Traditions, Gossips, and Constraints: Women's Interpretations of Marriage and Birth at the Jufu Village, Kinmen

• Main Author: 莊廣婷
• Other Authors: 黃倩玉
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/24633789723258728851

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 人類學研究所 === 94 === Abstract This thesis is concerned with women’s interpretation of marriage and birth in a traditional village, Jufu, in Kinmen (Quemoy). The value of patrilineal culture is interiorized by local people and expressed in daily life as public opinion through informal conversations, rumors, and gossips. As a result, women at Jufu village continue to subscribe to the traditional concepts of marriage and birth. The significance of these findings lies in the linkage between the period of military control (1956-1992) and the recent period of social change (2000-2004) by delineating the perspectives of local women of different cohorts. Jufu is a lineage village with strict kinship and marriage organization. The villagers utilize public opinion as the mechanism of communication as well as social control. Under the cultural context of ancestor worship, this mechanism reinforces the traditional values of marriage institution and the preference of son to daughter. Even in the present period of transition when the Jufu villagers have long adopted modern communication media and a lifestyle of modern industrial and commercial society, the traditional values of marriage and patrilineality remain salient and show no signs of being prone to social change. The women of Jufu village did not respond to the recent social change by abandoning the traditional values of marriage and birth. Rather, they took social change as an opportunity for agency and actively chose the traditional values of marriage and birth as their female gender ideology. This study based on five months (July-December, 2004) ethnographic fieldwork at Jufu village, Kinmen. Research methods adopted in this research are: in-depth interview (102 women and 59 men), conversation with local elites (senior members, religious ritual experts, and intellectuals), literature search, and participant-observation.