Kinship in Action by Andrew Strathern Pamela J Stewart

Author:Andrew Strathern, Pamela J Stewart [Andrew Strathern, Pamela J Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781317346968
Google: ZUEUCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-02T05:59:09+00:00

MARRIAGE, FILIATION, AND DESCENT: THE NA PEOPLE OF CHINA

“Na” is a term given to a category of people spanning Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in South-Western China (Cai 2001: 35). Cai’s field studies were made in the Yongning basin, where the population was about 12,000 people around the year 2000, cultivating a range of root and grain crops (2001: 40), and rearing buffalo, cows, and horses, and also chickens and pigs. Traditionally, the population was stratified into three ranked categories, sipi, dzéka, and we (p. 49), marked by differential rights to wear certain kinds of clothing. The sipi term means “chief” and consisted of the descendants of the family of the governor (zhifu) of the prefecture established as such in the past. Cai translated sipi as “aristocracy” (2001: 50). The children of a married sipi man belonged to his lineage, and people of sipi status were expected to marry within that category.

Dzéka means “people” (Cai 2001: 51). These were the majority, and Cai calls them “commoners” (p. 51). Occasionally families of zhifu descent fell out of favor historically and were demoted to dzéka status. Among the commoners a form of sexual cohabitation which Cai calls “the visit” prevailed, and in these cases children were said to have belonged to the mother’s line (2001: 52). The we were serfs and could be transferred between households or sold to another household. The zhifu could also demote people to the status of we. This category also included descendants of other ethnic groups who worked for the zhifu in order to survive, and debtors who could not pay off their debts (p. 53; this last is a classic example paralleled by South East Asian cases; see Strathern and Stewart 2000: 13–28). Most serfs were from families that had originally been commoners (p. 55).

The working out of relations of filiation in this hierarchical order of groups together with different forms of recognized sexual relationships produced some complex and unusual results. The rule was that daughters would follow the status of their mothers and sons the status of their fathers. Thus, if a commoner woman had a union with a serf man, her daughters were commoners but her sons were serfs (Cai 2001: 57). The operation of rules of this kind was also inflected in terms of what Cai calls the “four modalities of sexual life” (2001: 414). These modalities were: the furtive visit, the conspicuous visit, cohabitation, and marriage. Cai’s study is historical, and he argues that what he calls “marriage” was not present among the Na prior to influence brought to bear on them during the time of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) (2001: 67, 413). The Na are an ethnic minority, and different dynasties treated these minority groups incorporated into state control differently. Over time the dynasties gradually extended their direct control over the governance of minority groups, and mandated more power to the zhifu as hereditary governors. The zhifu’s power was based on land ownership and the collection of taxes as well as the employment of serfs as workers.

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