Download or read book Everything Nuosu written by Susan Walters and published by . This book was released on 2015-12-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don't get lost on a mountain path or miss out on the roasted potato, hot from the fire. Come meet the Nuosu of southwest China. This book is a must-have phrasebook for anyone interested in the Nuosu. It includes tips on traveling, etiquette when visiting, cultural notes, sentence patterns, simple grammar explanations, illustrations, maps and a 2,000+ word dictionary categorized for easy look-up.
Download or read book The Nuosu Book of Origins written by and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nuosu people, who were once overlords of vast tracts of farmland and forest in the uplands of southern Sichuan and neighboring provinces, are the largest division of the Yi ethnic group in southwest China. Their creation epic plots the origins of the cosmos, the sky and earth, and the living beings of land and water. This translation is a rare example in English of Indigenous ethnic literature from China. Transmitted in oral and written forms for centuries among the Nuosu, The Book of Origins is performed by bimo priests and other tradition-bearers. Poetic in form, the narrative provides insights into how a clan- and caste-based society organizes itself, dictates ethics, relates to other ethnic groups, and adapts to a harsh environment. A comprehensive introduction to the translation describes the land and people, summarizes the work’s themes, and discusses the significance of The Book of Origins for the understanding of folk epics, ethnoecology, and ethnic relations.
Download or read book A Grammar of Nuosu written by Matthias Gerner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first modern grammar of Nuosu written in English. Nuosu belongs to a little known section of Tibeto-Burman. The 2.5 Million ethnic Nuosu are part of the Yi nationality and live in Sichuan (China). This grammar informs Tibeto-Burman linguists, typologists, scholars of language contact and foreign learners of Nuosu.
Download or read book Fieldwork Connections written by Ayi Bamo and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic �truth.� The book begins with short accounts of the process by which each of the authors became involved in anthropological field research. It then proceeds to describe the research itself, and the stories begin to connect as they become active collaborators. The scene shifts in the course of the narrative from China to America, and the relationship between the authors shifts from distant, wary, and somewhat hierarchical to close, egalitarian, and reciprocal. The authors share their histories through personal stories, not technical analyses; their aim is to entertain while addressing the process of ethnography and the dynamics of international and intercultural communication.
Download or read book Animism beyond the Soul written by Katherine Swancutt and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How might we envision animism through the lens of the ‘anthropology of anthropology’? The contributors to this volume offer compelling case studies that demonstrate how indigenous animistic practices, concepts, traditions, and ontologies are co-authored in highly reflexive ways by anthropologists and their interlocutors. They explore how native epistemologies, which inform anthropological notions during fieldwork, underpin the dialogues between researchers and their participants. In doing so, the contributors reveal ways in which indigenous thinkers might be influenced by anthropological concepts of the soul and, equally, how they might subtly or dramatically then transform those same concepts within anthropological theory.
Download or read book Passage to Manhood written by Shao-hua Liu and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passage to Manhood is a groundbreaking and beautifully written ethnography that addresses the intersection of modernity, heroin use, and AIDS as they intersect in a new "rite-of-passage" among young ethnic-minority males in contemporary China.
Download or read book Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China written by Stevan Harrell and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in the 1980s and 1990s in southern Sichuan, this pathbreaking study examines the nature of ethnic consciousness and ethnic relations among local communities, focusing on the Nuosu (classified as Yi by the Chinese government), Prmi, Naze, and Han. It argues that even within the same regional social system, ethnic identity is formulated, perceived, and promoted differently by different communities at different times. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China exemplifies a model in which ethnic consciousness and ethnic relations consist of drawing boundaries between one�s own group and others, crossing those boundaries, and promoting internal unity within a group. Leaders and members of ethnic groups use commonalties and differences in history, culture, and kinship to promote internal unity and to strengthen or cross external boundaries. Superimposed on the structure of competing and cooperating local groups is a state system of ethnic classification and administration; members and leaders of local groups incorporate this system into their own ethnic consciousness, co-opting or resisting it situationally. The heart of the book consists of detailed case studies of three Nuosu village communities, along with studies of Prmi and Naze communities, smaller groups such as the Yala and Nasu, and Han Chinese who live in minority areas. These are followed by a synthesis that compares different configurations of ethnic identity in different communities and discusses the implications of these examples for our understanding of ethnicity and for the near future of China. This lively description and analysis of the region�s complex ethnic identities and relationships constitutes an original and important contribution to the study of ethnic identity. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China will be of interest to social scientists concerned with issues of ethnicity and state-building.
Download or read book Words from the Fire written by Jidi Majia and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jidi Majia is one of China’s leading indigenous minority poets. In Words from the Fire he explores his Yi heritage in poems that incorporate Yi origin stories, myths, his endangered fire culture, environmental degradation, and the importance of poetic expression in a time of global changes. His writing is consistently tender, celebratory, and respectful of the natural world and the dignity of all people. He has received major awards in China and abroad, and has been translated into over twenty languages in thirty countries. His most recent honor is the Xu Zhimo Poetry Prize and Lifetime Achievement Award from the UK’s King’s College, Cambridge.
