Since The publication of Malinovsky's A Strictly Speaking Diary in 1967, the heroic myth surrounding the founder of modern anthropology has been shattered. In this private diary written in Polish, Malinowski goes against the image of an anthropologist who should understand the "other," revealing his indomitable boredom and bitterness when doing fieldwork on small islands in the western Pacific, and even insulting the local natives.
Malinowski's diary not only surprised the world, but then sparked years of debate in anthropology. As the founding father of British functionalist anthropology, Malinowski still encountered "disenchantment" at the beginning of the book Anthropologists and Anthropologists: The English School of the Twentieth Century by the British anthropologist Adam Kuper. When this work on the history of the discipline came out in 1971, it caused an uproar within the anthropological community in the country by exposing the lesser-than-honored side of the founder of the discipline.
Malinovsky (1884–1942)
In Adam Cooper's discourse, Malinowski appears authoritarian and narcissistic, almost "academic", demanding not only that all students be faithful to him, but also that he rejects dissidents and ridicules different points of view. However, in today's view, Adam Cooper's description of the founder of the discipline is not excessive, at most it is a reduction of Malinowski as an ordinary person, not to mention that the book fully affirms his academic achievements.
Introducing his "most cosmopolitan" student body, the London School of Economics and Political Science is Malinowski's home base for students, Adam Cooper mentions the names of Chinese Fei Xiaotong and Francis Hsu.
As a generation of masters of Chinese sociology, Fei Xiaotong is a well-known in the field of humanities and social sciences, almost everyone knows it, and his representative works such as "Jiangcun Economy" and "Native China" are far-reaching. Fei Xiaotong used to call Malinowski "Teacher Ma", and he had introduced his study with Teacher Ma and his understanding of Teacher Ma's academic thought in many articles such as "Staying in England", "Rereading the Preface to "Gangcun Economy", and "After Reading Teacher Ma's Testament "On the Theory of Cultural Dynamics"" and many other articles. In recent years, because of a newly discovered letter from Fei Xiaotong to Malinovsky, the friendship and academic concepts of the two have once again become a hot topic of discussion in the academic circles. (See Chen Xinxin, "A Letter from Fei Xiaotong to Malinowski", in Shuya, No. 8, 2016; Liang Yongjia, "Young Fei Xiaotong Who Intends to Study "Religion", in Wenhui Scholar, February 17, 2017; Wu Jingjian, "The Captain" of Chinese Social Anthropology, published in The Paper, Shanghai Review of Books, March 8, 2019)
Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005)
In contrast, Xu Xuanguang's reputation in China is much weaker. On the one hand, this is because Xu Xuanguang spent most of his life teaching at American universities and had little contact with domestic academic circles; on the other hand, all of his works were first written in English and then translated into Chinese, and only two books, "Americans and Chinese: Comparison of Two Ways of Life" (Huaxia Publishing House, 1989) and "Clan And Caste Club" (Huaxia Publishing House, 1990), were introduced and published by Chinese mainland.
"Xu's name and articles were mentioned many times during the 'cultural fever' of the 1980s, but at that time, his English works were not translated in large quantities, and the most cited ones, except for the one about Chinese and Americans, were probably 'Under the Ancestral Shadow', but what could really be seen was only fragments." The general impression left by Xu Xuanguang to domestic scholars can probably be explained by Ge Zhaoguang's words in "And Borrowing Paper: Selected Reading Diaries".
Born in Liaoning in 1909, Xu Xuanguang studied undergraduate and graduate studies at Hujiang University and Fu Jen University in his early years, and in 1937, he was admitted to the Sino-British Gengzi Compensation Scholarship to study for a doctorate at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom, becoming Fei Xiaotong's disciple (although one year older than Fei), and the two also served as roommates for a year. Regarding Xu Xuanguang's study with Malinowski in Britain, it is recorded in The Marginal Man: Memoirs of Xu Xuanguang (Taipei Nantian Bookstore, 1997):
"The biggest feature of our class in Malinowski was that there were more than thirty people in the class, the doors and windows were closed, everyone smoked, and if I wanted to avoid others smoking, I had to leave the classroom. In order to fight against others smoking, I had to smoke. ”
"In Malinowski's seminar, in addition to the common interest of smoking, he also talked about some fixed laws and concepts in the universe, which aroused my great interest in psychological anthropology, but the basic theorems he talked about, such as the need for food and sex, did not satisfy my curiosity, because at the basic level, man can be said to be indistinguishable from other animals."
"Malinowski was my mentor when I studied in the UK, and a year later he got tired of the wartime situation in Britain and moved to Tulsen, Arizona, USA. ...... Before Malinowski went to the United States, he was insightful and enthusiastic about my research projects, and showed personal concern for me at every turn, so I thought he was the best teacher I had ever met in this life. ”
In the memoirs, Xu Xuanguang also broke the news that there was a "rich old virgin Miss Anderson" in Mr. Ma's seminar class who had always hoped to marry Mr. Ma, and spent a lot of money for it, but Mr. Ma was always unmoved.
Xu Xuanguang (1909-1999)
After obtaining his doctorate, Xu Xuanguang accepted the invitation of his brother Fei Xiaotong and returned to China to work at the "Sociological Field Investigation Workstation" jointly organized by Yunnan University and Yenching University (moved to Kuixing pavilion in 1940 in Chenggong County, a suburb of Kunming, to avoid Japanese air raids). During the "KuiGe" period, Fei Xiaotong was quite satisfied with Xu Xuanguang's research work, but Xu Xuanguang resigned due to personal disagreements with another anthropologist, Tao Yunkui, and moved to Huazhong University in Xizhou Town, Dali Prefecture, to teach, and only returned to Yunda a year later. In the winter of 1943, Xu Xuanguang and his newly married wife visited the United States, and then received a teaching position at Northwestern University in the United States, becoming the first Chinese professor to be formally appointed.
Overseas, Xu has been committed to the comparative study of "large-scale literate societies", and has successively conducted fieldwork in Europe, India, Japan and other places, and published a variety of anthropological monographs. In 1972, Xu Was allowed to visit China as a "foreign guest", and during a visit to the Central Institute for Nationalities, he was able to reunite with his old friend Fei Xiaotong, whom he had not seen for more than 30 years. Regarding the meeting, Xu Xuanguang said in his memoirs: "We laughed about the scenes of teaching Professor Malinowski when we were classmates in London in the past, and later working together at Yunnan University. "This is the last meeting between the two brothers. In 1999, Xu Died in San Francisco, USA. Six years later, Fei Xiaotong died in Beijing. (Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yuyao)