本文旨在檢討人類學家在過去四十年來所做的海外華人硏究。筆者指出，在七〇年代中期以前，人類學家所硏究的海外華人社會，基本上集中在東南亞；七〇年代末期以後，才擴展到其他地方的華人社會，而以北美爲重心。
不過，不論是東南亞或北美，人類學家硏究海外華人，仍然承繼Freedman的方向，把海外華人社會看做是漢人社會的延長；把海外華人當做是了解漢人社會的一面鏡子。
筆者在本文裏論證，人類學家應該把海外華人社會放在當地文化脈絡（local discourse)之下來了解，而不是把海外華人當做是一個孤立的社會。這也是筆者要指出的一個新的方向之所在。

The purpose of this article is twofold: reviewing the anthropological literature on overseas Chinese communities, and proposing a new direction for the study of overseas Chinese. Over the past forty years there has been a large contingent of anthropologists who have intensively studied overseas Chinese. Territorial and clan associations have been noted as especially important features of overseas Chinese communities. Although anthropologists may emphasize different aspects of community life, all emphasize the importance of the segmentary structure of these territorial and clan associations. A closer look at their emphasis reveals, however, that overseas Chinese communities are in the process also being treated as overseas communities isolated from their surrounding host societies.
Maurice Freedman was the first to see overseas Chinese as a window into china (Skinner 1979: xiii). For Freedman, “The study of lineage structure and organization is one of the main ways in which social anthropology has established itself within the general study of Chinese society•” (1979: 334). For forty years anthropologists have followed Freedman’s paradigm when studying overseas Chinese communities as extensions of Chinese society that are ipso facto isolated from the surrounding host societies.
The shortcomings for Freedman’s paradigm are obvious: anthropologists who study overseas Chinese society have themselves become an isolated community. More China specialists rather than anthropologists, there is virtually no dialogue with anthropology. This essay proposes an alternative direction for the study of overseas Chinese communities in arguing in favor of a shift in emphasis to the local sociocultural context. Freedman’s paradigm would recommend, for example, that the study of Chinese merchants in Papua New Guinea or Calcutta attribute the success of local Chinese merchants to their Chinese territorial and/or kinship ties. This picture, I argue, is incomplete. In Papua New Guinea we need also look at how the local Chinese community is entangled in the wider society’s exchange systems，and in India we need also look at how the local Chinese community is implicated in the caste hierarchies. Overseas Chinese communities are never isolated societies; even in their apparent isolation they are bound up with their local host society.