TY - JOUR
T1 - Mythogeographies of Anthropological Knowledge: Writing over the Lines and Footsteps of History in Southwest China
AU - Karlach, Jan
N1 - © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute.
PY - 2024/12/19
Y1 - 2024/12/19
N2 - In this article, I delve into the field diary of Ma Changshou – a major Chinese ethnohistorian and social anthropologist active between the 1930s and 1960s – to show how his journeys through Liangshan, a mountainous land in Southwest China inhabited by the Nuosu-Yi, led to a new kind of anthropological knowledge. Ma worked under the theoretical, methodological and ideological assumptions of his era, where he strove to assemble his findings on Nuosu-Yi kinship relations and textual sources into a linear historical narrative, even though the Liangshan of his day was not fully controlled by a centralized state bureaucracy. Retracing Ma’s journey in mythogeographical fashion, I propose that the travel-fieldwork trajectories of China’s Republican-era social scientists and their interpretation of data obtained from native chieftains, bimo ritualists, and other members of prominent Nuosu-Yi clans have shaped today’s knowledge of Nuosu-Yi history, society and culture. Notably, Ma’s mythogeography fleshed out two diff
AB - In this article, I delve into the field diary of Ma Changshou – a major Chinese ethnohistorian and social anthropologist active between the 1930s and 1960s – to show how his journeys through Liangshan, a mountainous land in Southwest China inhabited by the Nuosu-Yi, led to a new kind of anthropological knowledge. Ma worked under the theoretical, methodological and ideological assumptions of his era, where he strove to assemble his findings on Nuosu-Yi kinship relations and textual sources into a linear historical narrative, even though the Liangshan of his day was not fully controlled by a centralized state bureaucracy. Retracing Ma’s journey in mythogeographical fashion, I propose that the travel-fieldwork trajectories of China’s Republican-era social scientists and their interpretation of data obtained from native chieftains, bimo ritualists, and other members of prominent Nuosu-Yi clans have shaped today’s knowledge of Nuosu-Yi history, society and culture. Notably, Ma’s mythogeography fleshed out two diff
KW - China
KW - Liangshan
KW - Nuosu-Yi
KW - Ma Changshou
KW - mythogeography
KW - genealogy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85212490350&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1467-9655.14242
DO - 10.1111/1467-9655.14242
M3 - Article
SN - 1359-0987
JO - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)
JF - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)
ER -