Social Situation, Historical Memory And Ethnic Identity Descendants Of The Kaifeng Jews To A Case Study

For nearly three decades, ethnic identity issue has gradually become the focus of the academic community. Especially in anthropology, many works on theme of ethnic identity was painted. Anthropologist countries on this issue had a great deal of research and study and they put forward their own theories, such as "the theory of objective characteristics ", the "community of communities" under the subjective identity, " primordialist approach " and" circumstartialist approach", and so on.The scholars believed "objective characteristics" and the " primordialist approach " take the crowd physical characteristics and objective cultural characteristics such as language, clothing, hair style, tattoos, religions, customs and nationalism as the judgment criteria. In this theoretical background, ethnic identity to be seen as a simple family ties, which is from the foundation of the emotional ties of natural selection is only the inevitable outcome. This anthropology class study, which the culture of foreign observers to understand the perspective of cultural studies perspective, has been universally accepted until Edmund Leach, the British anthropologist, suspected it. From then on many scholars found that the traditional view of the ethnic groups can not explain the ethnic identity phenomenon observed in field research. The descendants of the Kaifeng Jews are a good example to show the defects of the traditional theory. During the field survey, we found that the ethnic identification of Kaifeng Jews and their descendants was not disappear by the dissolution of the Jewish community, cultural identity changed and the passage of time. In the social environment changes and in historical conditions changes circumstances, the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews re-constructed for each family of historical memory, and regenerate the Jewish ethnic identity.Therefore, discussing the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews ethnic identity issues should abandon the traditional interpretation theory, but use the depth interviews approach and participant observation approach which required by social anthropology to investigate the descendants of the Kaifeng Jewish family life and their living conditions, visit Kaifeng Jewish heritage sites, and further excavate the information of the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews, especially their oral history information, in order to understand their ethnic identity of the real causes from the researcher's point of view. This paper attempts to draw this thinking, beginning with the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews' ethnic identity change, use the ethnic identity theory of anthropology to explain the relationship of social situation, historical memory and ethnic identity. On the author's opinion, ethnic identity is not a gift from the Original and the emotional bond, but is a social constructivism which is built on the historical memory of people. Its production and changes has profound relationship with social environment and historical conditions.The article altogether divides five parts.Part One: Introduction.Part Two: The Kaifeng Jews' ethnic identity in history. Introduce the Kaifeng Jews' ethnic identity on folk lore and religion in history.Part Three: The Kaifeng Jews dilute the ethnic identity and the social environment changes. Beginning with the changing social environment, to explain the reasons of the Kaifeng Jews dilute the ethnic identity.Part Four: Descendants of the Kaifeng Jews' ethnic identity. Take the living of the Kaifeng Jewish descendants to be a target, to show the trend of regenerating the Jewish ethnic identity.Part Five: Closing remarks. Use the ethnic identity theory of anthropology to explain the relationship of social situation, historical memory and ethnic identity, and on the author's opinion, Its production and changes has profound relationship with social environment and historical conditions.