State and ethnicity in China's Southwest

Abstract

State and Ethnicity in China's Southwest, by Xiaolin Guo. Leiden: Brill, 2008. x + 346 pp. euro99.00/US$ 148.00 (hardcover). Xiaolin Guo has published a number of interesting articles on the politics of ethnic identity in Yunnan Province over the last decade. This book represents an amalgam of her observations in the field since the early 1990s, particularly her close work with two communities - one Han, the other Mosuo - in Ninglang and Yongsheng Counties in northwest Yunnan. The ethnographic description of these two communities is rich, reminding the reader of China's remarkable cultural diversity. Chapter 3 provides a good overview of the matrilineal Mosuo' s unique kinship structure and their economic practices. In chapter Guo presents some keen insights on cultural continuity and change under different regimes. She presents a similarly rich ethnography of a patrilineal Han Chinese community in Chapter 4. Other chapters in the book deal with the history of the region as a frontier, and state policies on and the environment. While the book promises an interdisciplinary approach, Guo is clearly most at home with anthropology. The sections on political behavior are less analytically robust. She shows well the inter-relationships between state and society - how ethnic officials can be agents of the state as well as members of their local community - but the significance of observation is underdeveloped. When she suggests that when ethnic identity takes precedence in local affairs, compliance to the state is likely to be compromised (p. 242), it would be interesting to learn more about the circumstances under which might or might not be the case. Is it the same for all ethnic groups in the area, or just for the less dominant ones? The book promises to fram[e] ethnicity issues in of local politics and inter-relationships between levels of government, but there are few insights into how local government works and the role of ethnicity in local governance beyond what is already widely known about preferential policies. Further, while Guo frequently moves discussion between the village, the township and the county, there is almost no discussion of the inter-relationships between levels of government. For example, she notes how the elevation of an ethnic Yi official from Ninglang County to Lijiang Prefecture and then to provincial government elevated the status of Ninglang [County]. According to Guo, this was significant in political and economic terms because, [w]ith their native representative sitting in the provincial capital the Yi in Ninglang [we]re now in a more advantageous position to lobby the state and seek more favorable conditions for local economic development (p. …