Paper short abstract:

The Mosuo people are well known for their unique form of matrilineal social organization where men and women live all their life in their mother’s house. This custom is only one expression of a larger system of relationships that shapes our shamanic world view as much as our kinship system.

Paper long abstract:

The Mosuo people have generated a great deal of attention in China and abroad because of their particular matrilineal social organization and in particular the fact that their families are headed not by a husband and wife couple but by a brother-sister couple; the father is replaced by the maternal uncle and men and women live all their life in their mother's house. Most of the documentation available is based on preconceived theories rather than on the opinion expressed by the Mosuo people themselves. In particular, far from seeing our society's ways as a simple matter of ignoring or refusing marriage in the Chinese sense of the term, Mosuo older people see their kinship system as part of a cultural matrix that is rooted in their worldview and their relationship with the non-human environment, from mountains and lakes to animals, trees and other plants, to invisible beings and to our ancestors and deceased relatives. It is this web of relationships that supports the essential ties between the mother and her children, that extends to the living and the dead, and between the world around and its inhabitants. It also supports our value system that allows us to treat both men and women with respect, deliberation and shared responsibility. Our traditional rituals, exemplified by our daba (healers, shamans or ritualists) are as much part of this web of connections as our matrilines.

Paper short abstract:

Les descriptions de la culture Mosuo sont le plus souvent dominées par l'analyse des conditions et conséquences de l'absence de mariage ou encore focalisent sur l'absence de père ou de mari. Une ethnographie des pratiques quotidiennes menée depuis 2007 permet de complexifier ce type d'analyse.

Paper long abstract:

Les analyses anthropologiques proposées sur le groupe minoritaire Mosuo mettent généralement en évidence les conditions et conséquences de l'absence de mariage ou encore focalisent sur l'absence de père ou de mari. Pour cette population vivant autour du lac Lugu, dans les provinces chinoises du Yunnan et du Sichuan, les pratiques quotidiennes économiques et politiques, les pratiques autour du culte des ancêtres, de leurs relations à la nature, des rituels de propitiation, révèlent cependant à l'analyse la centralité de la notion de maisonnée. L'ethnographie menée depuis 2007 dans deux villages Mosuo met en lumière un contexte culturel et des conceptions indigènes de la vie en société qui permettent de penser leur rapport au monde à partir des notions de personnes, de société dividuelle et d'approcher ainsi la question matrilinéaire à nouveau frais. L'analyse proposée montre que la matrilinéarité est indissociable chez les Mosuo de la matrifocalité.

Paper short abstract:

Based upon ethnographic research over a five-year period (2009-2014), this paper briefly explores some cultural underpinnings within political, religious, economic, and kinship practices that have anchored Mosuo matricultural society in Yongning Basin.

Paper long abstract:

Since c. 630 C.E., Mosuo society in Yongning Basin, Yunnan Province, has exhibited societal practices that indicate valuing women as least as equally as men. While many writers romanticize, glorify, and even invent a Mosuo "matriarchal" society, a closer reading of the Mosuo's history and recent ethnographic experience suggest the presence of cultural underpinnings that anchor a broader matriculture instead, one in which flexible forms of religion, kinship, livelihood strategies, and politics have worked for centuries to uphold economic systems with women at the center. This paper will briefly discuss how the Basin has maintained cultural autonomy beyond its last native ruler in 1956 C.E., even as their relatives, the Naxi, succumbed to central cultural integration around 1723 C.E. and the Mosuo were more recently subordinated to their former rivals, the endogamous, patriarchal Yi.

Discussion will then turn to a second important cultural underpinning of Yongning's Mosuo society: the successful integration of Tibetan (Tantric) Buddhism, daba shamanism, and the worship of Gemu Goddess of Lion Mountain. The Yongning-specific use of imagery and household practice within these three spiritual traditions affirm the value of both women and men and helps constitute the cultural underpinning of placing primacy on the household as the center of societal organization. Finally, recent ethnographic data suggests that sisters and brothers continue to work together in flexible kinship patterns to chart their futures in the midst of changing physical, economic, and social landscapes.

