1AC

Contention 1 Mosuo Misrepresentation

We begin by introducing the Mosuo, banishing the
homogenizing peripherality debate has assigned to the Mosuo,
an ethnic minority in the Peoples Republic of China.

The Mosuo
Mosuo Cultural Development Association 05
Lugu Lake 20 http://www.mosuoproject.org/culreli.htm Lugu Lake
Mosuo Cultural Development Association Mosuo Cultural Preservation Committee consisting of Mosuo people.

Mosuo Culture has attracted a lot of interest in recent years. There have been books written about them, documentaries produced about them, and scores of anthropologists coming to study them. Yet, for all of this, much of the

information that is out there about the Mosuo is damaging.

misleading at best, and at times We hope to provide more accurate information

The Mosuo don't have a

here, to help people understand this unique and fascinating culture! There is not that much known about the history/origins of the Mosuo culture.

written language (but we are working to help them develop one!), so their entire history is oral , passed an history down

through local priests

from generation to generation, mostly called Daba. There are occasional references in ChineseZZ written history, but due to the many different names that have
been used throughout history, it can often be difficult (or impossible) to demonstrate that these definitely refer to the Mosuo. So much of what is known about the Mosuo is a patchwork collection of most likely hypotheses.Of

Some trace
course, this inevitably leads to different/competing theories, and if you do study anthropological writings about the Mosuo, you likely will end up hearing different ideas. people

Mosuo heritage to the Yunnan/Sichuan area.

back to Mongolia; others consider the Mosuo to be native In the end, it can be difficult to

Three aspects of the

prove/disprove any of these theories; so this site, for the most part, focuses instead on the situation today, and on those aspects of history that are documented.

Mosuo culture their practice of a system similar to

that tend to attract the most attention are that is

matriarchal systems; their practice of walking marriages, an alternative system whereby women can

and integration of Tibetan Buddhism

choose/change partners as they wish, and couples do not live together or get married; their and their own
religion, Daba. As each topic is quite complex, we've designated separate sections for each subject. The Mosuo are a Chinese ethnic minority group who live high in the Himalayas, in an area straddling Yunnan and

. Although classified as part of the Naxi minority by the

Sichuan provinces, close to the Tibetan border officially

Chinese government, they are a different group, with different actually quite

language, culture, religion, the majority of etc.Most people who know about the Mosuo tend to identify them with Lugu Lake, however

Mosuo do not live at the lake, but in small towns and villages rather scattered

throughout the mountains The Mosuo economy is . Estimates as to their numbers vary, but are most likely around 40,000.

largely agrarian , and they are capable of producing most of what they need for daily living. In the past, Mosuo men would take trading caravans to other parts of China, to buy/trade products they

The average income

could not produce locally. Unlike most of China, the staple food is potato, rather than rice (although under increasing Chinese influence, this is changing). annual

for the majority of Mosuo is low would be around US$150-200, which quite even by Chinese standards. This does not mean that the Mosuo are starving to death;

even relatively small costs can be

they are quite able to provide for their basic needs. However, it does mean[s] that for things such as education, travel, etc.,

expensive. There are

prohibitively other minorities who live in the same area several , primarily

Each has its own

the Yi, the Naxi, and the Pumi. culture; and intermixing has unique in some cases, some of cultures

taken place, lending even greater variety depicting these to the local culture. So any of

minorities as being like this can be rather misleading.

P.R.C. representations of the Mosuo that masquerade as an

understanding of Mosuo identity subject the Mosuo to
commodification, sexual objectification, and consumption.
Walsh 05 , E. R. (20 ). From N Guo to Ner Guo Negotiating Desire in the Land of the Mosuo. Modern China, 31(4), 448-486.

Ner Guo receives tens of thousands of tourists

On the shores of Lugu Lake in Yunnan province,

annually. Luoshuis economy

The small village of Luoshui is the primary destination for tourists coming to this corner of Yunnan. is almost completely driven by tourism,

is driven by a desire to encounter the Mosuo

which itself .1 This much discussed ethnic minority has received national and international
attention because, according to state categorizations and media accounts, the Mosuo are matriarchal and their traditional sexual relations (referred to as zouhun in Mandarin, sese in Mosuo) are outside of marriage.

Journalists enhanced these descriptions

, novelists, and travel agencies have , luring tourists into the long and rather uncomfortable trip to Lugu

Residents of Luoshui
Lake. Tourists come by the busload to see Mosuo culture, to experience a land where women rule, and in some cases to give zouhun a try. daily

engage with the commodification of their culture, continually and they must face and
reshape constructions of Mosuo identity made by outsiders . Chinas recent economic growth has been
accompanied by an ethos of consumption and leisure, as well as by increased disposable income for the middle and upper classes. During the past decade, a booming internal tourism market has developed. Media attention to ethnic
minority regions has both responded to and fed Chinese desires for entertainment and travel. The tremendous growth of domestic tourism in China has followed a general rehabilitation of ethnicity during the 1980s, and ethnic

tourism has emerged during a time when the cultural particularity of Chinas ethnic groups is being celebrated. As others have discussed (Diamond, 1988; Harrell, 1995; Schein, 2000; Swain, 2001; White, 1997), official
representations have created an image of minority people as of Chinas ethnic minorities

dangerous, feminine, and erotic. The tourism industry at Lugu Lake exploded in the 1990s, drawing on government representations of the Mosuo to create a
marketing image that has proved compelling to the domestic tourism market. Sexuality and gender figure especially prominently in official representations of Mosuo culture, and in tourist literature as well. As Stevan Harrell (2001) has suggested, ways of being ethnic

. Mosuo narratives of
vary in China, and southwest China presents particularly complicated interactions between local, national, and cosmopolitan discourses of ethnicity

themselves are fashioned within a context of reportage, and flashbulbs. state policies, The process of

within Chinas ethnoscape different ethnic minorities

imagining ethnic others is also complex, and Susan Blum (2001) describes how in Yunnan

represent prototypes of primitivity. different The various notions of Mosuo culture that get played out+ in a context of tourism at Luoshui show that the process of othering is not only not

,
static; for some ethnic minorities in China, it is not even consistent. Luoshui residents are acutely aware that Mosuo identity sells and they, like many others in China, pin their hopes for economic change on expanding ethnic tourism. While the

they face the pressures of tourism and policy to

Mosuo face representations rife with imbedded contradictions, also

accommodate these representations . State policies and tourism have made gender salient in new ways for many Mosuo. Early state

categorizations of Mosuo have led to representations of Mosuo gender practices

ethnicity built around notions of women freely available for sex , to whom present lovers have no
future commitments, or of a land where women rule. Matriarchy and sexual availability are central in touristsdesire to visit the Mosuo. In negotiating different aspects of that desire, Luoshui residents must address touristsconcerns

about womens power as well as their hopes of finding sexually available young women. The culture that tourists hope to consume
is imagined through an ideational slippage in which notions of matriarchy and of women as ever-available objects of desire intermingle instead of clash. Tourists find alluring the notion of a Womens Country,

in Chinese tradition called both N Guo and Ner Guo; yet the practice of tourism at Luoshui is reinventing this area as a country of girls, drawing on the more common use of ner. At Luoshui , where ethnicity

is imagined and consumed through tourism, Mosuo women are the figurative (and sometimes literal) consumable.

The simulation of the Mosuo culture uniquely presents

homogenizing and Orientalizing understandings of identity.
The idea of an authentic identity of the Mosuo must be
refused- even the Mosuo themselves are facing an ideational
slippage in which identity is dissolved. Attempting to
understand Mosuo identity only drives the consumption .

Walsh 05 , E. R. (20 ). From N Guo to Ner Guo Negotiating Desire in the Land of the Mosuo. Modern China, 31(4)

My first visit to Luoshui was as a tourist in April 1993. Since then I have conducted a year of field research there (1998-1999), and I have returned to the

residents of Luoshui address these

area more than half a dozen times, most recently in July 2005. I argue that the

contradictions in part through performing both front and backstages (MacCannell,

[1976] 1999) for tourists. In this article, I discuss state policy and scholarly representations of the Mosuo, tourist representations that developed from
them, and the interactions and responses occurring at Luoshui around ethnicity. In considering the issues that Mosuo face in performing identity, I draw on
the work of Vincanne Adams and Tim Oakes to theoretically frame identity and encounter and to interrogate the notion of an authentic Mosuo identity.

