Looking Forward: Macanese Women's Voices and the Transition
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introduction
At the stroke of midnight on December 20, 1999, the transfer of power from Portuguese to Chinese administrations in Macau will carry with it profound social, political and economic changes for the Macanese community. The politics of adjustment as well as its process have understandably attracted a great deal of recent scholarly attention. However, despite studies analyzing the movements of population, theories on the role of selected industries and the disappearance of a discrete Macanese identity, precious little has been done to record the voices of the present generations that are guiding this future, particularly the voices of women. Since the sixteenth century, Macau has represented an intersection of peoples, ideas, technologies and commodities from both the East and West. Such a rich history of open exchange has brought about and inspired new and urgent questions about history, culture and social relations that highlight the contingent ways in which people have interpreted and continue to interpret the condition of their lives.

Until this century people from Macau have borne witness to and been affected by historical movements outside and within the confines of their progressively changing city. With the quickening pace of population and community shifts in the cultural topography of Macau, the Macanese have perceived a need to accelerate their capacity to mediate and internalize these changes and seek out an identity that is defined by class, race, gender and nationality. This predicament in the search for self is not unique in an age of rapidly developing circumstances.1 This research project intends to present in the course of social alignment and cultural mediation, the pluri-ethnic context of contemporary Macau through individual oral histories.

With new interest fostered in cultural studies initiated by challenging works by authors such as Michel Foucault and Homi Bhahba, and a fresh awareness of gender-specific experience has led cultural scholars to question the role of the woman in historical process of identity formation. In the historiography of Macau, there is an urgent need to bring to the foreground the critical importance of the Macanese woman in the functioning of the community, stressing not only their roles as wives, mothers and sisters, but as active participants in the forging of a Macanese collective and cultural identity.

Ana Maria Amaro maintains that the principal vector for the preservation and continuation of Macanese culture has been through the oral stories shared between Macanese women and their children.2 Beyond that, tentative preliminary works done in Macau show that Macanese women's oral histories prove important tools for assessing the contemporary condition of identity formation and ethnic alliances within the territory. The voices of Macanese women cannot be considered peripheral to the central concerns of historical and ethnographic study in Macau. Some Macanese women maintain that the memory of ordinary Macanese women has been dominated by those who have political, economic and ideological sway.3 Most of the historical records available tend to reflect the view of the masculine, privileged and powerful. Hence, it is crucial that social historians navigate skillfully through perilous channels of systematic bias and present, as candidly possible, the underlying structures that provide for such perceptions. They must carefully examine the arguments leading to discontinuities, challenge others concerning the intimate relation of history to the mediation of power and "invisibility" and demonstrate throughout sensitively to gender, a careful rendering of the sources and a wide knowledge of the field. The consequence is the emergence of an alternate memory: a framework of balanced arguments, based on the felt realities of these women, which can be fashioned to analyze the history of their past experiences, present conditions and future prospects. In the proposed study, stress is placed on the similarities and differences in the lives and circumstances of individual Macanese women, in the variety and complexity of their social relations and community interactions, along with their reciprocal influence and impact upon one another.

The collection and analysis of contemporary Macanese women's personal narratives is a subject that not only raises issues of woman's status and position within a community in transition but also links with these issues the much less tractable questions regarding the dynamics of class, race and gender politics in Macau and further addresses notions regarding national and ethnic identity. Therefore, the assumptions, meanings and experiences in the lives of Macanese women comprise a historical unity that is formed and affected by these forces and historic transformation. The personal narratives presented by these women must include answers for the ways cultural identity is organized and molded in this period of fundamental change, an era which is witnessing the emergence of Macau as a growing economic force in Southeast Asia and re-uniting with the Chinese mainland after centuries of Portuguese administration.

methodology
Until the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration of 1987, scant attention has been paid to the unique position of the Macanese women within Macanese society.4 Previous studies have illustrated the macro-processes of Macanese history and social formation, but not focusing solely upon the Macanese woman as a point of departure. This study of Macanese women concentrates primarily upon the community of persons who are recognized by their peers and community as Macanese. The proposed study will describe and analyze the lives of the women themselves and place the subject of cultural identity in the broader context of the impending transfer of Portuguese to Chinese administrations.

