第二章 基本概念
世界正如人类所感知的那样，在一定程度上是由语言形成的。然而，就语言与非语言现实之间的关系如何而言，并没有一致的看法。在20世纪30年代，两位语言人类学家提出了“萨丕尔—沃尔夫假说”。这个假说指出语言能在不同群体的生活世界之间产生决定性的差异。根据萨丕尔（Edward Sapir）和沃尔夫（Benjamin Lee Whorf）的研究，北美一些地区的语言——霍皮语是最著名的例子——包含很少的名词或表示事物的词语，并且有很多动词或表示运动和过程的词语。因此，他们推断与讲英语的人的典型生活世界相比，霍皮语一定包含着更少的物体和更多的动作。这种具有许多追随者的观点（尽管有些修正的模型），遭到了另一些观点的挑战，后者认为各地的人一般以同样的方式感知世界，各种语言具有许多共同概念。
当一个人讨论抽象现象时，术语无疑会强烈地影响一个人所感知的事物和方式。当然，一位印度教徒意识到许多神圣事物的存在并相信转世，对于生死观念就会与穆斯林不一样，后者只相信一种神并认为人死以后会进入永恒和超验的天堂。此外，这些观念可能会在一定程度上显露出他们的日常生活。同样，在专业研究方面，特殊的概念使我们可以用一定的方式看到某些事实，但代价是排除其他方面的现实或无法接近真相。例如，假若一个人使用亲属关系作为中心概念研究社会，与那些使用诸如父权制或族性之类概念的人相比，就必然会发现其他的关系和问题。
研究者个人的兴趣、所受的训练和——至少是充满希望的——他所仔细审查的社会，影响着其对概念和理论方法的选择。理论和概念、观察和方法论的选择、田野工作期间和田野考察结束之后，它们之间有着持续的相互作用。下一章我将会论证这一点。然而，某些概念对于人类学研究是如此重要，以至于人们必须涉及它们，而不管他的研究主题如何。在讨论研究方法和理论之前，我将在本章先介绍这些概念。
The Key Concepts
The world, as it is perceived by human beings, is to a certain extent shaped by language. However, there is no agreement as to just what the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality is. In the 1930s, the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis'was launched by two linguistically oriented anthropologists. The hypothesis proposes that language creates decisive differences between the respective life-worlds different groups inhabit. Certain North American languages—the Hopi language is the most famous example—contained, according to Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, few nouns or words denoting things, and many verbs or words denoting movement and process. As a result, they reasoned, the Hopi world must contain fewer objects and more movement than, say, the life-world typically inhabited by someone who spoke English. This view, which has many adherents (albeit always in a modified form), has been challenged by the view that humans everywhere generally perceive the world in the same ways, and that all languages have many concepts in common.
There is no doubt that when one discusses abstract phenomena, terminology strongly influences what one perceives and how one perceives it. Of course, a Hindu, who is aware of the existence of many divine beings and believes in reincarnation, has ideas about life and death which differ from those of a Muslim, who worships only one god and believes in an eternal, transcendent paradise after death. These ideas are, moreover, likely to inform their everyday lives to a certain extent. In academic studies, similarly, particular concepts enable us to see certain facts in a certain way, at the expense of excluding other aspects of, or approaches to reality. If, for example, one studies a society using kinship as the central concept, one will inevitably discover other connections and problems than one would if one had instead used concepts such as patriarchy or ethnicity.
The choice of concepts and theoretical approaches is influenced both by the researcher's personal interests, his or her training, and—hopefully not least—the society under scrutiny. There is a continuous interaction between theories and concepts, observations and methodological choices, both during and after fieldwork. This will be demonstrated in the next chapter. However, certain concepts are so fundamental to anthropological research that one must relate to them regardless of the topic under scrutiny, and I shall introduce some of them in this chapter, before moving on to research methods and theories.
人
这似乎是一个简单和明确的词汇，好像任何人即刻都可以明白。也许真是这样。不过，尽管每个人都知道人是什么，但他们并非都有同样的知识。当你看另一个人或看镜子里的人时，你所看到的东西取决于你来自何方。实际上，一些最令人振奋的人类学研究所涉及的东西，恰恰揭示了这些差异，也就是人这个概念的变化。
在西方社会，人通常作为一个独特的个体、整体和不可分的东西被感知。在生命过程中，单独的个体作出了大量的决定或选择，并不得不对其结果负责。当一些人去世时，他们不再作为个体而存在，但在西方社会，至于其后会发生什么，则没有一致的意见。有人认为死人会莫名其妙地作为无形世界里的幽灵继续活着，而另外一些人则假设去世就是人的终结。现代西方关于人的概念常被描述为利己主义，这不是自高自大的意思，而是作为一种视角，将自我或个体放在“舞台”的中央。
在印度的村庄里，关于人的概念非常不同。印度大部分人是印度教徒。他们相信转世轮回，认为每一个刚出生的婴孩都是死人转世，并不是一个全新的人。此外，一个人出生也不是作为一个完全独立的个体，而是一个特定种姓的成员。进一步讲，一个人的生活取决于他的因缘和法则（命运），也同样取决于他自己的决定。当一个人死亡时，生、死和再生的轮回又重新开始，一个人的重生取决于今生他所做的善事与恶行。这种关于人的概念常常被描述为社会中心论，意味着社会或更加广泛的社区才是宇宙的中心，而不是个人自我。
PERSON
This appears to be a simple and unambiguous word, which everybody understands immediately. Maybe so. However, although everybody knows what a person is, they do not all have the same knowledge. What it is that you see when you look at another human or into the mirror, depends on where you come from. Some of the most inspiring anthropological studies are in fact concerned with revealing exactly these differences; variations in the concept of the person.
In western society, the person is usually perceived as an unique individual, whole and indivisible. During the course of life, the single individual makes a number of individual decisions or choices, and has to take responsibility for their consequences. When someone dies, they cease to exist as individuals, but in western societies, there is no general agreement as to what happens afterwards. Some hold that dead persons somehow continue to live as spiritual beings in an invisible world, while others assume that death is the end of you. The modern western notion of the person is often described as egocentric, not in the meaning of egotistic, but as a perspective where the ego, or individual, is at the centre of the stage.
The notion of the person is very different in an Indian village. Most of the population are Hindus and believe in reincarnation, which entails that every newborn baby is a re-born person and not an entirely new one. One is, moreover, not born as an unattached individual, but as a member of a particular caste. Further, one's life is as much decided by one's karma and dharma (fate, destiny) as by one's own decisions. When someone dies, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth begins anew, and just how someone is reborn depends on their good and bad deeds in this life. This concept of the person is often described as sociocentric, which means that it is society or the wider community, not the ego, that is at the centre of the universe.
在非洲的村庄，传统宗教占据很强硬的立场，这里可以找到第三种关于人的概念，但同时祖先的灵魂也在场；人们可以向他们寻求建议，但要冒着被他们惩罚的风险。去世的人自身也可以变成祖先的灵魂，很多时候灵媒（可以与祖先的灵魂沟通的活人）可以执行相当多的神圣权力。
在美拉尼西亚的某些地方，会提到第四种实例，另一种关于人的概念却很普遍。显而易见，许多美拉尼西亚人采用某种特定的方式看待生死之间的转换。关于人的概念倾向于相关性，也就是组成一个人的东西是他或她与别人的关系。因此，一个不再呼吸的人，在他或她与别人的关系终结之前，就不会被人视为死人。在认定这个人真正死亡之前，必须先解决债务，还要举行一些仪式。实际上，一些写到印度和美拉尼西亚的人类学家建议，谈到作为个体的人时，不要使用个体这个称谓，因为他们实际上是可分的，是通过与他人的连接而存在的。
性别本身可以被视为一个关键术语，但是也可以将其看作与人有关的概念的特殊实例，因为很难或者说不可能不用性别去谈论人。在所有现存的社会区分中，没有哪个能比性别更加普遍。换句话说，所有的人都可以区分成男人和女人，性别关系在各地人群构成中是一个重要的因素。男人只有在涉及女人时才会是男人，女人也只有在与男人对比时才是女人。迄今为止，性别是一般概念。但是正如人这个一般概念会发生变化一样，性别也可以用多种方式来理解和处理。
In African villages where traditional religion is strong, a third conceptualisation of the person can be found. There, persons are typically accorded individual freedom and accountability, but at the same time, the ancestral spirits are present; one may ask them for advice, and one risks being punished by them. Persons who die become ancestral spirits themselves, and in many cases, spiritual mediums (living persons who are able to communicate with the ancestral spirits) can exert considerable secular power.
In parts of Melanesia, to mention a fourth example, yet another conceptualisation of the person is common. Notably, many Melanesians view the transition between life and death in a particular way. The concept of the person tends to be relational, which is to say that what constitutes a person is his or her relationships with others. A person who no longer breathes is therefore not considered dead before all his or her relations with others have been brought to an end. Debts must be settled, and certain ritual acts must be carried out, before the person in question is truly dead. Some of the anthropologists who write about India and Melanesia have suggested that, rather than using the term individual, we should speak of the persons in question as dividuals, since they are in fact divisible, created through their bonds to other persons.
Gender can be seen as a key term in itself, but it may also be dealt with as a particular instance of the concept of the person, since it is difficult, not to say impossible, to think about a person without gender. Of all the social distinctions that exist, none is more universal than gender. Put differently; all peoples distinguish between men and women, and the gender relationship is an essential element in the constitution of the person everywhere. Men can only be men in relation to women;women are only women in contrast to men. Thus far gender is universal. But just as the general concept of the person varies, gender is understood and dealt with in many different ways.
