| dc.description.abstract | Funeral and death are always topics avoided to be talked in Taiwan. Till now, it still remained the same in Miaoli Hakkas. With the change of social culture, Hakkas funerals also changed, disappeared or replaced in ritual or custom. The common people are not familiar with funeral procedures or meanings so they often follow the instructions of funeral dealers to execute in the reasonable range what they think. The funeral dealer plays an important role of assistant in the funeral. In Hakkas funeral, how gender hierarchy and meanings are arranged and women’s attitude in such gender hierarchy like resistance, acceptance or negotiation are all key points discussed in this paper. This paper explored in root theory in qualitative research and made conclusion and analysis from data in interviews. By repeating contents of the interviewees, it deduced from cases to build new category from the rituals and customs discussed by funeral actors and their responsibilities. In this way, gender hierarchy in the funeral was appeared again.
Taiwan social culture takes male inheritance in clan system as background. From the perspective of funeral rituals and customs, female can be explained by three categories, namely gender division, patriarchal inheritance and female as other in the gender hierarchy. In terms of gender division, the traditional gender is divided based on physiology to judge occupation of males in charge of outside affairs and females in charge of internal affairs. Therefore, it remains the same in the funeral classification. However, there appear cases that internal labor works are done by both males and females in Miaoli Hakkas funerals today. In the classification of patriarchal inheritance, from the perspective of males as blood inheritance, rituals like fight, holding streamer and taking pants are all symbols of male inheritance. Females have no independent subject and right to speak. In terms of female as other, females are treated as others or unclean symbol. They are the ones to be discriminated, just like crying, no right to hold ancestor tablet for the unmarried, the family member avoiding to behave daughter seven in the funeral. These rituals again showed female as other still remains till now and paternity rights prevail.
However, gender hierarchy in Hakkas funerals actually lose to some degree. It can be learned from the observations that most females hold self-discipline attitude in the funeral which is hidden behind traditional gender hierarchy, but housework and occupation of gender division newly appeared with the evolution of social culture. In some families, females are out for work and males are responsible for house work and serve the elderly sometimes. This kind of family is also different in the gender sequence of funeral. For example, the traditional responsibility of meal was done by males instead of females. Structure strength is displayed by human action. With the disappearance of paternity in the funeral, it can be learned from the cases in this study that female’s gender sequence has changed in Hakka funeral rituals and customs. It also means paternity bonus of patriarchal inheritance in the funeral is possible to be eliminated in the future.
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