Exploring the "Deep Ecology" of the Tao People of Lanyu

• Main Authors: Wei-lun Tsai, 蔡衛倫
• Other Authors: Chien-hui Kuo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35431629478465898505

碩士 === 南華大學 === 建築與景觀學系環境藝術碩士班 === 96 === 　　Today humankind has lost its former close symbiotic relationship with the planet and instead relies on a minority of people, on science, technology and an industrial environment to obtain the essentials of life. This is an issue which must be faced solemnly by every person. In Taiwan, the powerful metropolitan culture of the Han Chinese has long exerted an impact on the island of Lanyu , bringing about the collapse of its traditional economy and values; low quality Han-assimilative education and the labour demands of the mother island’s processing and export trade have driven the new generation of the Tao (Yami) people to enter Taiwan’s labour market at the lowest levels, causing the gradual erosion of the Tao people’s cultural heritage. Although Lanyu cannot resist the convenience culture and corresponding environmental change brought on the tide of “civilization”, nor does it desire to return to the harsh modes of existence of the past, we should consider how to explode the myth that modernization equals progress. 　　 　　The current research takes a deep ecology approach to research and analysis of the living world of the Tao people of Lanyu. It uses documentary research, fieldwork and analysis of relevant overseas comparators, in-depth interviews and photographic documentation from many trips to Lanyu, and the long-term notes and observations of friends on the island working in related fields. During five years, from subjective personal experience and objective interviewing and literature review, this research has taken an intersecting and comparative approach to show the lives of the Tao people and to record their living world as it relates to Heaven, earth, mountains and the ocean. The aims include representation and concretization of the Tao people’s oral culture and experience. Furthermore, through comparative analysis of the examples of development and present circumstances of Scotland’s islands of Mull and St Kilda and the gasshou-style 合掌造 villages of Shirakawa 白川 in Japan. We hope to derive certain methods for Lanyu to learn from; also, to provide some food for thought for all those who care about Lanyu. 　　 　　Finally, the current research shows the harmonious deep ecological coexistence between the Tao people and their natural environment, and their transcendence of deep ecology’s concepts of “cultural identity” and “value systems”. The hope is to find ways to solve Lanyu’s problems of natural, environmental deterioration and the gradual disappearance of Tao traditional culture, and to rebuild the Tao poeple’s ancestors’ “Taoist” ecology of interaction with Nature.