通常需要区分性与性别，尽管这种区分在某些领域多少有点过时（在性别的生物组成被质疑的地方）。性常常是指在体型、生殖器的形状等方面可以遗传的差异；性别涉及男女两性区分的社会建构。在后面这个领域，社会科学家研究的主题出现了令人感兴趣的变化（有人认为这只是有趣的相似性）。在生产领域、私人空间和许多社会里，男女两性之间的社会分工存在很大的不同，只是在最近50年里，性别关系才发生了急剧的变化。20世纪50年代，在大部分西方社会，大部分妇女是家庭主妇或兼职的工人，而现在大部分妇女却在家庭之外全职工作。20世纪50年代和60年代，欧洲和北美已为人父的男性，很少知道换尿布和煮饭之类的家务事。
包括人类学家在内的许多社会学家，一直对两性关系内在的权力感兴趣，这常常通过妇女受压迫的习惯术语来描述。也许有人会说男人往往要比女人行使更多的权力，而反过来的说法却很少。在大多数社会里，男子总是占据重要的政治和宗教位置，而且往往是男子控制正式的经济。有些社会规定妇女在公共场合出现时，必须遮盖住身体和脸蛋。另一方面，妇女通常可以行使相当多的非正式权力，尤其是在家庭范围之内。此外，人类学家在摸清社会的各个方面之前，无法清楚地说明妇女受到压迫，包括妇女（和男人）如何感知他们的地位。不可驳斥这么一种可能性，即西非（或中东）的某些妇女认为“被解放的”西非妇女受到了更多的压迫——因为后者——具有更大的职业压力和需要，以追求良好的和其他的期望。
当他们研究正在经历变迁的社会时，最重要的是考察不同利益群体之间价值观的冲突和紧张，尤其考虑主要的群体，这或许是当今大部分人类学家在做的事。通常，这些冲突通过性别关系展现出来。在较为典型的情况下，年轻的妇人在经济上能自给自足，因而会要求在人的现代概念范围之内的个人自由权利，这与她们的母亲形成了对比；对传统和另一种关于人的更加整体和社会中心论的概念，年纪更大的一代人则尽力保持他们的忠诚。在涉及移民社区时，西欧的新闻界经常描述这种冲突，但它们在其他社会中也能看到，只是用了不同的伪装。
It is customary to distinguish between sex and gender, although the distinction has gone somewhat out of fashion in some quarters (where the biological component of gender is questioned). Sex generally refers to inherited differences in body size, shape of the genitals and so on; gender is concerned with the social construction of male/female distinctions. In this latter area, that is the subject matter for social scientists who study the topic, there are interesting variations (and, some would argue, just as interesting similarities). The division of labour between men and women varies enormously both in the sphere of production and in the private sphere, and in many societies, gender relations have changed dramatically only in the last 50 years. In most western societies, the majority of women were housewives or part time workers in the 1950s, while the majority are now fully employed outside the home. European and North American men who became fathers in the 1950s and 1960s rarely knew anything about diapers or cooking.
Many social scientists, including anthropologists, have been interested in the power inherent in gender relations, often described through the idiom of female oppression. It can be argued that men usually tend to exert more power over women than vice versa. In most societies, men generally hold the most important political and religious positions, and very often, men control the formal economy. In some societies, it may even be prescribed for women to cover their body and face when they appear in the public sphere. On the other hand, women are often capable of exerting considerable informal power, not least in the domestic sphere. Anthropologists cannot state unequivocally that women are oppressed before they have investigated all aspects of their society, including how the women (and men) themselves perceive their situation. One cannot dismiss the possibility that certain women in western Asia (or the Middle East) see the ‘liberated'western woman as more oppressed—by professional career pressure, demands to look good and other expectations—than themselves.
When studying societies undergoing change, which perhaps most anthropologists do today, it is important to look at the value conflicts and tensions between different interest groups that are particularly central. Often, these conflicts are expressed through gender relations. In a typical situation, young women, who in contrast to their mothers may be economically self-sufficient, can demand their right to individual freedom within a modern conceptualisation of the person, while the older generation tries to retain their loyalty towards tradition and another, more holistic or sociocentric notion of the person. This kind of conflict is described regularly in the press in western Europe, with reference to immigrant communities, but it can be identified under different guises in many other societies as well.
社会
大部分社会科学家每天都在使用“社会”这个词，但他们很少费神去对之定义。要定义“社会”一词也不是一件易事。在日常语言中，社会这个词倾向于与“国家”同义。人们会谈到挪威社会、英国社会和南非社会等。但是这种定义经不起仔细的推敲。首先，每个国家（即使是最小的国家）都包含一些地方社区，可能因为种种意图凭他们本身的实力也可以将其视为社会。其次，许多国家包含讲各种语言的不同族群，他们之间的接触有限，而且在文化上的共性很少。最后，如果国家实行集权主义或腐败，或者社会成员仅仅感觉国家没有代表他们的利益，他们通常就会觉得国家是他们的敌人。
给“社会”下一个不是十分精确的定义，还是完全有可能的。例如，可以说社会由很多人组成，他们长期在一起生活和工作，因此觉得他们属于一个道德共同体，这强制他们彼此之间采用得体的行为。这种定义似乎更适合面对面交往的小型社区，而不是更加抽象的大型社区，当然这也没有什么错。毕竟，人类学家研究的典型社会都是小规模的。唯一的问题是地方社区总是更大系统的一部分——它们依赖对外的贸易，从外部接收妇女或牧师，也可能或多或少被遥远的国家机构有效地统治，年轻人可能会穿梭于大城市之间工作或求学，等等。在这种背景下，不可能在社会周边划出一条清晰和明确的边界。
SOCIETY
This word is used by most social scientists (and others) every day, but they rarely bother to define it. Nor is it easy to do so. In everyday language, the term society tends to be synonymous with ‘state'. One speaks of Norwegian society, British society, South African society and so on. But a definition of this kind does not withstand closer scrutiny. First, every state (even the smallest ones) contains several local communities, which may for several purposes be seen as societies in their own right. Moreover,many states are composed of different ethnic groups who speak different languages, who have limited contact and who may have little in common, culturally speaking. Third, the members of society often perceive the state as their enemy (if it is totalitarian), corrupt or they simply feel that it does not represent their interests.
It is perfectly possible to propose a less rigid definition of a society as well. One may, for example, state that a society consists of people who have lived and worked together for a long time, and who therefore feel that they belong to a moral community which obliges them to behave properly towards one another. This kind of definition seems to be more suitable for small communities based on face-to-face interaction than for larger, more abstract societies, and there is nothing wrong with that. After all, societies typically studied by anthropologists have been small. The only problem is that local communities are always part of larger systems; they are dependent on external trade, they may receive their women or their priests from outside, they are perhaps governed more or less efficiently by a remote state administration, the youths may travel back and forth to the big city to work or study, and so on. In this kind of setting, it is impossible to draw a clear and unambiguous boundary around the society.
尽管某些政治家的言论的大意是“没有诸如社会之类的事情”，但在社会的概念上，这就是当今所面临的问题。这些问题表明与近几十年人类学的发展有关的事情，但也说明了世界的互联性与日俱增。在19世纪后半叶，目前社会科学的许多概念得到了发展，早期社会学家和人类学家简单和随便地区分出了两类社会：大社会和小社会；或者是我们自己的社会和别人的社会。1861年，律师梅因（Henry Maine）写过一本重要的著作《原始社会》，对身份社会和契约社会进行了区分。在身份社会中，每个人与他人都有着固定的关系，这取决于出身、家庭背景和他在社会中的等级和地位。相比之下，契约社会以个体之间的自愿协议为基础，一个人在社会里的地位取决于他的个人成就，而不是取决于他的出身归属。梅因认为契约社会比身份社会更加复杂。
同一时期活跃的一些其他理论家，对小型/简单/传统社会与大型/复杂/现代社会作了相似的区分。或许，最有影响力的区分是社会学家滕尼斯（Ferdinand Tönnies）对社区和社会的比较。社区是一个地方共同体，人们凭借共同的经历属于其中，并建立在传统道义和个人熟悉的基础之上。另一方面，法理社会是更大规模的匿名社会，具有典型的现代性，国家和其他权力机构大部分取代了家庭与邻里的角色。实际上，滕尼斯描写了从农业社会向工业社会的转变，并明显相信法理社会的生活要由一个更加有帮助的、具有功利逻辑的行为来管理，而不同于由规范来驱动的更多群体中心论的礼俗社会。
那么，社会是什么呢？按照梅因、滕尼斯和其他人的说法，我们必须首先区分小规模社会与大型社会、简单社会和复杂社会，还有以亲属关系和互惠性为基础的社会，以及通过别的机制进行整合的社会。尽管20世纪中期之后，少数人类学家不加批判地采用了这类简单的二分法，但很清楚的是人类学家研究的很多社会都与滕尼斯的社会范畴有共同之处。另一方面，许多社会与之没有共性，并表明了类别上的严格限制。例如，印度的村落既可以被视为社区，也可以被看作更大社会的组成部分。在非洲的许多地方，传统社会组织具有高度的灵活性；它为了回应变化的环境需要扩展和收缩。通常，社会生活集中于村落，但通过商贸和冲突，村落也可以被整合到更大的系统之中。
Such are some of the problems experienced today with the concept of society, notwithstanding certain politicians' statements to the effect that ‘there is no such thing as society'. These problems indicate something about the development of anthropology in recent decades, but they also say something about the increasing interconnectedness of the world. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, when many of the current concepts in social science were developed, many of the early sociologists and anthropologists distinguished simply and unceremoniously between two kinds of society: the big and the small; or our own, and all the others. Henry Maine, a lawyer who wrote an important book about ‘primitive society' in 1861, distinguished between status societies and contract societies. In the status society, each person had fixed relationships to others, which were determined by birth, family background and the ensuing rank and position in society. The contract societies were, by contrast, based on voluntary agreements between individuals, and one's standing in society depended on personal achievement, not on birth ascription. Maine regarded contract societies as being more complex than status societies.