For the Mosuo in Luoshui, tourism has reified culture as a gendered consumable , affecting the
communitys own practices of gender and culture, as well as its uses of tradition. WHO ARE THE MOSUO? The Mosuo people who live by the lake are the
pet of the nature. They love freely as in heaven, so its called womens kingdom and become spectacular. Lugu Lake postcard package, Lijiang District
Post Office (produced circa 1997) The Mosuo have a population of approximately 40,000, live in the foothills of Tibet, and speak a Tibeto-Burman
language. Mosuo territory straddles the border of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, including Ninglang, Muli, Yanyuan, and Yanbian counties,2 and one of its
primary geographical features is Lugu Lake. According to many Mosuo, the Yongning Plain in Ninglang county, Yunnan, is the cultural center of Mosuo
territory. The Chinese government does not recognize the Mosuo as an ethnic group, or zu; instead, it officially classifies the Mosuo in Yunnan as a
subgroup of the Naxi, and the Mosuo in Sichuan as Mongolian (see Mathieu, 1996: 6-14; Shih, 1993: 22-25; Walsh, 2001b: 59-63; Harrell, 2001: 216-38). In
the late 1980s, their attempts to gain state recognition won the Mosuo the ability to call themselves Mosuo people (Mosuo ren). The Mosuo practice
Lamaism (predominantly Gelugpa) as well as their own shamanism, dabaism. Prior Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 451 to 1956, local chiefs (tusi)
had controlled the area for more than 600 years. While there is variety in marriage practices and household configurations among Mosuo from different
regions,3 many recorded accounts focus on the customs of the Yongning Mosuo. The cultural traits for which the Mosuo are best known are their
matrilineal family system (generally referred to as matriarchal) and zouhun, walking marriages. Zouhun is the Mandarin translation of the Mosuo term
sese, used to describe a relationship in which the man goes back and forth. Until the late 1960s, sese was the dominant mode of sexual relations among
the Mosuo. Adults practicing sese customarily remain socially and economically attached to their natal households; the woman receives her lover at her
residence in the evening, and he returns to his in the morning. Sexual relations are initiated and continued voluntarily, for indeterminate periods, and are
largely free of economic bonds. Children generally are part of the mothers household and take her surname. Households do not generally include fathers,
but they do contain maternal uncles. Most Yongning agricultural households are composed of one or two elders, several siblings or cousins of productive
age, and the children of one or more of these women. Others, especially in the area of the township seat, more closely resemble nuclear families because
of marriage policies discussed below. Informants say that sese relationships are more stable in form now than in the past (He, 1994, 2000; Walsh, 2001b,
2003). In Yongning Mosuo communities today, sese continues, alongside legal marriages, and either is acceptable for an individual, but not both. Mosuo
culture, both before and after Liberation, allows a high degree of sexual autonomy to both men and women. Because most households contain grown
siblings, there are strong taboos against talking about sex or sexual partners in front of family members of the opposite sex. Therefore one rarely hears
joking about sexual matters within mixed groups of men and women, especially if these groups include family members. Generally speaking, joking about
sexual matters is limited to small, same-sex groups meeting privately or semiprivately. The idea of the Mosuo as matriarchal has grown out of state
representations of the Mosuo, which then formed the basis of popular representations in the PRC.4 These greatly exaggerate the matriarchal aspects of
Mosuo culture, presenting Mosuo society as one in which 452 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 women are in control. The Mosuo are matrilineal, and
many Mosuo household heads, dabu, were and are women. However, in Yongning agricultural villages nearly one-third of household heads are male
(Walsh, 2001b). Moreover, local use of the term household head is complicated (Walsh, 2001b: 176-84), and even in the households with women heads,
often major decisions regarding property are the domain of either its senior or most economically productive man. Mosuo themselves describe their
culture as one in which both men and women are valued members of the household, and all adults have a voice in household decisions. PERFORMING
MOSUO IDENTITY The act of performing Mosuo identity has brought wealth to an otherwise struggling community in an area with limited transport and no
industry. Luoshui, considered poor by even local standards during the years of collectivization (because it had little and poor-quality land), is now the

While residents of Luoshui

wealthiest village in the county, with household incomes 20 to 100 times those of other villages.

may be Mosuo (more than 40%), Pumi (more than 40%), or Han (about 12%), most tourists believe
that they are all Mosuo, and those working with tourists often call themselves we Mosuo. Within this article, I will use Luoshui
residents and villagers to refer to all of the residents, and Mosuo when referring particularly to Mosuo. During the 1990s, against the tide of de-
collectivization, Luoshui residents collectivized key tourist activities. All households contribute one member to the teams that deal with tourists. Team

members must wear Mosuo costume and present themselves as Mosuo while
engaged in activities for tourists, such as boating on the lake, horse rides, or songand-dance performances. Those in Luoshui are well aware

that Mosuo identity has brought them their newfound wealth, and Mosuo identity is therefore prominent and exaggerated
at tourist sites. Tourists and students frequently ask me to what degree Luoshui residents perform Mosuo identity for tourism, and how this has affected
authentic Mosuo, or if the Mosuo are still authentic. While I try to avoid framing discussions of identity in this way, the issues of performance,
deception, authenticity, and loss seem forever Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 453 to recur in discussions of ethnic tourist sites. Mosuo identity

is a continual negotiation influenced by outsider representations and

expectations, as well as by insider desires. I would argue that Luoshui residents are sometimes aware of choosing to meet touristsdesires
and at other times are influenced by outsider representations and encounters in ways that are less obvious. Vincanne Adams, in her work on Nepalese

Sherpas, suggests that authenticity may not be a useful concept for understanding Sherpa identity (Adams,
1996). She paints a complicated picture of mimesis, in which expectations and desires affect encounters between Westerners and

Sherpas. Adams describes a mutual seduction in which both parties try to be the Other that is

desired, and each tries to find him- or herself in the Other. Her work is useful in moving a discussion of identity beyond the dichotomies of
authentic or inauthentic, staged or backstage. The historical conditions and contexts of encounters and tourism in Luoshui are different than those Adams
describes for Sherpas. Luoshui residents interact annually with thousands of tourists, who call on residents to perform their identity. While engaging with
tourists, residents sometimes present exaggerated accounts of Mosuo culture and lifestyle, yet they easily drop some of their more absurd and playful
representations when challenged. The obviously performed front stage and equally, if less obviously, performed backstages are just part of the
complicated layerings of lives conducted under the tourist gaze and in a government- and media-controlled soup of representation. Residents are aware of
being on- and offstage, and even of being still on- when backstage. Luoshui residents may invite into their homes those tourists who express admiration
for Mosuo culture, regaling them with traditional songs or stories. In these encounters, outsiders appreciation of being Mosuo seductively reinforces
certain components of identity. Yet in similar circumstances, others in Luoshui may turn away from tourists with boredom, may be annoyed at an outsiders

Asking which response is an

intrusion, or may show more interest in pursuing discussions of popular culture.

