标题: [邓迪斯]21世纪的民俗学 [打印本页]
作者: Robot 时间: 2010-1-18 19:36 标题: [邓迪斯]21世纪的民俗学
21世纪的民俗学
作者：[美]阿兰·邓迪斯(Alan Dundes) 译者：王曼利 译 / 张举文 校 | 来源：中国民俗学网 发布日期：2009-05-31 |
［摘要］21世纪初的民俗学状况不容乐观：全世界的民俗研究课程被废除或遭到了严重的削弱。阿兰·邓迪斯认为“宏大理论”创新的持续缺乏以及众多给这一领域带来坏名声的业余爱好者是导致民俗学学科衰落的原因。邓迪斯分析学员民俗学水平低下的原因有三方面：一是许多人只阅读坎贝尔的书而对民俗学的其他方面知之甚少，二是知识的缺失，三是民俗资料提供者的胁迫。尽管民俗学现状并不令人乐观，但波罗的海诸国的民俗学活动使他看到了民俗学的希望，民俗学并不是一门逐渐消失的学科。
［关键词］ 民俗学；衰落；宏大理论；坎贝尔
［中图分类号］ K890 ［文献标识码］ A ［文章编号］1008－7214（2007）03－0081－15
全文中译见：
http://www.chinesefolklore.org.cn/web/index.php?NewsID=4980
英文版见：
http://www.chinafolklore.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=4850
作者: Robot 时间: 2010-1-18 19:41
引用:
原帖由 clamstock 于 2010-1-1 22:54 发表 
很值得一看的文章，或许，我们对于中国民俗学的某些忧虑，并非一国独有，而是一种比我们所想象的更为普遍的现象。邓迪斯说，美国民俗学界对于民俗学理论构建几无贡献，反而是民俗学发源地的欧洲，作为民俗理论“倒置性反射”（projective inversion）的最初端，一直保持着对各种民俗现象的阐释力。在这样的批评下，“口头程式理论”，“演述理论”（Porformance Theory）等也未能幸免，被排除于“grand theory”范畴之外。这样清醒、独到的见识，实在难得！ ...
顺便说明一下，俺机器人一枚，在论坛只负责转载文章哦。讨论还得靠大家……
作者: 笛威辛亢 时间: 2010-1-18 21:10
谁喊得动谁去喊，偶是不知道去哪喊滴
作者: 马知遥 时间: 2010-1-19 00:06
是不是再弄个专贴，像前几日喊刘宗迪那样喊喊。。。。。。。。。。
作者: clamstock 时间: 2010-1-19 10:01
偶来鸟！
作者: 王霄冰 时间: 2010-1-19 23:07
别急啊，容大家先看看再说如何？
作者: 笛威辛亢 时间: 2010-1-19 23:18
霄冰JJ都学会设置高亮了哇，很重大的进步。
鼓掌一个（呱唧呱唧）！！！
作者: 王霄冰 时间: 2010-1-20 04:30
多谢鼓励，我还要继续努力
作者: clamstock 时间: 2010-1-21 18:42
是哦，大家先看，再讨论。前天听王杰文师兄说美国民俗学界后来对邓迪斯的grand theory又有所批判，待小可找来，与大家一同分享，再议不迟。
作者: 张润平 时间: 2010-2-2 18:27
作者: 王霄冰 时间: 2010-2-10 07:10 标题: 对邓迪斯“民俗学危机说”的几点疑问
我草草地读了这篇文章，有一个根本的问题没搞清楚：该文作者反复强调的对于民俗学学科的忧虑，到底是对美国民俗学的忧虑，还是对世界民俗学的忧虑？如果是美国的话，又是对美国民俗学在其他学科面前缺少话语权的忧虑，还是美国民俗学失去了在世界民俗学中的霸权地位的忧虑？还有，他所担忧的，到底是狭义民俗学（民间文艺学）的衰落，还是广义民俗学（以日常生活研究为主体的民间文化学）的衰落？
他一会说“21世纪之初的民俗学现状令人感到郁闷不安。全世界的民俗研究生课程被废除或遭到了严重的削弱，一度著名的哥本哈根大学学术课程不再存在，德国为了成为民族学中心而改变了民俗课程的称谓。甚至在赫尔辛基，这个民俗研究的真正麦加，赫尔辛基大学研究生课程的名称也做了改变。”
他一会又说：“美国民俗学者，很大程度上是追随者，而非引导者。”包括他提到的几个学科衰落的原因，如“宏大理论的缺乏”、“专业民俗学者在数量上远远不及给我们的领域带来坏名声的业余爱好者”等等，好像也只涉及美国现象，而不是全球普遍现象。
开篇提到的对于世界民俗学前景的不安，似乎有些耸人听闻。因为他举出的具体例子（全世界、丹麦、德国、芬兰），第一个属泛泛而论，第二个到第三个我们也可以理解为是各有实情，而不是全球民俗学走向衰落的统一标志。比如德国民俗学，通过改名为欧洲人类学之后，非但没有失去原有的价值，反而在所有文化学科中更显重要。
如果邓氏所担心的是美国民俗学的衰落，这倒是有些道理的。因为美国是全世界著名的历史既短又缺乏文化底蕴的国家，在这样的国家研究民俗，首先要想发明“大理论”恐怕并非易事，其次要想在世界上占据领先地位，也是比较困难的。除非美国民俗学真的能够放眼世界，把拉丁美洲诸国也作为自己的研究对象，并和世界其他文化圈的人类民俗展开比较，这样倒有可能真地发明出一些“大理论”，在全世界享有话语权了。当然话说回来，在与现代社会相关的一些话题上，美国民俗学在材料上也可占据优势，如邓氏提到的女性主义，还有网络世界的民俗、外国移民的文化变迁与融合、城市社会民俗等等。
文中引用了很多神话的例子。难免让人感到作者眼中的民俗学，并非广义的、而是狭义的。不过我读邓迪斯的书和文章不多，对他一向来的学术思想并不了解。所以也可能是我冤枉他了。
以上几点浅见，权当砖头先抛出来，盼能引出哪位高人的金口玉言，让鄙人也能跟着学习学习呵。
作者: silver 时间: 2010-2-10 08:06
师弟王杰文在敬文沙龙上提到，后来的美国民俗学界对邓迪斯的“大理论”有批判。
想起曾在JFR网站上看到过一期有关“大理论”讨论的论文目录(2008年)，这里找出来摘录如下：
Contents for Journal of Folklore Research volume 45, number 1
Lee Haring
America's Antitheoretical Folkloristics / 1
