Gender Politics: Hani Villagers’ Encounter with Chinese Modernity

• Main Authors: Chen, Ya-Hsun, 陳雅珣
• Other Authors: Chiang, Bien
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/26g4v7

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 人類學研究所 === 106 === This paper examines how narratives of gender and marriage in a Hani minority village have been twisted within the context of the marriage market under the impact of socioeconomic growth and birth control policy in contemporary China. First, the expectations of the life course have changed because of the implementation of mandatory education and economic development policies. Marriage has become an obstacle for women’s personal career development in their efforts to catch up to the so-called modernity. However, the Hani community and family rely on married women to worship their ancestors in order to keep the family safe. Therefore, the role of marriage is conflicted between women’s pursuit of modernity and the community’s need for existence. Also, as a consequence of the imbalanced sex ratio caused by the implementation of the one-child policy, men in the village have been facing challenges finding a spouse. Therefore, young women's negative conceptions of marriage have largely been invisible to young men. On the contrary, people tended to be happy for and encouraged men to get married as early as possible. The different perceptions of marriage between genders have become a further conflict in village life. While faced with different value systems between the village and the city, young women have adapted to different standards and rules of morality and learned to act according to diverse condition. Men, on the other hand, have largely been stuck in the gap between their local community and modernity as propagated by the state. They see no choice but to return to their original position in the village and faced the loneliness and desperation of finding no spouse. To conclude, aspects of women's life course, interaction between men and women, and the village’s safety and existence have all been disrupted and squeezed into a new contradictory and anxious gender politics under the state’s narrative of modernity. With this article, I aim to amplify and contribute the voices of an ethnic minority community to the research on the moral landscape of contemporary China.