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Introduction
Anthropology originated in the mid-nineteenth century through the observation of so-called “primitive” societies in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania and subsequently entered a developmental phase inspired by the methodologies of other disciplines. The newly acquired field data from the 1950s and 1960s, along with their analysis, revealed that the basic concepts and theoretical frameworks proposed by applying previous methodologies were disappointing and lacked the expected explanatory power they should have had as universal theoretical tools. The serious setback experienced by anthropology in the early 1970s appeared to occur during theoretical endeavours; in essence, the root of its crisis stemmed from the then-prevailing epistemological framework in anthropology. However, this was not the first epistemological crisis in anthropology’s history.
The development of anthropology has witnessed various theoretical approaches, including evolutionism, diffusionism, functionalism, structural functionalism, structuralism, and interpretive anthropology. The crisis of what may be termed the “structural anthropological trend” (although no scholar has ever explicitly defined structuralism) and interpretive anthropology (Geertz 1973) differs from previous crises in one striking way: not only were distinguished anthropological scholars thoroughly questioning previously established theories, examining various disciplinary dilemmas, and seeking new methodologies—as evidenced in Rodney Needham’s and David Schneider’s insightful and rigorous analyses—but textual scholars who had previously benefited from structural anthropology also joined this epistemological critique, launching challenges to ethnographic reliability from multiple perspectives. While scholars from other disciplines had occasionally engaged with anthropological debates on specific issues (such as Needham’s debate with philosopher Ernest Gellner on kinship), this time, the very foundation of anthropological authority—ethnography itself—came under direct cross-examination.
Decades have passed, and, for many scholars, the controversy has long subsided. However, some collective works dealing with the feasibility of ethnography continue to affirm James Clifford’s critiques. Les politiques de l’enquête. Epreuves ethnographiques (Fassin and Bensa 2008), for example, in citing Michel Foucault’s question, “Can we access truth without putting at stake the very being of the subject who accesses it?,” concludes that “Ethnographic truth is neither absolute nor final—this is the necessary price it must pay (Foucault 2001).’’ What is more, in January 2013, a French journal, L’Homme (Naepels 2012), has even returned to James Clifford’s topic in the form of a special issue by revisiting the categories of “subjectivity” (subjectivité) and “intersubjectivity” (intersubjectivité), as...