Abstract
Folk religion and the political-economic structure are usually regarded as two mutually independent realms. However, the overlap appears when it comes to land expropriation. In recent years, there were many controversial cases of land expropriations in Taiwan. In most cases, under the banner of economic growth as the source of legitimacy, they gain support from the local majority. In this study, however, it’s shown that the opposite situation occurs when it entangles religious phenomena relating to ‘’temple’’, ‘’grave’’, ‘’apparition’’, or ‘’vision’’, followed by the pause or extra processes of expropriation. In other words, religious phenomena mentioned above shown more strength than common means in terms of setting back land expropriations. Therefore, the problematic of this study are: firstly, why would the setting back of land expropriation take place when entangling folk religion; secondly, what exactly happens when they entangle？There are three cases of land expropriation taken under scrutiny in my investigation: ‘’Tudi Gong’’ in Hsinchu HSR Station Special District Land, ‘’Wan Shan Ci’’ in Jhunan Science Park and ‘’Fu Hai Temple’’ in Taoyuan Aerotropolis. By studying these cases, this study tries to figure out that, how, and under what circumstances, can folk religion form substantial influence on state power？ The finding shows that the complexities and difficulties of expropriations concerning folk religion comes from the religious community, will of deity, apparition of deity and its timing. The different path of the development of the three cases can be traced back to the four factors. The study further points out that the actors within the community which have great faith in deity, the unpredictability of efficaciousness and of oracles are the crucial factors to expropriating as such. Two kinds of actors can be distinguished from the interviewees: one kind tends to explain the matter with interpretation of the will of deity with traditional knowledge of religion; the other kind, who are usually local elites and the intellectuals, promotes the value of the temples as cultural heritage, under a more cosmopolitan view comparing to the former. Therefore, this study argues that the seemingly result of calculation of cost that preserving temples in the three cases, is actually more a matter of combination of faith, politic-economic, culture and religion. Given the factors mentioned above, this study finds that temples, instead of being torn down in the process of a expropriation, are usually preserved under the name of administration of park, school or culture. Nevertheless, the temple, while prolonging its existence, has acquired a different meaning as it became a part of administration in the post-expropriation locality.