Walled Liu Miao Village Ritual Gift Of Life Flow And Society

If we put the essence of the ceremony as the symbolic expression of social relations,"Ceremony" can be defined as being built around social relations, pointing to the symbolic operation and strengthening mechanism of resource control and configuration. By sorting out the context of social relationships in birth, marriage, funeral rites and other major life etiquette of Lao liu zhai Miao people village in Yunnan province, this paper attempts to analyze the blood relatives, in-laws and non-kinship between the different levels of gift flow path and feature. It not only analyzes the flow of physical gifts, but also includes the exchange of labor, emotion, power and other aspects between different social levels, as well as the symbolic exchange between human and the supernatural power. Based on this realization, gifts flowing in ceremony is closely related with specific social background, cultural concept and economic factors in miao people. Consequently, the different categories of local rituals corresponding to different levels of social relations and social groups, and expression of the corresponding range of economic, social and cultural resources of internal sharing and external exclusion. Ceremony involves the exchange of people’s life, history background, social structure and social status, and includes the ingredients and diversity of the overall power, honor, duty, symbol, emotion and so on, which exhibits the solidarity and mutual trust between the exchange of social connection. Thus, it is by the construction of traditional exchange network, which is characterized with ceremony, that the reproduction and redistribution of the social resources within the local community, as well as the continuous integration of social relations can be realized. Based on this, we should see the integrity and complexity of the ceremony of gift exchange, and regard it as a ceremony system associated with local society. Therefore, the ceremony should not merely be interpreted as a cultural symbol. We should see its function as manipulation, regulation the local social order, coordination and integration.