An Analysis of the Metaphorical and Symbolic Meanings in the Spatial Construction of Mosuo Family Houses
This article examines the metaphorical and symbolic meanings embedded in the spatial construction of Mosuo household houses (jiawu) in southwestern China. Drawing on anthropological theories of social space (Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Bourdieu), the author argues that the Mosuo distinguish conceptually between "house" (wo) as a physical structure and "home" (du) as an integrated entity encompassing people, property, and sacred objects such as the hearth and ancestral shrine. Based on fieldwork in Yongning, the study analyzes how spatial organization within Mosuo houses reflects and reinforces the region's distinctive matrilineal kinship system and walking-marriage practices. Particular attention is paid to binary oppositions such as light/darkness and life/death associated with the front door versus the rear death-chamber, linked respectively to women's life-giving roles and men's handling of funerary rites. The analysis reveals that Mosuo house space embodies a female-centered cosmology and cultural practice of "maternal reverence, female nobility."
This page publishes the bibliographic record and the project's summary. The scanned article text belongs to its publisher and is shown to readers under a research-use policy; it is not reproduced in this record.