AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 投稿模板-刊鹿论文编译

My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File. Katherine Verdery. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. 344 pp.

Abstract:

In 1999, Romania passed Law 187, which granted access to surveillance files compiled by the Securitate, Communist Romania’s secret police. While doing research in the Securitate Archives in 2006, Katherine Verdery learned from the reading room supervisor that as a citizen of a NATO country, she could make an access request. This memoir resulted from her encounter with her file. Immediately after she arrived in the Transylvanian county of Hunedoara in 1973, as a graduate student pursuing anthropological research, an inadvertent motorbike ride into a restricted area put Verdery under observation. During that and subsequent study stays in Romania, which totaled over three years until 1988, her file grew into a 2,781-page body of evidence. Containing informative notes from more than 70 persons as well as investigation, search, surveillance, and operative reports by several case officers and memorandums pointing to multiple lines of investigation, Verdery’s file documented her supposed identity as, successively, a CIA agent, a Hungarian agitator, and a dissident ally. My Life as a Spy reads like a self-analysis—a working through of the profound trauma caused by examining its contents. Joining a growing body of literature based on secret police archival documents, Verdery’s book stands out as she deploys her craft of anthropologist to examine the unexpected material. Generated by her presence in the field and her interactions with the villagers, the file operates an inversion. It is an ethnography of her own person that makes herself the object of investigation and source of data. Verdery notes the striking similarity between the means and instruments of the anthropologist and of the secret police operatives—the use of informants and informers, incessant questioning, detailed note taking on sociopolitical aspects, the use of specific abbreviations and pseudonyms. The supposition that she was, after all, a spy appears ever so plausible in a context where both sides shared the suspicion that foreign researchers were spies in disguise. A second inversion happens when one of Verdery’s informers, a woman she had counted as a close friend, agrees to discuss her experience. She recalls the dread and queasiness she felt after her interactions with Verdery in anticipation of the ensuing meetings with the Securitate officer, the disgust and panic after giving the reports, the shame and concealment. At one point, she rancorously tells Verdery that she caused her a lot of harm. From the betrayed, Verdery became the betrayer; from victim, perpetrator. This painful revelation exposes the difficulties of ethnography as a method when trust relations are compromised. The Securitate mapped and permeated social relations and used them to compel Romanians to comply. It inverted sociability into internal loneliness, affection into threat. The anthropologist’s work inflected the whole relational space of her subjects—their rapport with others, their links with the authorities, their relationship with their own selves. This revelation also exposes the fact that transparency and honesty do not win the trust of a system that rules through surveillance. This is a lesson well worth learning for technology-intensive security governance systems as well. Verdery refrains from denouncing or assigning blame. Quite to the contrary, she starts by noting that doing fieldwork in a Communist country during the Cold War situated anthropologists at the intersection of global political forces that required specific interpretations of their acts and identity. It is in this key that she struggles to interpret the Securitate’s informative reports, collected evidence, and operative directives and integrate them into her own field notes, diary entries, and letters. It is also in this key that she strives to know, to learn, and to obtain closure in speaking with those who informed on her and with the Securitate officers responsible for her case. All these identities are generally maintained and protectively marked in the book: the author as a young anthropologist, her several doppelgängers talking through Securitate’s voices from the file, her present reflexive self as seasoned scholar. By investigating one of its most elusive yet powerful apparatuses, the Securitate, Verdery creates an enthralling ethnography of the Communist state. Populated by a secretive species, the securis, ti, it functioned by producing files. When someone raised suspicions, surveillance began with a specific kind of file, the DUI, dosar de urmărire informativă or “dossier of informative pursual.”

Author Listing： Irina Culic

Volume： 46

Pages： 106-107

DOI： 10.1111/amet.12738

Language： English

Journal： American Ethnologist

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST

AM ETHNOL

影响因子：2.0

是否综述期刊：是

是否OA：否

是否预警：不在预警名单内

发行时间：-

ISSN：0094-0496

发刊频率：-

收录数据库：Scopus收录

出版国家/地区：-

出版社：Wiley-Blackwell

期刊介绍

年发文量	23
国人发稿量	-
国人发文占比	0%
自引率	10.5%
平均录取率	-
平均审稿周期	-
版面费	US$3000
偏重研究方向	ANTHROPOLOGY-
期刊官网	-
投稿链接	-

质量指标占比

研究类文章占比	OA被引用占比	撤稿占比	出版后修正文章占比
98.44%	42.86%	0.00%	0.00%

预警情况查看说明

时间	预警情况
2024年02月发布的2024版	不在预警名单中
2023年01月发布的2023版	不在预警名单中
2021年12月发布的2021版	不在预警名单中
2020年12月发布的2020版	不在预警名单中

JCR分区 WOS分区等级：Q1区

版本	按学科	分区
WOS期刊SCI分区 WOS期刊SCI分区是指SCI官方（Web of Science）为每个学科内的期刊按照IF数值排序，将期刊按照四等分的方法划分的Q1-Q4等级，Q1代表质量最高，即常说的1区期刊。（2021-2022年最新版）
	ANTHROPOLOGY	Q1

关于2019年中科院分区升级版（试行）

分区表升级版（试行）旨在解决期刊学科体系划分与学科发展以及融合趋势的不相容问题。由于学科交叉在当代科研活动的趋势愈发显著，学科体系构建容易引发争议。为了打破学科体系给期刊评价带来的桎梏，“升级版方案”首先构建了论文层级的主题体系，然后分别计算每篇论文在所属主题的影响力，最后汇总各期刊每篇论文分值，得到“期刊超越指数”，作为分区依据。

分区表升级版（试行）的优势：一是论文层级的主题体系既能体现学科交叉特点，又可以精准揭示期刊载文的多学科性；二是采用“期刊超越指数”替代影响因子指标，解决了影响因子数学性质缺陷对评价结果的干扰。整体而言，分区表升级版（试行）突破了期刊评价中学科体系构建、评价指标选择等瓶颈问题，能够更为全面地揭示学术期刊的影响力，为科研评价“去四唯”提供解决思路。相关研究成果经过国际同行的认可，已经发表在科学计量学领域国际重要期刊。

《2019年中国科学院文献情报中心期刊分区表升级版（试行）》首次将社会科学引文数据库（SSCI）期刊纳入到分区评估中。升级版分区表（试行）设置了包括自然科学和社会科学在内的18个大类学科。基础版和升级版（试行）将过渡共存三年时间，推测在此期间各大高校和科研院所仍可能会以基础版为考核参考标准。提示：中科院分区官方微信公众号“fenqubiao”仅提供基础版数据查询，暂无升级版数据，请注意区分。

中科院分区查看说明

版本	大类学科	小类学科	Top期刊	综述期刊
	法学 3区	ANTHROPOLOGY 人类学 3区	否	否
2021年12月升级版	法学 1区	ANTHROPOLOGY 人类学 1区	否	是
2020年12月旧的升级版	法学 1区	ANTHROPOLOGY 人类学 1区	否	是
2022年12月最新升级版	社会学 1区	ANTHROPOLOGY 人类学 1区	否	是