From Millenarians to Christians: The History of Christian Bureaucracy in Ahmao (Miao/Hmong) Society, 1850s-2012.

Abstract

This dissertation describes the role of bureaucracy in Ahmao society during the conversion of the Ahmao from millenarianism to Christianity. These transformations importantly included the introduction into Ahmao society of a new functional role for teachers/pastors which came to form an elite social status for Ahmao Christians. From the late imperial era to the present post reform PRC era, the social history of the Christian Ahmao divides into four periods: The first period began in the late imperial China with mass Ahmao conversions into missionary-led denominational congregations. The second period began in the 1920's during the Republican era as the authority of the missionaries in the reproduction of Christian knowledge weakened and the authority of Christian Ahmao teachers/pastors expanded. The third period began early in the PRC era during the revolutionary decade of the 1950's and lasting into the 1980’s as the communist state destroyed Christian denominational congregations and replaced them with patriotic congregations. The fourth period began early in 1990s as the effect of Ahmao identity became salient in organizing Ahmao congregations. In each period, there was a distinctive process of bureaucratization that provided a context that fixed literacy-as-value in such a way that it in turn reconfigured the relationship between the Chinese state and Ahmao society. The major finding of this ethnography is that the history of bureaucratizing among the Christian Ahmao was dialectical insofar as it was driven by a pursuit of literacy-as-value at the same time that the literacy-as-value changed the process bureaucratization. It is suggested that Christian Ahmao found it difficult to achieve consensus about decisions on how to change their lives until they reached a consensus within their Christian bureaucracy about how consensus was to be achieved.