Marshall M
Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242.
J Subst Abuse. 1990;2(3):353-67. doi: 10.1016/s0899-3289(10)80007-0.
A controversy that has continued over the past 5 years concerning whether ethnographic studies of alcohol systematically "deflate" alcohol-related problems is discussed and critiqued. This debate harbors some fundamentally significant matters that have important implications for the future of alcohol and culture studies. These matters concern the epistemological basis of ethnography, and the reliability of ethnographic research methods. Drawing upon data from Truk, Federated States of Micronesia, these issues are explored in detail. It is suggested that the presence or absence of "alcohol problems" in ethnographic accounts is largely a result of particular interpretations made at specific historical moments in the changing, open-ended systems that anthropologists study. It is concluded that by alerting us to likely biases in the ethnographic record, Room has performed a signal service to the anthropology of alcohol.
本文讨论并批判了过去五年来一直存在的一个争议，即关于酒精的人种志研究是否系统性地“淡化”了与酒精相关的问题。这场辩论包含了一些具有根本重要性的问题，这些问题对酒精与文化研究的未来具有重要影响。这些问题涉及人种志的认识论基础以及人种志研究方法的可靠性。利用来自密克罗尼西亚联邦特鲁克的数据，对这些问题进行了详细探讨。研究表明，人种志记录中“酒精问题”的存在与否很大程度上是人类学家所研究的不断变化、开放式系统中特定历史时刻所作特定解释的结果。研究得出结论，通过提醒我们注意人种志记录中可能存在的偏见，鲁姆为酒精人类学做出了重要贡献。
