第一章 为什么我们需要掌握人类学？
在一两代人以前，学术圈以外的人几乎很少知道人类学。只有很少的几个国家，在大学里开设极少的人类学课程。这门由少数具有献身精神的发起人引导的学科，被局外人视为晦涩难懂的知识，而局内人则将其视为神圣的知识。人类学家到遥远的地方进行田野调查，然后带着令人陶醉的心情返回，但往往分析的是神秘的亲属制度、刀耕火种的农业或“他者”内部的战争。除了少量惊人的另类之外，人类学家对外部世界的兴趣是适中的，而且其影响力往往局限于学术界。人类学要在人类学家自身所在社会的公共生活中发挥作用，也仅仅是在非常难得的情况下才有可能。
这种情况已经发生了变化。西方越来越多的非专业人士已经发现，人类学提出的一些涉及人类处境的基本见解，可适用于家庭的许多日常情况。在一些国家，高职院校训练护士和警察时，也要给他们传授人类学的知识；人类学的概念还被大学的其他学科借用，并应用于新的现象之中；人类学所强调的从下往上、从内向外观察人类生活的理念，已经影响到了通俗的新闻；学习人类学的学生人数已经逐步增长，有些地方甚至是在显著地增加。在我执教的奥斯陆大学，1982年人类学系的学生为70人，十年之后就已经增长到了600人。
20世纪90年代，在西方社会中，人类学及其理念成了新闻记者和决策制定者日常词汇的一部分。这并非巧合。事实上，我坚持认为人类学对于我们理解当今的世界是必不可少的，而且没有必要为了欣赏其重要性，而追捧非洲的亲属制度或波利尼西亚的交换制度。
Why We Have to Study Anthropology?
A generation ago, anthropology was scarcely known outside of academic circles. It was a tiny university subject taught in a few dozen countries, seen by outsiders as esoteric and by insiders as a kind of sacred knowledge guarded by a community of devoted initiates. Anthropologists went about their fieldwork in remote areas and returned with fascinating, but often arcane analyses of kinship, slash and burn horticulture or warfare among ‘the others'. With a few spectacular exceptions, the interest in anthropology from the outside world was modest, and its influence was usually limited to academic circles. Only very rarely did it play a part in the public life of the anthropologist's own society.
This has changed. Growing numbers of non-academics in the West have discovered that anthropology represents certain fundamental insights concerning the human condition, applicable in many everyday situations at home. Its concepts are being borrowed by other university disciplines and applied to new phenomena, its ideas about the need to see human life from below and from the inside have influenced popular journalism, and student numbers have grown steadily, in some places dramatically. For example, at the University of Oslo, the number of anthropology students grew from about 70 in 1982 to more than 600 a decade later.
In many western societies, anthropology and ideas derived from the subject became part of the vocabulary of journalists and policymakers in the 1990s. This is no coincidence. In fact, it can be argued that anthropology is indispensable for understanding the present world, and there is no need to have a strong passion for African kinship or Polynesian gift exchange to appreciate its significance.
以下几方面的理由，可以解释为何人类学可以帮助我们弄明白当代的世界。
首先，不同文化群体之间的接触在当代日益增多。长距离的旅行已经非常普遍、安全且价格相对低廉。在19世纪，只有少数西方人到过其他国家（包括移民在内），而且一直到20世纪50年代，即使是相当富裕的西方人，也很少去国外度假。众所周知，这种情况近几十年已经发生了翻天覆地的变化。国家之间人口的暂时流动，已经日益增多并导致了密切的接触：商人、救援人员、从富国到穷国的旅行者、劳务移民、难民和双向流动的学生。访问“异国他乡”的西方人，远比一代或两代以前要多。20世纪50年代，我的父母亲年轻时可能只去过意大利或伦敦一次。而在20世纪80年代我还年轻时，我们可以乘坐洲际铁路的列车到葡萄牙和希腊，或者在每年的暑假都有类似的旅行。当前，具有同样背景的年轻人，可以到远东、拉丁美洲和印度去度假。旅行的范围得到了拓展，如今会有为人们量身定制的旅行，以及各种特殊的兴趣形式，包括“探险旅行”和“文化观光”，人们在导游的带领下可以去看南非的市镇、巴西的贫民窟或印度尼西亚的村落。实际上，对于第三世界的很多社区来说，“文化观光”已经成了重要的收入来源，这可以视为西方人对其他文化的兴趣日益增加的迹象。而从文化观光到完全的人类学研究，可能只差一小步。
同时，由于我们越来越多地在新环境下“造访”他们，就可能发生相反的移动，尽管不是因为同样的原因。正是因为贫富国家之间生存机会和生活水准的极大差异，非西方国家才有数百万人定居在欧洲和北美。一代人以前，对于西方城市的一位居民而言，为了品尝次大陆的烹饪风味和欣赏其音乐曲调，他就必须长途跋涉到印度次大陆。实际上到1980年时，我的家乡还没有印度菜馆。2004年，那里的印度菜馆已经多达12家，从四星级的设施到廉价的外卖小菜馆鳞次栉比。全球文化差异的碎片和琐屑，如今可以在西方人的门阶上发现。因此，这激发了他们对他者的好奇心，而且也因为政治原因，变得很有必要去理解文化差异所承载的东西。当前多元文化议题的争议，诸如少数民族宗教权利、伊斯兰头巾和学校的语言教学，以及因为劳动力市场上的种族歧视导致的积极行为，证实了理智解决文化差异的迫切需要。
There are several reasons why anthropological knowledge can help in making sense of the contemporary world. First, contact between culturally different groups has increased enormously in our time. Long-distance travel has become common, safe and relatively inexpensive. In the nineteenth century, only a small proportion of the western populations travelled to other countries （emigrants excluded）, and as late as the 1950s, even fairly affluent westerners rarely went on holiday abroad. As is well known, this has changed dramatically in recent decades. The flows of people who move temporarily between countries have grown and have led to intensified contact:business-people, aid workers and tourists travel from more economically developed countries to less economically developed ones, and labour migrants, refugees and students move in the opposite direction. Many more westerners visit ‘exotic'places today than a generation ago. In the 1950s, people may have been able to go on a trip to Rome or London once in their lifetime. In the 1980s, people could travel by Interrail to Portugal and Greece, and take similar trips every summer. Young people with similar backgrounds today might go on holiday to the Far East, Latin America and India. The scope of tourism has also been widened and now includes tailor-made trips and a broad range of special interest forms including ‘adventure tourism' and‘cultural tourism', where one can go on guided tours to South African townships, Brazilian favelas or Indonesian villages. The fact that ‘cultural tourism'has become an important source of income for many communities in the less economically developed world can be seen as an indication of an increased interest in other cultures from the West. It can be a short step from cultural tourism to anthropological studies proper.
