Social Structure And Survival Strategy Of The Dong Nationality

Dong nationality lives in the border area of Guangxi, Guizot, Hunan. In history, inthis area people are faced with serious challenges for survival. The survival crisis comefrom two aspects: one is the social crisis, mainly in the war, bandits, fights, tyranny; theother is a natural disaster, mainly in agricultural disaster, food shortages, plagues andother aspects, and the most prominent problem is the shortage of food. Because of theexistence of the continuing survival crisis, it can say the Dong is an insecure group,security becomes a social constructionist principle.This paper takes a village as a case, from the settlement pattern, the relationshipbetween village and village, the main belief, social stratification, the civil authority,family structure, social network, birth idea, concept of marriage and other aspects, toanalyze of the structure of the society, reveal a set of strategies of survival and survivalethics of the society of the Dong.Either social crisis or natural crisis has contributed to people’s continuing migrationin this area. Population migration not only formed a multi-ethnic mixed cultural pattern,also make a considerable degree of foreign descent into the Dong. The immigrants builttheir own survival guarantee system from two respects, one is individual (familial)levels of security, mainly dealing with natural (material) survival crisis; the other is avillage (ethnic) group’s level of security, mainly dealing with social crisis. When asociety emphasizes only a need, it is easy that lose or ignore other opportunities, thedilemma of security and development is reflected at all levels of the society of theDong.When people face great pressure for survival will depend on the strength of groupsnaturally, the Dong people obtain this force from the three paths. The first is toestablish regional community. Sporadic immigrations construct large villages; a villageis a defensive fortress. The “safety first” principle of choosing settlement forms asignificant departure from the principle of ecology, the most prominent problem is toaggravate farming and face with a severe fire threat. This was followed by theestablishment of community. The immigrations construct a prepared blood lineagethrough the sworn brothers, and the village common ancestor worship formed a unifiedsocial identity. In the fiction of lineage, social hierarchy has been established accordingto the time of settling, economic condition and the relationship with ghost, the poor and later settling immigration may fall into the bottom of society. Village ancestral ritereflects this kind of social class arrangement. The folk authority exists to maintain theunity in action of the villagers, which is the essential condition to maintain the publicwelfare, but the authorities’ behavior also strongly reflects the personal will and mayviolate collective interests. From this we can see that, although the presence of constantmigration, later immigrants in order to obtain the village asylum moved into the socialsystem, the main body of social structure remains stable. The last is a village alliance.When the pressure of survival is large enough to require the establishment of collectiveaction among villages, village alliance--Kuan is such action unit. A village accordingto the specific situation participates in more than one (one time) of alliance, which is akind of relationship beyond the feelings of liking or disliking between village andvillage. In addition to village alliance, there still exist two kinds of persistentinteraction relations: mutual visiting and fighting. Mutual visiting forms thegenerational friendship and fighting results in a feud. The collective relationshipbasically does not affect the individual level.The survival strategy of individual (family) levels is to obtain basic living security,largely constrained by the collective survival strategy. The farmers hoard food toprevent possible failures, maintain the family pattern to provide life insurance for theelderly, bachelors and other vulnerable members, and birth sons for their old age,which are in individual (family) controllable range of choices. Beyond individualfamily ability the problems of life depend on supporting of social network consisted ofsworn brothers, marriage family, singing groups. In order to establish a stronger socialnetwork, the villagers tend to marry in the village, and social hierarchy limits thechoices of marriage, which results in a conflict between arranged marriages by parentswith freely loving among the young people, and the relationship model of “notfollowing the husband”and“unite outwardly but divide at heart”between husband andwife.Since new China is built, because of enhancement of the country control force,social crisis are lifted, the collective level survival pressure can be said to bedisappeared. Thus we see, originally closer settlement began to external proliferation,the traditional conception of social hierarchy in the younger generations is desalinating,folk authority has also been questioned more and more, the closing village alliance isconfined to entertaining content. However, at present, these changes are not enough toradically change the village’s social identity; the village social cohesion is still strong, recurrent folk collective action shows us the strength. As the mass of migrant workersand a series of supportive policies for rural area, they have the opportunity to obtainmaterial resources from the outside of a village, the basic food and clothing has aguarantee. The question now is that the brandish famine consciousness does not go andthe strategy, trying to hoard food and birth sons to cope with the recent and long-termfamine, has resulted in serious consequences. It not only limits the improvement oftheir life but also forms an abnormal high sex ratio at birth which makes many menlose their mating opportunities.