Research Article
Practices and Contexts of Lineage Tradition in Contemporary China
서강대학교 동아연구소
Published: January 2013 · Vol. 64, No. 0 · pp. 145-185
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33334/sieas.2013.32.1.145
Full Text
Abstract
In this article, I examined a broad social spectrum of lineage tradition in contemporary China investigating several fieldwork cases. For the efficient analysis, in advance, I considered the contexts of limits and practices of kinship tradition under the criticism of kinship tradition as ``feudal tradition`` in modern Chinese society. Under those conditions, the existence of lineage village and family unit life, etc., had offered unofficial social space for lineage culture. After the reform and opening up policy of China, the important point for analyzing revitalization of lineage tradition is to interpret related social phenomena within contemporary Chinese social contexts. Therefore, considering the contemporary activities of lineage tradition under concrete regional social context, I tried to analyze the four aspects. Firstly, in terms of state-society relations, Chinese Fujian cases show that the relationship between the state and society represented by the lineage activities in that area is notably close to each other. Secondly, the ancestral halls in Fujian as social space-agent play an important role to enlarge kinship network with overseas Chinese people. Thirdly, the lineage villages in Beijng and Hebei under the contemporary Chinese tourism culture are used as historico-cultural villages. Fourthly, after the reform and opening up policy of China, investigating the new establishing process of lineage property let us recognize the way of lineage tradition`s revitalization in contemporary Chinese contexts. The case studies which I analyzed under contemporary Chinese contexts could not represent general aspects of Chinese society, but I focused more on showing the various contexts themselves in contemporary China by suggesting respective cases.
