Folk Beliefs: Keeping The Rural Society "Lively"

This paper is an ethnographic study on folk beliefs in central Hunan. On the basis of first-hand materials from the fieldwork, through an ethnographic "record" on folk beliefs in a common funeral as well as daily life world, the article described a general picture of folk beliefs in Central Hunan, and gave an anthropological "deep description" in folk beliefs from three dimensions, individuals, families and communities. In the process, from the perspective of "emic", the author showed the thoughts of the supernatural, the ritual practice, and a variety of cultural symbols of folk beliefs of blood groups, geographic groups, as well as ritual experts in the village.Firstly, through the "local knowledge" as a result of the field survey, the article presents a visual sign of folk beliefs in the current rural society, through recording the thoughts and rituals of folk beliefs as a social fact. Furthermore, in essence, it provides us with an interpretation of the characteristics of the folk beliefs of living material. The research finds: the labor division of ritual experts and co-existing of multi-beliefs make folk beliefs harmonious.Secondly, the author discussed the importance of folk beliefs to social structure, following structural functionalism and the theory of social change. Folk beliefs maintain the traditional blood and geopolitical relations as well both destroyed in the process of modernization by modern relationship. Essentially, they are metaphors of the spirits of Community of central Hunan rural areas; folk beliefs seem to be a tool for observing social changes, which rely on the relations in rural society, and make quiet village really "lively".