Ethnic by Design: Branding a Buyi Cultural Landscape in Late-Socialist Southwest China
Author(s):
Luo, Yu
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ph.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : Yale University, 2016.
Pages:
262
Language:
English
Abstract:
This dissertation, based on a total of 18 months of fieldwork in southwestern China's Guizhou Province, unravels the paradox of ethnic branding through the case of the Buyi (Bouyei) in the early 21st century. "Ethnic by design" describes the remaking of ethnicity in a late-socialist context, wherein minority identities and cultural traditions are interwoven with the party-state rhetoric and internalized by local peoples themselves so that they may benefit from cultural commodification and consumption. Especially in places where other modes of rural-based development may not be valued, branding ethnic identity in a readily recognizable manner becomes a potential means for locals to gain socioeconomic welfare. The Buyi, officially classified by the socialist state in 1953, is now China's tenth ' largest minority nationality, but little is known about this group in Western scholarship. Even within China, the Buyi – in contrast to other ethnicities such as the Miao (Hmong) or the Dong (Kam) – have a lower profile today and are less closely identified with the exoticized, multi-ethnic Guizhou. This is often attributed to the self-described "water-like" nature of the Buyi. As summarized by their local elites, the Buyi – relying on rice paddy agriculture in alluvial strips and river valleys – have become culturally cosmopolitan and physically sedentarized at once. Strategically attaching themselves to the central state(s), the Buyi have also thrived on fluidity and adaptability across rugged terrains, which are nonetheless at odds with the state's attempt to make local populations legible. Exemplary of such a paradox, which has become manifest in today's ethnic endeavors in China, is the predicament of ethnic groups like the Buyi that are neither mainstream Han nor the most "exotic." The case of the Buyi thus also pinpoints a fundamental tension in China's national history: the desire to preserve roots of cultural purity and, at the same time, the impulse to push for civilizational progress. Should the Buyi move forward with the rest of the nation into "prosperous modernity" as "modern" citizens, or should they develop a more distinguishable identity to fit into a burgeoning cultural market? The primary chapters of this dissertation examine several key components in China's ethnic branding to make a broader case beyond the village locale itself. These include life-cycle rituals, song-and-dance performances, museum exhibits, and landscape design. Multiple layers of local participants, including local government bureaucracy, the Buyi elites who became state-educated cadres or intellectuals, and villagers with gender and generational differences, all engaged in the quotidian production of the Buyi identity. Their perceptions of the locality and of the Buyi ethnicity, which now conflates heritage with tourism fads, not only underscore state-society complicity as seen in earlier decades, but also reveals subtle negotiation and misrepresentation. My argument is hence two-fold. First, the Buyi's inward search for "uniqueness" based on grassroots beliefs and practices is unwittingly entangled with the language of the state and cultural politics in the larger regional sphere. Second, despite the developmental state's intention to highlight quintessential ethnic identities, the Buyi's historical experience of being fluid and flexible continues to inform their delicate positioning. Using the metaphor of "treading water," this dissertation delineates the "becoming" of the Buyi as a continual process of survival that is historically contextualized and ever unfinished. Out of seemingly fragmented and recycled cultural components, the Buyi ultimately constitute an assemblage of people with multiple layers of historical experiences. Therefore, in the spirit of critiquing cultural essentialism, this dissertation also takes on the categories locals construct or adopt for themselves to make sense of their life-worlds. It makes the case that ethnicity persists today as a powerful mode of negotiating a grounded sense of belongings and engaging with extra-local forces.