跳出原居民人类学的陷阱:次原居民人类学的立场、提纲与实践

Escaping the Trap of Indigenous Anthropology: The position and practice of sub-indigenous anthropology

针对西方人类学的困境,原居民人类学一直被视为极具优势的另类田野研究实践,而且是一种日益盛行的人类学研究门径。然而,透过仔细检视原居民人类学的知识论理据,兼以华人原居民人类学文献为参照,本文尝试对原居民人类学的学说进行反省,指出该学说中可能存在的一些陷阱,即有把田野考察者的主体位置本质化及把身份凌驾于之上并当反省于作田野研究基础的危险。笔者二人在文中将引用个人的田野研究经历,说明原居民人类学如何在实践上往往并不一定独具优势和完美无缺。尽管田野就是自己的家乡,笔者二人还是与一般田野考察者没有多大分别,也要不断保持警觉,步步为营,从而维持研究对象与自己之间的友好关系,跨越研究对象与自己之间的差距。就此,笔者二人提出了“次原居民人类学”的学说,来阐明其重要性,兼而申明反省性在田野研究中的必要性,在家乡进行的田野研究亦不例外。

Specially referring to existing Chinese literatures, this article attempts to critically review the epistemology of indigenous anthropology. The authors point out that there are some possible traps in the notion of indigenous anthropology and the danger is to essentialize the subject-position of fieldworkers and to override the reflexivity of fieldwork research. Based on the authors' fieldwork experiences, they show that although indigenous subject-positions brought them advantages in conducting research in their hometown, at the same time it also caused them various unsolvable difficulties which similarly shared with Western anthropologists. Authors emphasize that no matter what subject positions anthropologists taken, they ought to take numerous sensitive and careful steps in order to maintain rapport with their research subjects and come across their different gaps from them. Authors develop the notion of “sub-indigenous anthropology' to outline such a subtle but critical situation in the actual practice and argue for the necessity of being reflexive in the practice of fieldwork research even in the case of one's indigenous society.