Several other theorists who were active in the same period established similar distinctions between small/simple/traditional and large/complex/modern societies. The most influential such distinction is, perhaps, the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies' contrast between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). The Gemeinschaft is a local community where people belong by virtue of shared experiences, based on traditional obligations and personal acquaintance. Gesellschaft, on the other hand, is the anonymous large-scale society typical of modernity, where the state and other powerful institutions have largely taken over the roles of family and neighbourhood. In fact, Tönnies wrote about the transition from agrarian to industrial society, and he clearly believed that life in the Gesellschaft was governed by a more instrumental, more utilitarian logic of action than the norm-driven, more sociocentric Gemeinschaft.
So what is a society? According to Maine, Tönnies and others, we must first of all distinguish between the small and the large, the simple and the complex, those which are based on kinship and reciprocity, and those that are integrated through other mechanisms. Although few anthropologists working after the mid-twentieth century would uncritically adopt a simple dichotomy of this kind, it is clear that many of the societies studied by anthropologists have many elements in common with T önnies' category of Gemeinschaft. On the other hand, many do not, and indicate severe limitations with the categorisation. Indian villages, for example, can be seen both as Gemeinschaften and as parts of a larger Gesellschaft. In many parts of Africa, traditional social organisation was highly flexible; it expanded and contracted in response to shifting circumstances. Usually, social life would converge on the village, but through trade and conflict, villages were also integrated into larger systems.
很久以来，人类学已经抛弃了类似这样的简单二分法。世界远远要复杂得多，社会类型之间的变动也很大，将其分成两种互相排斥的社会类型，这样的分类意味深长。此外，正如前面讨论的那样，人们无法一劳永逸地划出社会的边界。因此，说人类学家尤其是社会人类学家研究社会生活，会比说他们研究社会更准确。
同时，将社会视为有边界的实体，往往会很确切而且很有必要。描绘社会的一般标准是政治权力。按照这种观点，一个社会就是人们的一个集合体，能够有效地隶属于同一个政治机构。但即使是这种描述也存在问题。在现代国家，可以说各种居民都生活在同一个社会里。然而，地方政府和一些国家也同时不同程度地执行政治权力——尤其是在欧洲——并被整合到更高层次的政治共同体之中。另外，在多民族国家，族群的领袖有时候比国家的权力更大。还有一些国家的整合程度很弱，尤其是在非洲，以至于政治权力的可操作层面就在更低、更具有地方性的层次上。这样，国家的实际权力就要远低于它在纸上显示的权力。
虽然社会的概念缺乏清晰度，但这个词毫无疑问是必不可少的。在日常语言中，这个词可表示地方社区、大规模的社会和全球社会，这些都是实际存在的实体，而且存在于不同的系统层次上。人类被整合进（也就是参与和贡献于）一些社会系统，有些是大规模的，还有些是小规模的。当人类学家描述他们的研究点时，规模的层次取决于手边的问题。如果他要研究祖鲁人的巫术，就要采用特别的方式来描绘这个系统；如果研究焦点是南非的法律制度，就有必要采用另一种描述；如果主题是祖鲁人与南非白人之间的关系，第三种社会系统就与其有关了。所有这些分支体系（还有很多其他）的存在，都可以被看作社会。
Simple dichotomies such as these have long since been abandoned in anthropology. The world is far too complex, and variation between societal types is too vast, for a categorisation dividing it into two mutually exclusive kinds of society to be meaningful. In addition, as argued above, one cannot once and for all draw the boundaries of a society. For this reason, it is more accurate to state that anthropologists, particularly social anthropologists, study social life rather than saying that they study societies.
At the same time, it is often both accurate and necessary to regard societies as entities with boundaries. A common criterion for delineating societies is political power. A society, according to this view, is an assemblage of people effectively subjected to the same political apparatus. But even this kind of delineation is problematic. In a modern state, one can claim that the inhabit-ants in many respects live in the same society. Yet, at the same time, political power is also exerted, to varying degrees, by local government, and several states—not least in Europe—are also integrated in political communities at higher levels. Moreover, in ethnically plural states, the ethnic leadership may sometimes be de facto more powerful than the state. Also, there are states, not least in Africa, which are weakly integrated, such that the operational level of political power is located at a lower, more local (often kinship—or locality—based) level. In such cases, the actual power of the state is much less than it may appear on paper.
In spite of the lack of clarity in the concept of society, the word is doubtless necessary. In everyday language, words denoting local communities, large-scale society and global society exist, and all refer to actually existing entities, existing at different systemic levels. Humans are integrated in (that is, they participate in and contribute to) several social systems, some operating at a large scale, others at a small scale. When anthropologists delineate their field of study, the level of scale is determined by the issues at hand. If one is about to do a study of witchcraft among the Zulu, one delineates the system in a particular way; if the focus of the study is the legal system of South Africa, another delineation is necessary; and if the topic is the relationship between Zulus and Afrikaners, a third social system becomes relevant. All of these partial systems (and many others) exist, and all may be seen as societies.
文化
这里讨论的第三个概念与前面两个一样重要，也不会更容易把握。实际上，有人认为文化的概念是人类学里唯一最难办的术语。1952年，克鲁伯（A.L.Kroeber）和克拉克洪（Clyde Kluckhohn）出版了一本著作——《文化：概念与定义的批判性回顾》，对于学科中现有的文化定义进行了概述。他们辨认了162种文化的概念。不可否认的是，其中有些概念十分相似，但是他们不得不推断，似乎不存在一种文化概念的定义，能够让大多数人类学家都认可。
文化这个术语常常被用作社会的同义词，比如一个人在日常语言中会谈到“别的文化”。同时，区别文化与社会的观点似乎很广泛，就像“多元文化社会”这样的表述。如果这样的社会存在，换句话说就可能有一个社会，但有多种文化。尽管这种说话方式在新闻术语和口语中富有意义，但在人类学研究中却太不准确而无法使用，即使诸如“多元文化社会”之类的术语，暗示了与人类学问题有关的事情。
在文化的定义中，有一个最古老、最有名的定义源自英国人类学家泰勒，他在1871年对文化的定义如下：“按照最广泛的民族志定义来看，文化或文明是一个复合的整体，包括知识、信仰、道德、风俗和作为社会成员的人所获得的能力和习惯。”很多人将之视为一个非常有用的定义，尽管——或可能因为——它有广泛和普遍的特征。在关于文化的概念中，泰勒囊括了他能想到的各种“能力和习惯”，而且还远远不止这些。之后，使用人类学意义的词汇来定义文化的各种努力，就已经没有那么包罗万象了。20世纪60年代，解释人类学的杰出代言人格尔茨认为，文化是通过公共交流来表达的共同意义。换句话说，共享的文化并不需要每个人恰好获得同样的知识和技能，但是共享一种文化的人也会共享一种世界观，并且在同种文字及其隐喻的意思方面，能说同样的语言。
因此，文化渗透于各种人类的活动中。一些人或许还在想经济及政治与文化关联甚少：经济与实用性有关；而政治关乎权力。但是这种描述当然不可如此轻易地简单化。文化价值观不同于社会经济生活中能够感知贵重物品的决定，文化环境影响政治精英的行为。文化是人类活动的一个方面，而不仅仅是一个区域。
CULTURE
The third concept to be discussed is just as important as the two previous ones,and it is not easier to grasp. Some would actually argue that the concept of culture is the single most difficult term in anthropology. In 1952, A.L.Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn published the book Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Defi nitions, which gave an overview of extant definitions of culture in the discipline. They identified 162 different definitions. Some were, admittedly, quite similar, but they had to conclude that there does not exist a definition of the culture concept that most anthropologists seem to agree upon.
Quite often, the term culture is used as a synonym for society, as when one speaks, in everyday language, about ‘other cultures'. At the same time, a view distinguishing the two also seems widespread, as in terms such as ‘multicultural society'. If such societies exist, it is in other words possible to have one society, but several cultures. Although this way of speaking can be meaningful in the simplified terminology of journalism and colloquial speech, it is too inaccurate to be useful in anthropological research, even if terms such as ‘multicultural society'are suggestive of relevant anthropological issues.
One of the oldest and most famous definitions of culture stems from the English anthropologist EB Tylor, who defined culture as follows on the first page of his book Culture, published in 1871: ‘Culture or Civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. Many have seen this definition as a rather useful one, in spite of—or perhaps because of—its very wide and general character. Tylor includes every ‘capability and habit'he can think of, and then some, in his concept of culture. Later attempts at defining culture in the anthropological sense of the word have been less wide-ranging. The leading spokesman for interpretive anthropology, Clifford Geertz, suggested in the 1960s that culture be seen as shared meanings expressed through public communication. Shared culture does not, in other words, entail that everybody has obtained exactly the same knowledge and acquired exactly the same skills, but that those who share a culture also share a world-view and speak the same language in both a literal and a metaphoric sense.
Culture, thus understood, permeates all human activity. Some may still think that economics and politics have little to do with culture; economics is about utility, and politics is about power. But of course, such a description would be unforgivably simplistic. Cultural values, which differ, determine which valuables are perceived as desirable in the economic life of a society, and cultural circumstances regulate the behaviour of political elites. Culture is an aspect of human activity, not merely a sector.
