历史田野新方法——利用社交媒体外包“生牛贸易”口述史的一种尝试

Cattle Trade Customs and Commercial Networks in the Republican Period: An Experiment in Wide-scale Interview Outsourcing

口述史访谈是了解过往的一种重要途径与方式,需要研究者走近受访对象,了解地方性知识并倾听他们的声音。但新冠肺炎疫情的爆发,使得访谈人走进地方、走近受访对象受到了极大限制。为此,可采取将口述史研究项目外包给来自不同地区大学生的方式展开进行:培训、指导他们走进田野,开展针对性的访谈并将他们的发现总结为结构化的访谈报告。这些访谈人,既了解地方性知识,且能运用当地方言与受访对象进行交流。这一操作模式,便捷、高效、可靠,且有利于建构实际有效的线上调研共同体,可复制于其他类型的田野研究中去。

This article outlines the authors’ experience of outsourcing oral histories on China’s cattle trade before 1949, a topic that required a large number of oral history interviews conducted with local knowledge and in local dialect. Inspired by the virtual ethnographic methods that have arisen in response to Covid, we trained students to interview their family elders in a way that would provide usable information to the project organizers. Our operational model is efficient, reliable, and replicable to other sorts of ethnography. We close by reflecting on the role of virtual community in shaping the ethnographic relationship.