Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China [Paperback]

Nearly seven million Yi people live in Southwest China, but most educated people outside China have never heard of them. This book, the first scholarly study in a Western language on the Yi in four decades, brings this little-known part of the world to life.Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest Chinais a remarkable collection of work by both Yi and foreign scholars describing their history, traditional society, and recent social changes.

In addition to being valuable as an ethnographic study, this book is also an experiment in communication among three discourses: the cosmopolitan disciplines of history and the social sciences, the Chinese discourse of ethnology and ethnohistory, and the Yi folk discourse of genealogy and ritual. This book uses the case of the Yi to conduct an international conversation across formerly isolated disciplines.

Stevan Harrellis Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington and Acting Curator of Asian Ethnology at the Burke Museum. He is author of the forthcomingWays of Being Ethnic in Southwest China(2000),Human Families(1997) andPloughshare Village: Culture and Context in Taiwan(1982). He is also co-editor ofMountain Patterns: The Survival of Nuosu Culture in China(2000), with Bamo Qubumo and Ma Erzi. His edited volumes includeChinese Historical Microdemography(California, 1995) andChinese Families in the Post-Mao Era(California, 1993, coedited with Deborah Davis).

List of Tables, Maps, and Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction, by Stevan Harrell

PART ONE: The Yi in History
1. Reconstructing Yi History from Yi Records, by Wu Gu
2. Nzymo as Seen in Some Yi Classical Books, by Wu Jingzhong

PART TWO: Nuosu Society in Liangshan
3. A Comparative Approach to Lineages among the Xiao Liangshan Nuosu and Han, by Ann Maxwell Hill and Eric Diehl
4. Preferential Bilateral-Cross-Cousin Marriage amol£