反思窥视法 ———中国乡村民族志中的乡村中心主义与尴尬

文章从明恩溥的＂窥视法＂比喻入手,探讨了中国乡村民族志田野工作中隐含的乡村中心主义与尴尬问题。文章首先讨论了乡村中心主义的持续影响,即农村代表＂真正的＂中国的观点。它将农村和城市割裂开来,并否认农村也有现代日常生活。若承认如今中国农村也出现了现代日常生活,并且普通百姓清楚乡村中心主义和它的对立面（城市中心主义和现代性）,那我们就需要找到合适的研究方法去处理日常生活中乡村主义和现代主义表述的社会用途与纠葛。文章接着论证了＂反思窥视法＂正是一种合适的方法。从笔者在湖北省西南部做田野调查遇到的尴尬入手,笔者认为＂窥视法＂的窘境是一个反思当代中国乡村道德话语与行为日益模糊的好起点。

The Reflective Peephole Method: Ruralism and Awkwardness in the Ethnography of Rural China

Starting from Arthur Smith’s metaphor of the "peephole method",this article explores the issues of ruralism and awkwardness which underlie much ethnographic fieldwork in rural China.In the first part,the continuing influence of ruralism – the idea that the Chinese countryside represents the ’real’ China – is discussed.This idea is based on a radical conceptual separation of the countryside and the city,which denies modern everydayness to the countryside.If we accept that the modern everyday is now present in rural China and that ordinary people are aware of ruralism and its opposites(urbanism and modernity),we need to find research methods suitable to address the entanglement and the social uses of ruralist and modernist representations in everyday life.In the second part of the article,the author argues that the ’reflective peephole method’ could be such a method.Starting from the awkwardness the author felt in his own fieldwork in South-western Hubei Province,he argues that the dilemmas of the ’peephole method’ might be a good starting point to reflect on the intensified ambiguity of moral discourse and action in contemporary rural China.