POWER MAINTENANCE OF RELIGIOUS ELITES IN MINORITY TOURISM COMMUNITIES: TAKING HUI VILLAGES IN SANYA AS AN EXAMPLE

Abstract

Although cultural elites in China’s ethnic minority communities are the main carriers and maintainers of traditional culture, changes in the power of their traditional authority has not been studied much relative to tourism development. This article explores the changes in community religious elites’ authority with regard to conflicts concerning tourism development. The methods involved interviewing and observation in a Hui ethnic minority community in Fenghuang Town, Sanya Municipality of provincial Hainan Island. It has been found that tourism development strengthens the villagers’ identity with religious authorities while reinforcing cultural elites’ management powers in religious affairs. However, in conflicts of interest arising from tourism, the religious elites’ powers have become “externally strong, yet internally weak” by eroding traditional authority, and personal competencies have become a foundation for applying secular mediation powers. The inherent flexibility and initiative of the religious elites’ authority has resisted the weakening of their power brought by the modernity of tourism to some extent, and provides a reference for future studies on how to resolve the contradiction between modernization and the continuation of traditional culture.