大部分人觉得格尔茨关于文化的概念，比泰勒的文化概念用起来更舒服。但是必须立即承认，事情要比它迄今看起来的样子更加复杂。文化的概念比社会的概念争议更大，多年来人类学家一直对此有批判，他们认为没有这个词可能会更好（我怀疑他们不会这样，但是看库伯[Adam Kuper]在1999年的文化定义，却有不同的结论）。在人类学领域，对文化概念的批判已经成了相当标准的训练，从硕士学位论文到民族志，只有少数几个论据在文献中被反复提到。事实上，核心论据的数量似乎可以限制在四个之内。
第一种异议关注文化这个词的复数形式。一方面，文化可作为自然的对立面被概念化。按照这种观点，所有的人都平等地得到教化；文化的一切东西都是习得的，比如语言、宗教等，以使我们人类和文化相应地合并到人性里。另一方面，文化可以采用复数形式，而且文化突然间以某些事物显现，这是将人性分开而不是统一。这时注意力就从唯一的人类转向使群体互相区分的事物。
在整个20世纪的人类学界，这种将文化概念化的方式占据了主导地位，尤其是因为博厄斯的文化相对主义和马林诺夫斯基的田野方法，焦点似乎都在单个的社会上。一些人类学家对相似性更有兴趣，而不是差异性，他们希望重新理解文化，将其视为使人类统一的东西。按照这种观点，文化的实际表达明显是独特和可变的，但在更深的层面上，他们是指某些普遍的事物。
第二种异议关注描述的问题，它与对于社会概念的一般批判有着很多共性。在每一个人类群体中，无论怎样勾画总会有相当大的变化，而且不太容易看到群体之间的系统差异。在某些方面，一个群体内的变化会比群体之间的差异更大。这个简单的观点很容易通过观察得到支撑，尤其是在现代复杂的社会。在某些方面，西欧的城市中产阶级互相之间具有更多的共性，这超过了他们与距离自己国家遥远的地方的人之间的共性。而且，外来移民带来了一种新的文化动力，从各种来源获得新的推动力混合体。在新的国家里成长的移民子女，可能在家里讲旁遮普语，而在外面却讲德语，还会吸收一种文化保留节目，它既不是巴基斯坦的，也不是德国的，而是两者兼而有之。
Most of those who feel comfortable with the concept of culture use it in ways that have more in common with Geertz' definition than with Tylor's. But it must be admitted that the situation is more complicated than it may appear so far. The concept of culture is even more controversial than the concept of society, and it has been criticised for many years by anthropologists who are convinced that they would be better off without it (which I suspect they won't, but see Adam Kuper's Culture, 1999, for a different conclusion). The critique of the concept of culture has become a fairly standard exercise in parts of anthropology, and a small cluster of arguments are presented again and again in the literature, ranging from MA dissertations to monographs. In fact, it seems possible to limit the number of core arguments to four.
The first objection concerns the pluralisation of the word; cultures. On the one hand, culture can be conceptualised as the opposite of nature. According to this view, all people are equally cultured; it is culture i.e. everything that is learned, such as language, religion and so on, that makes us human, and culture accordingly unites humanity. On the other hand, culture may be used in the plural, and suddenly, culture appears as something which divides humanity instead of uniting it. The attention is shifted from the uniquely human to that which makes groups different from each other.
This way of conceptualising culture was dominant in anthropology throughout the twentieth century, not least because of Boas'cultural relativism and Malinowski's field methodology, focusing as it did on the single society. Some anthropologists, more interested in similarities than in differences, wish to return to an understanding of culture seen as that which unites humanity. According to this view, the actual expressions of culture are obviously unique and variable, but at a deeper level, they refer to something universal.
Objection number two concerns the problem of delineation, and it has much in common with criticisms of the concept of society. Within every human group, however delineated, there is considerable variation, and it is rarely easy to see what are the systematic differences between groups. In some respects, the variations within a group can be greater than the variations between groups. This simple point can easily be supported by observation, not least in modern, complex societies. In certain respects, the urban middle classes in western Europe can be said to have more in common with each other than with people from remote parts of their own countries. Moreover, immigration has brought with it a new kind of cultural dynamics, which creates new mixtures of impulses deriving from a variety of sources. The children of immigrants, who have grown up in the new country, may speak Punjabi at home and German outside the home, and draw on a cultural repertoire which is neither Pakistani nor German, but both.
第三个例子可以拿商业大众文化作为出发点。来自全世界的青少年都获得了同样的文化参照物，因为在其他事物中，他们听到了相似的音乐，看了同样的（美国）电影；人们可能想当然地认为他们会与父辈分享。当代世界充满了复杂的文化形式，以及文化要素的跨国流动，这使我们比以前更难在文化之间划出边界。许多人类学家将文化描述成动态和流动的过程，其中汉内兹（UIF Hannerz,1992）最具有影响力。他将文化视为无边界的全球网络，但是提出网络具有自身的节点（或交换台）及不同密度的区域，与此同时存在着文化领域或局部领域，它们可以保持相对稳定和空间上的定位。
第三种异议关注文化概念的政治用途。日益清楚的是经典人类学关于文化的概念——文化相对主义的概念——已经被用于促进特定群体的主张，以区别出少数民族并通过好斗的民族主义保护其排外性。文化概念的这种用途，将社会现有的复杂性减少到了少数几个简单的类别，这已经激励了许多在政治上自觉的人类学家，去用特别的批判方式审查自己的文化概念。经典文化概念用于政治的最著名的（也可能是最极端的）例子，或许是南非的种族隔离制度。
从1948年到1994年，南非国家实行一种种族隔离的政治制度（在南非语中意味着受冷落），它可以确保不同的人群不会未受控制地混合在一起。种族隔离的最终目标在于以种族、族性和假想的文化为基础建立独立的国家。种族隔离制度的背景是大部分白人少数群体，在经济上统治了占人口多数的黑人群体，没有给予他们平等的机会和权利；但是这种制度在意识形态上的辩护证据，与文化相对主义具有可怕的相似性。实际上，南非的几个人类学家也是种族隔离制度最直言不讳的拥护者，而且这种制度的智力建筑师韦纳尔（Werner Eiselen ），是一位人类学教授。（必须附带说上一句，在公正的名义之下，南非许多人类学家坦率地批评过种族隔离制度。）由于多种原因，种族隔离制度背后的思想意识形态不足以令人相信，其中事实之一是各种群体已经居住在同一地区达数百年，而且在文化上相互之间存在影响。20世纪50年代开始，南非数千万黑人被迫迁入所谓的家园，据称这种身体上的隔离是他们自己的意愿，因为他们只有居住在文化上的独立空间内，才能够保持他们自己的文化。种族隔离的独特性在于它将文化相对主义的意识形态，连接到一种残忍压迫的状态，但事实上博厄斯学派关于文化的经典概念，很容易被用来为种族偏见和民族主义作辩护。这种发现已经导致了一种对文化概念的普遍不安，并促使他们倡导第二种异议（边界、内部差异和变化的问题）。
A third example could take the impact of commercial mass culture as its point of departure. Adolescents from all over the world acquire some of the same cultural references since, among other things, they listen to similar music and have seen the same (mostly American) films; and one cannot take it for granted that they share those references with the parental generation. The contemporary world is teeming with mixed cultural forms and transnational flows of cultural elements, which makes it more difficult than ever before to draw boundaries between cultures. Among the many anthropologists who have described culture as a flowing, dynamic process rather than a static and thinglike entity, Ulf Hannerz(1992) is among the most influential. He regards culture as a global web of networks with no absolute boundaries, but adds that the network has its nodes (or ‘switchboards') and zones of varying density, and that there simultaneously exist cultural universes, or partial universes, which remain relatively stable and spatially localised.
The third objection concerns the political use of the concept of culture. It has become increasingly clear that the classic anthropological concept of culture—that of cultural relativism—has been used to promote particular group claims, to discriminate against minorities and to defend exclusion through aggressive nationalism. This use of the culture concept, which reduces the existing complexity of a society to a few simple categories, has inspired many politically self-conscious anthropologists to scrutinise their own culture concept in an especially critical way. The most famous (and possibly the most extreme) example of a political use of the classical culture concept is the South African apartheid system.
From 1948 to 1994, the South African state practised a politics of apartheid (which means apartness in Afrikaans), which aimed to ensure that different peoples did not mix uncontrollably. An ultimate aim of apartheid was to establish separate states based on race, ethnicity and assumed culture. The background of apartheid was the desire among a large part of the white minority to dominate the black majority economically without having to give them equal rights and opportunities; but the ideological justification of the system had uncanny resemblances to cultural relativism. In fact, several South African anthropologists were among the most outspoken defenders of the system, and the main intellectual architect behind the system, Werner Eiselen, was a professor of anthropology. (In the name of justice, it must be added that many South African anthropologists were outspoken critics of the system.) The ideology behind apartheid was unconvincing for many reasons, among them the fact that the various groups had already inhabited the same areas and had influenced each other culturally for centuries. Millions of black South Africans were forcibly moved to so-called homelands from the 1950s, and it was claimed that this physical segregation was for their own good since they could only retain their own culture if they lived in their own, culturally independent space. Apartheid was unique in that it connected a cultural relativist ideology to a brutally oppressive state, but the fact is that the classical Boasian concept of culture can easily be used to defend both ethnic prejudices and nationalism. This discovery has led to a widespread uneasiness concerning the concept of culture, and it has strengthened the case for those who advocate objection number two (the problem of boundaries, internal variation and change).