At the same time as ‘we' visit ‘them' in growing numbers and under new circumstances, the opposite movement also takes place, though not for the same reasons. It is because of the great differences in standards of living and life opportunities between more and less economically developed countries that millions of people from non-western countries have settled in Europe and North America. A generation ago, it might have been necessary for an inhabitant in a western city to travel to the Indian subcontinent in order to savour the fragrances and sounds of subcontinental cuisine and music. Today there are large numbers of Indian restaurants in many western cities, ranging from four-star establishments to inexpensive takeaway holes in the wall. Pieces and fragments of the world's cultural variation can now be found on the doorstep of westerners. As a result, the curiosity about others has been stimulated, and it has also become necessary for political reasons to understand what cultural variation entails. Current controversies over multicultural issues, such as religious minority rights, the hijab (shawl or headscarf), language instruction in schools and calls for affirmative action because of ethnic discrimination in the labour market testify to an urgent need to deal sensibly with cultural differences.
其次，世界正在以其他方式缩小。卫星电视、手机网络和互联网，已经为真正的全球、瞬时和无摩擦的沟通创造了条件，不管是好是坏，按照许多人的见解：对于密切接触、新的和去区域化的社会网络或“虚拟社区”的发展而言，距离不再是具有决定意义的阻碍物，同时，个人具有更多的信息可以选择。此外，经济也正在逐步走向全球一体化。过去数十年来，在数量、规模和经济重要性方面，跨国公司正在急剧增长。整个20世纪，资本主义生产方式以及总体上在全球占主导地位的货币经济，几乎已经变得普及。同样在政治上，全球议题逐渐占据议事日程。政治与和平、环境和贫穷问题，都在全球议题之列，并且涉及如此多的跨国连接，以至于单个国家根本无法令人满意地加以处理。艾滋病和跨国恐怖主义也是跨国问题，只有通过国际合作才能加以理解和处理。以前相对分离的社会文化环境，现在已经更紧密地纠葛在一起，这促使我们日益认识到大家都在同一条船上的事实：即便可以从阶层、文化、地理和机会方面分类，但人类本质上还是一个整体。
再次，在当今时代，文化正在迅速地变迁，这几乎在世界任何地方都可以感受到。在西方，典型的生活方式当然正在改变。稳定的核心家庭不再是唯一常见和社会可接受的生活方式。青年文化和时尚及音乐的潮流快速变化，以至于年纪稍大者很难迂回曲折地跟随它们；饮食习惯正在变化，这导致许多国家出现更大的文化多样性；等等。这样或那样的变化使得我们有必要问：“我们究竟是谁？”“什么是我们的文化——说我们具有文化究竟有何意义？”“我们与55年前习惯于居住在这里的人有何共同之处，如今我们与那些居住在完全不同的地方的人又有何共同点？”“是否还可以肯定地讲我们主要属于国家，或者属于其他更加重要的群体呢？”
最后，近十几年以来，人们对文化认同的兴趣空前高涨，这正逐渐成为一种资本。许多人觉得自己的地方独特性，正在受到全球化、间接殖民主义和来自外部世界的其他影响形式的威胁，并且作出反应，试图强化或至少保护他们视为独特文化的东西。在很多情况下，少数群体的组织要求代表他们选区的文化权利；在其他情况下，国家尽量通过立法，减缓或设法阻止外部的影响或变迁的过程。
Second, the world is shrinking in other ways too. Satellite television, cellphone networks and the Internet have created conditions for truly global, instantaneous and friction-free communications. Distance is no longer a decisive hindrance for close contact; new, deterritorialised social networks or even ‘virtual communities'develop, and at the same time, individuals have a larger palette of information to choose from. Moreover, the economy is also becoming increasingly globally integrated. Transnational companies have grown dramatically in numbers, size and economic importance over the last decades. The capitalist mode of production and monetary economies in general, globally dominant throughout the twentieth century, have become nearly universal. In politics as well, global issues increasingly dominate the agenda. Issues of war and peace, the environment and poverty are all of such a scope, and involve so many transnational linkages, that they cannot be handled satisfactorily by single states alone. AIDS and international terrorism are also transnational problems which can only be understood and addressed through international cooperation. This ever tighter interweaving of formerly relatively separate sociocultural environments can lead to a growing recognition of the fact that we are all in the same boat; that humanity, divided as it is by class, culture, geography and opportunities, is fundamentally one.
Third, culture changes rapidly in our day and age, which is felt nearly everywhere in the world. In the West, typical ways of life are being transformed. The stable nuclear family is no longer the only common and socially acceptable way of life. Youth culture and trends in fashion and music change so fast that older people have difficulties following their twists and turns; food habits are being transformed, leading to greater diversity within many countries, and so on. These and other changes make it necessary to ask questions such as: ‘Who are we really? ', ‘What is our culture, and is it at all meaningful to speak of a “we”that “has”a “culture”? '‘What do we have in common with the people who used to live here 50 years ago, and what do we have in common with people who live in an entirely different place today? ' ‘Is it still defensible to speak as if we primarily belong to nations, or are other forms of group belonging more important? ’
Fourth, recent decades have seen the rise of an unprecedented interest in cultural identity, which is increasingly seen as an asset. Many feel that their local uniqueness is threatened by globalization, indirect colonialism and other forms of influence from the outside, and react by attempting to strengthen or at least preserve what they see as their unique culture. In many cases, minority organizations demand cultural rights on behalf of their constituency; in other cases, the state tries to slow down or prevent processes of change or outside influence through legislation.
我们这个时代，是柏林墙倒塌，以及苏联模式的共产主义消失之后的时代；也是互联网、卫星电视和全球资本主义的时代；还是种族清洗和多族群现代性的时代；在各种其他事物中，这个时代的独特标签是全球化和信息化。为了理解这种看似嘈杂、混乱和复杂的历史时期，有必要采用一种视角看待人类，而不是用预想的假设对人类社会想当然，因而要从全球和地方的角度同时分析人类世界，对其差异和相似性具有敏锐的反应。人类学是唯一能够满足以上条件的专业学科，它研究人类在社会中可以想象到的最多变的环境，其目的是要寻找模式和相似性，但最为根本的是要快速地解决复杂的问题，并用简单的答案来回答。
现在，尽管人类学的概念和观点在近年来已变得非常流行，但是人类学本身却依然鲜为人知。人们普遍相信，人类学的目标在于从诸如亚马孙或婆罗洲这样的偏僻之地“发现”新的民族。许多假设认为人类学家的魅力来自最新奇的风俗和可以想象的仪式，他们避开了展览上的老生常谈，还有人相信人类学家用一生大部分的时间，穿着或不穿卡其布套装，在世界各地旅游，间或写点枯燥无味又博学的旅行见闻演讲稿。所有这些关于人类学的概念都是错的，尽管它们——类似于同类的许多虚构之事——包含了一点点实话。迄今为止，我已经讲过人类学对于理解当代世界至关重要，它的很多中心观点进入了人们的日常生活，而且它——尽管这样——很少为人所知。因此，让我们抓紧往下讲吧！
Our era, the period after the fall of the Berlin wall and the disappearance of Soviet-style communism, the time of the Internet and satellite TV, the time of global capitalism, ethnic cleansing and multi-ethnic modernities, has been labeled, among other things, the age of globalization and the information age. In order to understand this seemingly chaotic, confusing and complex historical period, there is a need for a perspective on humanity which does not take preconceived assumptions about human societies for granted, which is sensitive to both similarities and differences, and which simultaneously approaches the human world from a global and a local angle. The only academic subject which fulfills these conditions is anthropology, which studies humans in societies under the most varying circumstances imaginable, yet searches for patterns and similarities, but is fundamentally critical of quick solutions and simple answers to complex questions.