authentic Mosuo response, or which person is an authentic Mosuo, does not get us closer to
understanding the lives of Luoshui residents or of Yongning Mosuo in general. Tim Oakes (1998) brings a rather different frame than
Adams to issues of identity and ethnic tourism. Oakes shows the complicated 454 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 interplay of policy, levels of
government, and intermediaries that affects ethnic tourist sites in ways never perceived by tourists and that often causes great difficulty for locals. He
explains how government discourse can affect tourists expectations and the nature of encounters. His descriptions of some of the external processes of
ethnic identification, modernity, and identity formation in China are useful in considering the Mosuo. In his study of the Miao in Guizhou, Oakes argues that
defining their own subjectivity makes the Miao truly modern subjects. In my examination of encounters at Luoshui, I draw on Oakes and Adams in
interpreting Mosuo identity at Luoshui as a negotiated, continual, and relational process, a process that involves agency and internalization. The Mosuo
clearly show agency in responding to tourist encounters, yet different Mosuo (indeed different residents of Luoshui) are differently positioned to affect and
be affected by the identity processes engendered by these encounters. Among themselves, the Mosuo engage in an identity politics that draws on state
and media representations, on discourses of social change and cultural advancement, and of being civilized (wenming) or backward (luohou), and that
incorporates outsider discussions of cultural preservation as well. THE ESSENTIALS OF BEING MOSUOFROM STATE CATEGORIZATIONS TO POPULAR
REPRESENTATIONS The Mosuo people . . . still retain some remnants of the matriarchal society. Men and women are not bound by marriage, each living at
ones mothers home. Men work at home during the day and spend their night with the women they love in their homes. . . . This unique wedlock values
affection and gives more freedom to men and women in their relationships. They may choose to unite or separate at will. It has been considered as the
living fossil as a basis for a study of social patterns and matriarchal marriage customs in todays world. China Travel and China Vacation Packages
(http://www.travel-to-china.net/destination/ spot/yn_lijiang_lugulake.htm) Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 455 In Luoshui, the tensions of creating
or holding a Mosuo identity are enacted on a stage built by tourism but rooted in decades of Maoist rhetoric. During the 1950s and 1960s, state work
teams described the Mosuo as a people in which children do not know their fathers (Yunnan minzu diaocha dui, 1964: 1). This has become a common
theme of contemporary Han popular discourse on the Mosuo. Mosuo women had (and still have) the freedom to choose and leave lovers. In pre-Liberation
Yongning, long-distance traders and merchants were part of their pool of potential lovers. Also troubling to early PRC cadres and researchers was the
condition of Mosuo menthey did not control the households they lived in but instead lived in their mothers houses. State researchers produced
several reports on the Mosuo in the 1960s, including the 1964 Investigation of the Social and Household Patterns of the Ninglang Yi Autonomous County
Naxi (Yunnan minzu diaocha dui, 1964). The reports concluded that the Mosuo were a primitive people that had not evolved, but were still in the earliest
stages of social formation, primitive matriarchy. The Azhu Marriage System of the Naxi from Yongning (Yang Guanghai, [1965] 1998), a state-produced
documentary film, highlights the simplicity of the Mosuo, the oppression to which they were subjected prior to Liberation, and the primitive practice of

group marriage in which they purportedly engaged. The Mosuo were used to prove Chinese
Communist theories of social evolution and became part of the theoretical justification for cultural politics in the
Maoist PRC. Although they had developed agriculture and a feudal society, the Mosuo were viewed as stuck in a primitive

social form and labeled living fossils by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) scholars (Yan, 1982). As Susanne Knodel points out, the
strongly patriarchal Chinese, seeing matrimonial order as one of the foundations of society, must have been uneasy with the system in Yongning
(Knodel, 1998: 51). The recommendations of early work teams and Communist ethnographers framed state policies aimed at helping the Mosuo evolve
out of their primitive sexual relations and household structures (Cai, 2001: 385-95); they were intended to develop the people as well as the infrastructure
by encouraging the Mosuo to have maleheaded nuclear households. Also supporting reform, state health workers described the area as overrun with
venereal disease because 456 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 of the licentious behavior of the people (Sydney White, personal communication, March
2001). Most villagers with whom I spoke in 1998 and 1999 did not clearly remember different reforms, but simply recalled the one husband, one wife
(yifu yiqi) policy. By the early 1970s, government pressure to marry was quite strong, and those who refused risked losing their grain rations. Compliance
among Mosuo in areas far from easy surveillance was only nominal, but cadres could easily reach many villages in Yongning. Yongning villagers remember
the one husband, one wife mandate as a policy that broke up their families, and point to the forced cohabitation as causing domestic disharmony as well
as violence. Many Mosuo born before Liberation describe the rupture in family arrangements that occurred during this time as the most painful effect of
cultural policies during the Mao years. In the early 1980s, several state researchers involved in the early CCP investigations of the Mosuo published their
research on the Mosuo as complete ethnographies. The works of Zhan Chengxu et al. (1980) and Yan Ruxian and Song Zhaolin (1983) sparked new
interest in the Mosuo, and Yongning became an exotic destination for the most elite of Chinese travelers, especially cadres. These publications appeared
at a time when China was beginning to actively celebrate ethnic diversity, and they have become the basis for the popular representations of this area. In
the 1980s and 1990s, state television crews produced documentaries on the Mosuo that drew on these ethnographies. In an ironic reversal, the cultural
characteristics the Maoist government tried to change became celebrated as markers of Mosuo cultural uniqueness and value. TOURISM IN THE LUGU
LAKE AREA: DEVELOPING AN UNEVOLVED MINORITY In Ninglang county, Luoshui has grown into the premier site for visiting the Mosuo; and until about
2001, Luoshui was virtually the only village that had been successfully refashioned to accommodate tourism. More than 90% of the tourists entering the
area stay in Luoshui; smaller groups now sometimes stay at Lige and other lake villages, as well as the Wenquan hot springs further into Yongning. Walsh /
FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 457 Currently, the township has plans to turn several villages away from the lake into tourist destinations. Tourism at
Luoshui has developed in both structured and unstructured ways, and this growth has occurred both under and outside of village, county, and higher
control. Land redistribution and reforms arrived in Yongning township in 1982, and for the next several years, young men continued to drift out of Luoshui
in search of work. Village leaders from the 1980s estimate that at most the village then received a few hundred tourists a year. The early tourists were
often government connected, rather than adventure travelers, and tourism development first started around the government environmental protection
station, the Baohusuo, which lies approximately 1 kilometer from the village. In 1988, the county began selling admission tickets to the area, and it was
not until 1989 that larger numbers of tourists started to come. In 1990, Lugu Lake was officially opened to tourism; in 1992, to foreign tourists. On my first
visit to the lake in April 1993, there appeared to be three private guesthouses in the Baohusuo area, as well as two or three small restaurants attached to
the guesthouses. Boat rentals were available and gatherings in the evening for song and dance occurred if there was enough interest. A walk into Luoshui
showed a sleepy little agricultural village, with no guesthouses, stores, or restaurants visible. The village head (cunzhang) had begun hosting guests in his
household in 1992 (it was the villages first guesthouse), but the village had not yet physically changed, though construction was in process on several
small sites. On that first visit, no one approached me at all as I wandered through the villagenot to sell objects or entertainment of any kind, not to invite
me in to sit by his or her fire or engage in conversation. Older women wore traditional Mosuo costume in subdued colors. At the time, my Chinese
acquaintances in Chengdu were almost completely unaware of the Mosuo, or of the lake as a travel destination. In 1993, the trip was seen as rather
difficult, to be attempted only in the fall or spring: summer mud slides or winter snows could make the already crumbling unpaved mountain roads quite
dangerous or impassable. My first trip to the area was in April, then believed the optimal time for a visit, but I met with few travelersa small group of
Hong Kong journalists and photographers who arranged an impromptu song-and-dance performance, and another small group of cadres on timber
business. 458 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 The lake is now a travel destination well known to the middle and upper classes in Yunnan and Sichuan,
as well as much of urban China. Tourists come year-round, and during holiday times thousands of tourists descend on the village to stay a day or two.
Tourism began to greatly expand in this area in the mid-1990s. According to workers at the ticket gates, in 1997 approximately 60,000 visitors purchased
tickets, and ticket sales in 2002 were over 80,000, and in 2004 well over 200,000 (Lijiang Lugu Lake Provincial Tourism Zone Management Committee).
According to village council members and gatekeepers (interviews 1999, 2002, 2004), at least 90% of these tens of thousands of tourists to Luoshui are
domestic (including tourists from Hong Kong). On my return to the lake in 1997, I noted a marked difference in ambiance. Large guesthouses with
decorative gates and signs had sprung up throughout the village, and an entire strip of guesthouses along the lake replaced the quiet shore lined with old
trees. Sex workers and escorts in Mosuo costume strolled in the village and along the lake. The village head and village committee had organized tourist
activities, set prices for boat and horse rides, and scheduled regular evening performances with a fixed entrance fee. The entire village was working to
professionalize tourism in efforts to accommodate the staggering inundation of outside visitors that began in 1996. This growing professionalization of the
tourist industry and development of the village was readily apparent during my 1998-1999 fieldwork, and in return visits since. By 2002, several
competing photo exhibits on Mosuo culture had been mounted, and a large, private Mosuo cultural center had been built that hosted the villages evening
song-anddance shows. In June 2004, CCTVs exposs on pollution and prostitution at Luoshui brought national attention to growing problems in Mosuo
territory, and a team of cadres was sent to design and enforce plans for appropriate growth and development. The growth of tourism in Luoshui led to
several important developments. In 1993 and 1994, more households began to take in guests and to supply larger accommodations for them. Two
collectivized teams formed to deliver boat rides, horse rides, and an evening performance to visitors. According to residents, the village head at the time
organized the teams so that there would be no ugly competition over these earnings. Since 1993, all householdsMosuo, Pumi, and Hanhave Walsh /
FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 459 contributed one member to participate in one of the two teams, and all income from the activities is split equally
among team members. After the 1995 Qing Ming Festival, when there were more guests than beds in Luoshui, construction of more and larger quarters
took off. By 1998, the first four-story guesthouse was being built; in 1999, more than 50 guesthouses and over 1,300 beds were available for tourists in a
village of 500 residents; by 2004, locals rushed to provide tourists with regular hotels with individual bathrooms and showers, the number of beds
available had nearly doubled, and development has continued apace. In 2005, the village now has beds to accommodate 3,500 guests (Lijiang Lugu Lake
Provincial Tourism Zone Management Committee). Outsiders from Ninglang and Yongning had begun doing business in Luoshui in the early 1990s. Their
small buses and taxis were the first transport for hire into the area, and as tourism development quickened, they rented the shops and restaurants that
formed the first floor and external face of many of the guesthouses. Vendors from Ninglang and Lijiang started to move in, introducing different cuisine as
well as products for tourist consumption. Luoshui villagers who could not find money to develop guesthouses looked to joint ventures with Chinese from
outside the area. One household allowed an entrepreneur from Harbin to build a guesthouse on their site. He would be able to use it for ten years, after
which it would belong to the Mosuo household. Leasing to, or in some cases marrying, outsiders who can provide startup capital has become a common
method for some residents in Luoshui and Lige to join in tourism development. By 2002, a woman from Shanghai had opened a distillery forsulima, a
traditional Mosuo liquor; it doubled as a brothel in the evening. Fujianese had opened camera repair shops and other businesses. By 2004, an outsider,
under the cover of a local family, opened the three-star hotel that shifted the dynamics of development at Luoshui, setting off a wave of changes as local-
owned guesthouses hurried to compete. Although critical of some of the outside businesspeople (one local commented, They say once Fujian people
move in, then things will go bad very quickly), until recently villagers managed to keep control over much of the tourist development occurring
immediately within Luoshui. They still owned the guesthouses and land, and outsiders were able to set up businesses only if they collaborated with a 460
MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 resident household. While the sulima distillery and other joint businesses were a sign of change, the large hotel
seemed to be the spark that opened wider possibilities for development and government intervention. In 2002, the primary concern of most villagers was
local tensions and conflicts, especially the increasing power of several well-connected families and attempts by the county to control tourism in Luoshui.

