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Freedman's model. All of this then suggests in my opinion that the localized cult of ancestral worship is a peculiar historical phenomenon which cannot be understood in terms of Freedman's model or any version of descent theory. I shall elaborate further in a later context.
The third dimension of Faure's work concerns the linkage he claims exists between the fall of "The Great Five Clans" and the rise of other village-lineage formations as well as regional alliances called the yeuk in Cantonese (hsiang-yüeh (M)). His political argument that alliances of this sort were successfully suppressed in the past and could only have appeared when the former's sphere of influence was considerably weakened is not very convincing. By Faure's account, there were several kinds of yeuk in the New Territories, some of which had primarily defensive functions. It is a significant fact that the yeuk in the New Territories has had a short history beginning no earlier than the mid-19th century and faded from memory by the mid-20th century. Yet even in the archetypical case of a defensive alliance like Luk Yeuk, it came to light only under threat by a larger party regardless of whether the latter was on the decline or on the rise, and under such conditions it is perhaps easier to believe that the "great" lineage-village and the yeuk are both products of the same "structural" environment (as in the notion of a **village-temple alliance**; see Brim 1974). Unless Faure can produce examples of yeuk having been obliterated out of existence in the past by larger villages, I would prefer to believe that a yeuk could easily have maintained its existence especially if it was necessary for its continued survival. Moreover, in the case of the Luk Yeuk, many of its participating villages outside of the more established villages like Ping Yeung, Shan Kai Wat and Ping Che were small communities which hardly could have been called anything more than groups of households a century earlier. Therefore, the yeuk was to be sure a product of a particular (historically constituted) social milieu, but one is still far from pinpointing how that social milieu was defined in analytical terms. In short, while the contrast Faure wishes to make between the villages of the "great" era and later settlements is an interesting one, his point would have been better served by writing his political history as history or by isolating regions in light of their peculiar historical experiences. History is what the nature of the village and the local community in the New Territories is all about, not misguided attempts to abstract in functional terms the rights of settlement.
249
Freedman's model. All of this then suggests in my opinion that the localized cult of ancestral worship is a peculiar historical phenomenon which cannot be understood in terms of Freedman's model or any version of descent theory. I shall elaborate further in a later context.
The third dimension of Faure's work concerns the linkage he claims exists between the fall of "The Great Five Clans" and the rise of other village-lineage formations as well as regional alliances called the yeuk in Cantonese (hsiang-yuch (M)). His political argument that alliances of this sort were successfully suppressed in the past and could only have appeared when the former's sphere of influence was considerably weakened is not very convincing. By Faure's account, there were several kinds of yeuk in the New Territories, some of which had primarily defensive functions. It is a significant fact that the yeuk in the New Territories has had a short history beginning no carlier than the mid-19th century and faded from memory by the mid-20th century. Yet even in the archetypical case of a defensive alliance like Luk Yeuk, it came to light only under threat by a larger party regardless of whether the latter was on the decline or on the rise, and under such conditions it is perhaps easier to believe that the "great" lineage-village and the yeuk are both products of the same “structural" environment (as in the notion of a **village-temple alliance"; see Brim 1974). Unless Faure can produce examples of yeuk having been obliterated out of existence in the past by larger villages, I would prefer to believe that a yeuk could easily have maintained its existence especially if it was necessary for its continued survival. Moreover, in the case of the Luk Yeuk, many of its participating villages outside of the more established villages like Ping Yeung, Shan Kai Wat and Ping Che were small communities which hardly could have been called anything more than groups of households a century earlier. Therefore, the yeuk was to be sure a product of a particular (historically constituted) social milieu, but one is still far from pinpointing how that social milieu was defined in analytical terms. In short, while the contrast Faure wishes to make between the villages of the "great" era and later settlements is an interesting one, his point would have been better served by writing his political history as history or by isolating regions in light of their peculiar historical experiences. History is what the nature of the village and the local community in the New Territories is all about, not misguided attempts to abstract in functional terms the rights of settlement.
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