当代民族志形态的形成:从知识论的转向到新本体论的回归

The Configurations of Ethnography:From the Epistemological Turn to the New Ontological Return

本体论(旨在辨析存在的本相与"真实"的要素)与知识论(旨在辨析认识者的知识之本质)是相对而言的;人类学史上,两类求索,是民族志一贯兼有的两面。然而,在不同历史阶段,民族志却表现出不同形态,个中因由,与研究旨趣向二者中的一方倾斜有关。20世纪70年代之前,民族志书写者侧重于辨析被研究的"土著"的存在与价值,致力于从中引申出思想;之后,在政治经济学、知识一权力思想及文艺批评理论的影响下,则侧重于处理外在于民族志对象世界的知识论问题;20世纪90年代以来,民族志领域则涌现出致力于整理"民族志书写的区域传统"、深化宇宙论研究及哲学化"土著观念"的研究者,他们将重点重新放在"对象世界"(此时已作为认识主体存在)的本体论阐述上。民族志形态史,是两种并存面向之间关系结构的先后两次"反转"(alternations)构成的。近期提出的"本体论转向"(ontological turn)指的是第二次反转,这一转向意味着现代主义民族志形态的重建和更新,而这又进而意味着,民族志对于"对象世界"的客观化(本体化)既不可避免又有其价值。

Ontology(the understanding of the realities of heing and the elements of 'fact' and 'world') and epistemology(the understanding of the nature of the knowledge of the knower) are relative to each other;in the history of western anthropology,ontological and epistemological pursuits have been the two sides of the same 'coin' of ethnography,and they have been relative and related to each other.Ethnography has not been the same through its own history;rather,it has alter its configurations since the early 20 th century.Prior to the 1970 s,the ethnographers paid more attention to the being and value of the 'native',endeavoring to derive ideas from what they learn in the life worlds and cosmologies of the 'observed'.For a period after the 1970 s,under the influence of the theories of political economy and power-knowledge as well as literary criticism,they redefined their central issues,seeking to reveal the epitemological ' powers' impacting ethnographic investigation and writing from outside the 'life worlds' of the 'observed'.However,since the 1990 s,there have seen a few returns in Western ethnography to 'regional traditions of ethnographic writing',to cosmological comparisons,and to ontological revelations of the 'objectified world'.The history of ethnography can be seen as resulting from two subsequent alternations of the two different emphases of ethnography(epistemological and ontological),and the recent discussions of the 'ontological turn' can be understood as one of the 'ontological returns' which,as revitalizations of modern ethnography,are an inevitable alternation of the over-epistemological orientation of 'post-modern' Western anthropology.