为巨变中的苗族山地文明留下记忆——潘年英的苗族田野调查研究述评

For the Public Memory of the Fading Mountain Civilization: Pan Nianying's Field-notes and Other Writings on the Hmong People

潘年英在他的"乡俗中国"系列丛书及其相关的著作中,以文化笔记的形式对苗族文化进行了人类学的"深描",为我们展示了一个奇特而神秘的贵州苗族文化世界,并通过反思和批判外部世界对山地民族文明的偏见和误读,提出了自己的洞见。他长期以贵州黔东南为其田野考察对象,历时30余年,足迹遍布贵州黔东南山地的各个苗族社区,记录和分析了上百个苗族传统山寨的文化个案,为在现代性浪潮中不断巨变的山地文明留存了一份对于传统的公共记忆。

Scholarly writer and anthropologist Pan Nianying has presented to the world his brilliant integration of creative literary writings and anthropological field-notes in his works on the Hmong,one of the most notable mountain peoples in south China. In the past 30 years,Pan＇s footprints spread all over the Hmong villages of more than a hundred. Such a long-term and extended field experience awarded him many insights about the mountain civilization and its discontents,and allowed him to rightly criticize those outrageous bias,misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the Han-Chinese mainstream about the Hmong and other mountain peoples. For him,even if traditional mountain civilizations such as that of Hmong may inevitably fade away,it is the scholars＇ duties to document them for public memory.