Geographical Identity And Social Interaction

When I was in contact with the Uygure society in Urumchi, I got to know that when people have dealings with each other, they pay more attention to the relationship with the people from their hometown. And in some important social contact realms, such as marriage, funeral, friendship, and some other utilitarian (when people want to reach their aims )contact, they mostly like to contact with the people from their hometown. The relationship with the people from one's hometown is mainly used when a person contacts with others. They use the social relation net, which has come into been from the regional identity, to work for and protect certain social resources. And the social individuals' regional factor and background has become a label to distinguish them.The social community which has a regional background is one of the ways to understand the Uygure social structure. The regional community's social contact activities provide more angles of view to watch their social behaviour, and also give us more materials to study the common theoretical proposition of sociology and anthropology, the relationship between concept and behavior.I used a certain regional community - the people from Atush in Urumchi to watch study and explain this social phenomenon from the aspect of cultural anthropology, and described it in the way of ethnography. I want to understand and explain how the social individualhas dealings with others, so at first, I talked about the people's regional identity in every social class, and then analyzed the pattern of their social contact by observing and interviewing. In my ethnographical-like description, I used the theory of interpretive anthropology to describe, by employing the related theory of interpretive anthropology which focuses on the culture undertaker's self description.In Urumchi, the Uygure people's contact net among the people from their hometown is a copy and development of social net of individual's original region. Just as Feixiaotong said" region is the flash of blood relationship". The core of the contact net is still the original village, they call "village" to people on their own side, and "region" to outside. So the social contact is also limited among the people in the same village. The principle of contact is the expansion of the idea of blood obligation. The pattern of the contact is "traditional rites" which is the blueprint and the system of analysis that makes the social individual's behaviors can be foreseen by others.After I had analyzed the cause and effect of the social contact behaviors of country-fellow community who are influenced by the idea of regional identity, I draw the conclusion: Xinjiang is a special place with its natural geography, desert oasis around several basins, the civilization, culture, ethnic groups, races, historical events and the peculiar tolerant nature of oasis regime. All these aspects helped to bring about the"cultural heterogeneity" of different region. On the other hand, many times of people's migrant and reproduction have comprehensively influenced different villages. In the end, this influence as well as the cultural heterogeneity caused the border between one village and another, and they also established and strengthened the idea of village identity and the internal marriage which is the result as well as the reason of village identity. On the other hand, some facts are actually the key points of the change and transcendence from regional identity to ethnical identity. such as the historical position of Xinjiang —silk road which is the bridge between the West and the East, the unifying of the language from regional to Turkish, of the religious belief to Islam and the standardization of writing system first by some of the local power and then new China, the spreading of the nationalism, the policy of our country for ethnic minority groups after the liberation.The message of my study is: there are many facts and reasons which can lead a social individual to have certain social activities, which is a comprehensive role of many complicated elements; it is hard to simply explain by simple theory. So, personally, I think accurate ethnography should still be the necessary subject of anthropology.