Myths And Legends - On The Anthropology And Cultural Evolution Of The Writing Paradigm

The dissertation tries to make a study on cultural writing of anthropology, that is, the writing of ethnographic text.Since Malinowski initiated the realistic ethnography, cultural writing of anthropology has been regarded as an objective and scientific description of culture. The convention has continued in cultural writing of anthropology. Most of the earlier works were written in the convention. Most of the young scholars and graduates of anthropology are still writing in this way, which should not exist nowadays.The 1960s witnessed the interpretive anthropology represented by Clifford Geertz, which was to reflect on ethnographic fieldwork and writing. In the 80s, and started the prelude of postmodernism in anthropology. The anthropologists began to explore the issue of how to write culture. According to George Marcus and Dick Cushman in the introduction of Ethnographies as Texts, the anthropologists began to be concerned with ethnographic writing at length, which has long been neglected.How to write culture is not only an issue of writing style, but also a matter of methodology. The dissertation aims at exploring the nature of ethnography and questioning "the science of culture" through an inquiry on the development of ethnographic writing. It points out that since ethnography is writing, there should not be any paradigm for it. A true anthropologist is supposed to be a writer at the same time.The dissertation divides the history of ethnography into three phases, the realistic ethnography, modernist ethnography and postmodern ethnography with a narration of different theoretical orientations in different phases. From the interpretive anthropology to postmodernism in the 80s, the nature of science of anthropology has been questioned. Anthropology was no longer scientific, but had a strong sense of literature.The first part outlines the ethnographic writing in the west.Chapter 1 explains the characteristics of the realistic ethnography and, with a review of Argonauts of the Western Pacific, demonstrates that realistic ethnography is not fully objective description, because the self is embodied, which is Malinowski himself. Since the self exists in the text, it cannot be said to be purely scientific. The so-called science of culture is but a realistic fiction.Chapter 2 portrays the interpretive anthropology and the "thick description", which supplies a general model for modernist ethnography. Since then, the method of ethnography has been transferred from the cramming of social facts to the interpretation and communication of symbolic meanings.Chapter 3 talks about the "literary turn" and "subjective truth" raised by postmodernist anthropology and other postmodernist theories with a narration of main ideas of Writing Culture and argument on its important significance to cultural writing. It also comments on After Writing Culture.The second part intends to make a text analysis of some creative anthropologicalworks written by Chinese scholars, including Gold Wings, Silver Wings, Memories of the Temple, The Spiral Road, and Flow of Gifts, all of which have made breakthrough on the conventional way of ethnographic writing in different styles.Chapter 4 analyzes the fictional style of Gold Wings, positioned somewhere between literary creation and anthropological research with a combination a truth in literary sense and truth in anthropological sense.Chapter 5 concerns the writing system of Silver Wings, a combination of different writing styles with some touches of postmodernist ideas in anthropology.Chapter 6 explores the literary genre of The Spiral Road, which takes the personal history as the main thread. The story tells the fate of a group of people and describes a vivid picture on the cultural background. There is no parallel in the ethnographies before.Chapter 7 presents a close reading of Memories of the Temple, which tells a story in the memories of Dachuan people in application of symbols and metaphors. In the...