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Minzu University of China Hai Lu
Abstract: Authenticity has long been regarded as the core issue of researches on ethnography. Under the guidance of the contemporary principle of introspection, traditional ethnography based on “scientificity” and “objectivity” comes to be challenged and criticized in the field of anthropology. Whether anthropology is scientific or not and whether there exist “subjectivity” and “personal interpretation” in the writing of ethnography are put into discussion. Focusing on the authenticity of ethnography, the author of this paper makes attempt to analyze the deviations in the writing of ethnography caused by “memorizing” and “reconstructing” from such aspects as the historical memories, the ethnography styles，and the rhetoric devices. The issue of authenticity is also discussed based on the author’s personal experience in field study.
Fieldwork is a basic skill in the study of anthropology. It is not only a way to collect first-hand data, but also a method to approach to the local people and to learn to interpret the materials from perspectives of the local people and with their emotions. As an important form of the fieldwork achievements, ethnography is a research method and at the same time, a theoretical carrier. Ethnography is an important link between other cultures and the readers. Since what ethnography manifests is what has happened at a different time, it inevitably separates the researchers from the situation of the conversation[ Roberto Malighetti，which connects him or her with his or her reporters in the fieldwork. Since the 1970s, with the development of post-modern anthropology, traditional ethnography has been facing challenges. Post-modern anthropology lays much emphasis on those who carry out researches in fieldwork. Besides, literary-orientation and cultural creation are becoming increasingly popular in the field and in writing, “distortions” appear in ethnography as a result.
In The Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz refers to ethnography as the complex “construction of construction” and “interpretation of interpretation”[ C.Geertz，The Interpretation of Culture；] which is conceived with languages. In fieldwork, ethnographers and anthropologists use relevant tools such as sound recorders, video recorders, and pens to record segments of conversations among the speakers. What they have record is those parts which they can understand, while what the reporters tell the ethnographers is just what they want to say and are able to say according to their understanding of the questions proposed by ethnographers[ Roberto Malighetti， Due to the fact that ethnography is an interpretation of the researchers’ “memory” as well as the reporters’, it contains some reconstructions more or less. In this paper, the author, based on her own experience in fieldwork, makes efforts to reflect on the way we view the relation between memory and historical facts and the authenticity of ethnography under the instruction of the theoretical framework of modern scientific ethnography.
In regard to memory, some historians, including some western historical philosophers, have made discussions on it prior to anthropologists. The famous philosopher, Socrates, once said that the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, is the mother of the Muses and the goddess of history, Clio, is among one of the Muses. Thus, history is generated from memory. If history is a kind of narrative, it should appear before memory, just as history does not equal to the past and it is the history that exists in the memory. Time and Ethnography – Authority, Authorization and Author, written by Roberto Malighetti, begins with his ethnographic research in a Brazilian village of the black in the Amazon Basin, “I was skiing yesterday.”[ Roberto Malighetti，Ⅱ Quilombo di Frechal：Identità e lavoro sul campo in una comunità di discendenti di schiavi，Milano：Raffaello Cortina，2004；] These very few words separate the inevitable time and space distances between the time of the fieldwork and the time of writing. The temporal difference of the fieldwork and ethnography leads to the subtle differences between memory and historical reality.
Anthropological researches on “memory” have, nevertheless, beard few fruits. Relative anthropological works regard culture structure as a dynamic system and focus on how those social memories deviating from the written records of the dominant culture constitute multi-linear history. Such thought is actually the criticism of modernity, dominant narrative and linear history. Both deviations of individual and collective memories and confronts between folk memories and official memories can lead to “distortions” in ethnography. Thus, it is necessary for us to ensure the accuracy of memory while we carry out field works so that reconstructions are reduced in the later collating of materials and thus, the “authenticity” of ethnography is better ensured.
Anthropologists are expected to make what are originally strange familiar to us while retaining their exotic flavors. It is necessary that they make every endeavor to strike a balance between memory and history. Historical facts and historical truth are closely related to those subjects who memorize. To a large extent, it is these subjects who decide what are to be memorized as historical facts and what are to be forgotten Here comes the question — faced with the reality of selective memory, what kind of efforts can ethnographers make to keep the authenticity of ethnography?
