1. No one can distinguish between folklore and anthropology.
On June 5-4+February, 2006, Liu invited many famous scholars from Beijing folklore, anthropology, sociology, history and other fields to attend the "Symposium on Ethnography and Folklore" at Beijing Normal University. Different disciplines sat together and had an interesting discussion on the same topic. At the meeting, scholars such as Gao and Zhuang Kongshao raised this question again.
Gao said: "The difference between ethnography and ethnography is that I participate in the observation and cultural writing of my group, and the other is that I participate in the observation and cultural writing of other groups." The implication is that anthropology focuses on studying different cultures from the perspective of others. Folklore focuses on the study of local culture from the perspective of self-concept. Based on this view, Gao frequently sent several of his doctoral students in structural anthropology to Southeast Asia and even the United States to conduct field investigations, which he considered to be authentic anthropological investigations. Zhuang Kongshao's main distinguishing criterion is that anthropologists, like "moles", focus on the study of "points" in specific communities, so they need specific, lasting and in-depth investigations; Folklorists, like locusts, focus on grasping the similar aspects of folk customs in different regions, so they need broader common sense.
At the beginning of modern folklore in China, it was mainly influenced by the British Folklore Society. The origin of British folklore has a strong colonial color, and its main purpose is "ruling the country can obtain better ruling laws for its subordinate nationalities." The so-called "subordinate nationalities" are of course "different cultures", so folklore may not only pay attention to "local" culture from the beginning. In recent years, some foreign experts in folklore have made investigations in China. For example, the German folklorist Fumarui's survey in the northern rural areas of China and the Japanese folklorist Ryuhiko Sakurai's survey in Miao Feng are all folk surveys in different cultural regions. Even if the research is limited to hometown folklore, it still needs two perspectives, namely "(theme) and" (guest), because scholars are both insiders and outsiders. The grasp of these two perspectives is different.
If we look at the folklore achievements of1980-1990s, Zhuang Kongshao's feeling may be right. Folklore research in this period is mostly a special study of specific folk events. However, this research orientation has been broken before entering 2 1 century, and more and more folklore scholars tend to make long-term field visits. In recent years, Beijing Normal University has been conducting field surveys. Such as Wu, Yue Yongyi, Wang and Ji Guoxiu. , not only have a long-term, fixed-point field life, but also achieved good results. The theoretical resources and research paradigms borrowed by these achievements are not essentially different from anthropology. If we want to classify these achievements into anthropology, it is difficult for us to find reasons to object. In recent years, Liu advocated "folk custom dominated by symbolic culture" writing. It is also a "mole" and "point" investigation method. Of course, we can't expel Liu and his disciples from the folklore team just because they are not like locusts. Therefore, Zhuang Kongshao's distinguishing standard is no longer suitable for the development of contemporary folklore.
So, how should folklore and anthropology be distinguished? Different scholars often give different answers. The website of the Folk Culture Youth Forum has been repeatedly discussed. This group of people discussed for some time, but there was no result. After a while, another group of people came to discuss it, but there was still no result ... What's more, a contemporary scholar, Zhong Jingwen, one of the founders of modern folklore in China, and Fei Xiaotong, the number one hero of anthropology in China, could not tell the essential difference between folklore and anthropology. Fei Xiaotong once drew an easy line for folklore: "In my personal opinion, in order to avoid the inextricable overlap between folklore and social anthropology, it is best to draw oral folk literature as the object of folklore." However, this artificial regulation, because of Fei Xiaotong's academic status, does not have much effect. Scholars who agree with Fei Xiaotong will naturally take his authoritative words as their own business, while scholars who disagree with Fei Xiaotong can simply ignore him.
No matter who defines it and how it is defined, it is easy to be overturned for various reasons. It is a paradox that no one can give an answer to a seemingly simple question. So we can only say that the imaginary division between folklore and anthropology does not actually exist. That is to say, there is no qualitative difference between folklore and anthropology.
As far as scholars are concerned, Gao is both a folklorist and an anthropologist. Can we say that this paper of his is the result of folklore and the other is the result of anthropology? Sun Yat-sen University simply distributes the resources of folklore equally to the Chinese Department and the Anthropology Department. The Chinese Department always counts the achievements of the Anthropology Department as its "early achievements" when applying for folklore projects every year. Conversely, the anthropology department is the same, and they even want to hire their own teams with high salaries. As for doctoral supervisors in anthropology department, most of them are recruiting doctoral students in folklore. Can teachers and students in this class still distinguish? Don't they also extend the same hand, open the same mouth and bite which side there is cake when they see it?
As long as your research field is mainly in folk culture, whether you are a folklorist or an anthropologist depends mainly on your "self-identity" and "identity". The key is that you have to know a few mainstream scholars in that subject (of course, you have to be known by them), hold more meetings in that subject circle or publish two articles in that subject. As long as you do these two things, even if you are a scholar in that discipline, like Gao, both sides know people, have meetings and publish articles, then both sides recognize him as a scholar in their own discipline and a famous scholar. This amphibious phenomenon of different disciplines is also applicable to a number of famous scholars, such as Jin, Chen Ganglong,,, and so on.