Abstract: Articles in this special issue, revised from an American Folklore Society "forum" in October 2005, seek to answer the question "Why is there no 'Grand Theory' in folkloristics?" The collective answer is that American folklorists don't care much for theory: having left behind the past orientation of their predecessors, they prefer to focus on the actualities of vernacular practice. The American conception of folklore moves its professionals away from the abstract towards the concrete--towards situated interaction among human beings. American folklorists are more likely to accept method than theory; their theoretical insights have turned into method. Their master Dell Hymes advocated starting "from community definitions of situation, activity, purpose, genre, and discover[ing] validly the ways in which communicative means are organized in terms of them." That program is method, not theory. Communities do indeed make their own definitions of situation and the rest; so do folklorists, with the result that i's easy to see the point at which "folklore" entered the vocabulary of their community. Attempts to frame an American Grand Theory now encounter the dissolution of folklore as a distinct field of study. Because folklore can't be separated from other human activities, except as a product of one moment in the thinking of a certain interpretive community, the term could well be turned over to traditional artists and those who "interpret their traditions before audiences outside of customary performance contexts."
Gary Alan Fine
The Sweep of Knowledge: The Politics of Grand and Local Theory in Folkloristics / 11
Abstract: Theory creates community in an academic discipline. The concern with generalizations ties scholars together in common projects, establishes networks, creates boundaries, and provides for a disciplinary status with other fields. Theory builds identity, both within and outside knowledge domains. The uncertainty of a self-conscious interest in folkloristic theory, both grand and local, poses political and intellectual challenges for the vitality of our discipline.
Margaret A. Mills
What('s) Theory? / 19
Abstract: Cultural theory is (a) interpretive, even metaphorical, (b) interdependent with method, and (c) developed in dialogue with a discursive community. Interpretive theory should thus be judged not for sovereignty�its power to exclude or preclude other theories�but for aptness: resonance with a knowable meaning system. High/low and local/ grand theorizing are discussed in relation to politics of knowledge.
Richard Bauman
The Philology of the Vernacular / 29
Abstract: I suggest in this essay that the prevailing theoretical orientation of American folklore study might best be identified as the philology of the vernacular. In the course of the essay, I outline the major tenets of this orientation, identify its principal scholarly inflections, and suggest some of its potential implications.
Dorothy Noyes
Humble Theory / 37
Abstract: Folklorists can resolve their theory anxieties by embracing not grand but humble theory. Humble theory informs and is informed by ethnography and practice. It addresses how- rather than why-questions: the middle ground between lived experience and putative transcendent laws. In this zone we can build on our disciplinary legacy.
