My research has two dimensions, the study of Taiwan’s political economy and the theoretical exploration of the concept of shentigan (身體感, perceptual categories). The former began with my dissertation research on Taiwan’s night markets, which examined the development of the political economy, characteristics of Taiwan’s economic organizations, and night marketing systems. Working from the theoretical perspective of an informal sector, that research asked why night markets have flourished across Taiwan, to become representative of Taiwan’s native culture and ascend to one of the key tourist attractions in urban centers. Recently I returned to my night market research to examine changes in that sector over these twenty years.
My involvement in developing the concept of shentigan began from personal experience. After finishing the first draft of my dissertation and waiting for my professors’ comments, I had a chance to take part in a meditation retreat. This seven-day retreat brought me a deep realization of how bodily cultivation and the transformation of consciousness were related to religion. Since the Thematic Research Program’s “Qi, Culture, and Traditional Medicine: Collaboration among Disciplines,” organized by academician Li Yih-Yuan in IOE, was looking for a PI for one of its subprojects at that time, I was invited to join. This project opened the door to my twenty-year engagement with the notion of shentigan. Qi is a key concept and sensation in traditional Chinese medicine and the everyday lives of Taiwanese and Chinese people. From the perspective of cognition, qi is a category of bodily experience—as is “up” and “down,” “high” and “low,” “cute” and “ugly,” or “sacred” and “profane.” They are the focuses or ways of how we sense the world, or to put it differently, they are how we categorize sensory information to make sense of our inner and outer worlds. I have adopted Shigehisa Kuriyama’s term, shentigan, to name the categories and have integrated findings in neuroscience and cognitive science, along with ideas of sensory anthropology, to develop the theory of shentigan.
“Shentigan” is not a common Chinese or Taiwanese term. My choice of a term that has no ready English translation symbolizes a new intent: I hope to develop shentigan into a theoretical approach having paradigmatic meaning by which one can explore new topics and discover new perspectives for socio-cultural or historical research. I do not follow the ideas of sensory anthropology, but instead have been working to formulate a new theory, because my in-depth literature reviews in neuroscience, cognition, and the physiology of senses all point to the following conclusions: (1) it is problematic to take individual senses as units of study; (2) sensory information begins to interact and integrate before it informs perception, i.e., perception does not come from processing information of individual senses, but from information already integrated among them; (3) categorization plays a key role in the process of perception; (4) rather than merely passively processing sensory information received, perception is active; perception is action. Perception results from our actively engaging the world around us and from our categorizing sensory information acquired from those explorations. Shentigan categories hence serve as an interface that allows us to understand how both searching and categorizing are done and how both acquire cultural characteristics that shape the ways we sense the world.
To develop this shentigan theory, I have engaged with a few research topics and types of fieldwork: “Qi and Meditation,” “The Sense of Comfort and Consumption of Antique Furniture in Modern Taiwan,” “The Taste of Aged Puer Tea and Its Globalization,” “Qingxiang (清香, fresh and fragrant) Taste and Taiwan’s High-Mountain Tea,” and “Everyday Modernity among Yunnan Tibetans.” I hope these projects will demonstrate the theoretical potential of the shentigan approach.
筆者從2003年起開始發展「身體感」的研究取向，身體感的分析概念由筆者先前於慈溪道場禪坐與斷食的實踐探討食物冷熱及認知的關係發展而來，筆者認為冷熱的身體經驗與文化概念之間有非常值得探究的關係，而此關係的深入將有助於我們重新思考過去過於重視心的層次之文化理論的課題。「身體感」這個理論分析概念的提出和近年頗受到強調之感官人類學的發展有密切的關係。筆者認為感官人類學多聚焦於單一的感官，且常以西方社會從文藝復興以來強調視覺的現象為主要的理論議題，而難以處理一些無法歸納於西方五官的分類（如中國文化的氣感及虛、實、補、洩的感覺）或綜合多重感官（如潔淨的感覺即可能結合視覺、觸覺與嗅覺）的身體經驗，且出現議題過分集中於單一課題，並少與人類學文化理論直接對話的問題。筆者認為從「身體感」（在此定義為：「身體作為經驗的主體以感知體內與體外世界的知覺項目」）出發，除了可以讓我們對身體經驗的文化現象做更全面的研究，更容許我們從感官的訊息如何與文化的隱喻 (metaphors) 結合，來探討身體經驗如何形成文化意涵的基礎，並呈現於人類學家過去常討論之神聖/世俗、正式/非正式、具價值高/不具價值、純潔/危險、陰/陽、奢侈/樸素、優雅/粗俗、熱鬧/冷清、冷/熱、清/濁、虛/補等認知的項目 (categories)。也就是說，在這些過去以「心」的範疇處理之文化認知概念，若被放在身體感知的面向重新審視，皆可發現其過去未曾受到注意之身體經驗的面向，及這些身體經驗的焦點所形成之體系性關係，因而身體感的研究可與人類學象徵、認知的研究接軌，且可以有密切的對話。另一方面，筆者也強調身體感的社會學研究方向，當某些身體感（如潔淨感、舒適感）在歷史的發展過程中開始成形（established），成為社會的標準，它們也開始擁有獨立的生命，影響物質科技（如洗衣機、清潔劑、及空調）的發展，更對我們的日常生活有深遠的影響，如此也容許我們從身體感的社會生命史論及政治經濟的現象。筆者目前主要致力於三個方面的研究：（1）發展「身體感」這個理論性概念與研究取向；（2）將身體感研究取向應用在台灣陳年普洱茶的消費風潮之研究；（3）雲南迪慶地區藏族的田野，探討藏族家屋與家具的舒適感。
身體感研究概念的提出並引起民族所「醫療與身體經驗」研究群成員的興趣，於2004年一同撰寫兩個整合型計畫，分別以「感同『身』受：日常生活與身體感的文化研究」及「感官經驗與中國傳統醫學」申請中研院主題計畫與蔣經國基金會，並獲得通過。計畫已經於2007年執行結束，第一份研究成果《體物入微》論文集已經通過審查，清華大學出版社將於2008年出版。
【未來研究方向】
筆者於未來幾年仍將致力於身體感的研究。一方面將過去三年計畫執行期間累積的資料寫成論文出版，另一方面筆者仍將延續雲南藏族及普洱茶消費現象的研究，於後者，筆者計畫將觸角從研究台灣90年代中期興起的普洱消費風潮延伸到受台灣影響之香港、韓國與雲南，從身體感（在此為陳年的風味）的方向探討全球化的議題並進一步追溯普洱茶及普洱之「陳韻」的社會生命史，以說明身體感之研究的意義。