全球场景下的“族群”对话

The dialogue of ethnicity in a global discourse

一个多世纪以来 ,人类社会发生了巨变 ,先是列强的殖民性扩张 ,后是大国的数字化霸权、炮舰加“文明” ,几乎没有给“小国寡民”和“传统社会”留下什么生存空间。在这样的背景下 ,“族群”概念在“民族”概念之后进入了许多非英美世界 ,其能指和所指并不完全符合当地社会的习惯 ,而从一开始就是不平等的对话 ,让这两个原本富于变化的概念更加复杂。可以说 ,在不发达社会情愿、不情愿地投入全球大对话的今天 ,“族群”

The last century has seen tremendous changes in human society. First we came up with colonial expansions by international powers, and then are now confronting digital hegemony of super nation-states. Gunship plus civilization has left little space for ‘antique states' and ‘traditional societies' to move around in. It is against such backdrops that the notion of ‘ethnicity', after that of ‘nation', found its way into the world beyond the UK and the US, being ill matched with the local ways in both referent and reference. This has been an unequal dialogue from the very beginning, which made the two erratic notions more complex. We can safely say that nowadays-underdeveloped society is still constructing its own adaptive and adaptable images of ‘ethnicity' in the global interlocution in which it plunged itself willy-nilly.