But by 2004, the autonomy of the village was under grave threat following the arrival of district and provincial cadres. These cadres responded to the
negative reports on tourism in Luoshui by constructing a new plan of development for the village and mobilizing local officials to enforce costly and
unpopular regulations. One of the outcomes of this intervention was shifting control of the area away from Ninglang county to the larger Lijiang
government, and this included the resources brought in by the ticket gate. In the mid-1990s, when tourism was just developing and becoming a force for
economic change, the county and village governments generally found themselves in opposition on matters concerning Luoshuis tourism. Sources of
tension included the ticket gate and use of space. Zoning and the character of the village have been a continual site of struggle at Luoshui since

1997. At that time, the county and district tourism boards drew up plans for the village to develop and yet retain
an authentic character. These plans designated the Baohusuo area as a commercial zone, restricted the size of guesthouses
in the village, and prohibited development in sections of the village. In accordance with these plans, the county government forced villagers to remove the
red-light district to the Baohusuo area while razing some of the bars recently built by villagers in areas deemed too close to the lakeside. Only a year later,
villagers from some of the wealthiest households had begun to flout the development guidelines. In some cases villagers looked to the county government

for help in enforcing zoning rules; at other times, they resented the attempts of the county to manage space and to profit from the natural
resources, tourism, and name recognition of the Mosuo at the villagers expense. In the summer of 2004, after the expos, a flood of cadres
descended on the village to develop a new plan and regulations, and the new Lijiang Lugu Lake Provincial Tourism Zone Management Committee surfaced
as in control of implementing these changes. Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 461 Through the late 1990s, there was still little tourism
development outside of Luoshui and the adjacent Baohusuo. The town of Yongning, some 20 kilometers past the lake over rough dirt roads, had several
very basic guesthouses in addition to the government guesthouse, but it saw very few of the tourists visiting the area. Some did pass through, as they
visited the recently restored Zhamie Lamasery or went to bathe in the hot springs at Wenquan, even farther away. Recently, however, Luoshui has been
facing increasing competition from some of the smaller villages around the lake, notably Lige, which had developed a dozen guesthouses and several
teahouses by 2002. Residents and village government in Luoshui, like their counterparts in other touristed areas in China, worry about the boom-bust
phenomenonbeing hot for several years, overdeveloping, and then losing out as new sites and areas open. But thus far, the popularity of Lugu Lake has
continued to attract increasing numbers of tourists, and bus tours, still the major source of tourists, continue to make Luoshui their destination until other
areas become developed for tourism. The Lijiang Lugu Lake Provincial Tourism Zone Management Committee estimates that Luoshui will receive nearly
300,000 visitors this year. Last year, however, Sichuan opened a new road to the villages on its side of Lugu Lake. The road is wide and paved, and this
area is now also successfully developing for tourism and drawing virtually all the organized tours originating in Sichuan. TOURISTIC REPRESENTATIONS
Some believed that the Lugu Lake area is the last paradise in the human world because the people there are always in love but never get married. Others
said that the Mosuo tribe is a romantic minority group. Men ride horses in the evening to visit their lovers, casual and romantic, while women wait at home
with tender affections. Still others said the area is the most ideal place for people to look for the feeling of home return because the people there have
never left their mothers. They always live with their mothers just like the stars that move around the moon. Zhang Feng, Lugu Hu: Huigui zuihou de muxi

Images and
jiayuan / A Trip Back to Lugu Lake, the Last Matriarchal Society (2002) 462 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005

