A Study of Historical Sociology on the Establishment of “Differential Status” in China’s Boat Racing Cultural Lineage

To meet the demand of facilitating the knowledge system structuring of the discipline of sports with Chinese characteristics, we made arguments from the dimensions of cultural relics, literature and cultural heritage from an interdisciplinary perspective of history and sociology, using a “power and rights” framework to interprete “the special type of dragon boat” experience drawn from boat races in history and today, based on triple evidences of “archaeological relics-ancient literatures-scene pictures taken in field research”. The study demonstrated that the boat racing cultural lineage has “differential status”. Under the progressive influence of the power of the authority and non-official elites, the functions of dragon boats have gradually become an indicator of the presence of authority, a demonstration and interpretation of customs, and a metaphor of ethics. Dragon boats gradually came to the center stage of China's boat racing, whereas other forms of racing boats have either begun to be or increasingly peripherized. Then, the study discussed the major reasons behind the generation of “differential status” in China's boat racing cultural lineage at the macro, meso and micro levels of interactions between power establishment and rights adaptation.Finally, to address realistic issues by drawing upon historic experience, we provided possible insights and thoughts of coordinated development between grassroots-level governance of traditional ethnic sports and local culture, based on a further discussion on the dynamic growth and decline between “power establishment and rights adjustment” of China's boat racing culture.