In terms of this issue, Roberto Malighetti thinks what’s most important is to understand the role of concepts and to understand the mutual relation between them to avoid two kinds of extremes: on the one hand, ethnography with too many facts and no personal insights; on the other hand, ethnography with too many facts which have been processed by thoughts[ Roberto Malighetti， Reports given by ethnographers should not be simple reproductions as what is anticipated by local people nor they should be simple reflections of individuals’ imagination. The former is “ethnography of witchcraft written by witches”, while the latter is “ethnography of witchcraft written by geometrist.”[ C.Geertz，The Interpretation of Culture；]
Scientification of fieldwork results is the primary principle proposed by Bronislaw Malinowski, which has been repeatedly emphasized in his works. Therefore, ethnographical works represented by Argonauts of The West Pacific are recognized as “scientific ethnography or ethnography of scientism”. He believes that in terms of ethnographical materials, only two kinds of resources are undoubtedly scientific. The first kind includes those findings that are discovered through direct observations, aboriginals’ statements and explanations; the other kind is the deductions that are made based on the author’s common sense and mental understanding.Malinowski, through the application of such a skill, aspires for scientific and systematic processing of ethnographical research materials. Without any ambiguities, these works can be objective enough so that the scientific goals of fieldwork can be better realized and the writing of ethnographies can be more systematic and scientific. The method of direct observation mentioned here equals to the research method of participant observation defined in modern ethnology. There exist a balance between subjectivity and objectivity in participant observation. Such a balance means researchers observes to meet the requirements of scientific research while directly participating in local activities[ Roberto Malighetti， All potential scientific methods should be adopted in the later writing of ethnography to avoid reconstructions of memories.
In the process of writing and studying ethnography, which are accomplished with the method of participation and observation, researchers often find themselves in the dilemma between participation and observation. If we probe into this couple of concepts in the writing of ethnography, we will find that “participation” requires that anthropologists enter the circle of subjects, join in various kinds of activities like a local one, and keep records of what has been observed[ Atasha Mack，Cynthia Woodsong，Kathleen M．MacQueen，Greg Guest，and Emily Namey．Qualitative Research Methods：A Data Collector’S Field Guide，Durham，NC：Family Health International．19；] in practice; while to “observe”, anthropologists must sit on the sidelines, which means to look on the subjects as objectively as possible and to write down what they have found as spectators. Such a tension between participation and observation has lead to such different proposals of research method as “observational participation”, “participant observation”, “full participation”, and “full observation”. These methods leans toward participation or observation to different degrees, but the central problem here is to find out which perspective to take —the perspective of an outsider or of an insider— in the process of studying and writing ethnography.
On many occasions, it is hard to decide the how far anthropologists should go in terms of participation and observation and it’s also no easy to measure the rationality of expressions in the writing of ethnography. Whether the degree of participation and observation will influence their opinions toward local affairs, whether it will do harm to certain local people when they observe and participate too much, and whether it will affect the neutral role that researchers should paly if they have done too much are all problems that disturb many scholars who write in and out of the field. Ethnologists and anthropologists should keep a clear head while attempting to devote themselves into the field or to become part of the field. As ethnographers’ memories inevitably deviate from the facts, research findings usually can’t be free from personal interpretations and individual characteristics. Personal interpretation and explanation of a certain other culture can directly influence the description and explanation of historical facts in that cultural district.
Moreover, more and more scholars have realized the fact that those who participate in the writing of ethnography are not necessarily the anthropologists themselves. Field workers always receive careful inspections from their subjects, just as the fact that the subjects are carefully inspected by them. Realization of this fact is of crucial importance. As the initial explainers of their own cultures and historical facts, they might give quite different reports because of differences in genders, social roles, ages, social status and so on. The author ever suffered a lot from such troubles during a research in the region of Dulong River in the summer of 2015. Information received from one respondent would be overturned by that given by another respondent, so inquiry to a third one is quite necessary. Even so, there still exist certain doubts in the final version of “historical facts”.
The subjectivity of ethnography studied by way of participation and observation is an inevitable problem faced by this kind of writing. On the one hand, although Malinowski lays emphasis on the principle of scientification in the study of ethnography, the research method of participation and observation is undertaken by the researchers who observe while living among the subjects, which will inevitably lead to the subjectivity of the results. It goes against the scientism’s principle of observing facts from an objective perspective. On the other hand, focusing mainly on the method itself, the discussions and thoughts towards this research method are independent from the discussions on the writing. In fact, the tension between participation and observation, between being an insider and an outsider and between subjectivity and objectivity exists in the stage of fieldwork, but can only be reflected in the writing. Although scientific ethnography advocates objectivity, getting rid of subjectivity during participation and observation is of no possibility. When doing the writing of fieldwork and ethnography, anthropologists can only search for a balance between the subjective and objective perspectives and prevent themselves from getting lost in either perspective.
The problem of authenticity concerning ethnographical texts has long existed since the very beginning of ethnography. There are inevitable differences between history in memory and real history. So absolute authenticity is in no way to achieve since everything is relative. It is not realistic to have totally objective ethnography. We have to use our mind, which has been scientifically trained, to seek really relative approaches and to head for important goals with scientific research methods so that we can be infinitely close to authenticity and objectivity.
海璐（1992.12--）：女，23，回族，籍贯河南省许昌市，中央民族大学民族学与社会学学院2014级硕士，研究方向：宗教人类学
论文作者:Hai Lu
论文发表刊物:《文化研究》2015年9月
论文发表时间:2016/6/16
标签：许昌市论文; 回族论文; 期刊论文; 民族学论文; 河南省论文; 人类学论文; 尽在论文; 《文化研究》2015年9月论文;