Construction and Practice of Culture: A Restudy of the Kinship System of the Yongning Mosuo
This article revisits the kinship system of the Yongning Moso people living around Lugu Lake in Yunnan, China. Renowned for their unique matrilineal households and "walking marriage" (tisese) practice of separate residence between sexes, the Moso offer a distinctive case for anthropological studies of kinship classification across cultures. Drawing on kinship theorists such as Needham, Beattie, and Schneider—who emphasize kinship's cultural embeddedness and irreducible internal logic—the author situates Moso kinship terminology within the broader Moso cultural worldview rather than treating it in isolation. Using extensive Moso proverbs and idioms as evidence, the study argues that the Moso kinship system results from specific cultural construction and practice, operating through distinctive social institutions, beliefs, and values. The paper also reviews prior scholarship, contrasting early evolutionist-influenced Chinese ethnolinguistic studies with later interpretive work by overseas and Hong Kong/Taiwan scholars, challenging conventional kinship classification models found in existing ethnographic literature.
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