論地方知識的所有權與研究職權：從詮釋人類學的觀點省思Lahuy的「論文返鄉口試」

Abstract

Drawing on Geertzian interpretive anthropology, this article elaborates how ethnographies reflect the fieldwork discipline, represent the native’s point of view and further reshape the understanding of local knowledge. Conventional ethnographic writing often displays a research dilemma, in that the anthropologist experiences his involvement as an observer of cultural activities and yet disappears from his own textual presentation. The arrival on the scene of interpretive anthropology in the 1960s and ’70s inspired the paradigm of ethnographic writing, in which rhetorical concerns - the ownership and authority of local knowledge, and self-reflection on fieldwork and ethnographic writing - were transformed into a cumulative, multifaceted representation of anthropological studies. Ethnographers came to doubt the legitimacy of fieldwork while the realization of intersubjectivity between anthropologists and their informants became a major concern. This essay suggests that the emergent task of current anthropology is to understand the meaning of the disguise and transfiguration of local knowledge, through which ＂thick description＂ was launched as an intellectual method for eliciting cultural derivations from tribal sentiments, concealed norms, obscure portrayals, or ambiguous identities.