Although the concepts and ideas of anthropology have become widely circulated in recent years, anthropology as such remains little known. It is still widely believed that the aim of anthropology consists in ‘discovering' new peoples, in remote locations such as the Amazon or Borneo. Many assume that anthropologists are drawn magnetically towards the most exotic customs and rituals imaginable, eschewing the commonplace for the spectacular. There are those who believe that anthropologists spend most of their lives travelling the world, with or without khaki suits, intermittently penning dry, learned travelogues. All these notions about anthropology are wrong, although they —like many myths of their kind —contain a kernel of truth.
人类学的特殊性
人类学试图通过详细地研究当地人的生活，并用比较法进行补充，以达到对文化、社会和人性的理解，是一门在智力上具有挑战性、在理论上又富有野心的学科。许多人因为个人原因被人类学所吸引：他们可能在一种陌生的文化环境中成长，或者仅仅是着迷于遥远的地方，也可能是忙于少数民族的权利问题——移民、土著群体或其他少数民族，根据情况而定——也或者是爱上了墨西哥的一个村庄或是一名非洲男子。但是作为一个专业和一门科学，人类学还有更大的野心，而不只是为个人的自我理解提供答案，或是将旅行的故事或政治手册带给别人。在最深的层面上，人类学提出了哲学问题，并试图通过探讨不同状态下人们的生活来作出回应。在稍微没有那么崇高的层面上，可以说人类学的任务是产生惊讶，以显示世界要比人们通常想象的更加丰富和复杂。
或多或少要进行简化的话，我们可以说人类学主要是提供两种视角：首先，它能产生有关当今世界文化差异的知识，比如，人类学研究可以处理印度村落社会中种姓和财富的角色、新几内亚高地居民的技术、南非的宗教、挪威北部的饮食习惯、中东亲属制度的政治重要性或者亚马孙流域的性别概念。尽管大多数人类学家是一个或两个领域的专家，但要对一个区域、话题或人口说出令人感兴趣的事情，就必须对全球的文化差异有所见识。
其次，人类学提供了方法和理论视角，使得从事这个行当的人可以探索、比较和理解人类生活状态的不同表现。换言之，这个学科既提供了可以思考的事情，也提供了思考的方式。但是，人类学不仅仅是一个工具箱，它还是一门工艺，可以教会新学者如何获得一定种类的知识，以及这些知识可能说出的重要道理。就如一个木匠或许擅长制作家具或盖房子，一位记者可能关注股市的波动，而另一位记者则注意皇室的丑闻，人类学这门工艺也可以用于大量不同的事物之中。和木匠或新闻记者一样，人类学家也有一套职业技能。
THE UNIQUENESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology is an intellectually challenging, theoretically ambitious subject which tries to achieve an understanding of culture, society and humanity through detailed studies of local life, supplemented by comparison. Many are attracted to it for personal reasons; they may have grown up in a culturally foreign environment, or they are simply fascinated by faraway places, or they are engaged in minority rights issues immigrants, indigenous groups or other minorities, as the case might be—or they might even have fallen in love with a Mexican village or an African man. But as a profession and as a science, anthropology has grander ambitions than offering keys to individual self-understanding, or bringing travel stories or political tracts to the people. At the deepest level, anthropology raises philosophical questions which it tries to respond to by exploring human lives under different conditions. At a slightly less lofty level, it may be said that the task of anthropology is to create astonishment, to show that the world is both richer and more complex than it is usually assumed to be.
To simplify somewhat, one may say that anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First, the discipline produces knowledge about the actual cultural variation in the world; studies may deal with, say, the role of caste and wealth in Indian village life, technology among highland people in New Guinea, religion in southern Africa, food habits in northern Norway, the political importance of kinship in the Middle East, or notions about gender in the Amazon basin. Although most anthropologists are specialists on one or two regions, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about global cultural variation in order to be able to say anything interesting about one's region, topic or people.
Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare and understand these varied expressions of the human condition. In other words, the subject offers both things to think about and things to think with. But anthropology is not just a toolbox; it is also a craft which teaches the novice how to obtain a certain kind of knowledge and what this knowledge might say something about. Just as a carpenter can specialize in either furniture or buildings, and one journalist may cover fluctuations in the stockmarket while another deals with royal scandals, the craft of anthropology can be used for many different things. Like carpenters or journalists, all anthropologists share a set of professional skills.
一些刚接触这门学科的新手，对人类学的理论特征会大吃一惊，人类学要求弄懂普通人的日常生活，而这是难以读懂的事情，许多人认为这极具讽刺性。现在必须插一句的是，许多人类学文本都写得非常漂亮，但是其中很多都是费尽周折又复杂难解。人类学主张进行分析和理论探讨，结果却往往使人觉得难以接近并使人敬而远之。（由于它的内容如此重要——还可以争论的是——令人着迷，因此这只是表明人类学的普及很有必要。）
不只是人类学会对社会和文化开展专业的研究。社会学描述和说明社会生活，尤其是对现代社会，在广度和深度方面都有突破。政治科学处理各个层面的政治问题，从市政问题到全球话题。心理学通过科学和解释的方法，研究人类的心理生活。人文地理则用跨国的视角，考虑经济和社会过程。最后还有一些新近的学科虽然存有争议，但在文化研究的公众和学生中间颇受欢迎，比如可描述为文化社会学、思想史、文学研究和人类学的混合。对此说三道四的人认为这是“没有痛苦的人类学”，意思是说它没有田野研究和缜密的分析。换言之，学科之间有相当大的重叠，在一定程度上也可以说学科边界是人为的。社会科学表达了一些相似的兴趣，也试图回应相同的问题，尽管它们还存在一些差异。
此外，人类学也有人文学科的许多共性，比如文学研究和历史。哲学总能为人类学提供智力输入，同时这里还有一个面向生物学富有成效又可热情辩论的前沿领域。
Some newcomers to the subject are flabbergasted at its theoretical character, and some see it as deeply ironic that a subject which claims to make sense of the life-worlds of ordinary people can be so difficult to read. Many anthropological texts are beautifully written, but it is also true that many of them are tough and convoluted. Anthropology insists on being analytical and theoretical, and as a consequence, it can often feel both inaccessible and even alienating. Since its contents are so important and—arguably—fascinating, this only indicates that there is a great need for good popularisations of anthropology.
