Gathering life stories and oral traditions among the Na of Southwest China
Résumé
This chapter examines the challenges of conducting anthropological research among the Na (Mosuo) of Southwest China, a group historically stereotyped as a matriarchal society. Drawing on 11 months of fieldwork, it explores the method and ethics of conducting research in post socialist China. It explores the Na's dual narratives: onstage and offstage. Publicly, the Na perform a commodified identity for tourists, emphasizing their cultural uniqueness and conforming to expectations of exoticity and eroticized otherness; while privately, they negotiate these representations to carve out a place for themselves in the State's modernist agenda. Methodologically, the chapter highlights the importance of positionality, language acquisition, and informal, friendship-based approaches in accessing nuanced narratives. Through life stories and oral traditions, the Na reveal a complex worldview that blends inherited memory of the past with contemporary experiences. By analyzing the tensions between dominant meta-narratives and local voices, this study advocates for a pluralistic micro-historical approach to understanding the Na’s dynamic ethnicity and social organization.