ANTHROPOLOGY/SISEA 470

PAPER TOPIC #4: THE SOUTHWEST

Due electronically at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 31

A. A lot of what we are reading and talking about in this unit has to do with ethnic identity and the way it varies from one place and one group to another. But Professor Bamo Ayi once said publicly at a conference, "Steve is always talking about identity, identity. I've known since I was a little girl that I was a Yi." Is it really so complicated or so important to study the nature and causes of ethnic identity? Why or why not? Does the study of ethnic identity in the Southwest of China have any relevance to ethnic conflicts or problems in other areas that you know about, such as (but by mo means limited to) California, Mexico, Xinjiang/East Turkistan, or Tibet?

B. The Chinese state's Marxist-Leninist ideology officially endorses gender equality, but the effects of state modernization and development programs on gender ideas and relations can be uneven or even paradoxical. Several readings for this class, including Chio's A Landscape of Travel, Liu's A Precarious Rite of Passage, and Walsh's From Nv Guo to Nv'er Guo describe encounters between local people's traditional ideas about gender and the modernizing agendas of the Chinese state. Compare the effects of modernization and development on gender relations and gender ideas in the Miao, Nuosu, and Mosuo/Na cases, and explain the similarities and differences.

C. In the 1980s and early 1990s, ethnic elites in the Southwest spent a lot of time and effort promoting education in minority languages, including both bilingual education and education primarily in the minority language. Recently this interest seems to have faded. What are the arguments on the two sides of this issue, and what do you think policy should be for education in areas where children's first language is not Chinese? Does the situation in the Southwest differ materially from that in Xinjiang? Why or why not?