Patrolmen were to "arrest and supress robbers and bandits

^$X

)'. ^ This was meant to involve them in regular rounds of their territory, a duty often shirked. In 1029 a military official of K'ai-feng found it necessary to report that despite an increasing number of bandits in the area, the patrol troops were sitting

uselessly in their posts. He asked not only for the troops to be ordered to make regular patrols, and not to stay in any one place longer than five days, but also for the subprefectural and chen ^ authorities to be required to report the day these patrols reached

9

them. The patrolmen also acted as reinforcements for the sheriff and his militia. If the sheriff had enough men to arrest a band of criminals and was known to have delayed long enough to allow them to escape, he was held criminally liable. If, on the other hand, his strength was too small, he was to send a report to the neighbouring patrolman and to the prefecture. In cases where a report was not sent, or where the patrolman concerned or the prefecture failed to act on one they received, those involved were to be held responsible for a grave breach of duty."^

With time, and deteriorating public order, the numbers of

patrolmen increased. This was criticized in an edict of 1080, which noted that the numbers of patrolmen had risen till there were up to five in some prefectures. Worse; even these forces were ineffective. This was attributed to lack of the local knowledge possessed by the militia, who were reputed to be more successful. In the future,

there was to be only one in each prefecture. The short term duty - one or two years - of the patrol troops does not seem to have been changed, though it must have been an important factor

local servicemen, or ill-paid troops given long terms of duty in one place, would naturally take advantage of their knowledge of the area, while troops on short postings could not be expected to be efficient. This general problem of social control was one of the reasons for the

initially at least, with some success.

In document Palabras claves: sujeto, subjetividad, identidad, sí mismo, constructivismo-cognitivo, (página 30-35)