龚鹏程x科马洛夫｜民族有限公司

龚鹏程对话海外学者第六十八期：在后现代情境中，被技术统治的人类社会，只有强化交谈、重建沟通伦理，才能获得文化新生的力量。这不是谁的理论，而是每个人都应实践的活动。龚鹏程先生遊走世界，并曾主持过“世界汉学研究中心”。我们会陆续推出“龚鹏程对话海外学者”系列文章，请他对话一些学界有意义的灵魂。范围不局限于汉学，会涉及多种学科。以期深山长谷之水，四面而出。

龚鹏程x科马洛夫｜民族有限公司

让·科马洛夫教授（Professor Jean Comaroff）

哈佛大学非洲和非裔美国人研究教授、人类学教授

龚鹏程教授：您好。传统与现代的关系，亚洲有两种方式，一是中国、韩国、新加坡、土耳其这类改革旧体制，走向现代化的；二是日本、泰国、马来西亚这类保留皇室的。非洲的情况，似乎是酋长制与现代资本主义国家相结合。2018年，您编辑了一本名为《习俗的政治:当代非洲的酋长制、资本和国家》的书，内容是关于非洲的酋长制。正如您在书的开头提到的那样，社会学家曾自信地预测，非洲的族长制将消失，取而代之的是民族主义、民主主义和市场经济。然而，此时此刻的未来，却证明并非如此。为什么社会学家如此肯定地认为酋长制会消失，又是什么原因使酋长制一直存在于非洲?

让·科马洛夫教授：龚教授，您好。在自由主义欧洲版本的世界史中，无论是流行的还是学术的，都倾向于认为现代民主政府的出现是一个漫长的过程，从原始的政治制度进化到他们自己的政治制度，前者在非西方社会的“传统权威”政权中仍然很明显。这种发展的愿景，在所谓的“现代化理论”中得到了最明确的阐述，该理论借鉴了社会学家马克斯·韦伯(Max Weber)和塔尔科特·帕森斯(Talcott Parsons)的思想，提出了一个从现代系统逐步过渡到现代国家的模型: 神圣会世俗化、习俗会化为法律、世袭角色会让位于选举职位、部落情感会让位于公民理性。

正如经常被指出的那样，现代化理论支持的是一种过于笼统的、理想化的转型愿景，而不是基于经验，对关于社会制度变化中的不平衡进行论述。然而，尽管受到批评，这一愿景的总体主旨代表了欧洲的常识。而且这种情况一直存在。

殖民主义的人类学家对二十世纪非洲社会的描述，再现了现代化理论的许多假设: 据说这些社会由传统酋长统治，他们的世袭地位因宗教和习俗而得到加强。殖民政权声称要培养一种文明使命，在这种使命中，基督教启蒙、教育和雇佣劳工将引领非洲人进入现代世界秩序——不可避免地使酋长制等制度过时。

但历史却走了另一条路。殖民者培育的采掘性经济依赖于廉价的、种族化的劳动力，他们声称“土著”是落后的，仍然受传统权威的束缚。殖民统治者实际上加强了这些权威的权力，将他们确立为“间接统治”的代理人，利用他们招募工人，征税，并让他们的臣民服从。

事实上，通过这样的潜在“现代化”倡议，实际上是在复制传统。在后殖民时代，随着本土身份的重新确立，传统统治者继续在传统政治中发挥着重要作用。

Liberal European versions of world history, both popular and scholarly, tend to presume that modern democratic government was the culmination of a lengthy process of evolution from primitive political systems to their own, the former still evident in regimes of “traditional authority” in non-Western societies. This vision of development was most explicitly spelled out in so-called “modernization theory,” which drew on the ideas of sociologists Max Weber and Talcott Parsons to posit a model of progressive transition from pre-modern systems to the modern state: the sacred would become secular, custom would become law, hereditary roles would give way to elective offices, and tribal sentiments to civic reason As often noted, modernization theory espoused an over-general, idealized vision of transformation rather than an empirically-grounded account of the uneven ways in which social systems change. Yet despite critique, the general thrust of this vision represented European common sense. And it has persisted.

