The Construction Of Belief And Its Radius Of Belief Identity

Based on the fieldwork in Tianjin, Putian and Shantou, this dissertation focus on the factors that might affect the actors’identities of folk religion. This dissertation consists of three main chapters which investigate Mazu belief, which is one of important folk religions in Chinese society. Chapter 1 shows the reconstruction of Mazu belief. Chapter 2 examines the consequences of reconstruction activities. Chapter 3 discusses the reason why religion actors identify folk religions. The result shows that "the relationship in beliefs" may affect this kind of identity, a concept tool called "the radius of identity" can be one of the explanations for it. This means that "public (gong)" and "private (si)" can influence the person in different classes. Effect might be the identity salience when "private (si)" dominates. Similarly, when "public (gong)", especially public power dominates, identity salience may change into the identity of folk religion, regarding as a kind of traditional cultures. The model of identity of beliefs was presented in this thesis and tried to illustrate the relationship between identity salience and religious identity.