Culture, Cognition, and Emotion in China's Religious Ethnic Minorities

Voices of Suffering among the Yi

Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting, Louise Sundararajan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319660592
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This study examines the suffering narratives of the Bimo and Christian religious communities of the Yi minority who reside in the remote mountains of Sichuan and Yunnan, China, respectively. It is informed by the theoretical framework of ecological rationality, which posits that religions influence and are influenced by cognitive styles that have co-evolved with the ecological niche of a culture. It was predicted and found that in times of adversity, traditional religious communities differ in emotion expression, causal attribution, and help-seeking behavior, with far-reaching ramifications for how they are uniquely vulnerable to the ravages of modernization. The authors hope that the voices of the study participants, heard through their harrowing narratives, may inspire a deepened sensitivity to the plight of rural Chinese communities as China races to become a superpower in the global economy.

© The Author(s) 2018

Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting and Louise SundararajanCulture, Cognition, and Emotion in China's Religious Ethnic MinoritiesPalgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66059-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. First Things First: Research Orientation and Background Information on Two Yi Communities in Southwest China

Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting¹ and Louise Sundararajan²

(1)

School of Sociology, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China

(2)

Rochester, New York, USA

End Abstract

As the first chapter of the first psychological investigation of the two religious communities of the Yi, secluded deep in the mountains of Southwest China, this propaedeutic has the important task of orienting the reader. We begin with an introduction to the purpose and scope of this psychological investigation, and the theoretical framework of our study. Next, we give an overview of the historical background of the Yi, their native Bimo tradition , and the spread of Christianity in Southwest China near the end of the nineteenth century. Then we take the reader on a tour to the two research sites—Meigu and Luquan . Lastly, we outline our research protocol of the mixed method approach, which consists of both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Scope of Our Study: An Unusual Blend of Approaches

This study is a multilayered endeavor, which consists of the warp of theoretical prediction on the one hand, and the weft of phenomenological analysis on the other. These two approaches differ in their levels of analysis . The theoretical approach is abstract and removed from the phenomenal world, whereas the phenomenological approach is deeply immersed in fieldwork, capitalizing on an empathic understanding of the participants in the study. This difference in levels of abstraction may be understood in terms of two types of observations—the bird’s eye view and the worm’s eye view. Corresponding to the theoretical approach, the bird’s-eye perspective gains an overview of things, but does not dwell on details. Corresponding to the phenomenological approach, the worm’s eye view capitalizes on experiential learning, counting each tree on its way to knowledge. These two approaches rarely collaborate in the field; and it is this unusual and synergistic combination of the two that sets this study apart from run-of-the-mill psychological studies.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework that guides this study is ecological rationality (Todd et al. 2012), which posits that cognitive styles shape different types of adaptation in response to varying environmental demands, as well as being shaped by them. This theory is extended by Sundararajan (2015) to explain the difference in cognitive styles across cultures , using strong versus weak ties as ecological niches to replace collectivistic versus individualistic societies/cultures . We here adopt and adapt it further to explain the difference in suffering experiences between two religious communities among the Yi in Southwest China. More specifically, the theory predicts that the differences between the two Yi communities fall along the divide between cognitive styles privileged by strong ties versus weak ties , respectively (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1

A schematic comparison between Yi-Bimo and Yi-Christians in terms of ecological rationality , defined as cognition co-evolved with the ecological niche

Ecological niche	Strong ties	Weak ties
Cognitive styles
Representation of emotion	Implicit	Explicit
	Somatic expressions	Verbal, linguistic, conceptual
Information processing	Perceptual (concrete)	Conceptual (abstract)
Categorizations	Experience-bound	Higher level of abstraction
	In-group versus out-group; natural versus Supernatural Causes	Church as all-inclusive group: God having sovereignty over all things, natural and supernatural
Cognitive orientation	Physical space (external)	Mental space (internal)
Cause of suffering	External Attribution (cause is external to the self)	Internal Attribution (sin)
Responses to suffering	Concrete action (hire a religious specialist to do ritual)	Mental action (prayer, etc.)
Cognitive effort	Low cognitive effort	High cognitive effort

The various cognitive components of suffering , as shown in Table 1.1, will be further examined in Chaps. 3–5 according to the scales we constructed (What , Why , How , Help ). In addition, there are other contributing factors to suffering that we will not analyze. It suffices here to adumbrate them all with a chart (see Diagram 1.1).

Diagram 1.1

A schematic representation of all the contributing factors to suffering experiences

As Diagram 1.1 indicates, our investigation pays selective attention to certain variables, and not others. Note that all the demographic variables (on the outer ring of the diagram), such as governmental policies, historical factors, and so on, are not the focus of our investigation. What we focus on instead are the cognitive styles behind certain behaviors—help-seeking, emotional expression , and causal attributions—associated with suffering . This point can be elaborated by levels of analysis . The variables that show up on our radar screen, as indicated by the shaded circle on Diagram 1.1, are accessible at two levels of analysis —at the abstract, experience-distant level, cognitive styles are conceptualized and predicted by the bird’s-eye approach; at the concrete, experience-near level, data on help-seeking, emotional expression , and causal attributions are collected through sympathetic listening to the suffering narratives of the research participants. What falls outside the scope of our investigation is the mid-range level of analysis that focuses on the societal, historical, political, religious, and environmental factors (shown on the outer ring of the diagram) found in anthropology literature.

Aim of Our Study: What Is This Study About?

Due to this difference in levels of analysis , our investigation of the two religious groups of Yi neither asks nor answers the same questions that concern anthropologists. Rather, it asks a different set of questions. Guided by the theory of ecological rationality , we propose that religion as a cultural system co-evolves with the ecological niche and cognitive styles , which have a pervasive impact on the emotional expression and help-seeking behaviors of the local community. Let us spell out more fully what we do and do not include in our research agenda:

1. 1.
   This study is not about religion per se, because religion is dissolved into the higher-level analysis of culture . By the same token, this study is not about the religious experience of the individual—we focus only on religious behaviors, such as rituals and prayers , that give us information on cognitive styles and emotional e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. First Things First: Research Orientation and Background Information on Two Yi Communities in Southwest China
• 2. Narratives of Suffering
• 3. Suffering and Worldviews
• 4. Help-Seeking in Suffering
• 5. Emotions of Suffering
• 6. Toward a Reflexive Indigenous Psychology
• 7. Challenges and Future Directions
• Back Matter