Ritual Events: A Way To Integrate The Multi-centered Village Communities

With the research survey of yangge (a popular rural folk dance) in chuncun (a village located in longxi county, Gansu province in China) , the author states that ritual events are a basic way to integrate the multi-centered village communities. Ritual events integrate the multi-centered village communities on the following three lays: the individual's coupling, the identification of the culture, and the maintenance of the social order as well. On the individual's lay, the integration of the villages is no other things than a kind of coupling owing to the individual's interaction. On the cultural lay, it is one of the products of the society's common value view. However, from the perspective of the social structure, the integration of the village communities is a reproduction of the social structure of the villages and maintenance of the social order. The traditional culture and value view in the villages provide for the villagers the motivation and the way for their behaviors, therefore, the common behaviors of the villagers consist of the ritual events in the whole villages. In the ritual events, the villagers unite as a whole, then form a relationship net and a basic structure, both of which are actually the reproduction of the social structure. Meanwhile, the process of the ritual events is also the process of the reproduction of the traditional culture and the value view in the villages. Consequently, it is in the reproduction in the ritual events that the integration of the village communities continues and develops. Surely, the integration of the village communities can neither be simply built on a certain ritual event nor be completed only in one ritual event as such a process is a process to be continually constructed. A certain ritual event is not only a result of the integration in the villages and a process of it, but a basis for the integration in the villages. The process of the integration in the villages thus is a process of a current of events.