Cai Hua

　　Institute of Anthropology, Peking University

　　Abstract：In this dialogue, Cai Hua and Maurice Godelier ask whether there has been a change in the research entity. This question concerns the representation of the “world of the other”and its impact on the intellectual world since the advent of postmodernism. Cai Hua states that when he was an overseas student in France in the 1980s, he could not see any traces of colonization. The postmodern movement is simply a kind of emotional catharsis and cannot be called “scientific research” in a rigorous sense. As a scientist, if your position is neutral,you cannot see the other in a dichotomous way; the other is simply what you research, and you are not part of the other.

　　Keywords: substantive entity, conceptual ontology, anthropology