Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T11:07:25.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Poetics of Grief and the Price of Hemp in Southwest China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

Erik Mueggler
Get access

Extract

One bright winter afternoon in 1992, in the mountains of Yunnan Province, China, Li Yong told me a story. Li Yong and I were crowded into a courtyard in his largely Yi (or Lòlop'ò) village, at a mortuary ritual for one of his affines. In the courtyard's center, where the corpse had lain in its coffin seven days before, a crude trough had been scratched into the earth, with a shallow hole at the end where the corpse's mouth had been. The dead woman's daughter, her husband's sisters and their daughters, and some of their female friends sat on benches on either side, singing formal poetic laments about labor and pain. To accompany her tears, the daughter ladled water from a bucket into the hole in front of her. The water overflowed into the trough and gradually turned the lower surface of the courtyard to mud. Women from the dead woman's son's family moved about the courtyard pouring alcohol for the hundreds of guests, who drank while squatting, sitting or standing, their feet in the mud.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , November 1998 , pp. 979 - 1008
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Abu-lughod, Lila, and Lutz, Catherine A.. 1990. Introduction to Language and the Politics of Emotion, edited by Abu-Lughod, Lila and Lutz, Catherine A.. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ahern, Emily M. 1973. Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ahern, Emily M. 1981. Chinese Ritual and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 1987. “Politics and Magic in Contemporary China.” Modern China 13:40–61.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 1992. “Socialist Ethics and the Legal System.” In Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China: Learning From 1989, edited by Wasserstrom, Jeffrey and Perry, Elizabeth. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice, and Perry, Jonathan, eds. 1982. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, Bradley. 1979. Proto Loloish. London, Malmo: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Kang, Chao. 1975. “The Growth of a Modern Cotton Textile Industry and the Competition with Handicrafts.” In China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective, edited by Perkins, Dwight. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kang, Chao. 1977. The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shilin, Chen. 1963. “A Brief Description of the Yi Language.” Chinese Linguistics 125:334–47.Google Scholar
Weiji, Chen. 1992. History of Textile Technology of Ancient China. New York: Science Press.Google Scholar
Cornford, Francis M., ed. and trans. 1951. The Republic of Plato. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Tomlinson, Hugh. London: Athlone.Google Scholar
Desjarlais, Robert R. 1993. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1988. “Myth of Guandi: Chinese God of War.” Journal of Asian Studies 47(4):778–95.Google Scholar
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, and Gregory, Peter N.. 1993. “The Religious and Historical Landscape.” In Religion and Society in Tang and Sung China, edited by Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Gregory, Peter N.. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Elvin, Mark. 1972. “The High-Level Equilibrium Trap: The Causes of the Decline of Invention in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries.” In Economic Organization in Chinese Society, edited by Willmott, W. E.. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fei, Hsiao-Tung, and Chang, Chih-I. 1949. Earthbound China: A Study of Rural Economy in Yunnan. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Feutchtwang, S. 1992. The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harrell, Stevan. 1995. “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them.” In Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Fontiers, edited by Harrell, Stevan. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Harvard Yenching Institute, eds. 1962. A Concordance to Shih Ching. Tokyo: Japan Council for East Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Micheal. 1993. “In Defiance of Destiny: the Management of Time and Gender at a Cretan Funeral.” American Ethnologist 20(2):241–55.Google Scholar