representations help to frame tourist expectations of an area and, of course, are developed to create desire for an area.
State and private, domestic and international, journalists and filmmakers have been venturing to Yongning to capture images of the Mosuo for the
consumption of Chinese at large as well as for international audiences.5 In addition to the national and international media, Lijiang television stations and
tourism bureaus have handled much of the marketing of the Mosuo (most tourists come on tours arranged in Lijiang). In these countless representations of
Mosuo culture, the essential components of earlier government reports resurface, sometimes embellished but still acting as core descriptors of Mosuo
society. Media accounts of Mosuo culture tend to highlight several characteristics: (1) an exotic sexualityzouhun,6 which many Chinese interpret as free
love; (2) matriarchya land where women rule; and (3) primitivitya society that has not evolved. While tourist literature usually intertwines all three
elements, zouhun has by far dominated the imaginations of those writing and reading about the Mosuo. Song Zhaolin (2002) titled his book on the Mosuo
Zouhun de renmen (The People of Zouhun). From cabdrivers in Kunming to chance acquaintances in Beijing, those who heard me mention the Mosuo as
my subject of research generally gave me unsolicited comments, advice, and sometimes instruction on zouhun, asking if I had seen it and using it as the
symbol for Mosuo culture. Literature as well as ethnographies and documentaries brought Mosuo sexuality into mainstream Chinese consciousness in the
1980s. While intellectuals and cadres became aware of the Mosuo through the ethnographies of Zhan et al. (1980) and Yan and Song (1983), Bai Huas
1988 novel Yuanfang you yigi Ner Guo (The Remote Country of Women) made the Mosuo known to a much wider audience (Bai, 1994). Bais aim was not
to instruct Chinese readers on Mosuo society but rather to use this Other as a mirror to critique modern civilized society (see Harrell, 2001: 251-53;
Blum, 2001: 150- 52). Bai tells the story of a disillusioned young Han manmale, it is worth notingwho meets a Mosuo dancer in a county troupe during
the Cultural Revolution. He falls in love with the exotic and free-spirited Mosuo woman and they marry. Later, however, his jealousy and possessiveness
bring a disastrous end to the relationship. While much of what Bai described is a product of his imagination, he also drew on Walsh / FROM N GUO TO
NER GUO 463 ethnographic reports of the Mosuo to give his novel an air of authenticity. In addition, the story of the Mosuo heroine seems to parallel
that of several actual Mosuo women, Yang Erche Namu being the best known, whose singing or dancing enabled them to leave Mosuo territory. Although
the Mosuo act primarily as a backdrop for Bai to discuss the modern Chinese condition, particularly issues of individual and societal repression, many Han
Chinese I met believed Bais book to be an accurate representation of Mosuo society. His book circulated widely, and through it countless Chinese became
familiar with the Mosuo and Yongning, which they associated with a lost utopia. Bais story actually provides a rough frame for much of the tourism that
has happened in the Lugu Lake area, in terms of both the gendered dynamics around Han and Mosuo interactions and the expectations of romance and
escape. Since Bais novel appeared, a plethora of articles, travel brochures, documentaries, and books have been produced that tell would-be tourists
about Mosuo society. These bear seductive titles that refer to Mosuo society as alluring (Ma and Ping, 2000), mysterious (Ninglang Yizu zizhi xian lyou
fazhan banbian, 1999; Peng and Zhi, 2000; Wang and Zhan, 1989; SDYCZ), romantic (SDYCZ), primitive (Yu, 1996), a riddle (Li and Li, 1999), the
last matriarchal society (Chen and Qin, 1999; Zhang, 2002; ZYLD), a tribe (SWYC), and even the last rose (Yu, 1996). Some rehash the ethnographic
material of Zhan et al. (1980) and Yan and Song (1983), while others include traditional love songs, stories, and courtship practices.7 Often works on the
Mosuo begin with rapturous descriptions of the lake, described as embracing, protecting, and life-giving. It acts as a figurative mother in the imagined
paradise of the Mosuo. Accounts of this symbolic mother often lead into descriptions of the lovely Mosuo girls who inhabit this paradise, and who seem
to agree to anything if the request is accompanied by a gift of a silver bracelet or brightly colored scarf. The numerous books about the life and adventures
of Mosuo entertainer and model Yang Erche Namu (beginning with Yang and Li, 1997) have contributed to the popularity and recognition of the Mosuo, as
well as the idea of the Mosuo as a sexy ethnic group. Mosuo territory has been dubbed Ner Guo, a phrase that has rapidly become the brand name
of the area. It draws from Tang 464 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 dynasty references to N Guo, a land of women. Ner Guo became well-known in
China through Wu Chengens popular Ming literary classic Xi You Ji (Journey to the West; Wu, 1977-1983), whose protagonists pass through and are
tempted by this land of women. Though the literary meaning of neris women, and the popular recognition of Ner Guo is of a Womens Country, I
wonder if the more common meaning of ner, daughter, is slipping into an interpretation of the areas culture. For example, a Mosuo at Luoshui told a
visitor that because they live in Ner Guo, the Mosuo give birth mainly to daughters.8 He himself lived with his wife, and they had two sons. The tourist
believed him, and explained to me that since this is the Ner Guo there are more ner; she mentioned the information to help me with my research.
While this belief could be simply an extension of the Ner Guo from Xi You Ji, in which women gave birth exclusively to daughters, ner is an ambiguous
referentand the marketing of the area takes advantage of its ambiguity. Also, while the phrase N Guo did sometimes appear in tourism marketing in
the 1990s, the area is now exclusively referred to as Ner Guo. Many business names and products at Luoshui use ner, translating the word as

The slippage in meaning from

daughters and sometimes princesses and combining this with images of young women.

is representative of a deliberately maintained conflict in signs

woman to girl/daughter

and messages about Mosuo culturea culture of matriarchs, on the one hand, and a culture fulfilling male fantasies
of lovers for the taking, on the other. Within either interpretation, or either marketing strategy, Mosuo women are the focus of the marketing of Mosuo
territory. Enticing images of women in Mosuo costume adorn travel brochures as well as products ranging from books and video compact discs to dried
fruits and alcohol. Photos in brochures of attractive young women have equally alluring captions such as Making a date by lake and In expectation
(Ninglang Yizu zizhi xian lyou fazhan banbian, 1999). Daughters are generally not engaged in activities in these photos. The implication is that this is a
land of women where women sigh longingly, waiting for lovers (perhaps the tourist) to fulfill their desires. Photos that do include Mosuo men often show
them courting a lovergiving her gifts, meeting her among the pines, boating to her, or waving good-bye when leaving her quarters in the Walsh / FROM
N GUO TO NER GUO 465 morningclad in cowboy hats and Tibetan-style clothes.9 Pictures that do not present the Mosuo as a society that is
somehow predominantly maidens-in-waiting, or young women absorbed in courtship, often represent instead the older women, the matriarchs. Another
motif common in books and documentaries is the harmonious simple life of the Mosuo, unencumbered by modern worries and jealousies. In these
representations, the Mosuo still live in large extended families and work peacefully and cooperatively together. But at the head of this household sits not
the father but the matriarch. One rather talkative woman who runs a hotel has a scrapbook of newspaper articles (in both Chinese and English) written
about her as a matriarch. She makes a good subject for such stories as there are currently no men in her household, which comprises herself, her grown
daughter, and her granddaughters. Hers, however, is one of only two such households in the villageand the other is Han. Collections of Mosuo folk
stories, songs, and poetry by the Mosuo scholar Lamu Gatusa (1991, 1993) also elaborate on the themes discussed above. But Lamu includes stories and
songs of male freedom and adventure. He paints a romantic picture of life on the ma ban (long-distance trading expeditions that used horse teams),
replete with danger, excitement, and seductions along the way. While only a minority of Mosuo men engaged in the ma ban, both tourists and young
Luoshui residents now often refer to this activity alone as Mosuo mens traditional past. Through his tales, men reenter the imaginary of the Mosuo as
adventurers and seducers. (One could certainly argue, though, that men were never left out of images of the Mosuo. Even in brochures that almost
exclusively feature images of young women, men are present, as the gaze on the coy maids is assumed to be male.) In addition, television and
magazine interviews with the couple Da Lang and Helen, a Mosuo man and Han woman who met when she came to Luoshui as a tourist and are now
married and live there, have added to the images of the romantic Mosuo cowboy. Touristic representations of the Mosuo thus include the nubile maid, the
wise controlling crone, and the adventuring seductive man (be he a tourist or a Mosuo cowboy). These are the images that bring tourists to Luoshui and
that most tourists bring with them. More and more often, however, domestic tourists also bring a contemporary 466 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005
nostalgia for the pure pastoral life. The ethnic minorities offer a vision of a purer, happier, but lost past to the mostly urban Chinese tourists, who by and
large live in nuclear families permitted only one child. Visitors believe that they are finding in the Mosuo, as well as other ethnic minorities, a people who
live simpler lives that are richer in human kindness, a people who recognize the value of loving family relationships (for further discussion, see Walsh and

, locals
Swain, 2004). ENCOUNTERING MOSUO-NESS: THE FACES OF SONA Because the vast majority of tourists to Mosuo territory are domestic

must daily negotiate the fantasies sold by Chinese media and travel agencies in
marketing the Mosuo. Curious about zouhun, many tourists hope to see it, and some wish to try it themselves. Others say that
they have come to the area to see the last or only matriarchy, or to look for a primitive paradise. These different types of tourists hold conflicting and

foreign
contradictory desires. Some (usually Han men, but not always) wish to be sexually titillated or fulfilled. Others, including

feminists, hope to find a society that is somehow better, either because women are in control or because its human relations are more caring.
Both types of visitors bring an interest in consuming the Mosuo as a genderconsuming young

women as carefree lovers or older women as nurturing mothers and instructors in harmony. In negotiating tourist desires , Luoshui

residents present to outsiders different faces, which incorporate key concerns with gender, sexuality, family, and
cultural continuity. The faces that the Mosuo have developed for tourists show ambivalence about representations of them as sexually available and
matriarchal. Sexual titillation abounds in very obvious, staged ways but is counteracted by the sober backstage view of the Mosuo household and family

The potent issues of sexuality and gender are thus

values that is presented to tourists.

contained and controlled within the package of the Mosuo family. This package downplays matriarchy to
stress tuanjie, family unity. The following incident, which occurred while I was living in Luoshui, helps to illustrate these issues. Walsh / FROM N GUO TO
NER GUO 467 Early into my research in 1999 in Luoshui, I met three Australian women who had signed on to a Chinese tour in Lijiang for a two-day
visit to Lugu Lake. The women, in their 50s and 60s, were involved in womens groups in Australia, and one had done a higher-level degree in philosophy
and womens studies. They did not speak any Chinese, and asked me if I could introduce them to a Mosuo family and help them talk to some Mosuo
women. They had heard that there was a matriarchy here and very much wanted to interact with locals and try to understand what their lives were like.

