Contextual Interaction And Village Community Maintenance In Indigo Yao Funeral Rituals

As China’s new urbanization process deepens and advances rapidly,the phenomenon of withering village communities caused by population exodus is common in many areas,and more and more grassroots rural villages are gradually becoming "hollow villages" and "left-behind villages".However,in some ethnic minority areas,even though they are also facing the current situation of population exodus,there are still many grassroots ethnic minority villages retaining intact blood and geographical ties,among which the traditional culture and rituals of these villages play a significant role in maintaining the survival and development of their own communities through local special ethnic folk rituals.This paper attempts to illustrate the relationship between contextual interactions and the maintenance of village communities from the perspective of rituals based on a field study of the funeral rituals(also known as Xuzhai funeral rituals)of the Indigo Yao in Anlan village,Funing,Yunnan.This study takes the "interactive ritual chain" as the research perspective and theoretical foundation,and adopts the method of actual investigation to participate in the funeral rituals in An Lan village several times,and experience the local funeral culture together with the local indigo Yao villagers.Through long-term field research and field observation,the author tried to make the collected research data more realistic and comprehensive.Through the analysis of the research,we found that two conditions are indispensable for the smooth performance of the indigo Yao funeral rituals,namely,common actions and events and transient emotional stimulation.In terms of the motivational mechanism,it mainly relies on the participants’ high concentration on the ritual and the emotional ties among the participants.The operation of the motivational mechanism enables the ritual to be completed successfully and obtains four results of a successful ritual: 1)local indigo Yao villagers reinforce their knowledge of their own blood relations and ethnic culture during the continuous repetition of the ritual,forming a long and stable community "membership identity symbols";(ii)through the rituals,symbols that can be used to represent the group are gradually formed,including various instruments and actions that appear in the funeral rituals,etc.;(iii)a collective sense of moral justice is formed that attaches common importance to group symbols and protects the group;(iv)the emotional interactions among local indigo Yao villagers are made closer,and situational interactions are energy storage.The indigo Yao funeral ritual has a strong historical background and has been gradually extended spatially after a long period of time,making local villagers continuously participate in this ritual from childhood to adulthood and from abroad to their hometowns.This ensures the continuity of the ritual culture and the maintenance of the village community.In addition,some villagers,when participating in the funeral ritual,may have forced emotions or lack of emotional experience at the initial stage,but even so,they will continue to participate in different parts of the ritual spontaneously,and only very few villagers will consider it a "failed" ritual.Finally,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)the funeral ritual cannot be carried out smoothly without the unification of identity symbols and emotional energy;(2)the funeral ritual in the spatio-temporal dimension constructs the "class order" needed to maintain the community;(3)the performance of the funeral ritual is closely related to the social structure in the funeral ritual;(4)the relationship between the funeral ritual and the maintenance of the community is essentially a symbolic and social relationship.The relationship between funeral rituals and community maintenance is essentially an interactive relationship between symbols and social constructs.At the same time,the study finds that the practice of the "interactive ritual chain" theory in ethnic minority areas and Collins’ own theoretical viewpoint are open to discussion and deserve further exploration.At the same time,in the process of implementing funeral reform and practicing socialist core values,the perspective of contextual interaction may be able to achieve half the result with twice the effort.