Good Baby, Good Life

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the question of ‘a good life’ through a daily-life perspective. It focuses on a case regarding the abolition of infanticide, through which the relations and interactions between the socialist state and ethnic minorities of southwest China are examined. By elaborating how an Akha custom (infanticide) that guarantees communal goodness/purity was abolished, the research reveals three competing or collaborating notions of ‘good life’, where the Akha’s cosmological ‘good life’ is partly reformed to obey state law and to meet its members’ personal desires. This is an unusual case in that the ethnic cultural authorities from a small, politically marginalised, frontier-dwelling and egalitarian group in southwest China do not ‘resist’ or ‘collaborate with’ the state in the expected way. Instead, they draw on state power to oppose their own customs. With such a unique case, the research helps to diversify our understandings of state–society relations in southwest China.