. I took them to visit a

One was trying to film and record women from around China to create a presentation for her womens group

Mosuo woman in her early 30s with whom I had visited and joked several times. Sona and I had first met on the shore of the lake, as she
unloaded from a boat greens that she had gathered. She joked about, but permitted, my photographing her, and then invited me in for tea, delighted that

I could speak Chinese. During our first few interactions, Sona kept much of our conversation
centered on jokes about zouhun, asking if I were too afraid to pursue it and if she could help me. I laughingly agreed that she could
send me partners if they met all of my many criteria. On the day that I brought the Australian women to

Sonas, she invited us in to drink tea in the large kitchen; attached to her familys guesthouse restaurant, it also frequently doubled as the
place where family meals were cooked. Sona and the two younger women that she introduced as her sisters were preparing a meal. After reassuring us
that our visit was no bother, Sona acted as the main, and virtually only, respondent during our interview. The Mosuo women continued their work while we
talked; the middle one occasionally served lunch to the few guests that trickled into the adjoining dining room. The Australian women asked about the
Mosuo womens lives and families, what was important to them, what they valued in life, and what they wanted for their children. Sona

answered these questions with an air of gravity. She talked about how important
her family was to her and said that the most important thing in the world was her love for her sisters and her mother. Her main desire was
that she might be able to spend all of her life with them. As for her children, she hoped they would not go very far away, because the love of ones family
is so important. In response to a question from one of the Australians about cultural change, Sona assured us that tourism had not altered the village. 468
MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 Several evenings later, as I was walking by the lake, I met up with the middle sister from that interview at Sonas.
Durma approached me and told me she was a Mosuo from an interior village that did not receive tourists. She and the youngest woman in the kitchen
were not Sonas sisters; they were working at Sonas familys guesthouse. Durma did not want me to be deceived, and she also did not want her own
identity erased. In addition, she wanted to talk about the wealth that had flowed unevenly into the area with tourism, and the ways in which people had
changed because of it. Before tourism, Durmas household was wealthier than Sonas, because it had more and better land. Sonas family, who were their
distant cousins, regularly came to Durmas in the winter and often would leave with several bags of grains and potatoes, gifts that would help to tide them
over until spring. Durma was upset not only because her identity had been misrepresented in the interview with the Australians but also because she was
working for a previously poorer branch of the family that did not treat her as a family member. In Durmas opinion, shared by many in Yongning, the Mosuo
in Luoshui now consider themselves better than those in other villages, and are not Mosuo anymore. My point in telling this story from the field is not to
show that residents in tourist villages try to deceive tourists but to underscore how Mosuo culture was presented and how the deception happened (in a
way that I later saw repeated in other contexts). Sona did not want us to know that her household had grown wealthy (by local standards) and had hired
workers. Her focus was on maintaining a particular representation of Mosuo-ness, especially for a camera, and on maintaining an image of the Mosuo and
the village as unchanging. Her responses to the Australians questions depicted Mosuo culture as centered on the family, the love that the Mosuo feel for
their mother, and the deep enduring bonds that sisters feel for each other. Sona had correctly gauged the interests of her visitors and how to respond to
them. When speaking with the Australian feminists, she talked about woman-towoman bonds and a society of women supporting and caring for one
another. However, when I had first met Sona, she had joked about my taking pictures and then later about whether or not she should send a man to

zouhun with me. Her laughing, almost cocky demeanor had changed to thoughtful, heartfelt seriousness when confronted
with the respectful questioning of the Australian women. They thought they Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO

469 were seeing the backstage, and indeed we were literally back in the kitchen, sitting on little stools as we chatted. During

the interview, I myself was impressed by Sonas thoughtfulness, although later I was more impressed by her facility in adapting to different

contexts. What she had done was to switch faces, shifting from the most public face of humor and sexual titillation to the backstage face

of maternal and sororal love. This simple interaction illustrates how residents employ complementary

versions of themselves to accommodate the competing needs of visitors. Because of the disparate
interests brought by tourists, Luoshui villagers must present themselves in a variety of ways in their interactions with those tourists. Many exchanges
revolve around similar themes and fall into similar patterns, developed through these repeated encounters. Furthermore, Luoshui residents will rarely
discuss anything they believe to be negative with outsiders on their first meeting.10 In general, Luoshui residents who regularly interact with tourists are a
fairly well-defined, albeit changing, group. As mentioned above, the village has recollectivized itself into teams, with each household contributing one
member either to row tourists on the lake, lead them on horse rides, or perform songs and dances for them in the evening. These team members have the
most contact with tourists and act almost as a buffer for other members of the community. Sona herself had worked on the teams, and her household ran
one of the larger guesthouses that often received busloads of tourists. While shopkeepers and guesthouse managers also deal with tourists frequently,
they generally do so for much shorter periods of time, and outsiders now rent most of the shops. By 1998, much of the service work in guesthouses was
being performed by outsiderssome Mosuo, some not who migrated to Luoshui for work opportunities. Of the locals, team members interact most with
guests, and it is in their quick and easy exchanges that different faces of Mosuo-ness are deployed. These faces alternately play off titillation, exaggerate
Mosuo familial harmony, and present the lake as a lost and unchanging paradise (Walsh, 2001a). 470 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 SEXUALITY AS
PERFORMANCEWHEN ZOUHUN MOVES FROM SHAME TO BANTER Conversation in Luoshui tourist settings most frequently revolves around the themes of
zouhun and Mosuo sexuality. Visitors repeatedly question residents on their sexual habits. Many Mosuo are particularly sensitive to questions regarding
sexual customs, and some at Luoshui will avoid talking with outsiders altogether. Tourists, openly or with attempts at discretion, ask Luoshui residents
about Mosuo sexualityhow one zouhuns, if they themselves do, when they started, how many lovers they have had, or if they know their fathers.
Luoshui residents who frequently engage with tourists play off outside images of the Mosuo as promiscuous and present their area as one big love nest.
Their verbal exchanges with outsiders, like Sonas with me, often target the curiosity around zouhun, and they ask tourists in jest if they zouhuned last
night, or if they want help finding someone with whom to zouhun (Walsh, 2001a). This focus on sexual titillation is especially noticeable at the primary
activities prepared for tourists. When entertaining tourists, Mosuo villagers sing love songs and tell jokes about courtship or troubles with multiple
partners. Horse rides to the pasture end in staged wrestling matches that eventually become opposite-sex bouts between visitors and locals. One of the
Mosuo who acted as a team leader (duizhang) for a tourist team joked that he was the zouhunzhangthe captain of zouhun. Outside tour guides lead
groups from the county seat or the district capital, and many of these guides have their own stock of jokes or puns about Mosuo sexual habits. They often
set the tone for these visits before tourists have even arrived at the lake, thereby contributing to the ethos of titillation as well as sensationalizing the
Mosuo. One such joke I heard a tour guide tell was Mosuo, Mosuo, luan mo, luan mo. The word luan, which can be translated as chaotic or disorderly,
is often applied to the lower classes, the uneducated, and the uncivilized, who may disrupt society by spreading their disorder. In Kunming, Han and others
often described Mosuo sexual relations to me as luan. Mo here plays off its synonymic meanings, stroke, feel, and grope, and the pun implies that
Mosuo sexual relations are indiscriminate and disorderly. Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 471 Tourists of both sexes come to Luoshui, and all joke
about and inquire into Mosuo sexual relations. Nevertheless, visiting men are the primary targets of representations of the Mosuo. Images of young Mosuo
women are everywhere, surrounding the tourist experience in this Womens Country. Prior to 2004, tourists and locals alike expected that it was Luoshui
women who would be sought out by guests. Most tourists come from a wider Chinese context in which generally women are the objects and not initiators

