微觀政治視角下的宗教空間的社會與文化建構: 以中國大陸威甯石門檻基督教會為例

Abstract

伴隨著人文地理學對空間政治的日益關注，國際宗教地理研究體現出對宗教空間政治性的極大興趣。宗教空間在神聖與世俗的碰撞中經歷持續建構的過程，如族群文化與身份認同就在宗教空間中不斷得到再生產。微觀政治立足微觀、關注地方、結合宏觀的特性使其成為宗教政治性研究的有益視角。文章以中國大陸貴州石門檻基督教會為對象，分析教會領導下的「苗文保護運動」過程。發現在中國世俗化的社會背景下，地方少數民族文化與宗教的有機結合，建構了宗教空間之上「我者」的文化空間。「我者」文化空間具有其本質的地理、社會及政治屬性，能夠為少數民族文化提供保護，達到抵抗地方行政權力對民族認同的排斥，進而實現微觀層面上的策略性「政治越界」，有效地保護少數民族文化的傳承與發展。

Alongside the tendency in human geography of shifting to the relationship between space and politics in examining the social and cultural construction of space and spatiality, the research on the geography of religion has shown profound interests on the political potential of religious space. Religious space is always under construction, with the constant dynamic between the scared and the secular. Simultaneously, culture and identity are undergoing drastic reproduction through the participation and appropriation of scared space. Micro-politics, which focuses on micro-level political and cultural processes, but simultaneously reflects and re-shapes macro-level social and cultural fabrics, is a useful lens through which we can examine the intersection of human agency, power relations and cultural identity in local religious space. Through a case study of a ”Miao Script protection movement” staged through Christian Church in Shimenkan, Guizhou, we argued that the religious space holds the potential to become a cultural space of ”us” by combining sacred practices with the renegotiation of minority ethnic identity. This space, albeit non-confrontational and less radical, possesses the political energy to resist the exclusion of minority ethnic identity by the local state, demonstrating the tactical ”transgression” by religious space in a micro-level cultural politics and its potential of powerfully reinforcing local ethnic identity.