Hinton, William. 1967. Fanshen; a Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Holmberg, David. 1989. Order in Paradox: Myth, Ritual and Exchange among Nepal's Tamang. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hsu, Cho-Yun. 1965. Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 B.C. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hsu, Francis. 1967. Under the Ancestors' Shadow: Kinship, Personality, and Social Mobility in Village China. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Johnson, Elizabeth L. 1988. “Grieving for the Dead, Grieving for the Living: Funeral Laments of Hakka Women.” In Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by Watson, J. L. and Rawski, E. S.. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kleeman, Terry F. 1993. “The Expansion of the Wen-Chang Cult.” In Religion and Society in Tang and Sung China, edited by Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Gregory, Peter N.. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Kligman, Gail A. 1988. The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics and Popular Culture in Transylvania. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Dieter. 1988. Science and Civilization in China. Edited by Needham, Joseph. Vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Pt. 9. Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Philip A. 1990. Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1786. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
LiÉtard, Alfred P. 1913. Au Yun-Nan, Les Lolo p'o: Une tribu des aborigènes de la Chine meridionale. Munster: Aschendorff.Google Scholar
Yueh-hwa, Lin. 1961 [1947]. The Lolo of Liang Shan. Translated by Pan, Ju-shu. New Haven, Conn.: HRAF Press.Google Scholar
Hongchu, Liu. 1957. Wo guo di ma [Our nation's hemp]. Beijing: Shizheng Jingji Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Liu, Ta-chung, and Yeh, Kung-chia. 1965. The Economy of the Chinese Mainland: National Income and Economic Development, 1933–1959. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Xueliang, Ma. 1951. A Study of Sani, an Yi Dialect. Beijing: Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Xueliang, Ma. 1992. Minzu yanjiu wenji [Collected works on nationalities research]. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.Google Scholar
Mann, Susan. 1997. Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Maschino, Thomas. 1992. “To Remember the Faces of the Dead: Mourning and the Full Sadness of Memory in Southwestern New Britain.” Ethos 20(4):387–420.Google Scholar
Mueggler, Erik. 1997. “Specters of Power: Ritual and Politics in an Yi Community.” Ph.D. diss. The Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Mueggler, Erik. 1998a. “Procreative Metaphor and Productive Unity in an Yi Headmanship.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Incorporating Man 4(2):61–78.Google Scholar
Mueggler, Erik. 1998b. “A Carceral Regime: Violence and Social Memory in Southwest China.” Cultural Anthropology 13(2).Google Scholar
Oi, Jean. 1989. State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Feng, Qiao, ed. 1996. Yaoan Xian zhi [Yaoan County gazetteer]. Kunming: Yunnan remmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Rose, Gillian. 1996. Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Teiser, Stephen F. 1988. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Kathy L. 1993. “Economic Growth, Peasant Marginalization, and the Sexual Division of Labor in Early Twentieth-Century China.” Modern China 19(3):354–86.Google Scholar
Yuzhu, Wang and Zejian, Liu. 1989. “Dizhu Xia Hao de shuilao” [Landlord Xia Hao's water cell]. Yongren lishi ziliao xuanji [Selected materials on Yongren History] 1:139–40.Google Scholar
Watson, James L., ed. 1988. Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weller, Robert P. 1987 “The Politics of Ritual Disguise: Repression and Response in Taiwanese Popular Religion.” Modern China 13(1):17–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianjizu, Yunnan Sheng, ed. 1986 [1950]. Yunnan Yizu shehui lishi diaocha [Investigations of Yunnan Yi society and history]. Vol. 162. Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Weiyuanhui, Yunnan Sheng difangzhi bianzan, ed. 1992. Yunnan Sheng zhi. 17 juan. Gongxiao hezuoshe zhi. [Gazetteer of Yunnan Province. Vol. 17. Supply and Marketing Cooperatives gazetteer. ] Kumning: Yunnan renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
bangongshi, Yunnan Sheng renkou tongji, ed. 1990. Yunnan Sheng disici renkou tongji shougong huizong ziliao [Manual tabulation of major figures from the fourth population census of Yunnan Province]. Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Yunnan Sheng zhi jingji zonghe zhi [Economic statistics gazetteer of Yunnan Province]. 1989–1995. Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Zhang, Ruhai. 1984. Nongchan jige wenti yanjiu [Research on some problems of agricultural prices]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Zhongguo fangzhi gongye nianjian [Almanac of China's textile industry]. 1994. Beijing: Zhongguo fangzhi chubanshe.Google Scholar