Reconstruction Of The Temple: The Public Space Of The Contemporary Rural Society Remodeling

There isn't any kind of public sphere which is part of a civil society ever brought into being in modern China. In a traditional society, the gentries functioned as the agent class between the state and the local society by manipulating religious symbols and their implications to lubricate joint of the interactions between the state and its people. Temples were where the imperial authority, the gentries and the villagers communicate which thereby were allowed to take on the shape of a premature public domain. Due to the impact of the national planned economy and the stress of state power, the state authority replaced the gentry class to reconcile between the state and the public after the PRC was founded.After the1980s, the state authority started to fade out from people's life. The subjectivity of the public is awakened as a result of the infiltration of market rationality and the change in a political totalism structure. The villagers began to actively engage in the reflection upon and meaning seeking for the unity of rural society during which identity difference and identity crisis occurred. The reconstruction of the temples is a light the shines through the blind search of the central Chinese villagers which roots in the belief that a temple resides on religious faith would not only maintain a closer connection with the daily life of the commons, but also console people's pannic and confusion, and explain the meaning of life。 By offering space for the culture and faith relay, those reconstructed temples become a manifestation of the reformed public domain.Be it the public domain of a civil society or the public space in a rural society, the crux of such places is to spare and maintain certain room for free contacts. The public involvement and the space set in those temples in addition to the fact that they are open to all citizens and villagers makes holding people from different regions and various fields possible. The likelihood of temples to function as the village public domain is strengthened since they are jointly built by the government and the pubic and free mobility and open communication are allowed inside those temples. Anthropological fieldwork method is employed in this paper to engage in the participating observation process of a reconstructed village temple in central China. Combined with the methods of in-depth interview and document research, the role reconstructed temples playing as public domain in today's rural society is analyzed on that basis and the results are mainly in the following aspects:First of all, there is contemporary significance in the reconstruction of temple history, which includes the elaboration of the role state authority played in the historical narration of temples, and national resistance and compromise,as well as the donation of cultural capital and the self-identity of the villages.Secondly, the cultural significance behind the reconstruction of religious belief is demonstrated. Village men influenced by modernity are searching for moral belonging and identity consciously or subconsciously. People's perception and their understanding of village culture are expressed through religion or temples. This is important not only in a religious sense but also in a sense that it displayed the nexus of cultural power of the whole village.Thirdly, temple space has cultural significance as well. The communication inside the public domain created by those temple is carried out in two ways, either through the physical space and setup to interact with the villagers which includes the holy power, the imperial authority, the state publicity inside the architectural space or through the spiritual communication of rural spaces, which is to say that as the reconstructed temples are in the center of the village economy, religion and culture space, these three fields get to extend their influences via the temples.Fourthly, by reviving the tradition of temple fairs, the communication channel between the grassroots government and its people is restored. After the temples are reconstructed, temple fairs are bound to be brought back to life as it is a major way to conduct religious events and market economy activities which contains the organizational behavioral rules of the rural group. Although it may seem that temple fairs is separated from government operation, internal and invisible governmental power still acts as the core of the overall planning of those temple fairs. Meanwhile, since the state has recognized some of the original organizational principles of the villagers, township government which represents state authority at grass root level would be fulfilling the role of operator and supervisor of those concrete actions. People are left in a passive position as a result of those government conducts. They can only share their interests and likings inside the villagers'communication circle. As those opinions fail to reach to the township government, the is no room for any adjustment or improvement.