In the first part of the study, using oral interviews as a primary source, emphasis will be first placed on the macro-social forces and cultural values which shape the character of Macanese women's lives: living within a community in constant contact with the Chinese and Portuguese societies. Secondly, the social hierarchy within the community and notions of birth and family will be explored. And finally, the ambiguous and elusive notion of personal identity in a pluri-ethnic society will be addressed.

The second part of the study of personal narratives will give a sense of the historical circumstances that mold Macanese women's present perceptions of self. Focusing on the present century, the intent is to consult with institutional contacts within the governmental and ecclesiastic circles and investigate the unique experiences of Macanese women: relationships between individual women, marriage politics and genealogies. This part of the study will examine historical change through which these women have lived and attempt to raise questions about future cultural alignments.

The problems of selective bias, the fallibility of memory and the question of verification of material are very real in the proposed study. However, the inherent difficulties in the use of oral history testimony are more than offset by the power of language lifting the veil of silence from many of the women to be interviewed. The spoken word allows connections with the past and present that might otherwise be forgotten by the collective conscience of the Macanese in the future. Undoubtedly, personal narratives contain fascinating and important information about the choices and deeds relating to family, migration, work, changing relationships and thoughts about the upcoming transition. Details on dress, diet, living conditions, worship, childbearing and marriage will also be touched upon in the interviews.

A full analysis of contemporary Macanese women requires an interdisciplinary method and approach. With the emergence of contemporary feminism and post-modern women's history and the arrival of new social history, the previously unasked questions regarding the links between the personal mediation of identity and layering of experience will be approached. Interdisciplinary collaboration links "history from below" approach of micro-sociology and ethnohistory with historical sociology's "top down" emphasis on the sexual economy, state structures, and macro change and social variation. This collaboration between work both in the field and archives allows the reciprocal relationship between "experience" Ñ the intentions and behavior of the women as defined by themselves in the context of Macau Ñ and "process" Ñ marking an absolute condition Ñ to emerge. Neither one is meant to predominate, rather complement each other. The micro-dynamic approach moves beyond the intricacies of institutional relations. Micro-dynamism can tackle the fundamental issue of the dialectical relationship between the Macanese, Portuguese and Chinese populations in the territory as well as the role of institutions, such as religious bodies in the process. It also reveals the significance of the "invisible" strands that comprise the ordinary details of the women's lives.

With the successful employment of this approach, a portrait of the Macanese woman living in a "completely textured world of larger power constellations, intimate social relations, and deep moral dilemmas" will be rendered.5 Once the social structure of society in Macau and the role of the Macanese woman in it have been described, the study will attempt to understand the complexity of their experience and how the course of their lives have changed the individual's concept of self-perception and role in Macau society.

Lastly, and most importantly, this study intends to present the data of these women directly, by the presentation of edited transcripts of interviews, allowing the informant to speak out about her own world and sense of self. Using prosopograpy or collective biography, through personal narratives, the difficulties that attend an analysis of the present historical situation of the Macanese women and the contradictions inherent in some of their lives can only be depicted through a biography. Through the use of this technique the proposed study is compelled to play close attention to the disparate experiences, values and motives of the Macanese woman in the diverse contexts and sequences of social action, and to piece together the pattern and meaning of the many parts of their meaningful lives.


notes

1. Q.v. Barth, Fredrik. "Ethnic groups and boundaries" in Barth, Frederik (ed.) Ethnic groups and boundaries - the social organization of culture, (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget; London: Allen & Unwin, 1970); Vermeulen, Hans and Govers, Cora (eds) The anthropology of ethnicity: beyond "Ethnic groups and boundaries", (Amsterdam: Spinhaus; Hague: M. Nijhoff International, 1994).

2. Amaro, Ana Maria. Filhos da Terra, (Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1988).

3. Watts, Ian E. "Neither Meat nor Fish: Three Macanese Women in the Transition" paper presented at "Macau and Its Neighbors Toward the 21st Century" University of Macau, Macau, 2-3 June 1997.

4. Notable exceptions are works by Graciete Batalha and Ana Maria Amaro in terms of linguistics and ethnography. However, a single work recording, delineating and presenting Macanese women's voices has yet to emerge. More recent studies by Jo‹o de Pina Cabral and Carlos Piteira offer interesting theoretical paradigms for the study of Macanese ethnicity, but it is not the intent of the proposed study to analyze the dynamics of ethnic formation in Macau.

5. Shue, Vivienne. "The Long Bow Film Trilogy: A Review Article." Journal of Asian Studies, 46:4 (1987), p. 848.



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