The Sound And The Restless

Village C is a small Dong village, which locates in Qiandongnan Miao-Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province. County Town Rongjiang, which is very near from Village C, has carried out the urbanization policy of building a new city since the year of2001. Consequently, Village C has been involved in a rapid process of urbanization. To understand the social and cultural changes in Village C, the author took a deep observation of the everyday life of the Dong People there. Under the guidance of the methodology of individualism and the combinatory analysis of the emic and etic research, the author collected a lot of data in everyday life spaces in Village C including the fields, bazaars, roads and houses. All of the data were related to the everyday life of the Dong People in Village C. In the stage of data collection, methods of literature, fieldwork, observation, interview, autobiographical survey and participatory assessment were used. While in the stage of data analysis, the situational analysis and the confliction theory were applied to search for the outline of the various resources and scenes in the villagers’everyday life. And some themes of the villagers’everyday life turned up, referring to the aspects of daily production, daily social interaction and daily concepts. Under these daily themes, the author applied the method of theme description to the ethnographic narration. In this article, the author told a series of everyday life stories about the houses and roads, leading a life, running business, rearing poultry and livestock, Seniors Association, Villagers’Committees and so on.There are eleven chapters and four themes in this article. Chapter one and two introduce the main research questions and the situations of Village C. The third chapter focuses the issues of houses and road-building, which show the backgrounds of all the everyday life stories. The urban scale of Country Town Rongjiang is expanding which is characterized by more real estates and high-ways while the size of Village C is shirking which is characterized by less land and the destroyed county roads. The theme of this chapter is that the Dong People of Village C are involved in the process of urbanization passively. The following three Chapters focus on the theme of domesticity and to narrate the stories about the Dong People how to maintain the individual reproduction under the background of urbanization. Chapter four shows that after the traditional ways of making a living broke, the people made great efforts to search for new ways and has suffered various difficulties. Chapter five tells a story of two local businessmen running a parking firm and their situation of surviving in cracks during the process of urbanization. And the main contents of chapter six are related to rearing the livestock and poultry which show the difficulties to rear because of losing land and the difficulties to sell because it is hard to enter into the modern market system. Focusing on the theme of social organizations, chapter seven, chapter eight and chapter nine are concerning to the Seniors Association, Villagers’Committees and Litigating Groups in Village C. The author analyzed their features, their operating patterns and their problems through these three organizations’goals, actions and the core members’main actions. And all of that indicate the decline of the community of Village C. The religion, considered to be the main part of the concept field of everyday life, is the last theme of the article. The tenth chapter tells stories happened in the religious scenes such as the ancient wells, the old trees the river bank and temples of village C. Having analyzed the characteristics and trends of the Dong People’s religious concepts, the author concluded that there were some subtle changes happened in the concept field of everyday life of the Dong People in Village C.According to all the above stories of everyday life of the Dong People in Village C, the author drew conclusions in three aspects. Firstly, in the aspect of the conflicts and problems of everyday life, the author concluded that the land was the foundation of the construction of everyday life for the Dong People in Village C. In the past years, the people have been involved in a passive process of urbanization which was characterized as higher proportion of urban residents, the larger size of the city, the more property and infrastructure such as the highway and high railway. In front of the strong county, the Dong People lost their land and the production of the self-sufficiency was broken either. The community of Village C was on the wane from the economic base to the social organizations.Secondly, in the aspect of the everyday life choice of the Dong People in Village C, the author concluded that the villagers’knowledge of everyday life, which was entirely founded on the land and their farming livelihood, was not useful in the background of urbanization. New knowledge and strategies referring to the urban life supplied much more choices in the way of constructing everyday lives for the Dong People in Village C. And that made the everyday life of the villager reflective. At the same time, with the help of the traditional knowledge, the villagers made great efforts to rebuild their own community to fight for their interests against the powerful country. And that made the everyday life of the villagers full of power consciousness. Knowledge of the everyday life was so confused that most villagers found it completely hard to construct a clear and predictable image of everyday life. The multi-choice and the unpredictable consequences came to be the main characteristics of the contemporary everyday life of the Dong People in Village C.Thirdly, in the aspect of the everyday life study, the author explored the contemporary everyday life of the Dong People in Village C in the perspective of individualism and action and the characteristics of the contemporary society and culture of Village C were unfolded by the changing and conflicting everyday lives of the villagers. And it is an exploration to the further researches on everyday life of the multi ethic society of China. For one thing, the author considered the everyday life as a bottom-up and grassroots method, which focuses on the different individuals and emphasizes making deep observations of the local scenes and events and outlining the whole and various images of everyday lives of the local people during the process of data collection and analysis. For another, the author reflected the concept of everyday life and reinforced the variety of everyday life. China is a multi-nation country and there are various ways of constructing everyday life of various ethnic people, especially in the process of the urbanization across the whole country. Besides, as an attempt of exploring the everyday life study in the perspectives of individualism and action, there are still some questions to be answered in the aspects of the culture as a whole and the historical concern.