The Third Eye

Abstract

■ China is a vast country. Ethnic minority nationalities ( shaoshu minzu) located in different parts of the Chinese nation could have provided possibilities for the majority Han Chinese anthropologists to imagine `internal others'. Even among the Han, social life does not follow a uniform pattern: it includes great regional cultural diversities that could have allowed fieldworking anthropologists to develop their own arguments about cultural difference. However, throughout the 20th century, such internal differences have not been treated as a reflexive and contrasting mirror of the national Han Self. On the contrary, anthropological interpretations have been institutionally determined to favor official political projects of national revitalization ( minzu zhenxing). Are the perspectives of characteristically `native' — in this case Chinese — anthropology not creating some intellectual pitfalls that anthropologists in many parts of the world have attributed chiefly to the `West' and its orientalism? This article sets out to develop an answer, by way of a broad overview of the history of 20th century Chinese anthropology. It questions the nativistic characteristics of Chinese anthropology and raises issues about the development of a `natives' own scholarship'. By so doing, it also implies a reflection on postcolonialist critiques of anthropological disciplines as well as a hope for a liberal anthropological critique which the author defines in terms of `the third eye'.

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