Chinese Southwest Ethnic Groups - Social Life History

Author: Guan Yanbo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-11-01
Features: This is the final research of a Youth Fund project from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and also the first research on the social life history of Southwest ethnic groups. The opening section of the book systematically proposes the concept of ethnic social life history from a new perspective in the development of ethnic history and conducts an in-depth and systematic exploration of a series of theoretical issues, including the disciplinary attributes, research content, objects, and the interrelationships between ethnic social life history and other disciplines. Based on this theoretical analysis, the book further employs a large amount of literature and field survey data from a narrow perspective of social life history to systematically interpret the social life content of Southwest ethnic groups, primarily focusing on clothing, food, shelter, and transportation. For example, in the chapter on "Settlements, Architecture, and the Household Life of Southwest Ethnic Groups," the author takes the eight main material components of Southwest ethnic settlements as the main framework, tracing the form, structure, and distribution patterns of Southwest ethnic settlements. It deeply analyzes the influence and constraints of economic life, the level of productivity development and technological conditions, family systems, various ideological forms, and religious beliefs on Southwest ethnic settlements. In the examination of the dietary life of Southwest ethnic groups, the author does not limit the discussion to the types, composition, preparation methods, and cooking methods of their food. Instead, it specifically analyzes the social stratification and dietary concepts reflected in the evolution of dietary behavior. In the study of Southwest ethnic clothing, the book does not stop at introducing the forms, styles, fabrics, and ornaments of clothing. Instead, it devotes significant effort to exploring and investigating the multidimensional attributes of clothing and its cultural characteristics, such as ethnic and regional specificity, temporal limitations, hierarchical nature, gender and occupational aspects, and practicality, as well as its various social functions, including transformation, regulation, interpretation, and symbolism. This book is a systematic study of the social life history of Southwest ethnic groups from the perspectives of history and ethnology. The introductory chapter explores in depth a series of theoretical issues, including the disciplinary attributes, research content, objects, and interrelationships between ethnic social life history and other disciplines, from a new perspective in the development of ethnic history. Subsequently, it takes clothing, food, shelter, and transportation as starting points for important aspects of social life, using a large amount of literature and field survey data to conduct a relatively comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth analysis of the internal laws and external phenomena of the economic and cultural lives of various ethnic communities in Southwest history. It elevates the field of ethnic social life history, which has been neglected by traditional historiography, to the position it deserves.