Contemporary Amdo Tibetan Areas Of Religious And Social Studies

It is a global topic that how the ethnic groups with different cultural traditions live in harmony in a multinational country. What the society needs is cultural dialogue rather than split, culture hybrid within the framework of national and transnational law, and mutual respect and understanding between different cultures. For traditional Tibetan society, religion is one of the most sacred and respectable core values, which plays an important role in their ethnic identity. As we know, dominating the social order in Tibetan society, Tibetan Buddhism is not only a spiritual pillar and social foundation of Tibetans, but also an important long-tested source of knowledge for them. While the market economy makes use of capital to change the structure of Chinese society, Tibetan Buddhism is also in the state of auto-conditioning and changing in face of broader impact of globalization, and the binary sacred-secular oppositions that exists in the social structure also make adjustments accordingly.As a traditional "Chinese-Tibetan border", Amdo is a place with dual marginality, multiple cultural significance and unique regional characteristics. Geographically speaking, located in the North-East of the Tibetan plateau, Amdo is the home of many major rivers of Asia, and was called the "heart of Asia" by the early Western explorers. From a geographical and cultural aspect, as the intersection of Tibetan, Han and Mongolian and Islamic civilization, Amdo is a cultural platform with several differences of cultural communities which share the same geographical conditions. Labrang Monastery, built in the early18th century, gradually developed as the religious, cultural and trade center of Amdo Tibetan area. Its authority and academic influence is throughout the whole Tibetan area as well as Mongolia, Wutai Mountain, Beijing, Northeast China and Mongolian autonomous region in Russia. Although Labrang Monastery is one of the best preserved templesa in Amdo Tibetan area, nowadays it has also become a tourist resort of the world and has fully involved in the process of globalization.Based on the field work between2004-2011, this paper focuses on a traditional geographical social unit in Amdo-Labrang and aims to put the religion and society of contemporary Amdo into a wider and more dynamic framework, intending to combine the researches on the contrast of cross-civilization with those on main body of the religious society. The paper is composed with following seven parts.The introduction of the whole paper is divided into three sections. The first section describes the origins and significance of the research; the second section reviews the research status in the field of Tibetan and Anthropological Studies by the Western scholars, and makes some commentation on it; the third section is a description of the overall framework and a illustration on some related theories and methods.Charpter I consists of three sections. The first section describes the history and geography of Amdo; the second section introduces the historical traditions and its typical features of Labrang Monastery; the third section summarizes that Amdo's regional characteristic is dual marginality with both settled and nomadic living styles exsited.Chapter II is also divided into three sections. The first section compares the "Geshe" and "shi" with Karisma features, which respectively represents the Tibetan and Han society; the second section compares the social status of monks in Han and Tibetan traditional society; based on the elaborations of the above two sections, the third section summarizes the different roles of religion in Han and Tibetan society, and the differential orientation of knowledge resources based on the religion in these two societies.Chapter III also consists of three sections. Section I discusses the sacred and the secular world in the social structure in the context of globalization on the basis of the case study on the marginalized groups-the secularized monks; section II explores the monks' awareness of self and the external boundary through a case study; Section III summarizes the influence of the global tourism economy on the internal structure of the religious communityChapter IV includes three sections, too. The first section discusses structural interactive between the monks and nuns and their original families in contemporary Tibetan society, which shows the characteristics of interdependence, shared glory and continuity; the second section analyses the essential resources monks can provide for their original families, and they have important effect on the development of their families; the third section summarize the relationship of interdependence between monks and nuns and their families.Based on the case study on the marginal belief called "Thevu-rang" with taboo and demagogic Witchery features, chapter V explores its different manifestation forms as "Pe-har" and "Evil-cat", which show the geographical features of Amdo and by which the Shaman features and performance form are displayed in Amdo Tibetan religious society. It indicates that Amdo Tibetan religious society contains both institutional religion and diffused religion, whose social manifestiaon form is comparatively complex.The last part is conclusion, which gives a simple summary on the paper that although Amdo Tibetan religious society has experienced a drastic change because of globalization and the impact of reform and opening up, it is still full of vitality because its social order and resources allocation based on the traditions still occupy a positon. In addition, understanding the religious community accuratelyis is obviously favorable to a dynamic Chinese identity.