費孝通 人類學의 방법론적 검토: <江村經濟> 정독하기

Abstract

금년(2010년, 본고를 작성한 해)은 페이샤오퉁(費孝通) 선생(1910.11. 2~2005. 4. 24, 이하 경우에 따라서 페이 선생으로 표기)께서 탄생하신지 꼭 백년이 되는 해다. 인류학이란 학문의 걸출한 조상에 대해서

언급한다는 것 자체가 하나의 역사적 기록이 될 것이라고 믿어마지 않으면서, 나는 페이 선생께서 남긴 족적의 일부에 대하여 논하고자 한다. 대학자의 인생과 업적에 대해서 낭만적인 칭송만을 일삼는 것은 그러한 의도 자체가 하나의 비례일 뿐만 아니라 학문상의 발전에 전혀 도움이 되지 않기에 충분하다. 칭송과 찬양일변도의 분위기는 학문 발전을 위한 건강한 비판정신을 잠재울 수 있다는 점에서 더욱더 경계해야 할 위험요소라고 생각한다. 페이 선생 탄신 백주년을 맞은 중국인류학계의 분위기가 대체로 페이샤오퉁 칭송에 몰두하고 있다는 점을 감득한 나는 오히려 모골이 송연해지는 감을 떨칠 수가 없다.

This paper aims at analyzing Dr. Fei Xiao-tong's <Peasant Life

in China> in terms of methodology in anthropology. The monograph

was based on his doctoral dissertation (1938) under Bronislaw

Malinowski at London School of Economics.

First of all, I like to point out his idea of the indigenous

anthropology which seems not to be an appropriate terminology in

contemporary sense. His motivation to write the book was initiated

to solve social problems in reality in a Chinese community. This

attitude can be termed as practical anthropology of which

Malinowski tried to do that under the colonial situation. All most

all of ethnographies done by social anthropologists were dealing with

so-called primitive or savage societies while Fei did it a Chinese

peasant community. This should be acknowledged as a complete new phase of doing anthropology by Fei since that time.

Secondly, Fei's contribution can be claimed as community studies

which was another movement of new fashion in 1930s in

anthropology. At that time, Chicago school in anthropology

including Robert Redfield, Radcliffe-Brown, Lloyd Warner, and

Robert Park (sociologist) initiated community studies. One of

Radcliffe-Brown's students at University of Chicago, John F.

Embree (1908-1950), did the same style of research in a Japanese

village named <Suye Mura> (1939) and published a monography at

the same year of which Fei's <Peasant Life in China> (1939) came

out. In this sense, Fei's ethnographic monograph should be

considered as one of leading cases in terms of the community studies

in the process of anthropological development.

Thirdly, and last, there was a strong trend that social

anthropologists mostly worked in the primitive societies

characterized without the literate tradition. Anthropologists like

Malinowski and Raymond Firth were almost naturally accustomed

to this condition of nonliteracy and no one had ever raised the

question of anthropological fieldwork based on the issue of time and

history. Generally speaking, Chinese communities that Fei's

monograph was based on the long history of the literate tradition

could not almost generically be understood without the sense of

history. This is the problem of different kind of the pre-conditioned

context in doing ethnography from the primitive societies. Fei

followed the Malinowskian way of writing ethnography and the

Trobriand model never thought about this issue of nonliteracy.

Malinowski acknowledged this problem when he read Fei's monograph and overtly and intentionally wrote this issue of dealing

with time and history in his introduction for Fei's ethnography.

However, Fei has never paid attention to his mentor's advice on.

East Asian societies including China have long taken the history of

the literate tradition.

There could be a question: how could we deal with the literate

legacy within anthropological ethnography in the future? This seems

to be the problem for the East Asian anthropologists to struggle

within the East Asian context to contribute and to remake the

anthropological community in the world. Anthropology can be

reinvented with this question in the future.