这里要提到的第四种也是最后一种异议，关注文化概念不准确和块状化的特征。尽管自泰勒和博厄斯以来这已经在缩减，但文化的概念似乎还是非常宽泛和模糊的。通常在媒体和日常话语中，文化往往被用来解释冲突和问题。如果父母揍孩子一顿，人们或许会耸耸肩，然后说“这是他们的文化”；某些特定村庄里的渔夫，在出海捕鱼之前，会在地上泼洒几滴朗姆酒，他们这样做也是“因为文化”；如果一些特别的族群在犯罪统计方面超过了应有的比例，人们也会试图通过提及他们的“文化”来进行解释；还有要是一个志愿团体计划使用西非音乐和民族服饰游行，评论者可能会说他们这样做是因为“要庆祝他们的文化”。还可以列举出许多其他的例子。关键点在于为了理解世界上正在发生的事情，我们需要更加出色和微妙的术语，而不仅仅是文化概念所能提供的东西。通过流利地使用文化这个术语来解释事件，是非常简单的，它只能给出一种洞察力的错觉，而不是真正的理解。另外，一种选择包含在使用更加专业的术语之中，而不是宽泛和草率地谈论文化：如果一个人提到抚养孩子（最初的社会化），人们可能会说育儿；如果一个人谈到民间宗教，人们可能会说民间宗教，而不是使用包罗万象的“文化”术语；如果一个人真正想理解复杂人口中变化的犯罪率，用“文化”术语来提供一种充分的解释，将是一件不可思议的事情。
尽管前面提到的异议都有明显好的意思，但可能还是有合适的理由去尽量保存一种要点。因为事实上毫无疑问，有时在人们或群体之间存在着相关和系统的显著特征，这些差异——可能是重要的差别——是因为他们在不同的社会环境中有系统地成长。本章开头简要地讨论过语言的区分潜能，但是也提到其他等量的差别。虽然有必要注意差异问题、边界问题、政治滥用、变迁、流动和概念上的不准确性，但在我看来如果抛弃人们具有不同背景的概念，对人类学而言就会无异于智力自杀，因为人们在不同的环境中成长，并生活——或多或少——在不同的世界，而且使用不同的方式看待世界。在我的头脑中，已经考虑到这些维度，比如关于美好生活的想法、性别角色、规范和制裁、公正的社会和来生等。因此，似乎有必要保留文化的概念，但在理想的世界里，则应该安全地将之锁在一个橱柜里，在需要的时候才拿出来。在大部分情形下，现在的文化概念正被粗糙地使用——在人类学的内部和外部——这证明没有必要打开这个橱柜。
The fourth and final objection to be mentioned here concerns the inaccurate and lumpy character of the culture concept. Although it has been narrowed down somewhat since Tylor and Boas, the culture concept still appears very wide and vague. Often, culture is invoked to explain conflicts and problems in the media and everyday discourses. If parents beat their children, one might perhaps shrug and say that ‘it is their culture'; if fishermen in a particular village splash a few drops of rum on the ground before they go out to sea, they do it because of ‘their culture'; if a particular ethnic group is over-represented in the crime statistics, it can be tempting to explain it by referring to ‘their culture', and if a voluntary organisation stages a parade with West African music and folk dress, commentators may say that they do it because it‘celebrates their culture'. Many other examples could have been added. The point is that in order to understand what goes on in the world, we need a finer and more nuanced terminology than that which the concept of culture can offer alone. It is far too simple, and it gives an illusion of insight rather than real understanding, to explain events by using the term ‘culture' glibly. An alternative consists in using more specific terms instead of speaking loosely about culture. If one speaks of childrearing (primary socialisation), one might say childrearing; if one speaks about folk religion, one may say it instead of using the catch-all term culture; and if one really wants to understand variable crime rates within a complex population, it is inconceivable that the term ‘culture'offers an adequate explanation.
In spite of the obvious good sense of all the objections presented above, there may be sound reasons to try to save ‘culture'. It is beyond doubt that there are relevant, systematic and sometimes striking differences between persons and groups, and that some of these differences—possibly some of the most important ones—are caused by the fact that they have grown up in systematically different social environments. At the outset of this chapter, the divisive potential of language was discussed briefly, but other differences of equal magnitude could also have been mentioned. Although it is necessary to be conscious of variation, the problem of boundaries, political misuse, change, flows and conceptual inaccuracy, it would be tantamount to intellectual suicide for anthropology if it were to discard a concept that tells us that people with different backgrounds, who have been raised in very different environments, live—to a greater or lesser extent—in different life-worlds and see the world in different ways. Thus, it seems necessary to keep the culture concept, but in an ideal world, it would be locked securely up in a cupboard and taken out only when it was needed. In most cases where the culture concept is used cursorily today—inside and outside of anthropology—it would prove unnecessary to unlock the cupboard.
转译
对于人类学来说，一项最重要和最迫切的任务，存在于转译之中，这不仅是指从一种语言向另一种语言的口头转译，非口语行为的转译同样重要。非常明显的是转译可能会很困难。即使在两种关系密切的语言之间，比如英语与德语，书面文本之间的转译也可能会有问题。如果一个人前往与他自己的社会截然不同的社会，并要用他自己的语言尽量描述那里的居民所讲的东西，显而易见这一过程会碰到很多需要解决的困难。
虽然人类学家在田野中开展访谈与观察互动，但比较普遍的行为是开始于学习土著术语和概念的意思。这不仅是因为它本身对于理解语言很重要，而且因为当地人使用的土著术语可以用来描述行为。例如，为了理解一个亚洲村落社区的仪式，仅仅观察演员的行为是不够的；你必须学习他们用于描述行为的词汇的意义和内涵。这似乎微不足道又显而易见，但事实上很少有人相信他们在“凭自己的眼睛看见事物时”，已经理解了这个事情。人类学家有更高的需求，我们坚持认为只有当我们可以尽可能理解和解释一种现象对当地人意味着什么时，我们才能说已经明白了这种现象。
有些读者可能已经注意到前面“土著”这个术语的用法。这个词似乎已经过时，或许甚至有些优越感。当代人类学家使用这个词的方式与这两者都无关。意大利人和太平洋岛民一样，都是“土著”。
在挪威语中，具有土著特征的术语是“fred og ro”，若翻译成英文就是“平和与安静”的意思。然而，挪威语中关于土著术语的使用却具有特别的文化内涵，这表明直接的转译还不足以覆盖其全部的内涵。因此，文化转译意味着人们必须说明土著概念的全部意义，并指出其用法和范围。为此，不仅要限制对那个概念的转译，而且要显示它们如何与其他概念联系在一起，并最终如何形成一个连续的整体，即一个文化的领域。
TRANSLATION
A crucial task for anthropology, and one of the most demanding ones, consists in translation, and this refers not just to verbal translation from one language to another;just as important is the translation of non-verbal acts. It is obvious that translation can be difficult. Even translation between written versions of closely related languages such as English and German can be problematic. If one then moves to a society which is radically different from one's own and tries to describe what the inhabitants say and do in one's own language, it stands to reason that there are many difficulties to be resolved.
Although anthropologists both engage in conversation and observe interaction on fieldwork, it is common practice to begin by learning the meaning of native terms and concepts. This is not just because it is important in itself to understand language, but also because native terms are used locally to describe acts. In order to understand a ritual in an Asian village community, for example, it is not sufficient to observe what the actors do; one must also learn the meaning and connotations of the words they use to describe it. This sounds trivial and obvious, but in fact a depressing number of people believe they have understood a phenomenon when they have ‘seen it with their own eyes'. Anthropologists have higher demands, and insist that we have only understood a phenomenon when we are able to understand and explain, as far as possible, what it signifies to the local population.
Some readers will have noticed the use of the term ‘native'above. The word seems dated, perhaps even condescending. The way it is used by contemporary anthropologists, it is neither. Italians are just as ‘native'as the inhabitants of a Pacific island.
A characteristic native term in Norwegian is fred og ro, which translates into English as ‘peace and quiet'. However, in native usage in Norway the concept of fred og ro has particular cultural connotations which entail that a direct translation is not sufficient to cover its whole meaning. Cultural translation thus implies that one accounts for the full meaning of native concepts, indicating their usage and scope. It does not, therefore, limit itself to translation of single concepts, but also shows how they are connected with other concepts, and ultimately how they form a continuous whole, i.e. a cultural universe.
有时候，人类学家可能会遇到看起来无法转译的概念。例如，有人争论说某些人不会按照欧洲语言里的区分方式，去区别思维和情感，反而会用一个词汇来粗略地概述，比如“思维—情感”。在这种情况下，人类学解释就有必要使用土著的术语。这提醒我们往往可用显著多变的方式来分割词语。就拿颜色为例。即使是两种在地理上相近的语言，例如英语和威尔士语，也会用不同的方式区分绿色和蓝色：两种只有细微差别的颜色可能在英语中被感知为蓝色，在威尔士语中被感知为绿色。即使是普遍客观的事物，比如人的身体的组成部分，也不是被每一个人用同样的方式来描述的。阿根廷的屠夫顺着线切碎牛肉，他们用于描述牛肉种类的词汇，只有部分与德国的屠夫重叠；同样，人体组成部分的区分边界在各地并不一样。例如尼日利亚的伊博人（Ibo），使用单个的术语描述整条腿，包括从脚到大腿的各部分。
然而，这种转译问题相对简单和直接。要转译抽象的术语则会困难得多——关于精神、道德价值观和分类抽象系统的概念等。埃文思-普里查德（1956）在他关于苏丹牧牛部落努尔人宗教信仰的权威著作中，详细地描述了他们的信仰和宗教概念，并且用努尔人自己可感知的方式，不遗余力地描述他们的精神世界以及关于来世的概念和仪式。这本书得到了高度的评价，并且被宗教人类学课程列为必读书目，但这已经暗示普里查德的文化转译可能被他自己的信仰所着色，因为他是一位天主教徒。尤其是据说努尔人的创造精灵kwoth，被他描述成了与基督教的上帝一样。
所有的文化转译都需要一些解释和简化。一个文本若只包含直译而没有来自报道人的评论性注释，理性的读者就无法弄明白它的意思。因此，压缩和编辑是文化转译的必要组成要素。另外，无论一个人类学家怎样的杰出，作为田野工作者、作家和分析者，文本总是代表着一种选择，或多或少都会打上翻译者主观的烙印。
Sometimes, anthropologists may come across concepts (or acts) that seem untranslatable. For example, it has been argued that certain peoples do not distinguish between thoughts and emotions in the way that one does in European languages, but instead use one term which could be glossed roughly as ‘thought-feeling'. In such cases, it may be necessary to use the native term in the anthropological account,without translating it. This reminds us that the world is being partitioned in ways which can vary significantly. Even two geographically neighbouring languages such as English and Welsh distinguish between green and blue in different ways; certain nuances are perceived as blue in English, but green in Welsh. Even ‘objective', universally human things such as body parts are not delineated in the same ways by all people. An Argentine butcher cuts up a carcass along other lines than a German one and uses a vocabulary to describe the kinds of beef which overlaps only partly with the German; similarly, the boundaries between human body parts are not the same everywhere. The Ibo in Nigeria, for example, use a single term to denote the entire leg, from the foot to the thigh.
