Boundary Of Community And Identity Among Boat People

This thesis discusses boundaries and identity of the boat people.During the Socialist Transformation for Lianjiachuan in 1966,many boat people known as Dan,who had gathered along the coast of Zhangwan of Ningde County,moved ashore and settled on Hengyu,a small island on the westernmost of Sansha Bay.The changes of boat-living about which the settlement and housing program brought,however,did not,as expected,merge the boat people and their surrounding long-settled land communities into one.The social boundaries in local context between them are still salient in the boat people's everyday life.In terms of cross-boundary interaction,firstly,under the social process of competing for the possession of Hengyu island with Nancheng villagers,the boat people of Hengyu use rituals and spatial practice as symbolic means to reconstruct the boundary of their own community.Secondly,after the failure of learning farming in 1960s to 1970s,the boat people in Hengyu take this past and memory as a resource to construct their identity.They identify selves as'the people of fishing zone'who are skilled at fishing and still cannot master and adapt to agriculture.Their means of livelihood and economic practice impacted by the notion of identity,then,make a new discrimination with neighborhood after the Reform in 1980s.In terms of the social structure of Hengyu village,as Sahlins suggests,the domestic mode of production is inclined to toward a maximum dispersion of households and disorganization of the community.The rotating credit association,however,trough domestic capital accumulation,strengthen bonds of boat people homesteads and the over-all solidarity of the village.It also has positive effects on the economic independence of boat people,which to some extent maintains the boundary.To sum up,the social boundary between boat people and the land population is not blurred by placement and housing policy in 1966.It is conversely marked,embellished and reconstructed during the process of boat people living and acting around that boundary.