Landmark anthropological works on fame have shown that gift-giving is often the vehicle for producing relations of 'positive value' and recognition. When viewing fame against the related notion of fortune, however, the focal point of study shifts to how people produce reputations that are 'beyond value' or 'priceless'. This article proposes that the Nuosu of Southwest China enter into an ongoing 'economy of ordeals' in order to accumulate priceless 'tokens of value' that increase their 'fate-fortune' and fame. It shows that ambitious Nuosu accept new ordeals to achieve fame, while comfortably viewing their accomplishments as akin to those of a predatory spider. Tellingly, though, these efforts are vulnerable to the counter-extractive maneuvers of other people and ghosts, which present the Nuosu with new ordeals that could deplete their resources.
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The Art of Capture
Hidden Jokes and the Reinvention of Animistic Ontologies in Southwest China
Katherine Swancutt
ecological jargon in the first place. Drawing on my fieldwork among the Nuosu of Southwest China, my aim in this article is to show how the ‘art of capture’ underpins the native reinvention of animistic ontologies that shadow our fieldwork efforts at
Religion through the Looking Glass
Fieldwork, Biography, and Authorship in Southwest China and Beyond
Katherine Swancutt
person would thus extend across the moments of my fieldwork, the lives and research of my Nuosu colleagues (especially ethnologists) in Southwest China, my life and research in England, my return (and past) visits to Ninglang, the previous and upcoming
The Algebra of Souls
Ontological Multiplicity and the Transformation of Animism in Southwest China
Mireille Mazard
, onstage, is demonstrating the beginning of this journey for a group of researchers who traveled from Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan in Southwest China, to the province’s remote northwestern frontier to study endangered traditions of ethnic minority
The Mule Caravans of Western Yunnan
An Oral History of the Muleteers of Zhaozhou
Ma Jianxiong and Ma Cunzhao
Mule caravans established a network across physical, political, and ethnic boundaries that integrated Southwest China, Southeast Asia, and Tibet. This article is a first exploration of this little-known mobile network. Based mainly on oral history, it focuses on the mule caravans based in Zhaozhou in western Yunnan from the late Qing to the 1940s, when the first motor roads were constructed. The investigation assembles horse and mule technologies and trade organization in detail in order to reconstruct the role and standing of transporters and their networks in local society, in the regional setting, in a volatile political environment, and in the face of challenging natural conditions.
The Elementary Economies of Dechenwa Life
Fortune, Vitality, and the Mountain in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands
Giovanni da Col
This article presents some images and conceptual structures surrounding notions of fortune and luck among Dechen Tibetans in southwest China and reflects on the strategies for negotiating the integrity of persons and other 'social containers'. First, it analyzes the problem in separating the multifarious manifestations of fortune connected to the well-being and vitality of persons and households. Secondly, it examines the ethnographic concepts arising from the interface between fortune and sovereignty by illustrating the cosmological imagination surrounding contemporary state rituals focused on the cult of Mt. Khawa Karpo. Finally, musing on the relation between vitality, containership, and alterity, the article highlights how tracing the flows of fortune problematizes the divide between interiority and exteriority, or the question of where the outside and the inside of a being or a society begin.
COVID-19 and Uncertain Intimacy
State–Society Relations in Urban China and Beyond
Jialing Luo
further break down state–society dualism. Examining the transformation of a village office into a villagers’ committee in southwest China, he argues that ‘the state is not merely a set of institutions existing in society, the state is society
Introduction
Narratives, Ontologies, Entanglements, and Iconoclasms
Sondra L. Hausner, Simon Coleman, and Ruy Llera Blanes
religion and aspiration. Taking the example of Southwest China as her case study—where she was asked to judge a cultural competition on the basis of her own history as a dancer—Swancutt looks at the engagement between ethnographers and their communities of
Introduction
Anthropological Knowledge Making, the Reflexive Feedback Loop, and Conceptualizations of the Soul
Katherine Swancutt and Mireille Mazard
thinker in Southwest China, each of whom wields mischievously reflexive ideas about animism. Swancutt shows that Nuosu use hidden jokes to comment reflexively on both animistic ideas and the very concept of animism. Recently, the Chinese environmentalist
Thomas D. Hall
from Comparing the Two Southwests: Southwest China and Northwest New Spain/Southwest USA .” Journal of World-Systems Research 19 ( 1 ): 24 – 56 . http://www.jwsr.org/ . 10.5195/jwsr.2013.519 Hall , Thomas D. 2012 . “ Incorporation into and
