| This ethnography mainly discusses the traditional dragon boat and modern fitness dragon boat activities in Wenzhou, and places it into a long period from Late-Qing dynasty to the contemporary era. Taking the dragon boat activity which have strong local characteristics as clue, it demonstrates local social changes. Different from the diachronic and synchronic analytical paradigm as previous scholars did, this paper pays more attention to the long-term social groups’ interactions and their practice, as well as the deep meanings and structure beyond.Besides the introduction in Chapter1, Chapter2describes why traditional dragon boat became local society’s "deep play", from four aspects, the selective memory of the history, the general mode of dragon boat activities, ritual economy and the participation of various social roles. These four dimensions shaped the traditional dragon boat activities as a particular "field".Chapter3analyzes the multiple images of traditional dragon boat. The accidents of traditional dragon boat during Late-Qing dynasty and the period after1980s, were mainly the conflicts among different social groups. Of course, the traditional dragon boat was not always fold of accidents. After1980s, some factories also organized their workers rowing, including female workers. They created new mode from the folkers, which was usually called "Bai Xiang An", in order to consolidate the business cooperation relationships with other factories. In addition,"Duan Yang folk cultural Dragon Boat Festival" in OuHai was of great importance. Their styles, temperament and meanings were constructed through the actors’ symbolic interactions.Chapter4reviews the local government policies during the Late-Qing dynasty and the period after the1980s. Despite rebelling, the governance of traditional dragon boat reflected unequal political powers, which actually little effected. Finally this chapter summarizes the social factors leading to the decline of traditional dragon boat.Chapter5focuses on the history of how fitness dragon boat becomes more and more popular in Wenzhou. The author sees fitness dragon boat itself as a kind of culture system, and combs the fitness dragon boat’s own pedigree and characteristics. Taking "Ruian dynamic dragon boat team" as an example, the author analyzed the meaning of fitness dragon boat to the local people.In the end, Chapter6summarizes the empirical discovery that traditional dragon boat and the fitness dragon boat are constructing different senses of place. After presenting a so-called "civilized" process, this ethnography expounds the methodological and theoretical significance of "local knowledge". |
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