Anthropology is not alone in studying society and culture academically. Sociology describes and accounts for social life, especially in modern societies, in great breadth and depth. Political science deals with politics at all levels, from the municipal to the global. Psychology studies the mental life of humans by means of scientific and interpretive methods, and human geography looks at economic and social processes in a transnational perspective. Finally, there is the recent subject, controversial but popular among students and the public, of cultural studies, which can be described as an amalgamation of cultural sociology, history of ideas, literary studies and anthropology. (Evil tongues describe it as ‘anthropology without the pain', that is without field research and meticulous analysis.) In other words, there is a considerable overlap between the social sciences, and it may well be argued that the disciplinary boundaries are to some extent artificial. The social sciences represent some of the same interests and try to respond to some of the same questions, although there are also differences.
Moreover, anthropology also has much in common with humanities such as literary studies and history. Philosophy has always provided intellectual input for anthropology, and there is a productive, passionately debated frontier area towards biology.
大约一代人之前，人类学还几乎完全集中在对传统社会地方生活的细节研究之上，而且民族志研究是它的主要——某些情况下是唯一的——方法。现在，情况更加复杂，因为人类学家如今研究各种类型的社会，其方法也更加千变万化。本书总体上是要回答“什么是人类学”这个问题，但是现在我们可以说它是文化和社会的比较研究，主要关注当地人的生活。换句话说，人类学区别于其他学科之处在于它坚持社会现实，首要的是要通过人与其所属群体的关系来建构。例如，当前诸如全球化之类的时髦概念，对于人类学家已经没有意义，除非可以通过实际的人来研究他们彼此之间的关系和周围更大的世界。当到达建立“事实真相”这一层面时，才有可能探讨本地人的生活世界和更大规模的现象（例如全球资本主义或国家）之间的联系。但是，只有当人类学家花费足够多的时间“匍匐而行”时，也可以说是通过放大镜来研究世界时，他才能够为了获得一张全景图而进入直升机里面。
按照古希腊文的字面意思来翻译，人类学意味着对人类的研究。正如已经提到的那样，这里人类学家并没有垄断权。此外，本书也不仅仅描述一种人类学。哲学人类学提出了有关人类环境的基本问题。体质人类学研究人类的史前和进化。（有一段时间，体质人类学也包括“种族”研究。由于遗传学反驳了种族的存在，它们在科学上已经没有令人感兴趣之处，但是在社会和文化人类学方面，种族作为一种社会建构依然使人感兴趣，因为在人们赖以生活的意识形态方面，种族保持着其重要性。）另外，文化人类学和社会人类学有时存在区别，不可否认这只是一种模糊的差异。文化人类学是美国（还有其他一些国家）使用的术语，而在一定程度上讲，社会人类学的起源则要追溯到英国和法国。历史上，这些传统之间存在着一定的差异——社会人类学的根基在社会理论方面，而文化人类学的基础更加广泛——但两者的差异若没有费心去分析就依然模糊不清。在下文中，只有当有必要强调北美或欧洲人类学的特性时，才会使用到社会和文化人类学的差异。
A generation ago, anthropology still concentrated almost exclusively on detailed studies of local life in traditional societies, and ethnographic fieldwork was its main—in some cases its sole—method. The situation has become more complex, because anthropologists now study all kinds of societies and also because the methodological repertoire has become more varied. This book consists in its entirety of a long answer to the question ‘What is anthropology? ', but for now, we might say that it is the comparative study of culture and society, with a focus on local life. Put differently,anthropology distinguishes itself from other lines of enquiry by insisting that social reality is first and foremost created through relationships between persons and the groups they belong to. A currently fashionable concept such as globalisation, for example, has no meaning to an anthropologist unless it can be studied through actual persons, their relationship to each other and to a larger surrounding world. When this level of the ‘nitty-gritty'is established, it is possible to explore the linkages between the locally lived world and large-scale phenomena（such as global capitalism or the state）. But it is only when an anthropologist has spent enough time crawling on all fours, as it were, studying the world through a magnifying glass, that he or she is ready to enter the helicopter in order to obtain an overview.
Anthropology means, translated literally from ancient Greek, the study of humanity. As already indicated, anthropologists do not have a monopoly here. Besides, there are other anthropologies than the one described in this book. Philosophical anthropology raises fundamental questions concerning the human condition. Physical anthropology is the study of human prehistory and evolution. （For some time, physical anthropology also included the study of ‘races'. These are no longer scientifically interesting since genetics has disproven their existence, but in social and cultural anthropology, race may still be interesting as a social construction, because it remains important in many ideologies that people live by.）Moreover, a distinction, admittedly a fuzzy one, is sometimes drawn between cultural and social anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the term used in the USA （and some other countries）, while social anthropology traces its origins to Britain and, to some extent, France. Historically, there have been certain differences between these traditions—social anthropology has its foundation in sociological theory, while cultural anthropology is more broadly based—but the distinction has become sufficiently blurred not to be bothered with here. In the following, the distinction between social and cultural anthropology will only be used when it is necessary to highlight the specificity of North American or European anthropology.
作为一门大学的学科，人类学并不是很古老的科目——只有大约一百年的教学历史——但它提出了自古以来不同形式所表达的问题：人们之间的差异是先天的还是后天习得的？为何有这么多的语言，实际上它们又是如何区分的？所有的宗教都有共性吗？存在哪些统治形式，它们如何发挥作用？按照社会发展水平，是否可能将其排列在一个阶梯之上？所有的人都有共性吗？而且——可能最后总要问的是：人类是什么样的生物？是具有侵略性的动物、社会动物或宗教动物，还是可能在这个星球上唯一可以自我定义的动物呢？
每个好思考的人对这些事都会有自己的看法。这里面有一些很难彻底地回答，但至少可以用一种准确和熟悉的方式来回答问题。人类学的目标是要对人类生活的各种形式建立尽可能详细的知识，并发展出一种概念性工具，以便有可能对它们进行比较。这反过来能够使我们理解人类多种不同方式之间的差异和相似之处。尽管人类学家的记录千差万别，但是人类学的存在恰恰毫无疑问地证明，有可能在各种差异之间进行富有成效和容易理解的沟通。若是在文化上不可能理解遥远的人群，人类学本身就不可能存在。从事人类学的人没人会相信这不可能（尽管很少有人相信可以理解一切事物）。相反，我们可通过比较清楚地阐明不同的社会。
As a university discipline, anthropology is not a very old subject—it has been taught for about 100 years—but it has raised questions which have been formulated in different guises since antiquity: Are the differences between peoples inborn or learned? Why are there so many languages, and how different are they really? Do all religions have something in common? Which forms of governance exist, and how do they work? Is it possible to rank societies on a ladder according to their level of development? What is it that all humans have in common? And, perhaps most importantly: What kind of creatures are humans; aggressive animals, social animals, religious animals or are they, perhaps, the only self-defining animals on the planet?
Every thinking person has an opinion on these matters. Some of them can hardly be answered once and for all, but they can at least be asked in an accurate and informed way. It is the goal of anthropology to establish as detailed a knowledge as possible about varied forms of human life, and to develop a conceptual apparatus making it possible to compare them. This in turn enables us to understand both differences and similarities between the many different ways of being human. In spite of the enormous variations anthropologists document, the very existence of the discipline proves beyond doubt that it is possible to communicate fruitfully and intelligibly between different forms of human life. Had it been impossible to understand culturally remote peoples, anthropology as such would have been impossible; and nobody who practises anthropology believes that this is impossible （although few believe that it is possible to understand everything）. On the contrary, different societies are made to shed light on each other through comparison.
