提 要：20世纪80年代初兴起于印度史学界的“底层研究”，在80年代末发生了后现代转向。作为“底层研究”团体早期重要成员的苏米特•萨卡尔对这种转向提出了批评，并退出了该团体。萨卡尔之所以积极参与前期“底层研究”，是因为这种研究与他自己注重“自下而上”来看历史、重视不脱离语境的历史细节研究、强调具体的研究对象与社会关系之间相互诠释的社会史观相契合。相应地，萨卡尔对后期底层研究的批评，主要是由于这种研究在后现代主义和后殖民主义话语影响下，抛弃了对具体历史事件背后的社会—经济关系的必要寻求，未能将研究对象与具体语境结合起来，在批判西方文化霸权的过程中走向了纯粹的文化主义，忽略了对底层反抗运动的研究。此外，萨卡尔还对后期“底层研究”因受后殖民主义影响而表现出来的“殖民主义话语”进行了批评。这些批评将后现代主义与启蒙理性对立起来，坚守启蒙理性立场，反对后现代主义对“底层研究”的侵蚀。虽然萨卡尔对后现代主义的批判并不彻底，但是他的社会史观对当下中国的社会史研究是具有启发意义的 。

关键词：萨卡尔；底层研究；后现代主义；后殖民主义

Title: Indian Historian Sumit Sarkar’s Conception of Social History and His Criticism to the Recent Changes in the Subaltern Studies

Author:Xie Jindong, Lecturer, Faculty for the Study of Asian Civilizations, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin, 130024, China.

Abstract: The subaltern studies which emerged in the early 1980s in India experienced a substantial transformation in the late mainly 1980s under the influence of the post-modernistic historiography. In this process, Sumit Sarkar, a prominent scholar of the original subaltern studies, separated himself from the circle of subaltern studies and criticized that change. Sumit Sarkar emphasizes on viewing history from a grass-root level of society, contextual studies, and mutual explanation of specific facts and related social contexts. To him, the transformed subaltern studies, under the influence of the post-modernist and the post-colonialist discourse, abandoned the quest of socio-economic relations in event studies, disconnected individual facts from their social context, and eventually fell into pure culturalism while the subaltern class’ resistance against Western cultural hegemony is ignored. Sumit Sarkar, apparently, stands on a position of Enlightenment Rationalism in his criticism of the transformed subaltern studies.

Key words:Sumit Sarkar; the Subaltern Studies; Post-modernism; Post-colonialism