Reconsidering "Modernity" from an Ethnological Point of View : An Analysis of Ethnographic Photo-Archives

这项国际联合研究旨在通过大英博物馆和大阪国家民族学博物馆的民族志照片档案，追踪世界各国人民生活的历史变迁，并描述过去150年来西方和日本人持有的其他文化的图像变化。建立了一个兼容的图像数据库，并由两个研究所共享。基于数据库的联合研究结果如下：第一，重建了各民族，特别是非洲和大洋洲各民族生活的变化过程；大英博物馆的照片档案馆在这两个地区收集的图像最多；第二，通过对不同地区和不同时代照片的比较研究，阐明了全球现代化的细节。我们甚至可以确定一些共同的文化元素，这些元素巧合地被全世界接受为现代化的象征。这些发现促使我们重新思考西方与非西方、现代与传统、变化与变化之间的传统划分。第三，对19世纪中叶以来民族学对其他文化认识的变化也进行了解释。值得注意的是，民族志照片表达方式的变化与民族学/人类学理论的发展是同步的，总的来说，联合研究项目的主要目的--民族学/人类学历史化--已经完全实现。该项目的一些成果已经以纪念国家民族学博物馆开馆20周年的特别展览“其他文化的图像”以及同名目录的形式进行了宣传。

This international joint research aims to trace the historical transformation of the life of peoples of the world and to describe the changes of images other cultures held by the West and the Japanese during the last 150 years by means of ethnographic photo-archives of the British museum and the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. A compatible image detabase was constructed and shared by the two institutes. The results of the joint research based on the data base can be summarized as follows.First, processes of transformation of the life of various ethnic groups, especially of Africa and Oceania, have been reconstructed ; the British Museum's photo-archives have the strongest collection of images as for these two regions.Second, as a result of comparative studies of photographs of diferent regions and ages, detail aspects of global modernization have been clarified. We could even identified several common cultural elements which have been accepted coincidentally throughout the world as symbols of modernization. These findings urge us to reconsider the conventional divisions between the West and the Non-West, the modern and the traditional, and the changing and the changeless.Third, the changes of ethnological recognition of 'other cultures' since the middle of 19th century have also been explicated. It was quite a revelation that the changes of the expressive way of ethnographic photographs parallel the development of ethnological/anthropological theories.As a whole, the major purpose of the joint research project, that is to historicize ethnology/anthropology has fully been accomplished. Some of the results of the project have already been publicized in the form of the special exhibition 'Images of Other Cultures' which marked the 20th anniversary of the opening of the National Museum of Ethnology, as well as in the catalog of the same title.