Paper short abstract:

Although the ethnic Mosuo of Southwest China are commonly depicted as lacking marriage, husbands, and fathers, quantitative ethnography undermines these claims. This paper about contemporary Mosuo populations from a QE perspective reveals significant variation in Mosuo kinship and reproduction.

Paper long abstract:

The ethnic Mosuo of Southwest China are commonly depicted as lacking marriage, husbands, and fathers. Such depictions arise not only in mainstream media, but also in scholarly works, where the Mosuo are often used to prove that marriage is not a human universal. Extreme characterizations suggest that Mosuo fathers will even engage in sexual relations with their own biological daughters - a claim that many Mosuo vehemently contest. By contrast, quantitative ethnography undermines many of these claims for contemporary Mosuo populations and reveals significant variation in Mosuo kinship and reproduction.

In this talk, I describe some of this variation using a sample of 225 households that I surveyed in 2008. In this sample, all informants were able to identify their biological fathers and many were married or cohabiting in stable ("guding") non-marital relationships. These deviations from "traditional" matrilineal behavior were more common in areas that were influenced more strongly by tourism, but many claim that stable unions have been the norm for at least one hundred years. I reflect on these patterns and suggest that, while quantitative ethnography cannot replace deep ethnography, it can be an important complement to standard ethnographic methods and can increase understanding of intra-societial variation, both generally, and with specific reference to the Mosuo.

Paper short abstract:

Dongbas in Naxi society are the inheritors and disseminaters of Naxi culture, as well as being senior intellectuals among the Naxi People. A central element to their ritual performance is dance. This paper describes the body language and meaningful gestures of the Naxi shaman dancer.

Paper long abstract:

Dongbas in Naxi society are the inheritors and disseminaters of Naxi culture, as well as being senior intellectuals among the Naxi People. A central element to their ritual performance is dance. Before dancing, though, there are the steps of burning incense to the divine, reading scriptures, and inviting deities in the sacrificial ceremony, as well as specific movements and gestures belonging to Dongba shamanic ritual. This ceremony is the content that one must master to be an accomplished Dongba. This paper describes the body language and meaningful gestures of the Naxi shaman dancer.

Paper short abstract:

Using an ethnohistorical perspective, this paper explores the role of kinship and the place of the Brother-Sister dyad in the transformation of Mosuo and Naxi societies into matrilineal and patrilineal feudal domains under Chinese and Tibetan indirect rules.

Paper long abstract:

While mid-twentieth century observers were struck by the gender differences and kinship oppositions (matrilineal/patrilineal) found among the Mosuo and the Naxi, contemporary ethnographers have highlighted the diversity of actual marriage, kinship, and residential practices among both people. Meanwhile, ethnohistorical research proposes to make sense of these oppositions and variations as politico-historical processes.

On the basis of ethnohistorical analyses, this paper proposes that matrilineality played a role in both Naxi and Mosuo political history, and that matrilineality has possible links to the Tang dynasty matriarchal Dong Nü Guo. However, research also strongly suggests that matrilineal-patrilineal Mosuo-Naxi oppositions do not originate in distinct and opposite lineage systems so much as in distinct marriage reforms which transformed a former clan based avunculate tribal system. Avunculate kinship, like matrilineal kinship, places essential value on Brother-Sister relations.

Paper short abstract:

Religion and literature are among the earliest products of the human spirit, expressing people's thinking, experience, ideals and so on. "Gu", meaning the egg gives birth to the woman. I wish to analyze the Naxi Dongba teaching and the influence of Buddhism on the Mr Gu mythology.

Paper long abstract:

Religious artistic images derive from literature, literature from religious theme, plot, and feelings. Dongba is the native religion of the Naxi nationality, and has also had a great influence on literature. In Naxi oral literature "Mr Gu mi" is considered the father of the female ancestor. In this paper I wish to show how the Dongba tradition influenced the "Mr Gu mi" mythology.

Paper short abstract:

This article discusses how literatures established cultural hegemony over the peripheral people in southwest China. It analyzes the features of imaginations in the text, the narrative structures in which the images were formed, and, the impact on current stereotypes of ethnic females.

