Cultural Interaction under State Expansion in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands: Changes in Marriage and Reproductive Practices in Yunnan since the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article describes the marriage institution’s disintegration and the resulting diversification of reproductive practices in Pumi (Premi) villages in Yongning, northwest Yunnan. Yongning Pumi currently practice formal marriages, visiting relationships, and cohabitation without marriage. I argue that this diversity has resulted from both the expansion of state intervention and local individuals’ agency to fulfill cultural ideals and personal desires. The changing economic-political environment in the nineteenth century and the unequal power relations between Pumi and Mosuo (Na), whose elites ruled Yongning as native officials 土官 authorized by the imperial court, jointly contributed to Pumi’s acceptance of visiting relationships. The popularity of visiting relationships in Yongning reflects the decline of the local status-differentiation system exemplified in divergent forms of marriage and reproductive relations. Moreover, the increasing commonalities and similarities of diversification in Pumi and Mosuo reproductive and residential practices are symptomatic of the region’s further incorporation into a larger economic and political system.