Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China (Studies on China)

Studies on China #26

by Stevan Harrell

Nearly seven million Yi people live in Southwest China, but most educated people outside China have never heard of them. This book, the first scholarly study in a Western language on the Yi in four decades, brings this little-known part of the world to life. Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China is a remarkable collection of work by both Yi and foreign scholars describing their history, traditional society, and recent social changes.

In addition to being valuable as an ethnographic study, this book is also an experiment in communication among three the cosmopolitan disciplines of history and the social sciences, the Chinese discourse of ethnology and ethnohistory, and the Yi folk discourse of genealogy and ritual. This book uses the case of the Yi to conduct an international conversation across formerly isolated disciplines.

Genres: China

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Stevan Harrell is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington.