从边缘到边缘:法律人类学在中国的译介与传播

From Fringes to Margins:Translation and Transmission of Legal Anthropology in China

同样都是源自西方且有着百年历史的关于法律的社会科学研究,为何法律人类学在中国仍表现出一副"新兴学科"的面貌?本文拟对法律人类学在中国的译介与传播进行一番梳理。改革开放以后,重新获得启蒙的中国法学发现法律人类学的"只言片语"有着重要的理论意义与案例支撑功能,所以开始碎片化地引入。1997年以后,随着几部译著的出版,略显神秘的法律人类学终于引起了学术界的普遍关注,各种"填补空白"的作品集中地出现。2010年以后,随着中外学术交流的日益增多,互联网文献库的普及,导致外文文献获取难度大幅度降低,前沿、专题研究日渐成为主流。虽然法律人类学与法律社会学、法律经济学一同进入中国,但是在影响力上较后两者差距甚远。在西方就是一门"不太成功"的边缘学科,进入中国也就难以避免地继续被边缘化了。

Legal anthropology belongs to the category of social studies of law including such traditional interdisciplinary studies as legal sociology and legal economics,but why does it appear to be an emerging research area in China?To answer this question,we try to review in this paper the process in which legal anthropology works have been translated and spread in China.After the inception of the reform and opening up,prompted by the second wave of enlightenment in modern Chinese history,the legal academics in China began to realize the significance of legal anthropology in both theory and practice,though its translation and introduction into China was fragmented at that time.With the publication of several complete translated works in China since 1997,legal anthropology,which had appeared to be mysterious before,has eventually begun to attract wide scholarly attention,hence a surge of publications claimed to report so-called gap-filling researches.After 2010,due to the increased academic exchanges between China and foreign countries and wide availability of online database of academic literature which has made it much easier to get access to foreign research information,cutting-edge research on special issues is becoming the mainstream.Though entering China at the same time,legal anthropology cannot compare in influence with legal sociology and legal economics.In the western countries,legal anthropology is marginalized and it inevitably continues to be so treated in China.