An Ethnography Survey Of Catholic Communication In Dimalo Village

Dimaluo village is located in the hinterland of hengduan mountains in northwest Yunnan.It belongs to pengdang township,gongshan county,nujiang prefecture,Yunnan province.The village is a multiracial community,with Nu,Tibetan,Dulong and a small number of Lisu,Han,Bai,Naxi etc.The main ethnic groups are Nu and Tibetan,accounting for 50% and 41%.Originally,Dimaluo was an Nu village.Due to the fact that the Nu,Dulong have no written language and are deeply influenced by Tibetan culture,the village is manifested as an ethnic minority village dominated by Tibetan culture,which is also the largest Tibetan population in gongshan county.80% of the population in the village is Catholic,making it the most Catholic village in gongshan county.But in neighboring Diqing,Tibet,Myanmar,India and Nepal,where Buddhism,Taoism and other primitive religions are prevalent,the Catholic community of Dimaluo is an island in a vast ocean.What is it that causes the seeds of Catholicism to be sown in this land? What strategies did the church use to make Catholicism the dominant religion? Has Catholicism changed the way believers live?Using ethnography,this paper studies the Catholic transmission process in Dimaluo village.The paper is divided into five parts: the first part introduces the background of Dimaluo village,including the administrative division,the village background and the cultural representation.For a more detailed understanding of the spreading background of Dimaluo Catholicism,it is necessary to view it in the larger context of western missionaries’ repeated attempts to "preach in Tibetan areas" for hundreds of years.The second part deals with the history of the introduction of Catholicism into Dimaluo,including the miracles of Catholicism,the conflict with the local traditional religion and the establishment of the church.The third part mainly expounds the secular governance technology of the Catholic church,including relief,health care,schools and other aspects.The fourth part expounds the influence of village church on villagers’ life etiquette and daily life interaction through marriage,blood relationship and family technology.The fifth part expounds the collective integration technology of the rural church how to strengthen the identity of the Catholic groups.It mainly includes two aspects.One refers to the collectivity of organization,which is manifested as the collectivity of religious rituals and Catholic festivals,and is the integration of external groups.The second refers to the unorganized collectivity,which is manifested as the collectivity of villagers’ living memory and village narration,and is the internal group consciousness.The study found that the Catholic faith did not change the ethics of believers’ lives.They have two sets of logic in life etiquette and daily life.On the one hand,it is the logic of sacred religious behavior;on the other hand,it is the logic of secular traditional rural society.Dimaluo case study proves that it is feasible to use weber’s protestant ethic proposition to cogitate the relationship between Catholicism and social life and to think about the identity of believers.Because,when "Catholicism" enters "Tibetan culture",the key question is whether this religion can be effectively technicalized.The competition strategy,missionary means and the behavior logic of believers of the church skillfully adjust the conflict between the two heterogeneous cultures of "Tibetan culture" and "Catholic culture",and successfully overlap the identification of the two cultures.For believers,they have two prominent identities,which form two identification: Tibetan culture identification and Catholic culture identification.The combination of these two highly heterogeneous identification elements forms a unique Tibetan culture Catholic group.