Culture, Cognition, and Emotion in China’s Religious Ethnic Minorities: Voices of Suffering among the Yi

305 Pages·2018·8.334 MB·English

by  Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting, Louise Sundararajan

CULTURE,
COGNITION,
AND EMOTION IN
CHINA’S RELIGIOUS
ETHNIC MINORITIES
Voices of Suff ering among the Yi
Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting
Louise Sundararajan
Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology
Series Editors
Louise Sundararajan
Independent Researcher
Rochester, New York, USA
Kuang-Hui Yeh
Institute of Ethnology
Academia Sinica
Taipei, Taiwan
Alvin Dueck
School of Psychology
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, California, USA
Thomas Teo
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Jeffrey Paul Ansloos
Faculty of Human and Social Development
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology aims to introduce psycholo-
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Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting • Louise Sundararajan
Culture, Cognition,
and Emotion in
China’s Religious
Ethnic Minorities
Voices of Suffering among the Yi
Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting Louise Sundararajan
School of Sociology Rochester, New York, USA
China University of Political Science
and Law
Beijing, China
Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology
ISBN 978-3-319-66058-5 ISBN 978-3-319-66059-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66059-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953760
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To those participants who passed away during our study, as well as the kind
folks we met in the homeland of the Yi
F
oreword
Rachel SK Ting and Louise Sundararajan have produced a truly remark-
able book. It is a significant contribution to indigenous psychology and
this alone makes it worthwhile. However, even more, it is a marvelous
exemplar of a mixed-methods approach, cooperatively executed by a mul-
tidisciplinary team of research assistants who reflect upon their experience.
The research assistants come from sociology, psychology, social work, and
religious studies at various levels of expertise, all skillfully guided by Rachel
and Louise, both to do significant research and to reflect upon what they
do in the name of research.
This important contribution to indigenous psychology is informed
within a theoretical framework of the mutual interaction of emotion and
cognition that co-evolve with the ecological niche of culture. However,
rather than simply espouse theory, this study proceeds from the ground
up, with research teams heavily sharing in the lives of their participants.
Not seeking to impose Western psychological assumptions and methods
upon one of the 56 indigenous ethnic groups in China, this research team
(all Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China) choose to study two
Yi communities, located in the remote mountains of China, one near the
town of Meigu, the other near Luquan. While the Yi ethnic people only
make up about 0.65% of China’s massive population, they are one of the
ethnic minorities officially recognized by the present government and
number in excess of eight million persons. Of all the ethnic minorities
(constituting less than 9% of the overall population), the Yi make up one
of the larger groups.
vii
viii FOREWORD
The authors do a fine job of placing the Yi within an historical and
geographical context, illustrating why they are an important indigenous
group to study. While the Yi’s history is clouded by a disputed past, they
are likely an amalgamation of six tribes, united by a commitment to the
Bimo religion as the Hans were initially united by Confucianism. This is
what makes the Yi an indigenous group worthy of serious study. From a
Western ethnocentric perspective, the Bimo religion itself is simply dis-
missed as a “superstition,” which, in terms of respecting indigenous tra-
ditions, is unwarranted. As the authors rightly note, despite its great
distance from Western views of religion, the Bimo religion sustains the
Yi culture with Bimo (priests) who transmit its practices via rituals, sus-
tained by a sacred text that only a few can read. While not monotheistic,
the authors rightly note (and the research team came to respect) that the
Bimo religion is complete in and of itself, fulfilling all the markers of any
religion: beliefs, scripture, clergy, and rituals. Throughout the text we
are presented with wonderful, in-depth narratives, as the Yi priests and
believers tell of their participation in rituals requiring animal sacrifice,
and of their healers, who communicate with the spiritual realm in a tradi-
tion far removed from the monotheistic religions common in the West
and studied in the psychology of religion.
The focus of this research is how the experience of suffering is nar-
rated in two different Yi communities. The identities of the communi-
ties are protected by only indicating their general location in the remote
mountains of Sichuan and Yunnan, China. One, near the town of
Meigu, is more geographically isolated and continues as an exclusively
strong-ties Yi-Bimo culture. The other is a weak-ties culture near
Luquan. While mostly Yi, it has a history of Christian influence, largely
due to successful efforts by British Methodists to convert the Yi.
Especially notable is Samuel Pollard, who created the Miao script. The
success of Pollard and other Christian missionaries in Yunnan is indi-
cated by the fact that there are 386 registered churches in the Luquan
area, with 80% of the Yi population identifying as Christians. Thus,
both Yi communities are defined by religion, one indigenous to China
(Bimo) and one not (Christian).
