Four Perspectives on the Study of Mosuo Villages
The Mosuo people, residing along the upper Jinsha River across Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, became widely known to academia through their distinctive "walking marriage" custom. Scholarly research on Mosuo villages, initially centered on this marriage practice, gradually expanded to encompass tourism, architecture, and livelihood, yielding abundant and diverse findings that warrant systematic review. This article organizes existing scholarship around four analytical perspectives: walking marriage through the lens of organization, tourism through the lens of heritage/legacy, architecture through the lens of culture, and livelihood through the lens of habitat. Synthesizing research conducted since the twentieth century within this framework, the paper further examines the internal connections linking these four perspectives, revealing how they collectively illuminate the multidimensional nature of Mosuo village society. The study draws on diverse theoretical traditions—including marriage and kinship theory, structural-functionalism, appreciative inquiry, and stakeholder theory—and multiple disciplines such as ethnology and sociology. The paper concludes by proposing directions for future research on Mosuo villages.
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