人类学的神秘之处可以这样来解读：全世界的人天生具有同样的认知和身体器官，但他们却发展出了截然不同的人和群体，具有不同的社会类型、信仰、技术、语言和有关幸福生活的概念。每个群体内部个人被先天赋予的才能各不一样，群体之间也不相同，同样在乐感、智力、直觉和其他特性方面，人与人之间也是千差万别，但这些特性在全球的分布却十分均匀，并不是非洲人“天生就具有乐感”，或北方人“天生耐寒而内向”。就这些现有的差异而言，它们并不是天生就有的。另一方面，特殊的社会环境的确可以刺激个人天赋的乐感潜质，而另外的环境则可以鼓励个人抽象思考的能力。莫扎特是一个极具音乐天赋的人，但如果他出生在格陵兰岛，即使他的遗传代码完全不变，他也不可能成为世界上最伟大的作曲家。或许他最后只能成为一名糟糕的猎手（因为他出了名的急躁）。
换言之，诚如人类学家格尔茨（Clifford Geertz）所言，所有的人与生俱来都有潜能过上许多种截然不同的生活，然而我们却只能以一种生活结束人生。人类学的中心任务之一就是解读他者的生活，而且我们也本可过上这样的生活。
The great enigma of anthropology can be phrased like this: All over the world,humans are born with the same cognitive and physical apparatus, and yet they grow into distinctly different persons and groups, with different societal types, beliefs, technologies, languages and notions about the good life. Differences in innate endowments vary within each group and not between them, so that musicality, intelligence, intuition and other qualities which vary from person to person, are quite evenly distributed globally. It is not the case that Africans are ‘born with rhythm', or that northeners are ‘innately cold and introverted'. To the extent that such differences exist, they are not inborn. On the other hand, it is true that particular social milieux stimulate inborn potentials for rhythmicity, while others encourage the ability to think abstractly. Mozart, a man filled to the brim with musical talent, would hardly have become the world's greatest composer if he, that is a person with the same genetic code as Mozart, had been born in Greenland. Perhaps he would only have become a bad hunter (because of his famous impatience).
Put differently, and paraphrasing the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, all humans are born with the potential to live thousands of different lives, yet we end up having lived only one. One of the central tasks of anthropology consists of giving accounts of some of the other lives we could have led.
启蒙运动和进化论学派
这里不适合详细描述人类学的历史，但为了对现状和最近的过去提供一个适当的背景，就有必要及时地给出简明扼要的回顾。
人类学和其他人文科学一样，是在18世纪末期欧洲启蒙运动时期，随着人们认知能力和科学好奇心的增加，作为一个独具特色的问询领域而出现。几个世纪以来，欧洲传教士、官员和其他旅行家记录的资料，或多或少可靠地叙述了遥远地方的人们，而这也构成了有关文化变迁一般理论的原材料。（有时候，一种较早的理论归结于孟德斯鸠，认为文化差异是气候变迁的结果。）从19世纪中期开始，一种被称为进化论的理论开始占据主导地位。这种学说的追随者假定，社会可以按照发展层次进行排序，而且毫无疑问的是作者自己所处的社会，就成了长期和艰苦的社会进化的最终产物。诸如弓、箭、使用驮畜的犁耕农业以及书写之类的技术要素，都被安置在“进化层次”的边界上。进化论的模型完全与达尔文1859年发表的生物进化学说兼容（而且在形式上相似），而且殖民思想认为非欧洲的人必须接受比其发展序列更高的人的严厉统治，必要时可以采用武力。
ENLIGHTENMENT AND EVOLUTIONISM
This is not the place for a detailed account of the history of anthropology, but a brief excursion back in time is necessary in order to give a proper context to the present and the recent past.
Like other human sciences, anthropology emerged as a distinct field of enquiry in Europe following the period of heightened intellectual awareness and scientific curiosity known as the Enlightenment, at the end of the eighteenth century. More or less trustworthy accounts about remote peoples had already been recorded for centuries by European missionaries, officers and other travellers, and they now formed the raw material for general theories about cultural variation. (An early theory, sometimes attributed to Montesquieu, explained cultural differences as a consequence of climatic variation.) From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, a family of theories usually described as evolutionism became dominant. The adherents of these doctrines assumed that societies could be ranked according to their level of development, and unsurprisingly built on the premise that the author's own society was the end-product of a long and strenuous process of social evolution. Technological elements such as the bow and arrow, plough-driven agriculture with beasts of burden and writing were posited as the boundaries between the ‘evolutionary levels'. The evolutionist models were both compatible with (and similar in form to) Darwin's theory of biological evolution, which was launched in 1859, and with the colonial ideology stating that non-European peoples must be governed and developed from above, sternly and with force if need be.
到19世纪末期，进化论遭遇了来自传播论的严峻挑战，这种学说主要盛行于讲德语的国家，顾名思义就是强调研究文化特征的传播。进化论倾向于假定每种社会包含着自己发展的胚芽，而传播理论则主张变迁主要通过接触和“采借”来产生。
20世纪前十年内，西方社会的特色是发生了重要的变迁，而第一次世界大战则使之达到了剧烈的高潮。在同一时期，人类学也发生了近乎完全的革命。已有的进化论和传播理论的解释模型因为种种原因被人抛弃。
进化论如今已经被判定为一种具有根本性缺陷的方法论。现在，人类学家所开展的日益细致和精确的研究，并未表明社会按照预定的模式在发展，而认为学者自己的社会处于阶梯上部的标准假设，已经暴露出简单的偏见和歧视。具有基本相同技术的社会（比如南非的桑人和澳大利亚的土著），它们之间有着相当多的文化差异，这表明按照进化论所说的，“原始人”可以被视为我们自身社会早期的样子是不可想象的事。
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, evolutionist accounts met serious competition in diffusionism, a largely German language tendency which, as the name suggests, emphasized the study of the spreading of cultural traits. Whereas the evolutionists tended to assume that every society contained the germ of its own development, diffusionists argued that change largely took place through contact and‘borrowing'.
Momentous changes characterized western societies during the first decades of the twentieth century, with the First World War as a dramatic high point. In the same period, a near total revolution took place in anthropology. The established evolutionist and diffusionist explanations were discarded for several reasons.
Evolutionism was now judged as a fundamentally flawed approach. The increasingly detailed and nuanced studies which were now at the anthropologists' disposal did not indicate that societies developed along a predetermined pattern, and the normative assumption that the scholar's own society was at the top of the ladder had been exposed as plain bigotry and prejudice. The considerable cultural differences between societies possessing roughly the same technology (such as San in southern Africa and Australian Aborigines), indicated that it was unthinkable that ‘primitive peoples'could be seen as suggestive of what our own societies might have been like at an earlier stage, which evolutionists claimed.
