旅游者隐喻:西方旅游人类学的认识论困境及其反思

Metaphor of Tourists:The Epistemological Dilemma of the Anthropology of Tourism in the West and Reflections on its Solution

西方旅游人类学发展至今已逾50年,但无论是在人类学领域还是旅游学领域,旅游人类学家都面临身份认同的尴尬与知识信度的危机。在人类学领域,田野调查中的(旅游)人类学家常常被误认为嬉皮士或旅游者,其旅游民族志与旅行游记雌雄莫辨。在旅游学领域,旅游人类学的解释主义理路因缺乏信度而受到实证主义者的诘难。这导致旅游人类学的知识生产陷入步履维艰的认识论困境,(旅游)人类学家既有与旅游者相混淆之虞,又要提防其学术文本沦为文学作品,而且一不小心还会卷进更大范围的质性与量化研究方式之争。表面上,这种困境部分地来自主流人类学的表述“原罪”,以及旅游的娱冶性,但本质上却源于特定认识方式关于他者和文化接触的知识信度问题。质性的解释主义范式认识论困境是普遍现象,它在主流人类学表现为反思人类学浪潮,在旅游学表现为对民族志知识与旅游真相之间关系的质疑。因此,对主流人类学而言,现代旅游现象可能是其反思经验与田野调查方法得以应用与深化的实验场之一。

It has been more than 50 years since the rise of the anthropology of tourism in the West,but either in the fields of anthropology or tourism,the anthropologists of tourism are faced with the identity-related embarrassment and a crisis of intellectual credibility.On the one hand,in the anthropological field,anthropologists of tourism,as participant observers,are often seen as hippies or tourists wandering around in the guise of anthropologists,while their tourism-based ethnography,which is an important part of their research,is often juxtaposed with travelogues.On the other hand,in the field of tourism studies,the interpretivist approach of the anthropology of tourism has been challenged by positivists for its lack of credibility.This has left the production of knowledge in the anthropology of tourism in an overlapping epistemological dilemma,where anthropologists of tourism are at risk of confusing themselves with travelers,are wary of their research texts degenerating into literary works,and are inevitably involved in a wider debate between quantitative and qualitative approaches.On the surface,this dilemma appears to stem in part from the representational“original sin”of the mainstream anthropology and the recreational nature of tourism,but is essentially rooted in the credibility of particular ways of knowing about the Other,hetero-cultures and cultural encounters.Accordingly,the epistemological dilemma of the interpretivist paradigm is not an isolated phenomenon,but is manifested in the mainstream anthropology as a wave of reflexive anthropology,and in tourism as a questioning of the relationship between ethnographic knowledge and the truth of tourism.In this context,for the mainstream anthropology,therefore,the phenomenon of modern tourism may be one of laboratories in which the experience of reflection and fieldwork can be applied and improved.