英文摘要 |
This article is concerned with how the Bunun, an Austronesian-speaking indigenous people of Taiwan, conceptualize and deal with death in particular historical contexts. It focuses on the analysis of mortuary rites to explore how the Bunun confront the transience of life and construct the relationship between the living and the dead. I suggest that death rituals should not be treated as closed symbolic systems but as busy intersections of multiple social processes, and examine how colonial policies and the introduction of Christianity have transformed the ways in which death is dealt with among the Bunun, and to some extent, their emotional responses to death. It is emphasized that the emotions aroused by death and their orchestration are not static and timeless socio-cultural constructions but processes which could undergo changes over time. As the dynamic and temporal characters of emotion are highlighted, we can understand how mourning and the experience of loss generate the structures of feeling specific to Bunun indigeneity. |