identities are constructed around ideas of consumption

of sexual encounters and in which elite male

in particular, consumption of women. This wider context affects how Luoshui residents interact with outsiders, as
well as the expectations that outsiders bring to seduction and sexual relations. Within the touristic frame and imagination, the multiple ways of imagining
Mosuo territory, as a land of women and a land of sex, blur into a land of women for sex. Even as outsiders seek the exotic in a very different Mosuo
sexuality, this exoticism is framed within the wider context and dynamics of male-controlled sexual encounters. The familiar methods of marketing women
and using womens images for marketing appear now in the context of Luoshui tourism; indeed, the wenrou (soft and gentle) poses of the tourist
brochures draw on the same repertoire of female poses used throughout China and are mimicked by hostesses in the red-light district. In both the red-light
district and in Luoshui, names of shops, guesthouses, beauty salons, and karaoke bars draw on the themes of daughters, beauty, and rapture.11
Because there is only one road into Luoshui, all tourists, before arriving at the village, pass through the red-light district, where they see on display
professional sex workers in Mosuo costume. Following the 2004 expos, prostitutes were actually prohibited from openly practicing in the Luoshui area.
Now they are slowly, but quietly returning to the area. Once at Luoshui, an ethos of titillation surrounds tourist activities. The books, videos, and cassettes
for sale in the open-front shops along the lake nearly all feature images of young women on their covers or highlighted within them. Men head the teams
of both male and female villagers working at the main tourist events, a circumstance that in itself contributes to presenting women as the consumed. The
complicated reasons for male leadershipincluding village politics, household customs, gender norms, and the nature of current encounters 472 MODERN
CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 between residents and outsidersare unknown to tourists; what tourists see are men in charge and women as the focus of
interest. In general, tourists traveling in large groups are not likely to seek out the red-light district and professional sexual companions; they are satisfied
to engage in sexual banter and view the many costumed women on display, or perhaps to wrestle with resident women at the organized matches at the
end of the horse rides.12 These men consume Luoshui women through images, jokes, songs, glances, and fantasy. However, men traveling singly or in
smaller groups often do come with the intent of more direct consumption. Up until the recent news expos and government crackdowns, the red-light
district offered more than a dozen establishments at which men could hire sex workers, and individual cottages had been built for the private enjoyment of
patrons and their escorts. Men visiting Luoshui joked with me about the necessity of trying zouhun in order to experience Mosuo culture. According to
them, to experience an area, tasting local women was just as essential as tasting local cuisine (interview, 1999). The cultural center as well offered
chances to participate in this aspect of created Mosuo culture. Female tourists are also interested in tasting local men. Frequently women tourists imagine
Mosuo men as adventurous and seductive and, like other ethnic minorities, as uncorrupted by modern life, as closer to nature and more sexual. In the late

1990s, the number of such travelers (usually young Han women) who sought adventure in the arms of a Mosuo man was small compared to the
number of male tourists dreaming of female Mosuo lovers or using professional sex workers. Sexual relations at the lake between locals and outsiders
were primarily between outsider men and professional sex workers. The presence of sex workers was an obvious part of the landscape of the lake. This
even affected local men, and by 2002, village women complained about how their men were now playing with sex workers. The number of visiting men
having relations with women sex workers is still quite large, despite last years crackdown. In contrast, sex is nowhere openly sold by men; there is no
male equivalent of the female sex workers in the red light district. However, increasing numbers of local men are interested in relations with visiting
women, and likewise the number of visiting women looking for local men has increased dramatically. By the summer of 2005, local women were now
openly Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 473 resentful of the many local men sleeping with visiting women. Several off-handedly remarked that they
thought nearly 90 percent of the local young men had slept with outside women. One talked about how impossible it was to find a local boyfriend because
of this, another about how difficult it was to keep one. Even the Womens Representative (interview, 2005) discussed this as one of the negative impacts
of tourism for local women. The men I encountered who had had tourist women as lovers did not openly seek money in exchange for sex. Some
themselves sought the exotic in outside lovers; some appreciated the expensive gifts often provided by these women, as well as the status they gained by
their conquests of outsiders. At least one used work to get sex and vice versa, and was sometimes hired by female tourists as a guide. In a top-floor
bedroom of his familys guesthouse, he had hung photos of his travels in remoter territories; he brought the women up to show them the photos and
otherwise entertain them. Others openly flirted with tourists at the evening song and dance show. Tourists from many cultures at many destinations
experience travel as a break from the usual restrictions and pressures they face at home, often including those pertaining to sexual practices. The
marketing scheme that presents the lake as a love nest contributes to the sense of entering a different moral economy of sex. Tourist activities bring sex

insinuations. Sonas clearly joking offer to find me a lover, repeated by others at Luoshui,
into a public domain of jokes, songs, images, and

never occurred in other Mosuo communities. Sex between insiders and outsiders does take place at the
lake, of courserelationships between Mosuo men and women outsiders, as well as between local women who are not sex workers and men outsiders. A
few of those relationships have endured and been transformed into marriages. The many sexual exchanges between female sex workers and visiting men
involve exoticizing and eroticizing the Other, much as Sandra Hyde (2001) describes happening in Xishuangbanna. One outsider who was a long-term
visitor at the lake believed that the ethos of sexual freedom changed everyone who spent time there by expanding their concepts of gender. Nevertheless,
while tourists may play at being Mosuo, the combinations of economic and sexual politics involved in sex at the lake do not appear to break radically from
life outside of Mosuo territory and hardly signal a change in sexuality or gender politics. 474 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 As discussed above,

the desire and imagery that draw tourists to the lake in search of sexual adventure have already affected them
before they arrive. Many tourists stubbornly cling to the representations of the Mosuo, sexual or otherwise, that piqued their fancy,
even in the face of evidence contradicting these images. Furthermore, those involved in sex with sex workers are both enacting a relationship that has
been represented in the national ethnoscape of the PRC and continuing current habits of consumption popular among segments of the (male) business
and cadre population. It remains to be seen what effect the relatively new phenomenon of wealthier outside women tasting local men will have on local

more likely that outsidersexpectations of free

gender relations. At Lugu Lake, as has been seen at other tourist sites, it is

will affect their interactions with locals and their interpretations of Mosuo culture than their
love

experiences at the lake will affect their desire and imagination. Instead of tourists being changed by their visits to
Lugu Lake and Mosuo culture (as many claim), the large change is in the other direction: the sexualization of Mosuo culture because of tourism. Away from
tourist areas like Luoshui, sexual habits and experiences are rarely joked about so openly (Walsh, 2001b; Cai, 2001). At Luoshui, in contrast, performed
Mosuo culture has undergone a sexualization. Residents use banter and titillation to manage encounters and avoid directly engaging tourists about
sexuality while satisfying tourists desire. The sexualization of Mosuo culturethrough images, words, and interactions that insinuate sexdoes not affect
tourists alone. Because the site of tourism is the village, even those not engaged in tourist activities still hear and see these events on their doorsteps
daily.13 PERFORMING THE BACKSTAGE: WHERE REAL MOSUO CULTURE MEANS HARMONIOUS FAMILIES The sexualized Mosuo culture negotiated between
tourists and Luoshui residents generally has a very staged feel at tourist activities, and family-run guesthouses provide residents another space in which
to create and present alternative interpretations of Mosuo culture. As Sona aptly demonstrated, villagers offer a backstage face of Mosuo Walsh / FROM N
GUO TO NER GUO 475 culturethe familyto those tourists too sober to appreciate the titillation of songs and jokes and the many sexual insinuations
proffered at Luoshui. During cultural introductions to their houses and families, or if such visitors ask questions about Mosuo culture, the cultural trait that
villagers stress is not zouhun but rather da jiating, large families. The large family, or extended family, is often given as the reason Mosuo have been
culturally successful and now are economically successful in the Yongning area (Walsh, 2001b). The importance of the family and of maintaining the
traditional family are topics that arose often in conversations between Luoshui villagers and outsiders. Interestingly enough, in these cultural
explanations that center on the family, the villagers generally do not refer to themselves as a matriarchy but rather stress the unity of the family and
community, as well as respect for elders. Luoshui residents discuss the love and care family members show for one another, the high position of the
mother in the family, and the love of children for their mother. Women interlocutors, like Sona, also talk about the love that sisters feel for each other and
their mothers. Discussion of the family thus often has a very female flavor, as the father does not figure in the traditional Mosuo family, and uncles are
not mentioned nearly as frequently as mothers in these exchanges. Just as titillation was constructed primarily on female identity, so, too, the discourse of
the Mosuo family is constructed primarily on female identitythat of the mother. This fits in well with a current trend in Chinas media to glorify the love of
the mother, which in turn works to impress on women the need to be a perfect mother and accept the losses in womens status during the reform era.14
Small groups of tourists traveling out of Mosuo territory often talked about the wonderful time they had as they sat around Mosuo hearths listening to
songs about the love and sacrifices of mama (see Walsh and Swain, 2004). The Mosuo, depicted as a society that reveres the mother, can represent for
tourists an ideal mother-child love. This other face seems to act almost as an antidote to the first. To the mostly urban Chinese tourists, generally living as
couples with at most one child, these interactions in kitchens and around the hearth are very compelling. The discussions of family love and harmony ring
with nostalgia for a purer past in which people had simpler lives, 476 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 richer in human kindness and especially in loving
family relationships. While the Mosuo culture presented on the front stage titillates and gratifies those tourists looking for sexual excitement, this
performed backstage face gratifies those visitors who have traveled to see a primitive, happier past and a more natural existence. Many tourists believe
that in Mosuo families they have found a refuge from modern life where people are less distracted by the cares of an advanced society and where family is
still at the center of ones social life and concerns. Luoshui residents do not stress real gender differences or the so-called matriarchal aspects of a Mosuo
family (where women are generally in control of their own sexuality as well as often in control of households), but rather emphasize the cohesiveness,
love, and support of a Mosuo family. In this way, Luoshui residents offer tourists a family that can satisfy nostalgic longings for what has been lost without
threatening them with radical reconfigurations of gender. But by presenting this inviting family as a family of women, they conveniently leave a place for
the male tourist to step into and create a loving model for the female tourist to bond with. MAINTAINING MOSUO IDENTITY PRC ethnographers, state
agents, and now the tourist industry stress to the Mosuo how important preservation of their matriarchal culture is, and how very interesting their sexual