The descriptions of twentieth-century African societies provided by colonial anthropologists reproduced many of the assumptions of modernization theory: those societies were said to be governed by traditional chiefs, their hereditary positions reinforced by religion and custom. Colonial regimes claimed to be fostering a civilizing mission in which Christian enlightenment, schooling, and wage labor would usher Africans into the modern world order -- inevitably rendering institutions like chiefship obsolete. But history took a different course. The extractive economies fostered by colonizers depended on cheap, racialized labor, and on the claim that the “natives” were backward, still in thrall to customary authorities. Colonial rulers actually reinforced the power of those authorities by establishing them as agents of “indirect rule,” using them to recruit workers, collect taxes, and generally keep their subjects in line. In fact, by so doing, would-be ‘modernizing’ initiatives actually reproduced tradition. And in postcolonial times, as indigenous identities have been revalorized, customary rulers have continued played a significant role in the politics of custom.

龚鹏程教授：2012年，您出版了《来自南半球的理论:或者，欧美如何向非洲发展》一书。从何种意义上来说，欧美正在向非洲发展?

让·科马洛夫教授：这个标题有几分“半开玩笑”，但也只是部分玩笑。它旨在打破那种假定现代性“首先发生在欧洲，然后是其他地方”的进化思维。这当然不是在暗示今天的“欧洲文明”将处境恶化，向顽固地未能实现“现代化”的非洲大陆倒退。

我们认为，欧美国家和南半球国家都陷入了同样的世界历史进程，比如全球化、放松管制和市场化等。在这种情况下，所有国家都变得越来越相似，但南半球往往比北半球更早感受到全球影响。

这在历史和地缘政治上都有充分的理由，很大程度上与殖民主义的遗产有关。因此，曾经的边缘地带正在成为新前沿，在这里，具有全球竞争力的流动资本可以找到监管最低的区域来转移其业务;在这里，民主被威权主义和/或技术官僚削弱，而资本主义繁荣。在这里，工业制造业为自己开辟了成本效益更高的场所。

在这里，灵活的非正规经济也长期蓬勃发展，在2008年和新冠肺炎之后，也已成为北半球的“新常态”。在南半球，当代资本的“先进”之处在于正在尝试新的法律和监管形式、更密集的提取和积累模式以及新型知识产权。

简而言之，地球上一些最具创新力的经济体现在位于南方，这也是当代资本主义的驱动力。印度和非洲等地的年轻人口处于新兴市场的前沿。新的亚非贸易和发展东西轴线正在取代新殖民主义的南北轴线，改变了公认的全球核心和边缘地区的地理格局。

而且，与之相辅相成的是，北方现在正在发展以前与后/殖民世界相关的特征：经济增长下降、劳动力市场不安全、工资下降、中产阶级脆弱、种族冲突、基础设施衰落、国家衰弱、选举有争议、和财阀政府。

我们开始看到美国的公共知识分子出版诸如《第三世界美国》（赫芬顿）之类的书籍。这并不意味着现代性“演变”的空间逻辑被颠倒了；但资本主义运作规模的变化打乱了北方垄断全球财富生产和传播世界文明从欧洲演进的霸权观点的能力。

This title is partly ‘tongue in cheek,’ but only partly. It is meant to disrupt the kind of evolutionary thinking which presumes that modernity happens “first in Europe, then elsewhere.” It certainly isnot meant to imply that ‘European civilization’ today is going to hell in a handbasket, devolving backwards towards Africa, as a continent that has stubbornly failed to ‘modernize.’ We argue that the countries of Euro-America and the Global South are all caught up in the same world-historical processes, processes like globalization, deregulation, and marketization. Under these conditions, all are becoming more alike, but the South tends to feel the world-wide effects before the Global North. There are good reasons for this, both historical and geopolitical, related largely to the legacies of colonialism. As a consequence, old margins are becoming new frontiers, places where mobile, globally competitive capital finds minimally regulated zones to relocate its operations; where capitalism flourishes as democracy is diminished by authoritarianism and/or technocracy. Here industrial manufacture opens up more cost-efficient sites for itself. Here, also, flexible informal economies have long thrived and -- post 2008 and COVID – have become the “new normal” in the North as well. In the South, the “advanced” edges of contemporary capital are experimenting with new legal and regulatory forms, more intensive modes of extraction and accumulation, and new kinds intellectual property.

