The Practice of Deference and Its Politics: Theravada Buddhist Beliefs and Hierarchical Dynamism in China's Southwest Border Areas=恭敬的實踐及其政治：中國西南邊境地區佤族人的南傳佛教信仰與階序動態
Tzu-kai Liu, Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University.
關鍵詞
hierarchical dynamism=階序動態; Theravada Buddhist beliefs=南傳佛教信仰; religious conversion=佛教改宗; deference=恭敬; Wa Buddhists=信仰佛教的佤族人
摘要
In this article I examine the dynamics of religious and political hierarchies in Wa Buddhists' practice of Theravada Buddhist beliefs in the Autonomous County of Cangyuan, Wa Nationality, in China's southwest border region. Communities of Wa Buddhists in Cangyuan have gone through a number of historical phases for which the notion of ＂hierarchical dynamism＂ (Robbins 2015), is a useful theoretical framework for understanding, in particular, the workings of complex, multilayered hierarchical relations in the local history of religious conversion and practice. Here the symbolic role of the Wa king and the agentive role of senior Wa orators illustrate a feature of nested hierarchies by which the political and religious domains are contested and juxtaposed over time. In particular, the Wa deferential greetings performed by senior orators are not only confined and grounded in the religious field, but also feed into the hierarchical dynamics by which community tensions and conflicts are managed, where political distrust is expressed, and where social relations are reconfigured in light of local ethnolinguistic practices and ideas of nbuan (merit).
Introduction: Current Background to the Wa Story 68 Theravada Buddhist Beliefs and Wa Buddhists in the Border Areas 70 The Theoretical Framework: Hierarchical Dynamism and Nested Hierarchy 73 Contextualizing Religious Conversion and the Buddhist Hierarchy 77 History of the Wa Kings’ Families and Changes to Wa Kingship 83 Performing Deference, Reconfiguring Hierarchies 87 Conclusion 94 References 95
