Chieftains into Ancestors ─ Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China

As part of a wider effort to provide alternatives to the conventional history of China in which the central state perpetually drives local society, anthropologists and historians seek the voices of indigenous people in what is now southwest China. They examine the transformation of religious rituals over time, an approach that has proved successful in other parts of China. The topics include representing Nong Zhigao in Chinese ethnic minority society, a patron deity on the border of Hunan and Gizhou, the myth of native subjugation in the creation of lineage society in South China, social production and social reproduction by the Wancheng native officialdom, and gendering ritual community across the Chinese southwest borderland. Distributed in the US by the University of Washington Press and in Canada by the University of Toronto Press. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

David Faure is Wei Lun Professor of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His books include Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China. HoTs'ui-p'ing is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica and an adjunct associate professor in the Institute of Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University. She is the co-editor of State, Market and Ethnic Groups Contextualized. Contributors: Lian Ruizhi, Huang Shu-li, JamesWilkerson, He Xi, Xie Xiaohui, Kao Ya-ning, and Zhang Yingqiang