In short, some of the most innovative economies on the planet are now located in the South, as is the driving impulse of much contemporary capitalism. Youthful populations in places like India and Africa are at the forefront of emerging markets. A new East-West axis of Asian-African trade and development is replacing the neocolonial axis of North and South, altering received global geographies of core-and-periphery. And, in complementary fashion, the North is now developing characteristics formerly associated with the post/colonial world: declining economic growth, insecure labor markets, falling wages, fragile middle classes, ethno-racial conflict, decaying infrastructure, weakened states, disputed elections, and plutocratic government. We are beginning to see public intellectuals in the USA publish books with titles like Third World America (Huffington)3. This does NOT mean that the spatial logic of the modernity’s ‘evolution’ has been reversed; but the changing scale of capitalist operations has disrupted the ability of the North to monopolize the global production of wealth and propagate a hegemonic view of the evolution of civilization from Europe to the world.

龚鹏程教授：最近您编撰了《种族、商品、企业》一书。您所说的种族合并和商品化，分别指的是什么？您能举一些例子吗?

让·科马洛夫教授：“种族”是一个被广泛使用的术语，但很难被准确定义。著名的社会学家马克斯·韦伯（Max Weber）发现这是个很模糊的概念，与阶级或亲属关系不同，它被赋予了主观信仰和身份。

尽管如此，当文化与原始联系相遇时，种族通常蕴含了各种在世的存在，它已日益成为现代世界晚期一个重要的社会类别。作为一种根植于集体认同的根深蒂固的情感，人们为此而战，有时甚至准备为之而牺牲。直到最近，关于种族的关键分析辩论，在于它是否源于“原始”——甚至是遗传——身份，还是共同历史和环境下的产物。

在《民族有限公司》一书中，我和约翰·科马罗夫（John Comaroff）认为，在20世纪末的世界各地，我们一直在见证文化身份的产生和意识的转变。

这源于民族认同和文化制品与市场力量的日益联系，以及民族群体倾向于将他们共同拥有的物质和非物质遗产视为一种集体所有、共同财产的形式。虽然民族商品在过去经常被推销，但它们越来越被视为品牌商品，如Shipibo萨满疗法、Me-Wuk美洲原住民赌场赌博、斐济水、科伊桑茶或祖鲁珠饰。

这种转变涉及两个相互关联的过程:身份的整合和文化的商品化。

第一个，是指那些出售其文化身份的人倾向于将自己转变为一种或另一种财产控股公司的事实。第二个，是文化的商品化:民族习俗和产品成为具有交换价值的物品，旨在唤起消费者的欲望。

然而，民族商品是奇怪的存在：它们可能越来越多地被出售，但很少被轻易地异化。民族商品营销与身份意识是相辅相成的：文化产品通常不会因为出售而被贬值，而对于出售它们的人来说，文化制品的价值往往因以下事实而提高——它们不再是边缘化的标志，而是被视为民族艺术。

“Ethnicity” is a term widely used, but difficult to pin down. Sociologist Max Weber famously found the concept slippery and vested in subjective beliefs and identities, unlike class, or kinship. Nevertheless ethnicity, which generally implies the kind of being- in-the-world that emerges when culture meets primal connectedness, has increasingly become a significant social category in the late modern world. As a deep-seated sentiment rooted in collective identity, it is something people fight wars over and are sometimes prepared to die for. Until recently, the key analytical debate about ethnicity was whether it arose from “primordial” – even genetic – identity or is a product of shared history and circumstance.