John W. Roberts
Grand Theory, Nationalism, and American Folklore / 45
Abstract: A difficulty in producing grand theory in folklore study stems from the fact that it is a discipline with many origin narratives deeply influenced by nationalistic imperatives. The influence of nationalism makes it virtually impossible to have a coherent disciplinary project capable of producing grand theory. Although American folklorists have tended to deny nationalism as an influence on their conception of the field, I demonstrate that it has played an important role. This historical denial has led to an apolitical disciplinary project in the United States, one that has failed in its attempts to create theoretical models capable of responding to socio-political changes in the society and the academy.
James R. Dow
There Is No Grand Theory in Germany, and for Good Reason / 55
Abstract: German-speaking folklorists have no single "grand theory" of folklore; indeed a formal "farewell" was taken in 1970. This leave-taking was a result of abuses of Volkskunde during the years of National Socialism, as well as the "no experiments" approach of the postwar years. The rejection of a grand theory has led to a kind of dilettantism in the name of a broader understanding of culture. A recent suggestion would place empirical cultural studies within its historical folkloristic boundaries.
Newton Garver
What Theory Is / 63
Abstract: The word theory covers a multitude of virtues and vices, sometimes counting as knowledge and sometimes contrasting with knowledge. But theory is as important as observation in science. We all take force, gravity, electrons, mass, and continental drift as genuine aspects of reality even though they are theoretical rather than observational (empirical) features. We all also recognize that the concept of luminiferous ether that was generally accepted at the outset of the nineteenth century is a theoretical concept that was discarded because of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The paradigm for scientific theory is Newton's theory of force, which incorporates the two theoretical concepts of force and gravity. Huygens formulated the laws of centrifugal force, Galileo the laws of freely-falling bodies, and Kepler the laws of planetary motion. Newton showed that each was a special case of the general laws of motion. He thereby integrated three apparently disparate fields of mechanics, explained the empirical laws by subsuming them under the general laws of the theory of force, and provided a heuristic model for further explanations. The best theories are explanatory, integrative, and heuristic. Most scholars recognize this paradigm. Nonetheless, theories today are too varied to come under any single rubric. A particular danger in the humanities and social sciences is that explanations there invariably have a moral dimension, raising the specter of moralism hidden in any and every theory. This essay articulates the paradigm and the cautions without attempting to evaluate grand theory in folkloristics.
Kathleen Stewart
Weak Theory in an Unfinished World / 71
Abstract: This article suggests the value of a kind of cultural theory that attends to the cultural poesis of forms of living. Its objects are textures and rhythms, trajectories, and modes of attunement, attachment, and composition. The point is not to judge the value of these objects or to somehow get their representation "right" but to wonder where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already present in them.
Kirin Narayan
"Or in Other Words": Recasting Grand Theory / 83
Abstract: Revisiting C. Wright Mills' portrayal of grand theory in The Sociological Imagination, I extend his insights to reflect on theory more generally. Mills' critique of Talcott Parsons engages both the conceptual substance and rhetorical style of grand theory. I build on Mills to argue for the value of flexibly moving between (1) levels of generality and (2) registers of language, when using theory. Folklorists acquire theory from interactions in fieldwork as well as from disciplinary training and from larger interdisciplinary conversations. These different kinds of theory represent perspectives embedded in social worlds and associated power relations. Setting these different kinds of theory, with their associated viewpoints, into dialogue generates new formulations. Further, while theoretical concepts often form a specialized vocabulary that is a shorthand for the initiated but impenetrable to lay people, the ideas conveyed through this shorthand can usefully be translated, following Mills, into clear and intelligible language.
Charles L. Briggs
Disciplining Folkloristics / 91
Abstract: I explore two "ideological styles" associated with twentieth-century constructions of folkloristics, particularly in the United States. One consists of "boundary-work," in science-studies scholar Thomas Gieryn's terms; quintessentially embodied in the work of Richard Dorson, boundary-work constructs an autonomous discipline that must be defended against amateurs and scholars from other disciplines. A second style, associated with ethnography-of-speaking-folklore and performance approaches, stresses theory in linking folklorists with anthropologists, linguists, and literary scholars and developing new analytic frames. I suggest that theorizing should be construed not as a threat to disciplinary autonomy nor a locus of racial and academic authority but as a means of challenging the Eurocentric underpinnings of folkloristics and developing more creative alternatives through a radical democratic politics of theory that links theorizing the vernacular with vernacular theorizing.
来源：http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/issue.php?issue=v45n1
要读全文就只好去Jstor或Muse Project 下载了。
作者: cfs 时间: 2010-2-12 11:16
The point is not to judge the value of these objects or to somehow get their representation "right" but to wonder where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already present in them.
| 欢迎光临 民俗学论坛-中国民俗学网 (http://chinafolklore.org/forum/) |
Powered by Discuz! 6.0.0 |