Paper long abstract:

The Qianlong Qing as the "early modern" history witnessed the establishment of hegemony over the peripheral peoples in southwest China. Lots of literature contributed to this hegemony by constructing images about ethnic minorities (including the females). The Poems of the Savages (Mandong Zhuzhici) is a case text in which I discuss three questions: the features of images; the narrative structures; the impact on current stereotypes. I aim to excavate the ideology implied, to decode the complex structure in which a long-lasting stereotype of ethnic females was formed, and, to criticize the contemporary prejudice against ethnic females which is promoted by a so-called cultural consumerism.

The main arguments are as follow:

Firstly, different cultural traits of females were categorized into two parts. One was the physical characteristics, another one was customary features. The former ones featured their physical distinction. The latter one concerned with females' unique social roles, such as mother, wife, etc.

Secondly, female images were rooted in a then-collective social values, with the core of "ritual system", or "li". Compared with "li", women of ethnic groups were recognized as the Others: not only from the male perspective, but also from the Han-Chinese perspective.

Finally, Mandong Zhuzhici, as well as other literatures, had a significant impact on current social stereotypes on ethnic females by two ways: (1), it provides specific female images which are still alive in current imaginations, and (2) more importantly, it provides a set of "structured-narratives" in popular discourse.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the first results of fieldwork research conducted in nDrapa (Zhaba) where a form of visiting system similar to that of the Na (Moso) is found. The paper identifies a matrifocal principle combined with a household-centric orientation, and calls for cross-regional comparisons.

Paper long abstract:

In nDrapa (Zhaba), a valley south of Ta'u (Daofu) in Kardze Prefecture (Sichuan province, China), a significant number of local Tibetan inhabitants practice a form of visiting system similar to that of the Na (Moso). The visiting system which is associated with the uxorilocal residence for offspring from a non-contractual sexual relationship has so far been described as a form of union based on a matrilineal rule of descent. This paper shifts the angle of analysis and proposes to foreground the importance of the household as a key social unit. Using data that was collected during fieldwork conducted mainly in five different villages in the Drapa valley, this paper demonstrates that, while matrilineality prevails, the visiting system is not necessarily dependent on the respect of the matrilineal descent rule. The prime factor to be taken into consideration here is the importance of maintaining some continuity in the household. It can be said Drapa society is a matrifocal, household-oriented society in which most people play no social roles other than their kinship ones, and where the house¬hold is their only basic social affiliation. Such an analysis can help fruitfully revisit the Na (or Moso) people practice of a non-contractual, non-obligatory, and non-exclusive visiting sexual system, and reconsidered it from a cross-regional perspective and across contemporary ethnic boundaries.

Paper short abstract:

The Mosuo people of Lugu Lake, China, are affected by large scale and rapid tourism development. Their distinct matrilineal culture is now packaged into a tourist commodity and rewritten by developers. Cultural rights are ignored in this power relationship that silences the owners of Mosuo culture.

Paper long abstract:

The Moso people living on the shores of Lugu Lake on the Sichuan-Yunnan border in southern China are entering a transition period which is market economy- and tourism development-oriented. Mosuo people depended until recently on traditional, self-sufficient agriculture, but, due to their distinct matrilineal culture are now packaged as tourist commodities in a large-scale quasi-urban development. The conflict is easily predictable, since tourism as economic and business operation is always pursuing profit maximization, and does not give priority to the Mosuo traditional culture's maintenance and protection. Michel Foucault's discourse theory states that "Once the human subject is placed in the relations of production and meaning context, it enters extremely complex power relations as well."

In the background of power issues, the question of cultural identity is affected even as the anthropological discourse is manipulated to construct touristic imaginaries of Mosuo as exotic, Other, romantic, and even sexually available people. This brings a kind of social aphasia that accentuates the demise of cultural authenticity, marked by distortions and misconceptions. The property rights of Mosuo cultural resource are not clear when the originators of culture are treated as objects to be developed and end up unable to speak for themselves. From the perspective of power discourse, the issue of Mosuo culture discourse is being transferred from Mosuo people to the developers and, in the absence of cultural rights, has a profound influence on Mosuo society. This brings us to suggest possible countermeasures.