These kinds of translation problems are never the less relatively simple and straightforward. It is far more difficult to translate abstract terms, i.e. concepts about spirits, moral values, abstract systems of classification and so on. In his magisterial book about the religion of the Nuer, a Sudanese cattle people, EE Evans-Pritchard (1956) describes their beliefs and religious concepts in great detail, and takes great pains to depict their spiritual world, notions about the afterlife and rituals in the way they are perceived by the Nuer themselves. The book is highly regarded and is often on the reading list in courses on the anthropology of religion, and yet it has been suggested that Evans-Pritchard's cultural translation may have been coloured by his own beliefs, as he was a Catholic. In particular, it has been claimed that the creative spirit among the Nuer, kwoth, is described in a way that makes it resemble the Christian god.
All cultural translation necessitates some interpretation and simplification. No sane reader would be able to make sense of a text which consisted exclusively of directly translated, unmediated quotations from informants. Compression and editing are therefore necessary elements of cultural translation. Moreover, no matter how outstanding an anthropologist is, as a fieldworker, as a writer and as an analyst, the text always represents a selection, and it will always to a greater or lesser extent be marked by the subjectivity of the translator.
换句话说，似乎不可能获得一种“纯正”的文化转译；文本总是会受到人类学家职业特殊兴趣的影响。人类学家在对遥远地方的居民（也可能并不太远）的研究中迫切需要明确的问题，不一定是土著同样感兴趣的问题。他们可能会使用抽象的概念（比如性别、阶级、族性和等级制度等）组织资料，而且相应的概念并不总是存在于报道人的生活世界里。
转译的问题看似被歪曲的幽灵，唯一的最后方案好像只能让报道人没有中断地讲述，其功能就类似于一个传声器立在那里。这种极端的方法带来的结局必然将是一系列长期、未加评注和未刊行的独白，至多能够显示人类学家的解释、压缩和编辑有多重要。这种文本将是无法理解和不值得一读的。另外，转译不仅仅在于使口头表达可以理解，还在于解释社会组织原则和行为的方式。
没有任何文化的转译是完美和确切的，所有的转译都会具有主观性的要素，但还是有区分好坏的标准。肤浅的转译常常因为缺乏上下文环境而被人识破，因而不被有资格的读者所信服。通过向其他资源请教，比如在同一地区工作过的其他人类学家，通常可以发现误解和简单的误译。另外，人类学家不应该与他的研究对象保持太近或太远的距离。如果太过于密切，就像是在写作“自己人”那样，可能导致自我盲视（homeblindness），这会忽视对社会本质特征的观察，其原因是存在个人想当然的事实。太远的距离则表明人类学家无法在足够的程度上，抓住“土著自己的观点”。文化转译的艺术就是来回摆动于远近之间、个人概念和土著的观念之间，或者——换句话说——是使陌生的变熟悉和使熟悉的变陌生。
In other words, it appears impossible to achieve a ‘pure'cultural translation; the text will always be influenced by the anthropologist's professionally specific interests. The questions that are pressing for anthropologists in their research on remote (or not so remote) people, are not necessarily the same issues as the ones the natives are interested in. They also use their abstract concepts (such as gender, class, ethnicity, hierarchy, etc.) to organise the data, and corresponding concepts do not always exist in the life-worlds of the informants.
The only final solution to the problem of translation, seen as the spectre of misrepresentation, seems to be to allow the informants to speak without interruption, that is to function as their microphone stand. Such an extreme approach, where the outcome would inevitably be a series of long, unmediated and unedited monologues, would show, at the most, how important the anthropologist's interpretation, compression and editing is. Such text would be incomprehensible and unreadable. Besides, translation does not just consist of making verbal utterances comprehensible, but also in explaining patterns of action and principles of social organisation.
No cultural translation is perfect and definite, and all translations have an element of subjectivity, but there are criteria for distinguishing the good from the bad. Superficial translations can often be recognised by their lack of context and therefore do not convince the qualified reader. Misunderstandings and simple mistranslations can also often be discovered by consulting other sources, such as other anthropologists who have worked in the area. The anthropologist, moreover, should not seem either too close to or too distant from the people she or he writes about. Too great a degree of closeness, as when one writes about ‘one's own people', can lead to homeblindness, that is a failure to observe essential features of a society due to the fact that one takes it for granted. Too great a distance may imply that the anthropologist becomes unable to grasp ‘the native's point of view'to a sufficient degree. The art of cultural translation consists in oscillating between distance and nearness, between one's own concepts and the native ones, or—to put it differently—making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic.
比较
大部分人类学家认可比较是他们所做工作的重要组成部分，但是就什么样的比较相对合理或/且令人满意而言，可能会有很多种观点。在继续往下讲之前，我们必须清楚比较的目的。这不在于按照“发展水平”或人品将社会或文化排序。比较是一种澄清人类学家研究结果重要性的方式，通过建立比较可以揭示一种社会与其他社会的相似性，并得出（或批判）理论归纳。
在日常语言中，人们常常会讲“无法比较苹果和梨”。按照这个意思，有些事情是无法比较的，因为它们的性质不同，比如一罐橄榄油和一本诗集，这种警告是中肯的。然而，如果因此认为不同的现象，比如美国集镇和太平洋岛屿上的劳动力分工无法比较，许多人类学家就不会认可。比较的目的是理解和相似性一样多的差异，只要有足够多的相似性可以作出特殊的比较，这个工作就值得进行。
那么，当人类学家进行比较时，他们做的事情有哪些呢？首先必须解释清楚的是在人类学的作品中，比较总是连续不断地在发生，有些区别也是必要的。
首先，转译本身是一种比较的形式：我们含蓄地通过转译，将土著的语言及其概念与我们的进行比较。
其次——现在我们正在用一种有意识的目的谈论转译——人类学家通过在他们研究的社会或其他实体之间建立的对比进行比较。普里查德曾经说过他对中非阿赞德人的巫术的研究，使他更容易理解斯大林统治下的苏联。更典型的比较可能发生在印度和西欧关于人的概念化上，这在前面已经讨论过，或者像包办婚姻和恋爱婚姻之间的比较，并通常在研究西欧的亚洲裔移民时会涉及。这种比较尽量阐明不仅要详细审查制度，还要分析所讨论社会更一般的特征。
COMPARISON
Most anthropologists agree that comparison is an important part of what they do, but there are many views as to what kinds of comparison are possible and/or desirable. Before moving on, we must be clear about the aim of comparison. It does not consist in ranking societies or cultures according to their ‘level of development' or moral qualities. Comparison is a means to clarify the significance of the anthropologist's findings, through creating contrasts, revealing similarities with other societies, and to develop (or criticise) theoretical generalisations.
In everyday language, it is often said that ‘one cannot compare apples and pears'. If by this one means that certain things cannot be compared because they are qualitatively different, such as a tin of olives and a book of poetry, the admonition may be relevant. If, however, it means that phenomena that are very different, such as the division of labour on a Pacific island and in a town in the USA, cannot be compared, many anthropologists would disagree. The aim of comparison is to understand differences just as much as similarities, and as long as there are enough similarities to make particular comparisons possible, the job may be worth undertaking.
So what is it that anthropologists do when they make comparisons? First of all it must be made clear that comparison takes place continuously in anthropological writing, and some distinctions are necessary. First, translation itself is a form of comparison; we implicitly compare the native language, its concepts and so on with our own through translation. Second—and now we are talking about translation with a conscious purpose—anthropologists compare through establishing contrasts and similarities between societies or other entities that they study. Evans-Pritchard once said that his studies of witchcraft among the Azande in Central Africa made it easier for him to understand the Soviet Union under Stalinism. More typical comparisons could be undertaken between Indian and western European conceptualisations of the person, briefly discussed above, or the contrast between arranged marriages and love marriages, often dealt with in research (and in journalism) on Asian immigrants in western Europe. Such comparisons try to shed light not only on the institutions under scrutiny, but also on more general features of the societies in question.
