| dc.description.abstract | Before the Shihmen Reservoir was built, Jia-an Village was a classic Hakka settlement located in an outlying place where most residents were farmers. Soon after the war, the construction of the Shihmen Reservoir and the establishment of public institutes as the Shihmen Reservoir Administration Bureau, National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology and the Institute of Nuclear Research attracted a large labor force to move into the area of Jia-an Village. In addition to the Hakka people who had been living there for a long time, Mainlanders and Hoklo Taiwanese were successively moving into this area. Their collective inhabitation has endowed the ethnic combination of the community with an appearance of abundance, diversity and humanity.
This study probes into different ethnic groups’ perspectives of their own ethnic identities in a community formed by Hakkas, Hoklo Taiwanese and Mainlanders and explores their interactive relationship within the community. Through the promotion of community development, the residents re-experience the similarities and differences between “our own” and “other” ethnic groups and clarify how the different ethnic groups could converge mutual feelings towards the community. In view of the questions raised in the study, Jia-an Village was chosen as the field study site. The study applied in-depth interviews to gather interview contents from the association of community development, residents of the community, local government and civil units. With the support of related research documents and analyses, this study traced the collective memory and experience process of community participation to understand the development of the local community and the general situation of ethnic groups.
The study discovered that the residents’ ethnic awareness did not have a significant influence on community development. Although there was a time when local Taiwanese people and Mainlanders did not get used to each other in their daily life, different ethnic groups have gradually shaped into a diverse and integrated life circle. As far as the current situation is concerned, compared to the ethnic boundary between Hoklo Taiwanese and Hakkas that is gradually blurred, Mainlanders’ cultural identity is still slightly stronger. Through the action process of community development, the ethnic awareness, however, is no longer suffering from the troublesome past caused by historical factors. Community development also cultivates citizens’ recognition of multiculturalism. The converging process for ethnic identities to transform into community identities, the rise of the education level and the communication of cultures and religions have diluted the existing ethnic awareness that used to be strong. The actual community participation also facilitates the coexistence and mutual prosperity of the ethnic groups with different cultural backgrounds, allowing the community to be successfully constructed in a diverse and integrated environment. | en_US |