传播论被拒绝的主要原因是它作出的有关接触与传播过程的假定，无法得到证实。同样的现象存在于一个或两个地方的事实，比如技术或信仰，自身并不能证明它们之间有过历史的接触。所讨论的现象可能已经在多个地方独立地发展出来了。另一方面，没有人质疑传播现象的发生（实际上对于当代社会科学的趋势即全球化研究而言，这是一个重要的前提），尚有争议的是20世纪的少壮派过度地批判了传播理论，结果使得人类学走向了另一个极端——只是研究单个的小规模社会。
无论如何，迄今为止的要点在于收集“他文化”的资料——大约在第一次世界大战前十年——遭受了更加严格的质量要求，就收集资料的人员而言，专业研究者逐步替代了其他旅行者，继续长途跋涉收集那些详细和更加特别的资料。
Diffusionism was rejected chiefly because it made assumptions about contacts and processes of diffusion which could not be substantiated. The fact that similar phenomena, such as techniques or beliefs, existed in two or more places, did not in itself prove that there had been historical contact between them. The phenomenon in question might have developed independently in several places. On the other hand, nobody doubts that diffusion takes place (it is in fact a central premise for a contemporary trend in social science, namely globalisation studies), and it may well be argued that the ‘Young Turks'of early twentieth-century anthropology overdid their critique of diffusionism, with the result that anthropology became lopsided in the opposite way; as the study of single, small-scale societies.
Be this as it may, the main point is that the collection of data about ‘other cultures'was by now—the decade preceding the First World War—subjected to ever stricter quality demands, and as far as the people who did the collecting were concerned, professional researchers gradually replaced other travellers, going on lengthy expeditions to collect detailed and often specialised data.
现代人类学的四位创始人
按照惯例，现代人类学的创立需要提到四个人：博厄斯（Franz Boas）、马林诺夫斯基（Bronislaw Malinowski ）、拉德克里夫·布朗（A.R. Radcliffe-Brown）和莫斯（Marcel Mauss）。1864年，博厄斯出生于德国，但在19世纪80年代和90年代移居美国，并在美国待了比较长的时间。作为哥伦比亚大学的一名教授，博厄斯帮助建立了美国文化人类学，并且直到1942年去世时，一直都是该学科无可争议的领头羊。20世纪前半叶，大部分有名的美国人类学家，都曾经是博厄斯的学生。
博厄斯有着广泛的兴趣，但就本书而言，我们将其与两个特别重要和典型的概念联系起来，这有助于对美国人类学的定义：文化相对主义和历史特殊论。文化相对主义的观点认为每个社会、每一种文化都需要用自己的方式从其内部来理解，不可能也没有特别的兴趣去将各个社会排列在进化的阶梯之上。
在博厄斯年轻时，进化论的观点非常普及。他坚持认为，要理解文化的差异，这种思维方式并不令人满意。事实上，他认为相信一些社会客观上比其他社会更加先进，完全是一种种族中心主义的谬论，这种观点明显受制于自身文化具有优越感的偏见和未经考虑的观念。
文化相对论是一种主要的方法（不是一种世界观），旨在脱离研究者的偏见尽可能独立地探讨文化的差异。它的目标是学会观察世界，尽可能与信息报道人或“当地人”采用同样的方式看待世界。只有先做到这一点，才有可能进行理论分析。在当今有关文化接触和西方移民“融合”的公开辩论中，可能会设定类似的理想：只有当一个人理解了他人的生活时，才能够对其作出道德评价。
博厄斯的历史特殊论非常接近于文化相对论，包含的主要观点是每个社会都有其独特的历史，也就是说不存在社会必须经过的“必要阶段”。因此，不可能总结出历史的顺序，因为它们都是独一无二的。博厄斯坚持认为，所有的社会都有自身可持续的路径，有其自身的变迁机制。在人类学家之中，这种观点和文化相对主义的特定形式总是争论不休，但它们已经产生了深远的影响，直至今日。
THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Four men are conventionally mentioned as the founders of modern anthropology:Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, A.R.Radcliffe-Brown and Marcel Mauss. Boas, born in 1864, was German, but emigrated to the USA after several lengthy stays in the country in the 1880s and 1890s. As a professor at Columbia University, he was instrumental in establishing American cultural anthropology, and ‘Papa Franz'was the undisputed leader of the discipline until his death in 1942. Most of the American anthropologists of note in the first half of the twentieth century had been students of Boas.
Boas had very wide-ranging interests, but in this context, we shall associate him with two particularly important, and typical, concepts, which contributed to defining American anthropology: cultural relativism and historical particularism. Cultural relativism is the view that every society, or every culture, has to be understood on its own terms, from within, and that it is neither possible nor particularly interesting to rank societies on an evolutionary ladder.
In Boas' youth, evolutionist perspectives were widespread. In order to understand cultural variation, he argued, this way of thinking is not satisfactory. In fact, he regarded the belief that certain societies were objectively more advanced than others as an ethnocentric fallacy, that is a view governed by prejudice and an unconsidered belief in the superiority of one's own culture.
Cultural relativism is primarily a method (not a world-view) designed to explore cultural variation as independently as possible from the researcher's prejudices. Its aim is to learn to see the world, as far as possible, in the same way as the informants, or ‘natives', see it. Theoretical analysis can begin only when this is achieved. In today's public debates about cultural contact and ‘integration' of migrants in the West, a similar ideal might be posited; only when one has understood the lives of others, can it be justified to make moral judgements about them.
Boas' historical particularism, which is closely related to cultural relativism, consists of the view that every society has its own, unique history, which is to say that there are no ‘necessary stages'that societies pass through. As a result, it is impossible to generalise about historical sequences; they are all unique. All societies have their own paths towards sustainability and their own mechanisms of change, Boas argued. Both this view and certain forms of cultural relativism have always been controversial among anthropologists, but they have been deeply influential up to the present.
