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- Title
The Castrated Cock Contest in the Hakka Village of Sinchu County: The Cultural Construction and Ontology in the Local Community.
- Authors
Hsiu-hsin Lin
- Abstract
Through the interpretation of the castrated cock contest in a Hakka village in Northern Taiwan, this paper explores the ontology of the social process of local community in social structure. In this process, the physical body is the first realm in which the tension between the natural and the social plays out. The body carries our wild nature of instinct while living in the social environment--a fundamental contradiction for human beings that needs to be resolved. In raising and castrating the cocks, participating in the cock contest, and offering the cock to god as sacrifice, the Hakka villagers practice a hermeneutic circle to interpret the relations between nature, the self, and the other. With the body as the indispensable medium, culture is constructed through the community members' mutual "understanding" with each other. In conclusion, I argue that small scale and embodied communication is central to the lived experience of the community.
- Subjects
TAIWAN; GAME fowl; COCKFIGHTING; ONTOLOGY; SOCIAL processes; SOCIAL change; SOCIAL structure; SOCIAL context
- Publication
Taiwan Journal of Anthropology, 2008, Vol 6, Issue 2, p133
- ISSN
1727-1878
- Publication type
Article