Social Change In The Deer Ewenki

China is a multi-ethnic country with56nationalities. To establish the cultural pattern of diversity in unity, to construct a harmonious society is our common goal. The realization of this goal requires an understanding of the historic cultural development and other aspects of different nationalities, especially in some remote minorities with less population.This paper is a case study of a reindeer-herding-Ewenki family. By means of the social memory theory which is one academic tool and a thinking means, it combs the memory about some important events in several generations'life course of the family. It elaborates the interaction between individual or the family and social in modem history as well as the social transition of the interactive process. So that it reveals the important role of national traditional culture with reindeer-herding-Ewenki and their development trend. The full paper is divided into six parts. The first part is the introduction. The first chapter introduces the investigation of research site. The second, the third and the fourth is the main parts of the paper. The last part is the conclusion.In the second chapter, we can find that the family has certain common memories about their own family and the history of reindeer-herding-Ewenki through the story about the family. The collective memory built up by the specific groups is the most fundamental expression for the identity to the ethnic source of the social members. It is this identity that it can become" the foundation of a national or ethnic basic emotion". At the same time, the identity makes them produce a kind of collective identity to the nation.The third chapter discusses the Gu-family's memory of their nomadic life including various life skills, knowledge of life and other knowledge. People growing up in a culture must to learn appropriate mode of various behavior by repeatedly using their own practice and language. This is a learning process called" habit memory" by Connor. In the habit of memory, the past seems to accumulate in the body. It can connect the groups "with a cognitive content" through practice activity of generations. This "cognitive content of memory has being shared by group members ". And it has strong persuasion and endurance.The fourth chapter respectively discusses the Gu clan's memory to the three settlement process one by one. In the first settlement process, the society of reindeer-herding-Ewenki has undergone a fundamental change, from the primitive society into the socialist society. Although there is a common geographical change of the whole nation, its members have long held the ancestor hunting tradition. The resulting hunting culture also becomes their memories forever for them to look back and remember the past. To a certain extent, it can stimulate a sense of collective identity so as to evoke the memory of community. In the second settlement process, although the reindeer-herding life style is still continuing and still occupies a dominant position, a series of contradiction have produced:contradictions between the life "in the mountains" and "out the mountains", contradictions of the attitude toward reindeers between young generation and the older generation, contradictions between the internal development and external influence. These entire contradicted phenomenon make the traditional culture maintained long must to face huge challenges and threats. In the third settlement process, reindeer-herding-Ewenki members'"hunter" identity has ceased to exist accompanied by implementation of no hunting and shotgun handing in. The hunting tradition continued centuries in reindeer-herding-Ewenki has pulled out the historical stage. And the hunting culture began to be sealed in the old hunters'memories and museum artifacts. Emotion knot of hunting culture and reindeer culture also appeared obvious differences between intergeneration. On the surface, the demonstrated intergenerational differences occur in a familial vary generations, but this difference or estrangement is the difference between different age or gap and alienation or discontinuous between different times. The alienation and discontinuous make hunting traditions drifting away, in which the heritage and development of specific hunting culture and reindeer culture has been placed in jeopardy.The paper come to the conclusion of memory fracture" through the above analysis. As one part of reindeer-herding-Ewenki, the change of Gu-clan is impacted both the changes under macroscopic background and the effects of the dynamic role of individual. In this case, Gu-clan has undergone a period of unusual life course. Each generation's life course has become their collective memory. Collective memory is not only the bridge to link up the group's history and reality, but also "the important force of self-identity" of the group and "the special historical narrative and media" to distinguish and express the groups'identification and their identity. However, once the bridge is broken, there will not be a dialogue between the histories of the group with the reality in their development. It means that the histories of the group will properly be lost. How to maintain the historical memory is a problem that a nation in change must be face.