1884年，马林诺夫斯基出生于波兰，在克拉科夫上学，但他后来移居英国，这促进了他对人类学的研究。马林诺夫斯基在他那个时代是一名具有超凡魅力又能鼓动人心的教师，在关于集中田野工作的方法上，他持续的影响力一直特别的强烈。马林诺夫斯基不是第一个在地方社区开展长时间田野工作的人（比如博厄斯就曾做过田野工作），但是他在一战时期研究特罗布里恩岛民是如此的详细和透彻，以至于他所设定的标准即使在今天也无可挑剔。通过一系列关于特罗布里恩岛的著作（第一本也是最有名的著作是《西太平洋的航海者》），马林诺夫斯基显示了巨大的知识潜能，在对小群体开展缓慢、缜密和费力的详细研究方面，他的田野工作堪称典范。他认为特罗布里恩岛民的宗教和政治组织具有很大的权威，并且由于他对他们的生活方式具有非常广泛的知识，所以能够证明这些局部体系之间的相互关联性。
在他的田野工作方法中，马林诺夫斯基着重强调学习当地人的语言，并且推荐的主要方法是参与观察：民族志学者应该与研究对象一起生活，参与他们的日常活动，同时要进行系统的观察。直至现在即使不完全一样，也是与之相似的观点在指导人类学的田野工作。
如果宣称人类学调查始于博厄斯和马林诺夫斯基，可能会误导别人。当然，人们提出有关文化差异的问题，还有数千年来“其他人如何生活”，以及文化理论和民族志在他们之前很久就以各种方式存在。然而，在将人类学转化成一个十分有组织和清晰的知识体系，使其配得上科学的头衔方面，他们的贡献可能超过任何其他人。通过长期参与观察的田野工作方法，确保民族志学者获得的知识在进行比较时能可靠和有用，文化相对主义原则的意图不仅仅是抑制偏见，而且要发展一种中性和叙述性话语来描述文化差异。
尽管不怎么重要，但博厄斯和马林诺夫斯基的传记或许能反映他们对于文化差异的非正统方法。正如前面所说，两个人都在国外度过了大部分成年的生活——德国出生的博厄斯在美国，波兰出生的马林诺夫斯基在英国。人们可能会怀疑，不管是对他们的祖国，还是他们所身处的新国家，他们都会产生一种无根和不相容的感觉，而当他们开始发展自己的新学科时，这些恐怕不是一种有价值的资源吧？只有当一个人能够从一种边缘优势角度去看自己的文化时，他才能够采用人类学的术语来理解它。大部分人可能穷其一生也不会真正地思考这样的事实，即他们受到特定文化的深刻影响。与那些认识到他们自己的习惯和观念都是在特定社会环境中创造的人相比，在特定情况下这种无视自己的“盲目性”使他们更不适合研究其他人；如果他们在别的地方被抚养，他们在重要的方面将会是不同的个体。这种反思——自我反省——既是文化和社会比较研究的一种条件，也是它的一种结果。当刚入门的人类学家从田野工作返回时，他必然会以一种新的眼光看待自己的社会。然而在一定程度上，一个人在开始自己的田野工作前，需要从心理上将自己的社会抛在脑后。人类学家试图通过人类学概念和模式的教学，以传授这种技巧，但是学生不太可能认识到他们已经获得了这些东西，除非太迟了而无法回到更早的无知状态。
Malinowski, born in 1884, was a Pole who studied in Krakow, but he emigrated to England to further his studies in anthropology. Malinowski was a charismatic and inspiring teacher in his time, but his sustained influence has been particularly strong regarding intensive fieldwork as method. Malinowski was not the first to carry out long-term fieldwork in local communities （Boas, for one, had done it）, but his study of the inhabitants of the Trobriand islands during the First World War was so detailed and thorough that it set a standard which has its defenders even today. Through a series of books about the Trobriands, the first and most famous of which was Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski showed the enormous intellectual potential of the slow, meticulous and painstakingly detailed study of a small group of which his fieldwork was an exemplar. He wrote about the economy, the religion and the political organisation of the Trobrianders with great authority, and due to his very comprehensive knowledge of their way of life, he was able to demonstrate the interconnections between such partial systems.
In his field methodology, Malinowski strongly emphasised the need to learn the native language, and recommended that the main method should be one of participant observation: the ethnographer should live with the people he studied, he should participate in their everyday activities, and make systematic observations as he went along. Similar if not necessarily identical ideals guide anthropological fieldwork even today.
It would be grossly misleading to claim that anthropological investigations began with Boas and Malinowski. Of course, people have asked questions concerning cultural variation and ‘how others live' for thousands of years, and both cultural theory and ethnography had existed in various guises long before them. Yet they contributed, perhaps more than anyone else, to turning anthropology into a body of knowledge sufficiently organised and coherent to deserve the label science. The method of fieldwork through long-term participant observation ensured that the knowledge procured by ethnographers was reliable and usable in comparisons, and the principle of cultural relativism was intended not only to keep prejudices in check, but also to develop a neutral, descriptive terminology for describing cultural variation.
Although hardly of central importance, the biographies of Boas and Malinowski may shed a little light on their unorthodox approaches to cultural variation. As indicated above, both men spent most of their adult life abroad; the German Boas in the USA, the Pole Malinowski in England. One may wonder if the uprootedness and alienness they must have felt, both in relation to their native countries and towards their new ones, could not have been a valuable resource when they set out to develop their new science. For it is only when one is able to see one's own culture from a marginal vantage point that one can understand it in anthropological terms. Most people live their entire lives without reflecting upon the fact that they are profoundly shaped by a particular culture. Such ‘homeblindness' by default makes them less suited for studying other peoples than those who have realised that even their own habits and notions are created in a particular social environment, under special circumstances; and that they would in crucial ways have been different individuals if they had been raised elsewhere. This kind of reflexivity—self-reflection—is both a condition for the comparative study of culture and society, and a result of it. When the novice anthropologist returns from her first fieldwork, she inevitably views her own society in a new light. However, one must also, to some extent, be able to leave one's own society behind mentally before embarking on fieldwork. Anthropologists try to impart this skill through their teaching of anthropological concepts and models, but the students are unlikely to realise that they have acquired it until it has become too late to return to an earlier state of innocence.
事实上，很多人类学家具有的个人背景，在一定程度上使他们疏离了与他们有关的社会；相当多的人在另外一个国家度过一年或数年的时光，作为外交官的子女、援建工人或传教士；有些人具有少数民族背景或被另一个国家所接纳；犹太人在同行中总是坚定的代表。妇女在人类学领域的表现比在其他学术职业中更加突出。换句话说，例如作为一名局部的陌生者就是一个有利条件。
然而，在20世纪的前十年，第三位杰出的人类学家是英国本土人拉德克里夫·布朗（1881—1955年）。他在1937年重返牛津大学担任教授之前，有很多年是在芝加哥、南非开普敦和悉尼的大学从事教学和科研工作。布朗出名主要是因为他对社会人类学有着雄心勃勃的科学规划。布朗与博厄斯不同，在一定程度上与马林诺夫斯基也不一样，他的兴趣不在文化及其意义上，他关注的是社会运行的方式。布朗深受涂尔干的社会学理论的影响，并将其作为垫脚石开发出了人类学的结构功能主义，而涂尔干的社会学理论主要是有关社会整合的学说。结构功能主义的理论坚持认为，社会的各个部分或制度都要履行特定的功能，这与人体各个器官对整个身体的贡献方式一样；人类学的最终目标包含在建立“社会的自然法则”之中，这与自然科学法则的创立具有同样精确的层次。与博厄斯和马林诺夫斯基一样，布朗也有杰出和富有献身精神的学生圈子，其中一些是战后最具影响力的英国人类学家。然而，其中许多人最终抛弃了布朗的原初计划。之后很快就清楚的是，社会要比细胞与化合物更加不可预测。
对于大多数人类学家而言，这里要提到的第四位创始人最为重要。莫斯（1872—1950年）与诸如文化相对论之类的概念、参与观察之类的方法或结构功能主义之类的理论没有联系。然而，他对于人类学的影响却具有决定性，尤其是在法国。莫斯是涂尔干的侄儿，直到涂尔干1917年去世之前，他们一直密切地合作著书立说，其中一部有关原始分类的著作是两人一起写的。莫斯是一个博学之士，熟悉多种语言、全球的历史和经典著作。尽管他从未开展过田野工作，但他写的富有洞察力的论文却能覆盖很广泛的主题（还毫不松懈地教导观察的技巧）：关于不同社会中人的概念、民族主义以及作为社会产品的身体。他最著名的贡献是一篇非常有分量的论文，讨论传统社会中的礼物交换。莫斯认为在缺乏中央集权的情形下，礼物交换和服务的互惠性是社会关系的“黏合剂”。礼物可能是以自愿的形式出现，但事实上是义务性的，它们可以产生感情的债务，以及相当广泛与持久的社会责任。直至现在，其他人类学家仍在这种视角上进行分析。
In fact, a significant number of anthropologists have a personal background which has to a certain degree alienated them in relation to their society; quite a few have spent several years in another country as children of diplomats, aid workers or missionaries; some are adopted from another country or have a minority background;and Jews have always been strongly represented in the profession. Women have always been more prominent in anthropology than in most other academic professions. For once, in other words, being a partial stranger can be an asset.
