Culture to success or to invent? Cultural awareness in today’s anthropological study

誰が如何に文化を語っているか : 文化人類学の文化認識の現在

Culture to success or to invent? Cultural awareness in today’s anthropological study

Creators Zhang Yuling

Anthropology started in the early 20 century as a study targeting “barbarous people”. Based on a perspective of cultural relativism, anthropology has succeeded in presenting a relative viewpoint and distinctive way to describe the people living in the non-Western world and to criticize the knowledge of the West. Because of its historical limitation that it developed with the expansion of the Western countries’ colonial occupation of the world, particularly colonial occupations collapsed one after another after WWⅡ, anthropology was subjected to harsh criticism from inside and outside academia and driven into an unprecedented introspection. Discussions about the research methods and positions of the anthropologists, as well as reviews of the concept of culture, which has been one of the keywords of anthropology have continued. Anthropology has been required to self-innovate to face these new challenges. Based on a review of cultural criticisms related to anthropology so far, this paper discusses the stance that anthropologists should take and the concept of culture by analyzing two case studies about the succession and practical use of Chinese culture by ethnic Chinese in Japan.

[ISSN]2189-4825