再次，比较经常用于调查人类普遍性的可能存在。例如，如果所有的群体都掌握了有关红色、黑色和白色的概念（这似乎已经得到了证实），我们必须假设这些颜色之间的区分，是人类的一项天生特征。比较研究已经显示所有人都有概念和规范，关乎乱伦、血统、性别角色和其他许多社会现象。然而，大部分此类共性的现象，在于当这类概念翻译成当地的现实时，只要仔细检查总会清楚地发现它们是指非常不同的现象，而且人们必然会问普遍性是否确实存在，或者表面上的相似性是创造出来的，把概念强加于实际上完全不同的现象之上。
比较不只是尝试用于区分共性，不过这通常是富有争议的事情，还可以用来反驳这种主张。另一个后面将会更加详细讨论的例子，是关于侵略性的争论。特别是那些深受进化论这一关于人类生物性视角影响的人，坚持认为侵略性是天生的共性，尤其是在人类中更明显。与此观点相反，许多人类学家通常借助于他们自己的民族志，宣称有些人既没有与侵略性有关的概念，也没有可被描述为侵略性的行为。反过来，对这种论据的反驳将是侵略性到处都有，但是可能会以不同的方式表达出来，而不一定被研究者识别为侵略性，比如因纽特人（易洛魁人）的决斗。
因为两方面的原因，所以在此不可能得出每个人都认可的最终答案。由于转译是比较的必要条件，而且文化转译具有不稳定的成分，因此永远无法严格和无可争辩地证明，他实际上比较了他想比较的任何事情。另外，比较总是预示着去文本化的程度——只比较单一的特征而很少注意到更广的范围——这可能会导致误导性结果。例如，可能需要争论的是尽管所有人都有关于白色的概念，但在探讨当地人对白色的理解过程中存在的跨文化差异——完全在文化环境中看待白色——比只说白色是各地土著的一种范畴会更切中要害。众所周知，白色在中国是一种哀伤的颜色，这方面它与欧洲人关于黑色的意义一致。
Third, comparison is used to investigate the possible existence of human universals. If, for example, it is shown that all human groups possess concepts about the colours red, black and white (which seems to have been proven), we must assume that the ability to distinguish between these colours is an inborn feature of the human species. Comparative studies have also shown that all peoples have concepts, and norms, about incest prohibitions, descent, gender roles and many other social phenomena. The problem with most universals of this kind, however, is that on closer investigation it nearly always becomes apparent that such concepts, when they are translated into local realities, refer to very different phenomena, and one must then ask if the universal is really there, or whether the apparent similarities are created by the comparer, imposing the concepts onto phenomena which are actually very diverse.
Comparison is not just used in attempts, often controversial ones, to identify universals, but also to disprove such claims. An example, to be treated in greater detail later, is the debate about aggression. Many, especially those who are inspired by an evolutionary, biological perspective on humanity, have argued that aggression is an inborn universal, especially prominent among men. Against this view, many anthropologists have claimed, often referring to their own ethnography, that there exist peoples who neither have notions about aggression nor practices that can be described as aggressive. A rejoinder to this argument could in turn be that aggression exists everywhere, but that it may be expressed in different ways which are not necessarily recognisable as aggression to the researcher, such as song duels among the Inuit (Eskimos).
For two reasons, it is impossible to arrive at final answers that everyone can agree on here. Since translation is a necessary condition for comparison, and cultural translation always has an element of uncertainty, it can never be proven strictly and beyond dispute that one actually compares whatever it is that one claims to compare. Besides, comparison always threatens to lead to a degree of decontextualisation—single traits are compared with little attention to the wider context—which may entail misleading results. It may rightly be argued, for example, that although it has been shown that all peoples have a notion of the colour white, it is more relevant to explore the cross-cultural variations in the local understandings of the colour white—to see the whiteness in its full cultural context—than merely to state that whiteness is a native category everywhere. As is well known, whiteness is the colour of mourning in China, sharing at least in this respect the significance of the colour black in Europe.
最后，比较有时候涉及人类学的“类实验”。在实验类科学中，实验是新知识的最重要来源。一项实验总体上包括引入可控制的变量，进入其对相关变量完全了解的设置中，并拟定出变化的结果。如果一个自然科学家团队想调查激素的效果，他们可能会采用两组小白鼠做实验，它们除了在重要方面不同外完全相似。A组是既定的激素条件，而B组（控制组）则没有激素或注入无效的对照剂。如果A组明显发育得比B组更快，就有理由假定激素促进了生长。也可以在单组中进行实验，通过一段时期内变化的环境来观察。对于可靠性高的实验来说，除了一种调查研究的变量以外，其他变量必须保持稳定，也就是说只有允许变量处在可变的测试范围之内，其效果才是可判定的。
在人类学研究中，不可能保持单一变量的稳定。如果将一群土著放入一个人造和可控制的环境中，就会导致其互动失去能保证其真实性的背景，因而就使结果无效。所以，最近的人类学家开始通过比较得到实验的方法论典范。一个人可以比较一两个社会的许多相似性，但是只有一个或少数几个显著的差异。因此，一个人可以站在一个立场上说明差异。20世纪50年代以来的一个著名比较，是在有着许多共性的中非社会之间进行的，纳德尔（Siegfried Nadel）认为亲属制度、居住模式和巫术的相对重要性之间存在一种联系。如果亲属制度是父系，而且居住模式采用从夫居（妻子移居到丈夫家），巫术指控最有可能会更普遍——它们直接面向那些从外村来的妇女——与居住模式遵循其他原则的村落相比。
Fourth, comparison is sometimes spoken of as a ‘quasi-experiment' in anthropology. In the laboratory sciences, the experiment is the most important source of new knowledge. An experiment amounts to introducing controlled changes into a setup where one has full knowledge of the relevant variables, mapping out the consequences of the changes. If a group of natural scientists wish to investigate the effects of a hormone, they may take two groups of rats, which are otherwise similar in key respects. Group A is given the hormone, while group B (the control group) gets nothing or an ineffective placebo. If the members of group A on average grow markedly more rapidly than the members of group B, it is reasonable to assume that the hormone promotes growth. An experiment may also be undertaken on a single group, which is observed under changing circumstances over a stretch of time. For the experiment to be reliable, it is necessary that all the variables except the one under investigation are kept constant, which is to say that one only allows variations in the values of the variables whose effects are to be gauged.
In anthropological research, it is impossible to keep single variables constant. If one were to place a group of natives into an artificial, controlled situation, the resulting interaction would lose the very context that guarantees its authenticity, and the result would be useless. The closest anthropologists get to the methodological ideals of the experiment is therefore through comparison. One would then compare two or several societies with many similarities, but with one or a few striking differences. One would thereby be in a position to account for the differences. In a famous comparison from the 1950s, between some central African societies which had much in common, Siegfried Nadel argued that there was a link between the kinship system, the pattern of settlement and the relative importance of witchcraft. If the kinship system was patrilineal and the pattern of settlement was virilocal (the wife moved in with the husband), witchcraft accusations would most likely be more common—and they would be directed towards the women, who came from outside the village—than in societies where the pattern of settlement followed other principles.
整体论和语境
整体论这个术语可能暗含着神秘主义和模糊的虔诚感。许多宗教，尤其是当代新时期各类宗教的类并（syncretisms），提供了整体理解和整全疗法等的希望。在人类学中，这个术语的用法迥异，它是指一种方法，描述单个现象在整体中，如何与其他现象和制度相联系。在传统的功能主义人类学，比如马林诺夫斯基那里，会假定整个社会完全是整合的，就像一个拼图，里面的各块都能适合，不能落下一块；而且文化——具有象征意义的超结构——与社会组织的适应关系就如同手和手套的关系。这种超功能主义观点已经被人抛弃很久了。早在1954年，利奇研究缅甸高地的宗教与政治时，就认为社会远非一个综合的平衡体。社会不稳定而且会变化，关于起源的神话就有几种相互竞争的版本，有些实际上会诱导民众起来反抗。对社会不同部分或制度相互很好整合的观点，进行更加激进的批判是20世纪60年代巴斯（Fredrik Barth）的“相互影响论”，这种模式将行动的个体放置在中心，不假定社会整合是互动的必然结果。
然而，整体论并不一定是指社会或文化以一种完美、合乎逻辑和功能的方式结合在一起。它也可以是一种思维方式，假定现象会与其他现象有关，并在互动和各种要素相互影响的基础上创造出一些实体，而不想当然地认为这个实体具有持续的特征，或者可以包含整个社会或所有人群。在这种更谦虚和灵活的意思方面，一些实例可能会使整体论必需的东西更清晰。
在美拉尼西亚的混杂语言中，kastom的文化范畴是指传统、价值观、行为方式和人类创造性的结果，这些被当地人视为源自本地。在20世纪，美拉尼西亚岛从新几内亚延伸到斐济岛，都被拖入了市场经济之中；他们现在被现代国家的形态所统治，人们不得不卷入大众媒体、学校和金融经济。变化激发了许多美拉尼西亚人普遍政治认同感的增强，他们自我意识到有必要保持传统的文化形式，以便避免个人和集体失去自治权。因此，kastom这个术语可用来确认社会事实，表明他们具有其他起源，并且比现代人具有更道德的基础。正如美拉尼西亚人对人类学家（根据萨林斯的记载）所言：“如果我们没有kastom，我们就会和白人一样。”这个概念表明了一种宽泛的观点和生活方式，它用一种模糊的方式涉及现代性：它与抵制、自我主张和认同有关，而且涉及快速变迁条件下传统文化形式持久的生存能力。尽管它被视为反现代，但也是现代性的一种矛盾与反文化的产品，因为它镶铸在现代性的习语里。kastom的语法与各地的传统主义相似。
HOLISM AND CONTEXT
The term holism may have connotations of mysticism and fuzzy religiosity. Many religions, not least contemporary syncretisms of the new age kind, offer promises of holistic understanding, holistic healing and so forth. In anthropology, the term is used differently, and refers to a method for describing how single phenomena are connected to other phenomena and institutions in an integrated whole. In classical functionalist anthropology, as in Malinowski, one assumed that entire societies were perfectly integrated, like jigsaws where all the pieces fit and none has fallen behind the couch;and that culture—the symbolic, meaningful superstructure—fits perfectly in the social organisation. This ultrafunctionalist view has long been abandoned. As early as 1954 Edmund Leach showed, in a study of religion and politics among the Kachin of upper Burma, that societies are far from being in an integrated equilibrium. They are unstable, they change, and there are several competing versions of the myths of origin, some of which induce the inhabitants to revolt. An even more radical critique of the idea that the different parts, or institutions, in societies are well integrated with one another came in the 1960s with Fredrik Barth's ‘transactionalism', a model of analysis which puts the acting individual at the centre, and which does not assume that social integration is a necessary outcome of interaction.
