本土人类学与多重普遍性:重新思考“利奇-费孝通之辩”

Native Anthropology and Multi-Universalism:Rethinking Leach-Fei Debate

利奇在1982年以四位中国人类学家为例,批评“本土人类学”方法,认为这种研究难以逃脱文化偏见,虽然《江村经济》是一个例外。费孝通回应说,自己的意图在于通过类型方法逐步接近整体中国,而且自己有“学以致用”的关怀,希望超越“价值中立”的承诺和“消磨时光”的艺术追求。何况,研究本文化和异文化分别有“出得来”和“进得去”的问题,难分伯仲。实际上,利奇未必问过“微型社会学能否概括中国国情”的问题,也未必主张人类学家要秉承“价值中立”展开对“异文化”的艺术阐发,两人的分歧体现了中英传统学人的不同立场。真正的升华体现在费先生的暮年之作《试谈扩展社会学的传统界限》,费先生此时不再追求逐步接近整体中国的实证主义方法,转而通过中华文明的思想探索各文明的共性,探索一种可以称为“多重普遍性”的文明互鉴。该文立意高远,包含着对利奇的某种认可,可谓与利奇当年的主张殊途同归。

In Social Anthropology(1982),Edmund Leach,by assessing four works of Chinese anthropologists,argues that it is hard for a native anthropologist to escape from his cultural bias,though Fei Xiaotong’s Peasant Life in Chinais quite an exception.In a series of responses,Fei delineates that his book is the start of his ambition to approach China as a totality;he also has pragmatic concerns for improving China,a commitment different from Leach’s scientific stand of“value-free”or art pleasure of“leisure”.Moreover,Fei believes that while studying one’s own culture may find it hard to“get out”,studying an alien culture may find equal difficulty to“get in”.I argue that Leach might never question if“micro-sociology is able to understand total China”.Nor did he believe anthropologists should study others’cultures as leisure and do so without reason.The disagreement reflects the difference between two great intellectual traditions.Sublime came with Fei’s last paper,“On Expanding the Traditional Borders of Sociology”(2003),in which Fei abandoned his positivist ideal of a gradual approach to total China.Instead,he called upon the commonality of different civilizations with Chinese thought,exploring what I call“multi-universalism”featured in cross-civilizational borrowing.Fei finally agrees with Leach at a higher level.