Revealing complexity in the world—but also creating it—is at the heart of anthropology. It shapes our engagement with theory and ethics, writing and visual style, and choice of research subjects. But does it create blind spots? I respond to this question by discussing studies of violence, and my ethnographic material in progress on British ex-soldiers. Owing to the ethical norm of suspending moral judgment of our research participants, we tend to avoid portraying their unlikable traits, internal contradictions, or troubling actions that do not advance our arguments. Ethnography often reveals florid complexity in structures or systems, but it creates simpler depictions of the people who inhabit these forms. Yet, since anthropology has long aimed to holistically capture the truth of social life, it should allow more space in ethnographic narrative for complicated protagonists.

中文翻译：

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人类学和复杂的人

揭示世界的复杂性并创造世界的复杂性是人类学的核心。它塑造了我们对理论和伦理、写作和视觉风格以及研究主题的选择的参与。但这会造成盲点吗？我通过讨论暴力研究以及我正在进行的关于英国前士兵的民族志材料来回答这个问题。由于对研究参与者悬置道德判断的道德规范，我们倾向于避免描绘他们不讨人喜欢的特征、内部矛盾或无法推进我们论点的令人不安的行为。民族志经常揭示结构或系统的复杂性，但它对居住在这些形式中的人们进行更简单的描述。然而，由于人类学长期以来一直致力于全面捕捉社会生活的真相，因此它应该为复杂的主角在民族志叙事中留出更多空间。