反思「參與觀察」在臺灣漢人宗教田野的運用：一個女性佛教研究者的觀點=Rethinking "Participant Observation" in the Field of Han People's Religious in Taiwan: A Feminist Buddhist Researcher's Point of View
This paper deals with conversations and debates that took place several months after I went back to Taiwa to collect data for my dissertation in July, 1997. These conversations stimulated my refection on academic objectivity. Given my roles as both academic researcher and religious believer, some scholars in Taiwan asked how I could do objective research, since I subjectively embrace a certain religious belief to begin with. At the same time, the very subjects of my research, Buddhist nuns, wondered how, since I am not a nun, I could do research about Buddhist nuns. I stood in-between and attempted to think through the epistemological and methodological implications of these various questions. In this paper I first address the anthropological method of participant observation advocated by the anthropological academy of Taiwan and try to clarify some epistemological questions regarding that method. This will give shape to a discussion of the issues of outsider/insider and self/ other, and specifically in this case how these basic issues relate to the problem of academic objectivity versus academic subjectivity. Later in the essay, I examine the participant observation method in the context of study of Han religions in Taiwan. Based upon my own experiences, I suggest a "retrospective participant observation" method. Finally, I put participant observation in a post-colonial context to discuss the problematic consequences of the social sciences borrowing their standards of objectivity from natural science, instead of working out their own standards of investigative objectivity.
