The Exploration of the Tribal Children in Their Life Contexts:A Case Study in Xinguang and Cinsbu at Jianshi Xiang

• Main Authors: Bor Chen, 陳博
• Other Authors: 余漢儀
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09391536343159969940

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會工作學研究所 === 95 === Influenced by the manipulation of foreign governance, the policy of cultural assimilation, and the discrimination of the social majority, endangered by the relatively unfavorable situation of families, high risk of the dissolution of families, and the restricted concern of the government toward aboriginal children, accompanied with uneven distribution of wealth due to the development of tourism and both factional and hollow community empowering which is unable to gather the tribal inhabitants to cooperate, then, what images of the life context do the children raised up in the tribes have in mind? What are the relevant conditions to sustain and influence their growth? Since few studies of tribal lives were made according to a data-base of children, I locate Xinguang and Cinsbu as my field work by a gradual sifting and apply qualitative research method through in-depth interview and participant observation of sixteen tribal children (from ten families), thus synthesizing the ecological system and the viewpoint of social support network in order to understand the life configuration of the tribes as well as the operation of the support network and to analyze the structural power within the formation of tribal children’s life. First I will present respectively the background of the children, the tribal circumstances and the characteristics of life style, and then I will describe the support network in children’s minds, the importance and supporting types of family relationship. Meanwhile I will discuss how the exterior resources influences the children and their families by worldwide internet and how the operation of supporting network is affected by “identity,” “imagination and verdict of needs,” and “the reality of survival dilemma,” which results in a special “supply-led” phenomenon. Last but not least, I will also demonstrate how tribal children face the survival dilemma, the disunited boundaries of interaction, the status differentiation from Han Zu, and the annexation by mainstream cultures. While a large amount of resources flows into the tribes, the distribution is unfair on account of the ideology of welfare, including qualification, restraint, abuse-defense and so on. Moreover, the mode of currency exchange, the limit of the tribal environment, the economic depravity of the families and the intensified boundaries due to the integration of religious sects and tribes and their inharmoniousness, all these make the tribal children, who internalize the divisional lines and the differentiated status, troubled by a highly-probable failure to invest their future. Unless being interfered, they will inherit the disadvantaged identity in the long run. Thus the practical work and policy should move toward the crossing of divisional lines and the formation of tribal collective consciousness. I have the following suggestions aimed at the tribal situation quo: (1) to develop local economy, (2) the reflection and dialogue among religious organizations, (3) to cultivate teaching staff and materials aligned with tribal needs, (4) to introduce social workers into schools, (5) to utilize the skills of social organization.