Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Marginalization in China pp 123–143Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Feminization, Recognition, and the Cosmological in Xishuangbanna

  • Chapter

  • 120 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explores the feminization of Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna) and Dai (Tai) peoples in Yunnan province within the wider Chinese polity from the perspective of Dai cosmological understandings (see map 7.1 and map 7.2). Dai peoples in China are heavily promoted through the prism of feminization and often exploitation. This chapter looks at this process from the point of view of Dai peoples. It goes some way toward understanding how they read the abounding images of Dai women that pervade in Xishuangbanna (Banna) and constitute much non-Dai experience of them as a Chinese “minority nationality.” In order to comprehend these issues from the Dai perspective, cosmological understandings of femininity, especially youthful femininity, must be taken into account. By focusing on these understandings we can better account for Dai pragmatic participation in some of these ongoing feminizing projects. Dai participation is not simply passive submission to Han fantasy but is rather part of the ongoing process of negotiation and accommodation that has a long and complex history in this border region.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Bibliography

  • Ai Liu. 1993. Nanchuan fojiao yu Daizu wenhua (Theravada Buddhism and Dai culture). Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anuman, Rajadhon. 1986. Popular Buddhism in Siam and Other Essays on Thai Studies. Bangkok.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blum, Susan. 2002. “Margins and Centers: A Decade of Publishing on China’s Ethnic Minorities.” Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 4, 1287–1310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bray, Francesca. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conway, Susan. 2006. The Shan: Culture, Arts and Crafts. London: River books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Richard. 1984. Muang Metaphysics: A Study of Northern Thai Myth and Ritual. Bangkok: Pandora.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Sara. 2005. Song and Silence: Ethnic Revival on China’s Southwest Borders. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans, Grant. 2000. “Transformation of Jinghong, Xishuangbanna, PRC.” In Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng, eds. Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural Change in the Border Regions, 162–182. Copenhagen, Denmark: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, Franz. 1986. Black Skin White Masks. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frazer, James George. 1929. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Abridged edition. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giersch, C. Patterson. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gladney, Dru. 1994. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities.” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1, 92–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Mette Halskov. 1999. Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Mette Halskov. 2004. “The Challenge of Xishuangbanna: Development, Resources, and Power in a Multiethnic China.” In Morris Rossabi, ed. Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers, 53–83. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrell, Stevan, ed. 1995. Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hockx, Michel, and Julia Strauss. 2005. “Editors’ Introduction.” In Michel Hockx and Julia Strauss, eds. Culture in the Contemporary PRC: China Quarterly Special Issues New Series, no. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hsieh, Shih-Cheung. 1990. “On the Dynamic Ethnicity of Sipsongpanna Tai during the Republican Period.” Thai-Yunnan Newsletter, nos. 9, 2–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Humphreys, Christmas. 1997. A Popular Dictionary of Buddhism. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyde, Sandra Teresa. 2001. “Sex Tourism Practices on the Periphery: Eroticising Ethnicity and Pathologizing Sex on the Lancang.” In Nancy N. Chen, Constance D. Clark, Suzanne Z. Gottschang, and Lyn Jeffery, eds. China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Chinese Culture, 146–162. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaschok, Maria, and Suzanne Miers, eds. 1994. Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keyes, Charles. 1984. “Mother or Mistress but Never a Monk: Buddhist Notions of Female Gender in Rural Thailand.” American Ethnologist 11, no. 2, 223–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Komlosy, Anouska. 2002. “Images of the Dai: The Aesthetics of Gender and Identity in Xishuangbanna.” Ph.D. diss., University of St. Andrews.

    Google Scholar 

  • Komlosy, Anouska. 2004. “Processions and Water Splashing: Expressing Local Affinity and National Identity during Dai New Year in Xishuangbanna.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10, no. 2, 351–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Komlosy, Anouska. 2008. “Yunnanese Sounds: Creativity and Alterity in the Dance and Music Scenes of Urban Yunnan.” China: An International Journal 6, no. 1, 44–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leach, Edmund. 1958. “Magical Hair.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 88, no. 2, 147–164.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Litzinger, Ralph. 2000. Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, Zhimin. 2004. Xishunagbanna wenrou de youhao (Gentle and soft seduction of Xishunagbanna). Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Yan. 1999. An On-the-Spot Investigation into the Southerly Emigration of the Dai Race. Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2005. Chinese Face Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mackeras, Colin. 1994. China’s Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the Twentieth Century. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris, Rosalind. 1994. “The Empresses New Clothes: Dressing and Redressing Modernity in Northern Thai Sprit Mediumship.” In Lynne Milgram and Penny Van Esterick, eds. The Transformative Power of Cloth in Southeast Asia, 53–70. Montreal, Canada: Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies and the Museum for Textiles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrison, Toni. 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oakes, Tim. 1993. “The Cultural Space of Modernity: Ethnic Tourism and Place Identity in China.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11, no. 1, 47–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oakes, Tim. 1997. “Ethnic Tourism in Rural Guizhou: Sense of Place and the Commerce of Authenticity.” In Michel Picard and Robert E. Wood, eds. Tourism, Ethnicity and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies, 35–70. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oakes, Tim. 1998. Tourism and Modernity in China. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Overing, Joanna. 1986. “Men Control Women? The ‘Catch 22’ in the Analysis of Gender.” International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 1, no. 2, 135–156.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rack, Mary. 2005. Ethnic Distinctions, Local Meanings: Negotiating Cultural Identities in China. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ratanaporn, Sethakul. 2000. “Tai Lue of Sipsongpanna and Müang Nan in the Nineteenth-Century.” In Andrew Turton, ed. A Civility and Savagery: Social Identity in Tai States, 319–329. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanharakshita, Urgyen. 1993. A Survey of Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Methods through the Ages. Glasgow: Windhorse.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schein, Louisa. 1997. “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China.” Modern China 23, no. 1, 69–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schein, Louisa. 2000. Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shi, Zhihua. 1992. Nanlimananna: Poshuijie de gushi (Nalimananna: A water splashing story). Beijing: Wenhuaxian chubanshe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stafford, Charles. 2000. “Chinese Patriliny and the Cycles of yang and laiwang.” In Janet Carsten, ed. Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship, 37–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tanabe, Shigerharu. 1991. “Spirits, Power and the Discourse of Female Gender: The Phii Meng Cult of Northern Thailand.” In Anas Chitakasem and Andrew Turton, eds. Thai Constructions of Knowledge, 183–212. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tannenbaum, Nicola. 1987. “Tattoos: Invulnerability and Power in Shan Cosmology.” American Ethnologist 14, no. 4, 693–711.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waley-Cohen, Joanna. 1999. The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History. New York: W. W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yun, Gao. 1998. “The Dai Vernacular House in South China: Tradition and Cultural Development in the Architecture of an Ethnic Minority.” Ph.D diss., University of Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yos, Santasombat. 2001. Lak Chang: A Reconstruction of Tai Identity in Daikong. Canberra, Australia: Pandanus Books in association with the Thai-Yunnan Project, Australian National University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zheng, Peng. 1993. Xishuangbanna Gailan (Brief introduction of Xishuangbanna) Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Anouska Komlosy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2009 Siu-Keung Cheung, Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, and Lida V. Nedilsky

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Komlosy, A. (2009). Feminization, Recognition, and the Cosmological in Xishuangbanna. In: Marginalization in China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622418_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622418_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37844-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62241-8

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation