「透過臺灣」？閱讀冷戰時代美國在臺灣的「中國人類學」

“Looking Through Taiwan”? Reading the Cold War US Anthropology of China in Taiwan

從1950到1980年代，臺灣變成「英語中國人類學（Anglophone Anthropology of China）」收集民族誌資料的重要地點。然而，隨著中國80年代的改革開放及臺灣民主化促使臺灣研究興起之後，這段冷戰時期在臺灣進行的「中國人類學」研究反而引發爭議。雖然曾有一些作者批評美國人類學家是「透過臺灣」看中國（e.g. Hong and Murray 2005），民族誌田野調查的基礎要求這意味著人類學家比其他在臺灣作「中國研究」的其他領域學者更貼近臺灣常民生活。雖然當他們的著作出版時，研究對象所在的鄉村在書寫中被認定為「中國鄉村」。為了瞭解並深度理解冷戰年代的外文人類學研究和臺灣研究的發展路徑，北美臺灣研究協會（NATSA）和中研院臺灣歷史研究所（ITH）從2014年開始合作收集並出版過去學者的口述歷史。本文基於比較分析我們已出版的口述歷史《冷戰下的「臺灣研究」：北美人類學家訪問紀錄》Studying Taiwan Before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan（2024），並解讀關注在民族誌知識生產的三個時刻。第一，有什麼機構勢力或論述結構讓戰後快速發展的臺灣變成研究「傳統中國」的田野地點？第二，戒嚴時期臺灣的政治、社會、經濟、族群、種族和性別背景如何影響田野實踐和經驗以及民族誌的知識生產？第三，在臺灣研究出現之後，人類學家又如何重新理解他們自己過去的研究？我認為，雖然這些人類學家最初是為了尋找一種「中國」而來到臺灣，但是透過沉浸在臺灣的日常生活中，這些人實際上卻成為「臺灣研究前的臺灣研究學者」，雖然仍將臺灣研究置於中國研究的框架內。

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Taiwan became an important ethnographic site for the Anglophone Anthropology of China. Unable to conduct fieldwork in (mainland) China after 1949, American and British anthropologists instead developed projects based on fieldwork undertaken in Taiwan and Hong Kong, those regions which Maurice Freedman called“residual China”. Supported by US-based area studies research institutions, and welcomed by the ROC government, anthropologists like Bernard and Rita Gallin, Arthur and Margery Wolf, Myron Cohen, Burton Pasternak, Stephan Feuchtwang, Hill Gates, Stevan Harrell, and David Schak produced groundbreaking research in the Anthropology of China based on fieldwork conducted in Taiwanese villages. However, following the opening of China to foreign scholars in the 1980s, democratization in Taiwan, and the emergence of Taiwan Studies, this period of the“Anthropology of China”in Taiwan has become controversial, particularly from the perspective of a Taiwan studies framework challenging China-centric perspectives. For example, Murray and Hong (2005) famously criticized American anthropologists for“looking through Taiwan”to see China, arguing that not only did anthropologists misrepresent Taiwanese social realities in their search for“traditional China”, but were also complicit in providing intellectual support to both the KMT and the PRC in arguing that Taiwan’s social and cultural practices were traditionally“Chinese”. Besides reflecting the specific changing politics of national identity accompanying democratization in Taiwan, the critique also reflects the broader post-colonial critique of anthropological knowledge production. In order to better understand how Taiwan became (and unbecame) a destination for studying“China”, the North American Studies Association (NATSA), in collaboration with the Institute of Taiwan History (ITH) at Academia Sinica began a collaboration in 2014 to collect and publish the oral histories of that generation of foreign China studies scholars who established their careers first in Taiwan. Based on a comparative reading from the recently published volume Studying Taiwan Before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan (2024), I focus on three moments of ethnographic knowledge production. First, I examine the historical institutional and conceptual practices that facilitated Taiwan becoming (and then unbecoming) a field-site for“traditional China”. Why did American and British anthropologists go to Taiwan, and how did they think about Taiwan compared to the larger China they could not go to? Second, I examine how Taiwan’s political, social, economic, ethnic, racial, and gendered contexts during martial law era affected fieldwork practice and ethnographic knowledge production. What kind of social relations did these scholars develop in Taiwan? What social relationships or interactions did they have with language teachers, research assistants, Taiwanese scholars, and other Americans? The oral histories reveal how the politics of language training, and the urban-rural divide between Taipei and the village fieldsites anthropologists moved between, shaped how anthropologists understood the ethnic politics of Taiwan, even while understanding these distinctions primarily in terms of where they could locate a more authentic“traditional China”. I argue the“traditional China”anthropologists sought was a“popular”form ironically in opposition to the KMT’s own elite interpretation of“traditional China”. Third, I examine the political consciousness of anthropologists, how anthropologists experienced martial law and state power, exploring why different researchers came away with different impressions of the severity of martial law. Finally, I examine how anthropologists of that era understand the politics of the time and the politics of knowledge today. After (mainland) China opened up, how did these scholars decide to leave or stay in Taiwan? And after the emergence of Taiwanese studies, how do they evaluate their own past studies? What do they think about the relationship between Taiwan studies and China studies today? I argue that although these anthropologists originally came to Taiwan in search of a kind of“China”, by immersing themselves in ordinary Taiwanese life, they nonetheless produced a Taiwan studies before Taiwan studies. Nonetheless, the motivation for this shift came primarily from anthropological developments in theories of“tradition”,“change”,“history”, and“political economy”, rather than any criticism of Taiwan’s“Chineseness”.