The third of the leading anthropologists during the crucial first decades of the twentieth century was never the less a native Englishman, AR Radcliffe-Brown （1881-1955）. Radcliffe-Brown, who spent many years teaching and undertaking research at the universities of Chicago, Cape Town and Sydney, before returning to a chair in Oxford in 1937, is chiefly known for his ambitious scientific programme for social anthropology. Unlike Boas, and to some extent Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown's interest was not in culture and meaning, but in the ways societies functioned. He was deeply influenced by Emile Durkheim's sociology, which was primarily a doctrine about social integration, and used it as a stepping-stone to develop structural-functionalism in anthropology. This theory argued that all the parts, or institutions, of a society filled a particular function, roughly in the same way as all bodily parts contribute to the whole; and that the ultimate goal of anthropology consisted in establishing ‘natural laws of society'with the same level of precision as the ones found in natural science. Like Boas and Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown had his circle of outstanding, devoted students, some of them among the most influential British anthropologists of the postwar years. However, his original programme was eventually abandoned by most of them. It would soon become clear that societies were much less predictable than cells and chemical compounds.
To many anthropologists, the fourth ancestor to be mentioned here is the most important one. Marcel Mauss （1872-1950）is not associated with a concept such as cultural relativism, a method like participant observation, or a theory such as structural-functionalism. Yet his influence on anthropology, especially in France, has been decisive. Mauss was a nephew of the great Durkheim, and they collaborated closely until Durkheim's death in 1917, writing, among other things, a book entitled Primitive Classification together. Mauss was a learned man, familiar with many languages, global cultural history and the classics. Although he never carried out fieldwork, he wrote insightful essays covering a broad range of themes （and relentlessly taught techniques of observation）: on the concept of the person in different societies, on nationalism and on the body as a social product. His most famous contribution is a powerful essay about gift exchange in traditional societies. Mauss shows that reciprocity, the exchange of gifts and services, is the ‘glue'that ties societies together in the absence of a centralised power. Gifts may appear to be voluntary, but are in fact obligatory, and they create debts of gratitude and other social commitments of considerable scope and duration. Other anthropologists continue to build analyses on this perspective even today.
简单地讲，这四个创始人及其学生确定了20世纪人类学的主流。（可能有些更令人着迷的智力师承，但这里的篇幅不允许我深入展开。）然而，人类学总是一门自我批判的学科，这些大师不仅仅通过他们的箴言和著作来发挥影响力，还会挑起批判和评论。一战后，博厄斯（与博厄斯学派）的文化相对主义就遭受到强有力的抵抗，新生代的人类学家重新回到博厄斯之前的情形，关注社会进化并集中于物质条件、技术和经济。马林诺夫斯基以及他的学生在一定程度上，都因为理论较弱又不聚焦而遭到批评。就布朗而言，人们批评他似乎相信他那精巧的模型远比嘈杂的社会现实更加真实。在法国，多年之后很多年轻人将莫斯视为无关的人物，政治上激进的人类学家更加热衷于研究冲突而不是整合。
在第二次世界大战之后的数十年间，人类学家迅速地成长并多样化。新的理论学派和观点开始显现，在新的领域开展了田野工作，其复杂性和透视性也增加了；新的研究中心和大学院系开始成立，到21世纪初，全世界已有数千名职业人类学家，他们都擅长于某一方面的研究。可以说在这种热闹的多样化背景下，有一个明确和清晰的主题。原因是我们继续回到了同样的基本问题之上，这在各地几乎都以同样的方式出现。巴西的人类学家和他的俄罗斯同事，可以完全相互理解（假定他们有一种共同的语言，大多数时候是英语）；主张男女平等的后现代主义者与人文生态学者有很多差异，但如果他们都是人类学家，则在智力上还是会有很多共性。尽管存在理智的弑父和弑母行为、激烈的争辩和令人迷惑的专业化，我们仍然可以通过人类学对普遍与特殊之间关系的一贯兴趣，以及它对“当地人视角”的强调和对当地人生活的研究，还有它试图理解社会关联的野心和对不同社会的比较，来清晰地描述人类学。
Slightly simplistically, one may say that these four founders and their many students defined the mainstream of twentieth-century anthropology. (Several fascinating minor lines of intellectual descent also exist, but space does not permit an exploration of them here.) However, anthropology has always been a self-critical subject, and these great men did not only exert influence through their admonitions and writings, but also by provoking contradiction and criticism. The cultural relativism of Boas (and the Boasians) met strong resistance in the postwar years, when a new generation of American anthropologists would return to the pre-Boasian concerns with social evolution and concentrate on material conditions, technology and economics. Malinowski, and to some extent his students, were criticised for being unfocused and theoretically weak. Radcliffe-Brown, on his part, was criticised for seeming to believe that his elegant models were more truthful than the far more chaotic social reality; and in France, Mauss was, some years later, largely seen as irrelevant by young, politically radical anthropologists who were more keen on studying conflict than integration.
In the decades after the Second World War, anthropology grew and diversified rapidly. New theoretical schools and perspectives appeared, fieldwork was carried out in new areas, which also added complexity and perspectives; new research centres and university departments were founded, and at the start of the twenty-first century, there are thousands of professional anthropologists worldwide, all of them specialised in one way or another. It may still be said that underneath this teeming diversity, there is a clearly defined, shared subject. The reason is that we continue to return to the same fundamental questions, which are raised in roughly the same ways everywhere. A Brazilian anthropologist and her Russian colleague may perfectly well understand each other (provided they have a common language, which in most cases would be English); there is much to distinguish a feminist postmodernist from a human ecologist, but if they are both anthropologists, they still have much in common intellectually. In spite of intellectual patricides and matricides, heated controversies and bewildering specialisation, anthropology is still delineated through its consistent interest in the relationship between the unique and the universal, its emphasis on ‘the native's point of view'(Malinowski's term) and the study of local life, its ambition to understand connections in societies and its comparisons between societies.
扩展阅读
Barnard, Alan（2000）History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Kuper, Adam （1996）Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School,3rd edition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.