What is “Anthropological” about Anthropological Fieldwork?： Reflections on its Epistemology and Ethics

在田野工作已經成為一種時髦的用語，眾多學科都採用田野工作作為他們的研究方法時，「甚麼是人類學的田野工作？」成為人類學這個學門迫切需要反思的議題。這篇文章將從究竟「人類學的田野工作」有哪些性質，使得它與其他種類型的田野調查有一些重要差異入手，勾畫出我認為人類學的知識生產過程，最關鍵的一些知識上與倫理立場上的特性，包括：開放性與關係性的自我，主體位置的不確定性，高度的反身性與批判性，情緒與倫理的工作。這些性質塑造與影響人類學知識的性格與人類學家獨特的傾向，也帶給人類學特殊的學術倫理，有別於一般實證研究上形式性的倫理要求。本文反對用形式性的標準，像時間長短或語言能力來定義人類學的田野工作。也批評後現代主義那種文本取向的民族誌書寫，無法解決他們所要挑戰的研究過程中不平等關係，反而忽略了田野中的實作，才是民族誌繼續存在的關鍵所在。最後，本文嘗試回應，在當代全球化的情境中，人類學式的田野工作面臨的新挑戰。As “fieldwork” becomes more popular than ever among researches in other social sciences , anthropology suddenly finds itself increasingly losing control over one of its most cherished trademarks. With the dissipating of so called “primitive cultures”, the traditional intensive study of a single site in the field has become a questionable methodology to cope with a fast moving world. Anthropology needs to go back to its methodological foundation to reflect on its nature and its ethical commitment to conduct “Anthropological fieldwork”. This essay argues that there are at least four basic experiential dynamics at work in the fieldwork situation that continue to shape our discipline’s epistemological and ethical orientations. They are: the ethics of an open and relational self, uncertainty in locating subjectivities, a highly critical and reflective sense of politics, and the labor of emotion and ethics. Thus, we reject efforts to differentiate anthropological fieldwork from other empirical studies with various formalistic criteria, such as long duration or fluency in native languages, and also argue against those post-modernist attempts to obfuscate the unequal conditions intrinsic to any ethnographic writing by deploying various textual innovations. We insist that fieldwork should continue to be the central endeavor in learning and pursuing knowledge of the unfamiliar. In conclusion, we outline some of the most pressing challenges to anthropological fieldwork in the contemporary world and our possible responses