Variations of Tradition: Re-creating Yi Families in the Pearl River Delta / 流变的传统：珠三角的彝人家支再造

Abstract

Abstract The family is the most essential socialorganization form of traditional Yi people. With a huge number of Yi people flowing to the Pearl River delta for work, such families and their meetings have been emerging and developing in this region. A new kind of family system, based on the foreman model, represents the effect of the temporary labor market on Yi social relations. It also shows that Yi people are strengthening their social unity in response to unstable intra- or intergroup tensions by resisting the further marketization of labor forces. Therefore, the social connotation of Yi families and family meetings in the Pearl River delta has largely broken away from that in traditional Yi residential areas and is instead something new.