英文摘要:Title: Deitiness, Communication, and Interpretation─ The Social Interplay in Ma Tsu Worship Complex. Name of Institute: Institute of Asia Pacific Studies. Nan Hua University. Graduate date: 2000.6.10 Degree conferred: MJ Name of student: Gu-ming Hsu Advisor: Shih-chung Hsieh, Ph.D. Venerable Huei Kai, Ph.D. Abstract: The main theme of this thesis is the social interplay of Ma Tsu worship complex, and the process of how Taiwanese peasants constructed their worship to the “mother deity”. My ethnography is based on the fieldwork at Ch’ow-T’ien Temple in Pei-Kang. The methodology of this research shall be put in the sphere of an interpretive approach of anthropology. In this paper, I analyse the social communicative process by means of five dimensions of social relations: individuals and individuals, individual and state, individual and deity, temple and temple, and between various sects. I discuss the situation on the competition between the main temples for orthodox status. Also, I discuss their context between individual and the state for recognizing the legitimate position of a deity. Furthermore, I explain the universal characters of Han-Chinese female deities. And I find that the nativistic development of folk religions as a matter of fact is a social movement of syntheticism. I then describe the work of a Buddhist monk who is an abbot of Ch’ow-T’ien Temple. His appearance and performance in the temple can be interpreted as an embodiment of Buddha in the secular world. Each worshiper tries to keep contact with Ma Tsu by all instruments and facility in order to have her to understand one’s request. Among these ways, pei-pei (to perform obeisance to Ma Tsu with incense) is most remarkable. By means of individual “pattern of pei-pei”, worshipers have constructed a fictive kin relationship with Ma Tsu. In addition, free individual interpretation on the Goddess or the sharing of miracles among worshipers also became the source of faith. I, in later part of this paper, move ahead to clearify the distinguished quality of “mother deity”, from which we only catch some positive spheres of Han female merits, and eschew the negative pollutant social role. Therefore, mother deity in my point is an integrated figure goddess. It projects a Han-Chinese paternal consciousness that synthesizes virgin complex with maternal mercy. In other words, the construction of Ma Tsu worship complex reflects the psychology of male chauvinism of Han people.