Download or read book Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands written by Koen Wellens and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revival of religious practices of all sorts in China, after decades of systematic government suppression, is a topic of considerable interest to scholars in disciplines ranging from religious studies to anthropology to political science. This book examines contemporary religious practices among the Premi people of the Sichuan-Yunnan-Tibet area, a group of about 60,000 who speak a language belonging to the Qiang branch of Tibeto-Burman. Koen Wellens's ethnographic research in two Premi communities on opposite sides of the border, and his analysis of available historical documents, find multiple advocates and rationales for the revival of both formal Tibetan Buddhism and the indigenous Premi practices centered on ritual specialists called anji. Wellens argues that the variety in the shape the revitalization process takes--as it affects Premi on the Sichuan side of the border and their counterparts on the Yunnan side--can only be understood in a local cultural context. This full-length study of the Premi, the first in a language other than Chinese, makes a valuable contribution to our ethnographic knowledge of Southwest China, as well as to our understanding of contemporary Chinese religious and cultural politics.
Download or read book Economies of Favour After Socialism written by David Henig and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A volume on the economics of favours and how they function as socially efficacious actions in post-socialist regions including central, eastern, and south eastern Europe; the former Soviet Union; Mongolia; and post-Maoist China.
Download or read book Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China written by Stevan Harrell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-03 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a varied and wide-ranging collection of essays by Yi and foreign scholars on the history, traditional society, and modern social changes among the 7 million Yi people of Southwest China.
Download or read book A Frontier Made Lawless written by Joseph Lawson and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2017-10-06 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the region of Liangshan in southwest China was plagued by violence. Indigenous Nuosu communities clashed with Han migrants, the Qing and Republican states, and local warlords. Large numbers of Nuosu and Han alike were kidnapped and killed in widespread patterns of captive taking. The first English-language history of Liangshan, A Frontier Made Lawless challenges the view that the persistent turmoil was the result of population pressures, opium production, and the growth of local paramilitary groups. Instead, Joseph Lawson argues that the conflict resulted from the lack of a common framework for dealing with property disputes, compounded by the repeated destabilization of the region by turmoil elsewhere in China. Drawing on a range of sources including court records, locals’ memoirs, regional government records and surveys, and Nuosu epic poetry, Lawson adds new insights and comparative perspectives to the study of conflict in Liangshan.
Download or read book Rhapsody in Black written by Jidi Majia and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indigenous poet of the Nuosu (Yi) people of mountainous southwestern China, Jidi Majia is well known and celebrated among the Chinese. But his lyrical and worldly work, though widely published and honored, has not found its voice in English translation in the West. The poems in Rhapsody in Black, presented in Chinese and deftly translated by the gifted and respected Denis Mair, at long last introduce the English-speaking world to this remarkable Chinese writer. The poetry of Jidi Majia is deeply grounded in the myths and oral traditions of the Nuosu minority. It evokes times past but also speaks with eloquence of our global moment. Replete with cultural textures and local idiom, the poems provide an exquisite opening into the Nuosu world. In their ethnic richness, they also resonate with the voices of the indigenous and the dispossessed, from Native American and South American Indian poets to the African American and aboriginal Australian writers preserving and reshaping cultural identity. Jidi Majia’s voice sounds the depths of natural, cultural, and spiritual reality. In his poem “Voice of the Bimo,” the power of a Nuosu ritualist’s expression is reflected in his own: In tones both human and divine, it utters A praise song for birth and death When it invokes sun, stars, rivers, and ancient heroes When it summons deities and surreal powers Departed beings commence their resurrection! The poems in this volume broaden and deepen our experience of the world—Jidi Majia’s and our own.
Download or read book Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalayas written by Toni Huber and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-02-03 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Origins and migration are core elements in the histories, identities and stories of Tibeto-Burman-speaking populations in the extended eastern Himalayas. These essays explore theories of explaining origins and migration, methods for studying them and expressions of them in local cultures.
Download or read book Women and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Societies written by Shanshan Du and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-03-04 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent attention to historical, geographic, and class differences in the studies of women and gender in China has expanded our understanding of the diversity and complexity of gendered China. Nevertheless, the ethnic dimension of this subject matter remains largely overlooked, particularly concerning women’s conditions and gender status. Consequently, the patriarchy and its oppression of women among the Han, the ethnic majority in China, are often inaccurately or erroneously associated with the whole gendered heritage of China, epitomized by the infamous traditions of footbinding and female-infanticide. Such academic and popular predisposition belies the fact that gender systems in China span a wide spectrum, ranging from extreme Han patriarchy to Lahu gender-egalitarianism. The authors contributing to this book have collectively initiated a systematic effort to bridge the gap between understanding the majority Han and ethnic minorities in regard to women and gender in contemporary Chinese societies. By achieving a quantitative balance between articles on the Han majority and those on ethnic minorities, this book transcends the ghettoization of ethnic minorities in the studies of Chinese women and gender. The eleven chapters of this volume are divided into three sections which jointly challenge the traditions and norms of Han patriarchy from various perspectives. The first section focuses on gender traditions among ethnic minorities which compete with the norms of Han patriarchy. The second section emphasizes the impact of radical social transformation on gender systems and practices among both Han and ethnic minorities. The third section underscores socio-cultural diversity and complexity in resistance to Han patriarchal norms from a broad perspective. This book complements previous scholarship on Chinese women and gender by expanding our investigative lens beyond Han patriarchy and providing images of the multi-ethnic landscape of China. By identifying the Han as an ethnically marked category and by bringing to the forefront the diverse gender systems of ethnic minorities, this book encourages an increasing awareness of, and sensitivity to the cross-cultural diversity of gendered China both in academia and beyond.
