• 1 ^{Catherine Bell, Rituals: Perspectives and Dimensions, Oxford, Oxford U.P., 1997, pp.82-83. (Cited b} (...)

3Rituals are thus viewed here in terms of “transformative practices” that, contrary to current opinion, set out not to confirm a group’s identity but rather to reorganise it in the very act of ritual performance. “^{Rituals not only mean something, but also do something, particularly the way they construct and inscribe power relationships. (…) Rather than seeing rituals as the vehicle for the expression of authority, practice theorists tend to explore how ritual is a vehicle for the construction of relationships of authority and submission}.”1

• 2 ^{Stanley J. Tambiah, “A Performative Approach to Rituals,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 197} (...)
• 3 ^{Rudolph is critical of the works of the ethnographer and documentarist Hu Tai-li, who while displ} (...)

4The kind of rites Michael Rudolph focuses on, and which he calls “retraditionalising rituals” (p. 15), therefore point more often to situations foreign to the historical elements they borrow: the observer’s attention is drawn at the outset to the “emerging meaning” that the ritual staging helps express through a subversion of cosmological or other symbols used.2 Changes in ritual forms are not necessarily imposed by material conditions: they correspond to the quest for meaning through which the community redefines its borders, its bases, and its destiny. At the same time, the potential politics of any religious ritual can only be fully grasped by looking at its actuation in terms of the issues and strategies that lie beyond its narrow limits and anchor it in a greater community. Thus we move from the ritual’s apparent symbolism to the impression of meaning and power produced by its staging. In other words, the question of determining whether or not the semantic of contemporary rituals is that of past rituals is directly linked to the nature and evolution of the political community of which they are a part, and which they justify and/or challenge and transform.3

• 4 Rudolph relies on the dissertation of Qiu Yufang, Zuling, shangdi yu chuantong: Jidu zhanglao jia (...)
• 5 Unfortunately, in this case, as in others, Rudolph adopts the Chinese transcriptions of place nam (...)

6The next section begins by examining the relationship between the progressive recognition of the Taroko as an official ethnic group and the rituals adopted by the Tarokocommunities. The reorganisation of values and attitudes that led to the reaffirmation of Taroko identity followed a reinterpretation of their traditional cosmology in terms of social practice: cosmological symbols became those of concrete existence, ancient rituals being thoroughly reworked and imbued with new significations. The chapter shows that aboriginal intellectuals’ initial attempts to reorganise these rituals in line with ancient beliefs met with resistance from local communities, which imposed their own interpretation system on ancestral beliefs and the way in which they were adapted in the Taiwanese Presbyterian church. The aboriginal intellectuals’ relative failure might have been due to the fact that the public they had in mind had really been groomed less by their own people than by Han intellectuals when it came to persuading them of the excellence and efficacy of aboriginal beliefs and practices.4 The next chapter looks at the harvest festival (Ilisin) held annually by the Taibalang Ami tribe5 in Hualien district. Rudolph views such festivals as an annual forum for re-diffusing values, symbols, and strategies so as to facilitate the affirmation of Ami ethnicity and its bargaining power in Taiwanese society. Relations with political parties, the Catholic and Protestant churches, and other authorities are represented and negotiated in such a way as to ensure the unity and prosperity of a village that remains mainly Catholic while at the same time aspiring to benefit from the new cultural legitimacy of shamanistic practices. As in the Taroko context, this strategy is both encouraged and complicated by the symbiotic relations between local intellectuals and the Han intellectual community as a whole. Again, for the organisers of aboriginal cultural renewal, the challenge is knowing how to address different publics simultaneously while making trade-offs that will prevent falling afoul of any of them.