热带地理Issue(3)：308-318,11.
非洲裔移民在穗宗教场所地方感特征及其形成机制--基于广州石室圣心大教堂的实证研究
Profile and Determinants of African Immigrants’ Sense of Place in Religious Space:A Case Study of Guangzhou Sacred Heart Cathedral
摘要
Abstract
Under globalization, the geographyof religion has recently attracted much scholarly attention, and become a significant component of cultural geography. Yet, theoretical exploration and systematic empirical work on the role of sacred spaces in facilitating internal and international migrants’ assimilation and adaptation to local society are still lacking, especially in the Chinese context. With the rising global mobility, international immigrants are ubiquitous in a few large Chinese cities. In Guangzhou, an enlarging community of African immigrants is emerging. Their residential areas and daily activities, including religious activities, have shown a clear pattern of spatial concentration. Combined with semi-structured questionnaires and interviews, this study attempts to focus on this under-researched topic by exploring the underlying mechanism and the determinants of African immigrants’ sense of place in religious space in Guangzhou, using theSacred Heart Cathedral as a study area. Emperical evidence shows that African immigrants’ place attachment and place identity tended to develop before place dependence was formed. Although strong place attachment in religion space coexists with strong space substitutability, Sacred Heart Cathedral is irreplaceable to some extent because of its uniquelocation. And since the religious doctrine advocates psychological dependence rather than substance dependence, place dependence tends to be concealed unconsciously, which reveals the different nature of sense of place towards sacred space and secular space. Multivariate linear regression model reveals that social activities and the length of human-place interaction, instead of the length of residence in Guangzhou, are significant determinants for the development of African’s sense of place, because human-place interaction can foster senses of distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem and self-efficacy. Social conditions also contribute in a significant way because social environment is an efficient element to social integration in immigrant societies. This finding helps us to better understand that human-place bonding matters more than the length of residence in forming the sense of place. Although existant literature has demonstrated some positive effects of sacred spaces to immigrants’ social integration, the Guangzhou case shows that the confliction between Cantonese culture and African culture, as well as exogenous factors such as macro-political environment and isolation have imposed a negative impact on the improvement of sense of place in religious space. Furthermore, similar religious facilities with those in their home countries are of great help to improve immigrants’ sense of place to sacred place. In view of the problems discovered from the case of theSacred Heart Cathedral, this finding is of certain significance for immigrant management and creating the sense of belonging in the hostingcity for international migrantsmatter.关键词
地方感/地方依恋/地方认同/地方依赖/非洲裔跨国移民/广州石室圣心大教堂Key words
sense of place/place attachment/place identity/place dependence/African immigrants/Guangzhou Sacred Heart Cathedral分类
社会科学引用本文复制引用
黄嘉玲,何深静..非洲裔移民在穗宗教场所地方感特征及其形成机制--基于广州石室圣心大教堂的实证研究[J].热带地理,2014,(3):308-318,11.基金项目
国家自然科学基金项目 （）