In the bookEthnicity, Inc. John Comaroff and I argue that, across the world in the late twentieth-century, we have been witnessing a shift in the production and consciousness of identity-as-culture. This stems from the increasing engagement of ethnic identities and cultural artifacts with market forces, and the tendency of ethnic groups to view their shared heritage, both material and intangible as a collective possession, a form of joint property. While ethnic goods have often been marketed in the past, they are increasingly being seen as branded commodities, as in Shipibo shamanic healing, Me-Wuk Native American casino gambling, Fiji water, Khoisan tea, or Zulu beadwork) This transformation involves two interrelated processes: the incorporation of identity and the commodification of culture. The first refers to the fact that with those selling their cultural identity tend to transform themselves into property holding companies of one kind or anothe; hence “Ethnicity, Inc. The second, related process is the commodification of culture: ethnic practices and products become objects with exchange value, designed to evoking consumer desire. Yet ethnic commodities are queer things: they may increasingly be for sale but are seldom simply alienated. Ethnic commodity marketing and identity consciousness enhance each other: rather than being cheapened by being sold, cultural artifacts are often enhanced in value for those who vend them by the fact that – rather than being markers of marginality, they become valued as ethnic art.

龚鹏程教授：您在 60 年代种族隔离时期在南非开普敦大学学习人类学。在种族隔离制度下长大，对您的职业生涯和人类学家的工作有何影响？

让·科马洛夫教授：在种族隔离制度下长大，深刻地影响了我的生活和工作。

我的父母出生在南非，1930 年代曾在英国工作，并在欧洲度过了二战——我的父亲在英国陆军医疗队任职，我的母亲在伦敦大轰炸期间在伦敦担任社会工作者。

1940年代末，他们回到了我长大的南非，在 1948 年国民党选举和种族隔离正式出现之前，定居在伊丽莎白港（现在的 Gqeberha）。

他们有着自由主义的政治观点，而我的母亲，一名家庭主妇，对随后加剧的的种族不平等深感不安。她和伊丽莎白港的一群妇女与非洲同行合作，在所谓的城市边缘乡镇中解决黑人儿童的需求。她让我意识到种族隔离对日常生活的潜在影响，从空间政治和学校课程，再到劳动力市场和预期寿命等方方面面。她还使我意识到非洲语言和文化的活力，以及黑人教会和非洲民族主义抵抗的坚韧力量。

在开普敦大学，人类学家莫妮卡·威尔逊(Monica Wilson)等导师加强了这种这种宣传。她在东开普省的非洲人口中长大，是一位传教士的女儿。在这所白人专设的学院里，她是为数不多的几位学者之一，挑战绝大多数教学中以欧洲为中心的焦点，并向学生灌输了对丰富的非洲中心知识的强烈尊重。她坚信他们将南非多数人口的世界理解为对征服的反应，并让我去伦敦经济学院攻读博士学位，在那里我从事南非克理奥尔化的非洲教会的研究——以《圣经》为解放福音为中心。

Coming of age under apartheid profoundly affected my life and work. My South African-born parents had worked in the UK in the 1930's and spent WW2 in Europe – my father in the British Army Medical Corps, my mother as a social worker in London during the Blitz. They returned to South Africa, where I was raised, in the late 1940's, settling in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) just before the election of the Nationalist Party in 1948 and the advent of formal apartheid. They were liberal in their political views and my mother, a homemaker, was deeply disturbed by the intensification of racial inequality that followed. She and a group of women in Port Elizabeth collaborated with African counterparts to address the needs of black children in so-called townships on the fringes of the city. She made me aware of the insidious effects of segregation on ordinary existence, on everything from the politics of space and school curricula to the profile of the labor market and life expectancy. She also made me alive to the vitality of African language and culture, and the resilient power of the black church and African nationalist resistance.

This sensitization was reenforced at University of Cape Town by mentors like the anthropologist, Monica Wilson, who had grown up as a missionary’s daughter amidst the African populations of the Eastern Cape. She was one of the few scholars in a Whites-Only institution who challenged the overwhelmingly Eurocentric focus of most instruction and instilled a keen respect for the richness of Afrocentric knowledge in her students. She insisted that they understood the world of South Africa’s majority population as aReaction to Conquest,1 and set me on course for doctoral study at the London School of Economics, where I was to undertake research on the creolized African churches in South Africa – centered on the Bible as a gospel of liberation.

龚鹏程x科马洛夫｜民族有限公司