本文檢視魯凱人對愛的實踐和想法、人觀、性別、婚姻與家等文化實踐，在遭逢資本主義與基督教所象徵的現代性之際，當地人如何認識、理解與重構這兩股現代性的力量，從而在地方社會中創造出他們切身體驗到的現代性。本文首先檢視傳統魯凱人的情感範疇、性別、人觀、求愛過程、婚禮、婚後生活乃至於生育等社會文化實踐及其象徵意義，證明傳統魯凱人將夫妻關係與情感或愛當成繁衍家與親屬的關鍵。其次，正因為家與親屬的繁衍乃是傳統魯凱人的集體心之所繫，當時有關男女情愛的表意形式甚至未婚男女應對怎樣的對象表達情愛之意，皆受到家長權威與集體價值全面而細緻的規範。在此意義下，筆者指出傳統魯凱人係情感的行動者，及個人以身體履行情感實踐，而父母才是促成子女情感實踐的原因。自1980年代以來，許多年輕魯凱男女移居台灣北部工作，使他們與來自不同地區、不同族群的年輕人一同工作、生活，自主選擇戀愛對象，且採取新的文化形式如情書、流行音樂等，來表達感情，甚至以未婚懷孕迫使父母答應婚事。就此而言，年輕魯凱人充分展現其作為情感主體的意義。另一方面，於1950年代末期引入當地的基督宗教，主張以上帝的愛做為人類之愛的本體論，以夫妻關係合法化性和欲望，創造出符合教義的婚姻與家庭生活。然而，魯凱人從教義中認識到卻是將愛與欲望相互對立，將性和欲望侷限於婚姻關係之內，進而對愛的實踐、夫妻關係與婚姻生活加以重新分類、定性，同時賦予評價而創造出新的倫理階序。就生活實踐層面而言，對某些不接受基督教義的魯凱人而言，當代社會中個人欲望之展現，不僅意味著個人的心日益自由，更是人性使然。

This paper examines the category of love and its practice along with other kinship practices as the Rukai encounter, cognize, understand, re-construct, and experience the facets of modernities embodied in capitalism and Christianity. Firstly, I scrutinize both the Rukai category of love and its practices with regard to gender, personhood, courtship, marriage, and procreation in order to demonstrate the salience of love/affect in their constructs of family and kinship. Secondly, I discuss how, owing to the collective (Bourdieusian) illusio of domestic and kinship reproduction among the older generation, parental authority and social norms intervene in how younger couples express their feelings and even to whom they should express their feelings. I therefore argue that a person is seen as an affective agent in the sense that while he/she bodily enacts the practice of love, their parents are truly the cause of their children's practice of love. Ever since the 1980s, though, many Rukai youngsters have moved to northern Taiwan to engage in wage labor, where they earned and made a living in settings containing people from different ethnic groups. Meanwhile they were able to choose their own lovers as well as express their feelings by means of novel expressive forms such as love letters and pop music, and even to force their parents to accept their marriage partners by way of pre-marital pregnancy. In this sense the youngsters make and manifest themselves as affective subjects. On the other hand, with the introduction of Christianity in the late 1950s in Taromak, the church strongly promoted God's love as the ontology of human love and the view that sexuality and desire are only legalized in marital relationships; thereby ideal marriages and domesticity were created in the earthly world However, what the Rukai learned from the liturgy was the epistemological division of love and sexual desire, the latter being confined within marital relationships. Their knowledge as such leads to the re-classification of both the practices of love and to marital relationships and then endows these practices with a moral hierarchy. In practice, for several Rukai who did not accept the Christian liturgy, the expression of desire shown in pre-marital or extra-marital affairs is tantamount to the free expression of one's feelings, which is what humanity means to them in the contemporary contexts.