Failure Of Ritual Reinvention? Efficacious New Rituals Among Taiwan's Aborigines Under The Impact Of Religious Conversion And Competition Between Elites

Chapter Summary

The author contribution on the failure of a reinvented efficacious ritual among Taiwan's Aborigines shows however that such criteria cannot always serve as a satisfactory explanation of why certain ritual traditions are rejected while others are not: competing value systems and competition between elites in globalizing and highly hybrid cultural contexts also seem to be decisive factors in the process of selection. The main aim of the multicultural policy is to cure and to readjust the negative results and shortcomings of the former homogenisation policy of the Chinese National Party (KMT) that tried to make Taiwan appear a part of China. Religious efficacy was very much a by-product, created in the course of ritual criticism initiated by the opposing elites and reinforced by the intervention of the Christian minister-an authority who represented the 'sacred' in contemporary Taroko society-who tried to mould the ritual's efficacy according to his own individual ideas.

Keywords: China; Christianity; religious efficacy; ritual failure; Taiwan's Aborigines