While there are many subtleties worth additional attention, including
the distinction between “Black” and “White” Yi, identity politics is not
the focus of this book. Thus, the major value of this mixed-method study
is its focus upon the differences between the exclusively Yi-Bimo tradition
of the Meigu community as compared to the largely Yi-Christian commu-
FOREWOR D ix
nity of the Luquan. Rather than getting tangled in the exposition of mere
theory, the book documents the differences in suffering narratives of the
two communities, informed by, and illustrative of, the theory of ecological
rationality.
I do not want to keep the reader from entering into the unfolding of
what will likely prove to be an engrossing and, for many, even a personally
transforming read. We will see that this was the case for the researcher
team. Part of the immense value of this book is that it is a study of real
persons in their natural settings by real researchers who do not hide behind
methods or techniques imposed from without.
Many have challenged Western positivistic, natural science psychology
as itself a dangerous myth and one that distorts rather than illuminates
indigenous cultures. However, efforts to sustain a human science in the
face of devastating criticisms of positivistic science have not been success-
ful in the West. This is one of the reasons this book is so important. As I
will discuss below, and have stated above, it is an exemplary model of
mixed methods that illustrates not simply how to do human science with
indigenous groups, but how to do it humanely. Humanely means no
deception, no manipulation, and that the research’s claims are tested by
the one criterion essential to a human science that is humane: a negotiated
acceptance of descriptions by both researcher and participants, indicating
a shared understanding of experience.
A simple summary of some of the major findings is useful here, but is
no substitute for a thoughtful and reflexive reading of the narratives in the
text. As one might expect, both Yi communities experienced adversity
likely enhanced by poverty, which moderates all forms of suffering.
However, how the suffering was narrated varied noticeably between the
two Yi communities, as ecological rationality suggests should be the case.
The Yi-Bimo community tended to talk about emotionally rousing events
without naming their emotions. Instead they expressed their emotions
through implicit codes. This is contrasted with the Yi-Christian commu-
nity, who used a more extensive lexicon largely available to them from
their Christian culture. This claim is supported by the Christian commu-
nity making more extensive use of Internal Attributions and a personally
reflexive Life Review, while the Yi-Bimo community had ready access to
and made use of the more supernatural explanations readily available in
Yi-Bimo culture. Many of the suffering narratives focused on HIV and
AIDS, more common in the Yi-Bimo than Yi-Christian communities, for
reasons explained in the text.
x FOREWORD
While much more can be said about the empirical findings of this study,
the book must be read to glean the real significance of the rich data pro-
vided by the research team. The study began in 2014 with two research
teams each visiting and establishing rapport with their respective commu-
nities. Initial interviews were conducted, as well as focused interviews with
religious leaders. This constituted phase one. Phase two was the following
year (2014–2015), when follow-up interviews were conducted, each last-
ing 30 to 60 minutes, with the original participants, or replacements when
necessary. Continued contact with the participants was by follow-up
phone interviews, constituting phase three of the study. True subject mor-
tality limited follow-up interviews as seven of the original participants died
during the study. Data of the semi-structured interviews, coding, and the-
matic analyses was collected from 47 Yi: 24 Yi-Bimo from Meigu and 23
Yi-Christian from the Luquan area.
Detailed exposition of difficulties and the methods used in collecting
data, and on reliably coding narratives, are provided in the book and pro-
vide a virtual manual on how to do significant human science. When
appropriate, statistical differences between groups on coded measures are
provided, but the real merit of this work is in the rich descriptions the nar-
ratives provide. Having said this, I recommend you begin reading and
looking at the correlated photographs, which will introduce you to the
participants whose lives you will begin to understand through the narra-
tions of their sufferings in the face of adversity, some shared by both com-
munities, others unique.
I would be remiss if I did not expound upon what I see as the truly
exceptional contribution of this work, not simply to our understanding of
the indigenous psychology of the Yi-Bimo and Yi-Christian traditions, but
to how significant human, and truly humane, science ought to be done. In
Chap. 6 the authors present a reflexive analysis of how they and their
research assistants were themselves personally affected by participating in
this study. They categorize changes in three domains, each linked to the
three phases of the research. The domains address cognition, emotion,
and relations. Since, as noted above, the study involved intense, personal
relations with the participants and did not involve deception or manipula-
tion, true “objectivity” was neither desired nor feigned. The narratives’
authenticity was the issue and the goal was mutually shared understand-
ing. Interviews were recorded, extensive photographs were taken, and
validity checks were made, while at all times protecting the communities
and the individual subject’s anonymity. For instance, some photographs