Inheriting and Reflecting:Notes on three ethnographic restudies in Yunnan

Between the late 1930s and the early 1940s, a small group of Chinese anthropologists and sociologists carried out a series of field studies in the countryside of Yunnan .Among them, Fei Xiaotong , Francis L.K.Hsu, and Tian Rukang wrote three famous ethnographies.Each dealt with a different theme.But all of the three were deeply concerned with the cultural difference between rural China (as a whole)and modernity . After 60 years, a group of young anthropologists were sent to the three places where Fei , Hsu, and Tian conducted their research.There , they collected data and sought to restudy the villages.They were inspired both by the earlier studies and the new ideas of ethnographic restudy.Reflecting on Fei' s economics, Hsu' s confinement to inner-village life and negligence of the outer world of Dali , and Tian' s Durkheimian sociology , all three young scholars have drawn their own conclusions on the issues of political power, hierarchical order, and ideology.Written by the organizer of the restudy project , this article provides an overview of the research and suggests an interpretive line.By bringing the three studies together, it also seeks to suggest something more general concerning the legacy of “human ecology”in Chinese social sciences.

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