The Problems with Chinese Anthropological Research
Politics is but a small part of social science and social science is not politics. There are politically 56 ethnic groups in China. Though these ethnic groups are of less anthropological value if we look at their culture through the ways they were identified, they are still of great anthropological significance if we approach them as they are. That's where the difference lies in in Chinese ethnic Study. Most of them are of political value, political anthropology takes only up a very small part in anthropological research and if we approach these groups with the existing method, which has been very popular since 1949, we can only study how they have been divided and ruled. Under such circumstance, Chinese Ethnic Study will not make any progress without exchange of theory and method with others.Another obstacle is Han Chauvinism. In China, whenever researchers refer to ethnology, it means the study of 55 ethnic groups instead of 56. That means Han is a standard, a criterion，from which the study of other 55 ethnic groups must learn. There are many famous anthropologists who have been aware of his but never speak of it. Mr. Fei Xiaotong is one of them. Although he started his anthropological research with the Yao people, it was not the study of Yao that made him known to world anthropologist circle. On the contrary, it is the Village of Kaixuangong or Jiangcun that has brought him fame. Chinese anthropological study will not have its own position before Chinese anthropologists realize that all 56 and other people within Chinese boundary are of equal significance in anthropological research and there is no ethnic group that should be in a position of supervision. After all, the Snow Ball of Han Chinese itself is a controversial issue. Everybody knows it is a mixture.
China is a multi-ethnic nation, a nation of 56 ethnic groups. Anthropological study of Chinese ethnic groups must first be clear that different ethnic groups in China have created various cultures in accordance with the environment they inhabit. Some of them live along great rivers and plain and they plant rice; some in plateau and hence create their own unique culture; and others in mountainous areas and have own shifting cultivation. Looking at the situation, if we say that people in plains are in a stage of highest civilization, these who in plateau are less civilized, and these who in mountainous areas are the least civilized or primitive and savage, we are not doing social science but constructing social science. Such construction is baseless and hence of no use. By doing fieldwork among different ethnic groups across China from the east to west and from the north to the south (with no exception of the Han Ethnic Group), what we encounter is various adaptive patterns of culture to different ecological environments. If we put them onto an evolutionary ladder, I would say, we are putting different ecological adaptations of various ethnic groups onto a mentally constructed evolutionary ladder. Do you think there is such an evolutionary ladder? If you say yes, what you mean is that the plain is the most civilized, the plateau is the less civilized, and the mountainous areas are the least civilized. Different modes of production are but different ways of human adaptation to their ecological environments. It is unexpectable to wish shifting cultivation to be conducted in such big cities as New York, Beijing, and London unless you do it purposefully. It is the same case that you cannot hope to drive a submarine in southern Himalayas. People will practice their own custom according to their living conditions and you cannot put different human living conditions onto an evolutionary ladder to say that some are civilized and others are primitive.
In a word, evolutionary scheme is the third obstacle in Chinese anthropological research. It is acceptable to use evolutionary scheme in biology but it is disgusting to follow the step of Darvin when social science is concerned. Evolutionary scheme had long been abandoned in western academic circle. Well, in China evolutionary scheme is still a catchword and emphasized time and time again. Thus, the study of social modes has been very popular. Chinese scholars are so deeply preoccupied with evolutionism that it will take time to re-establish Chinese anthropological study.
[[i] Last edited by Anthroman on 2005-4-15 at 13:38 [/i]]
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