英文摘要 |
If the major endeavor of Taiwan anthropology’s study of the ethnic Han during the 1960s and 1970s focused on dimensions of culture and society harking back to the Qing dynasty, there remained in the background a powerful but unsatisfied curiosity regarding contemporary China. The opening up of China to fieldwork initiated a period of new concern with the present, in China research, to be sure, but also for anthropology in Taiwan. The middle-class transformation of society on both sides of the Taiwan Straits created the environment for a new phase of anthropological research. For China anthropology the middle class has become a defining element in the study both of those who are in it and those marginal to it. Middle-class characteristics now dominate this anthropology, ranging from the emergence of individualism and the triumph of the commodified and commodity-seeking self to the struggle for place in an insecure and rapidly changing class setting, to nationalism, and even to the impact of automobile ownership. Contrasts with Taiwan highlight and make explicit how China ethnologies share a framework of research and analysis, albeit one not defined by shared theoretical approaches, but nevertheless one that might be usefully and critically expanded to include comparable areas of concern in Taiwan. |