However, holism does not necessarily mean that societies or cultures hang together in a perfect, logical or functional way. It may also be a way of thinking which assumes that phenomena are connected to other phenomena and create some kind of entity based on interconnections and mutual influence between its various elements, without taking it for granted that this entity should be of a lasting character, or that it encompasses an entire society or an entire population group. A couple of examples might make it clearer what holism can entail in this more modest and flexible sense.
The cultural category of kastom in Melanesian pidgin refers to tradition, values, ways of behaving and results of human creativity that the local population regard as local in their origins. In the twentieth century, the Melanesian islands, which stretch from New Guinea to Fiji, were drawn into the world economy; they are now governed by modern state formations, and the populations have to relate to mass media, schools and a monetary economy. The changes have inspired the growth of a widespread identity politics among many Melanesian peoples, where they are conscious of the need to retain traditional cultural forms in order to avoid the loss of personal and collective autonomy. The term kastom is used to identify social facts that have other origins and another moral basis than the modern. As the Melanesian said to the anthropologist (according to Marshall Sahlins) ‘If we didn't have kastom, we'd be just like the white man'. The concept refers to a broad range of ideas and ways of life that relate to modernisation in an ambiguous way; it is about resistance, self-assertion and identity, but also about the enduring viability of traditional cultural forms in situations of rapid change. Although it is seen as anti-modern, kastom is also a paradoxical, countercultural product of modernity, since it is cast in the idiom of modernity. The ‘grammar'of kastom resembles traditionalism elsewhere.
对kastom的描述表明，它如何进入并融合到社会和社会生活的各个方面，这就是整体论。它并不说明这些社会特别紧密地整合到一起，或者是特别的稳定——相反，美拉尼西亚社会相当支离破碎和快节奏——但这种奇异的现象只有通过它们与其他现象的内部联系，才能得到完全的理解。在西欧，穆斯林妇女使用的头巾，如果不放在当地劳动力市场和媒体，以及战后非主流世界的政治认同的背景下，就无法得到理解。
另一个实例可以这样来说。在对挪威文化的描述中，阿彻提（Eduardo Archetti）谈到20世纪70年代他作为相对新近才移入这个国家的人，想在大学的咖啡厅给同事购买一杯咖啡，同事在他返回柜台取咖啡的瞬间把钱还给了他。换句话说，同事决心立刻解决他的债务。
从这个孤立的事件来看，场景纯属虚构，尽管土著直觉上可以理解阿彻提复杂反应的原因，但对于外人来说，很难了解挪威的文化与社会。而当阿彻提将此放入挪威历史与意识形态这个更大的背景下理解时，就可将其作为挪威人社会生活的中心特征的一种表达。即刻偿还所欠的债务，在人类学里被看作是平衡互惠，挪威人在日常生活中如此做的原因，是想对于那些他们不熟悉的人，避免长期和持久的感情债。在许多场合都可以发现平衡互惠的逻辑，这也可以联系到历史背景，比如大部分挪威农民是独立的小农，还可以联系到类似节俭和平等之类的清教徒价值观。阿彻提将即刻“返还礼物”与诸如独立和自给自足的价值观联系在一起。对挪威人日常生活中典型平衡互惠的描述，在其揭示大部分意义和规则的体现方式，又能通过似乎无意义的小事表露时，就成了一种整体论。
A description of kastom which shows how it enters into, and engages with, different aspects of society and of social life, is holistic. It does not suggest that these societies are particularly tightly integrated, or that they are particularly stable—on the contrary, Melanesian societies can be rather fragmented and fast-paced—but that singular phenomena can only be fully understood through their internal connections to other phenomena. The use of the headscarf, or hijab, among Muslim women in western Europe cannot be understood unless one sees it in the context of local labour markets and media, as well as postcolonial identity politics in the non-dominant world as such.
In a description of Norwegian cultural forms, Eduardo Archetti mentions that when, as a relatively newly arrived immigrant in the country in the 1970s, he wanted to buy a colleague a cup of coffee in the university canteen, the colleague paid him back the moment he returned from the till with the coffee. The colleague was, in other words, determined to settle his debt immediately.
Seen as an isolated event, the scene is pure anecdote, and although natives would intuitively understand the cause of Archetti's confounded reaction, it contributes little to unpacking Norwegian culture and society for outsiders. But when Archetti sees it in the wider context of Norwegian history and ideology, it can be understood as the expression of a central feature of Norwegian social life. Repaying incurred debts immediately is known as balanced reciprocity in anthropology, and the tendency to do so in Norwegian everyday life is a result of a desire to avoid vague and long-lasting debts of gratitude towards people one does not feel familiar with. The logic of balanced reciprocity can be identified in many kinds of situation, and it can be connected both to historical circumstances such as the fact that most Norwegian farmers were independent smallholders (feudalism was weak in this area) and to related Protestant values such as thrift and equality. Archetti associates the immediate‘return gift'with values such as independence and self-sufficiency. A description of balanced reciprocity, so typical of Norwegian everyday life, becomes a holistic one when it reveals the ways in which large clusters of meaning and norms (ideologies) are reflected in and revealed through small, seemingly insignificant events.
然而，另一个实例可能是FBD（与父亲兄弟的女儿结婚）的婚姻形式，它主要实行于中东和北非。在北欧人看来，这是一种奇怪的习俗，这接近于乱伦，而且侵犯了个人自由选择配偶的权利。尽管如此，对这一行为的整体描述却揭示，它在特定的社会世界中是有意义和合理的。实行这种婚姻形式的社会是父系社会（主要通过父系继嗣来计算亲属关系），当男人去世后，财产（土地或畜群）需要在子女中分割。因此，一名男子与他父亲的兄弟的女儿之间婚姻的联合，意味着他想阻止家庭财产的分裂。此外，兄弟之间的关系很强，而且在这些社会里具有重要的政治意义，它可以进一步强化他们之间的关系，用来确认重要的社会模式。亲属关系是巩固的，而且通过与其他亲属集团的联姻，可以避免可能发生的冲突。顺便提一下，没有哪个社会会禁止FBD婚姻，但在我们讨论的社会中，人们认为如果可以实行，它将是最好的一种解决办法。
因此，人类学的整体论使我们看到一种互动和沟通体系内部的联系。近年来，这个词多少有点过时了，部分是因为许多人类学家现在相信，他们研究的分裂的世界只是零零碎碎的整合。然而，我们的实例表明今天整体论还是可以联系实际，而不是假定存在一个紧密整合和稳定的实体。上下文环境实际上是一个关键概念。在人类学的分析方法中，事实上现象都要考虑它与其他现象之间的动态关系。除非它们在一个更大的上下文环境中被理解，否则任何信仰、技术和婚姻制度或经济实践（提到少量的实例）都没有什么意义。如果一位人类学家试图理解伊斯兰教，他就不能局限于研究《古兰经》，还要研究穆斯林的生活世界，也就是从内部呈现他们的世界。另外，如果人类学家想要研究互联网，他大概就需要在线上和线下开展研究。为了了解互联网用户在网络之外的生活，线下的研究很有必要，这可以反过来帮助他理解他们在线上所做的事情。在各种人类学研究中，联系实际的方法论要求都很重要，但是就我呈现的简单示例而言，每种现象都有其可能的上下文环境。相关背景的选择取决于研究者优先考虑的事情。
Yet another example could be FBD marriage (marriage with father's brother's daughter) as it is practised in North Africa and the Middle East. Seen from western Europe, this custom may appear a bizarre one, bordering on incest and in violation of the individual's right to choose his or her spouse freely. A holistic description of the practice will none the less reveal that it is meaningful and rational within a particular kind of social universe. The societies in question are patrilineal, and property (land and/or herds) is divided among the children when a man dies. A marriage alliance between a man and his father's brother's daughter (FBD) thus signifies an attempt to prevent fragmentation of family property. Moreover, the relation between brothers is strong and politically significant in these societies, which means that a further strengthening of their relationship serves to confirm important social patterns. The kin group is consolidated, and possible conflicts that might arise through intermarriage with other kin groups are avoided. There is, incidentally, no society that proscribes FBD marriage, but in the societies in question, it is considered a good solution if practicable.
Holism in anthropology, thus, entails the identification of internal connections in a system of interaction and communication. The word has gone somewhat out of fashion in recent years, particularly because many anthropologists now believe that they study fragmented worlds which are only integrated in a piecemeal fashion. Never the less, the examples above indicate that holism today is to do with contextualisation rather than postulating the existence of tightly integrated and stable entities. In the analytical methodology of anthropologicy, context may actually be the key concept. It refers to the fact that every phenomenon must be understood with a view to its dynamic relationship to other phenomena. No forms of belief, technologies, marriage systems or economic practices (to mention a few examples) have any meaning whatsoever unless they are understood in a wider context. If an anthropologist tries to understand Islam, he will not limit himself to studying the Qu'ran, but will also study the life-worlds of Muslims, that is to say their world as it appears from within. If an anthropologist intends to study the Internet, she will presumably carry out research both online and offline. Offline research is necessary in order to learn about the lives of Internet users outside the Internet itself, which in turn helps to make sense of whatever it is they are doing online. The methodological requirement of contextualisation is fundamental in all anthropological research, but as the examples above indicate, every phenomenon has several possible contexts. The choice of relevant contexts is dependent on the priorities of the researchers.
扩展阅读
Leach, Edmund (1982) Social Anthropology. Glasgow:Fontana.
Delaney, Carol(2004) Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology. Oxford:Blackwell.