A Study On The Conceptions Of Space Of The Jingpo People Of Ding Village

This research revolves around Ding Village, a Jingpo village located on the Sino-Myanmar border area. The study focuses on the village’s cultural life and village space which has been formed by nature, humanities, community, politics, beliefs, and festivals. It is an ethnographic study based on careful investigations and deep descriptions.Predicated on eight months’ fieldwork and the analysis of related historical documents, audio and video information, this dissertation attempts to discuss how the Jingpo ethnic people of Ding village who live around the border area recognize their space Conceptions and cultural traditions, how they show and perform their own culture under the influence of various powers, what factors and institutions they use to construct their own village identification and how they carry out their cultural consciousness, cultural choices and cultural practices. The dissertation includes an introduction, six chapters as the main body, and discussion and conclusion.The first chapter is about the natural and cultural space. It introduces Ding village’s natural geography and changes based on geographic environment, and then it focuses Ding village people’s regional awareness and space concept of settlement and house. This chapter provides a material arid conceptual foundation for studying Ding village’s regional and local characteristics.The second chapter is about the space of the community. Based on the description of Ding village people’s ethnic memory, it explores Ding village’s social relations and inner structural characteristics considering the facts of some special historical events about local people’s Cross-boundary flow, marriage, and revival of family association. It is found in this research that Mayu-Dama marriage relations are still the primary principle of construction of Ding village’s social relations. The chapter digs up the deep rules of Mayu-Dama marriage relations and the real manifestation of their marriage practices, and analyzes the influence and function of inner social relations in the cultural activities of the ethnic people in Ding village. The third chapter is about the space of beliefs. It describes the space beliefs of the ethnic people in Ding village which involve the traditional belief, and Christianity and Catholicism from outside. This chapter records the Ding village people’s ritual process and daily belief practices, and discusses how they deal with and adjust the conflicts brought by different beliefs.The fourth chapter is about the space of politics. It explores the regional characteristics of local Shan-official system through Ding village people’s historical memory, analyzes the influence of the Shan-official system on local people and records how the state has got into Ding village from the point of historical view. The main contents of this chapter include the definition of boundary line, transition of the mode of production, embedment of elementary school education and establishment of the nature reserve. It also describes the practice process of national political power in Ding village’s space and explains that the political spaces in history and reality have equal influences on Ding village people’s life and regional identification.The fifth chapter is about the space of festivals. With festival as a special concept, the chapter describes two important festivals,"Munaozongge" and Centenary Celebration of the Introduction of Gospel Script, arranged and held under Ding village’s cultural consciousness in recent two years. It shows how Ding village people deal with various relations and the cultural meanings in relation to rituals, and then shows Ding village’s group identification.The sixth chapter is about the discussion of village space and village identification. It discusses the connections between village space and village identification considering the Ding Village from the perspective of human geography, analyzes the structure and features of the space of the Ding Village. It also touches on the significance of the action in Ding Village to the development of regional identification in the village. Finally, reflections are made on the situations of frontier, birder and border residents.The last part concludes that the village space and structure maintain the village collective identity, that the regional identity comes into being from the action and significance of village space, that the geographical subject and spatial variability is an important feature of Jingpo village located on the Sino-Myanmar border area, and that village space shows when the local people carry out space construction, acting as the main basis of the village social structure and the significance of action.This dissertation holds that local characteristics and subjectivity are shown completely during the cultural practices of Ding village people. Therefore, villages’ regional identification should be given enough attention in the study of the national identification and ethnic identification of ethnic peoples on border areas, and the local characteristics and regional characteristics should be deeply concerned considering the safety and stability of ethnic and national border districts.