Anxieties about both cultural change and cultural preservation are

relations are.

present within the current framework of encounters. When Mosuo at Luoshui discuss issues of cultural preservation, they often bring up material
culture, but the aspects of Mosuo behavior that are key to outsiders zouhun and familyare also central concerns of Luoshui Mosuo and Pumi

themselves. Through the gendered dynamics of tourist interactions, the Mosuo at Luoshui present their culture, their
families, and gendere
oles within them in particular ways. These exaggerated romanticizations of
Mosuo sexuality and family life affect how Luoshui villagers imagine the preservation
of Mosuo culture. Luoshui villagers descriptions of Mosuo culture, whether intended for themselves or for tourists, highlight a picture of
the Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 477 family that puts women clearly in the center. This appears to be consistent with Mosuo conceptualizations
of the family from pretourist times. Mosuo did and do conceive of women as essential to the successful running and maintaining of the household on which
all members depend for their support. However, Mosuo in other nontourist communities, as well as the elderly in Luoshui, portray men not as outside of
the household but ideally as responsible, contributing members of it. Although the roles they play in household production and continuity differ from
womens, Mosuo men clearly see themselves as contributing members. In tourist performance aimed at tourists, Luoshui men are often discursively left
out of the household, and because they are left out of an essential role in Mosuo culture, they are freer to identify with national culture. As I have
discussed elsewhere (Walsh, 2001a), the highly gendered representations of Mosuo-ness that occur at tourist sites affect gender itself. At Luoshui, the
romanticized notion of a traditional Mosuo past, brought to life for and daily reinforced by tourism, seems to be influencing how men and women
contribute to labor. Tourists, anthropologists, and Luoshui women all note mens lack of participation in household and farming work, as well as heightened
levels of male consumption. One 25-year-old Luoshui man told me why he could not do any work around the house or farm: I would be breaking my own
traditional culture (interview, 1999). His explanation was not unusual among young men, as others also invoked tradition in various ways to justify their
refusal to work, echoing the responses of Naxi men in similar circumstances as discussed by Sydney White (1997). In contrast, older men in Luoshui do
talk about their contributions to household and farmwork as part of their own pasts, and Mosuo men in other communities help with farmwork and
sometimes aid in household chores as well. Thus, at Luoshui a caricature of the distribution of labor in the past, framed in discourses of cultural
preservation and authenticity, is used to justify a disproportionate amount of labor being put on womens shoulders. Some women in Luoshui offer a
different interpretation of the growing labor imbalance. These interviewees, some of whom had been involved in Ford Foundation projects targeting
indigenous women, felt that increasing wealth was resulting in men doing even less work 478 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 than before, contributing
less to the household, and consuming more of the household resources. Several believed that men were now embarrassed to be seen doing farm labor or
helping around the house (Tamen bu hao yisi bie ren kan tamen zai laodong). In addition, they, as well as visitors, noted that since the village has become
wealthier, a significant number of men gamble and drink during the day. However, during my most recent visit, I saw much less open gamblinganother
result, perhaps, of the crackdown of upper levels of cadres to clean up tourism at Luoshui. Both men and women work for the teams that entertain tourists
and receive earnings, in cash, at the end of each day. Men are more likely to consume their earnings and contribute less money to the household, while
women bring most of their earnings home for household use. Some women complained that the young men in the household were acting as a cash drain.
A few also confided that some Luoshui men now play with the girls (xiaojie) in the red-light district, behavior that these village women saw as a break
with Mosuo culture. Many of these discussions were conducted between 1998 and 2002, and increasing wealth and the growing standardization of public
areas are obviously heightening the shifts in residents attitudes toward labor and gender. CONCLUSION The Maoist state, drawing on Friedrich Engels and
Lewis Henry Morgan, labeled the Mosuo a primitive matriarchy and sought to help the Mosuo evolve beyond their chaotic sexual lives and an economy
held back by womens control. During the reform era, the state switched to tolerance and even celebration of difference while quietly continuing
development of its peoples through education, media, and migration. When tourism, and especially domestic tourism, came into its own as a growing
sector of the Chinese economy, the government rehabilitated cultural difference as a source of economic development and increasingly opened ethnic
areas and made them accessible to tourists. Government policies and programs and the enormous influx of tourists have brought changes to Mosuo
territory. Villagers of Walsh / FROM N GUO TO NER GUO 479 Luoshui must negotiate the very different fantasies that bring tourists, and income, to
their doors. Tourism is bringing about both class and gender shifts, through representation and marketing strategies as well as through the way it is
practiced. More than the forced marriages of the Cultural Revolution era, tourism may be turning this land of women into a land of girls as it interacts
with, markets to, and serves an outside clientele. Both N Guo, a land where women rule, and Lugu Lakes Ner Guo are products of outsider fantasies
of the Mosuo. Mosuo society is not one in which women choose their lovers and men have no say in the matter (Litke, 2002), in which women
completely rule households and control property, and in which there is no conflict. Nor is Mosuo society peopled primarily with young beautiful women,
forever willing to love you (for a night), never jealous, and never asking for anything in return. In Luoshui, the negotiation between tourist desires, outsider
representations, and identity creation has resulted in a reification of culture as a gendered consumable. State and popular representations of the Mosuo
focus on gender and sexuality, and these have become the foci of tourist interest in this area. Tourists come to consume a culture that is imagined through
the ideational slippage between the matrilineal and the matriarchal, and these conceptualizations of women as matriarchs and women as ever-available
objects for sex intermingle instead of clash. In addition, most visitors to Yongning, be they tourists, journalists, or anthropologists, have constructed an
interest in the Mosuo that has women at the center of Mosuo culture. Luoshui residents respond to this construction by presenting and enacting a Mosuo
culture centered on women, both in the sexual banter that fills tourist spaces and in the more sober backstage introductions to Mosuo households. When
Mosuo culture is consumed, so too Mosuo women, at least figuratively, are consumed. Ironically, the cultural commodification displayed in the various
strategies used in bringing tourists to this matriarchal paradise and in entertaining them while there, and the influx of wealth that has resulted, are
undermining the position of Luoshui women precisely because they are the symbolic center of Mosuo culture. Tourists flood the village of Luoshui, often far
outnumbering the residents and migrants now living and working there. Tourists and locals meet onstage and in the backstage, and both of these are

Authentic Mosuo identity at Luoshui is not somewhere else

performed 480 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 2005 spaces.

is lived and created in this context of representations,

somewhere behind even the backstagebut

negotiations, encounters, and shifting identity. Those Mosuo who are behind the backstage are also
performing identity for each other (albeit in very different ways), negotiating differences of wealth and access, justifying choices. Sona may have had one
story for me as a tourist, another for the Australian feminists later on, and yet other stories for herself, her family, and the Mosuo working for her. One of
the obvious characteristics of touristic cultures such as in Luoshui is that ethnic identity is the topic of conversation, day and night; it is a primary
explanatory device. Residents must discuss and present Mosuo identity to please tourists, and they worry about losing it and their income. In addition, the
continual negotiation with particular representations affects how the residents of Luoshui see Mosuo identity. The obviously staged

performance of titillation spills over for some Mosuo, and ethnic culture becomes an explanation for choices about sexuality. The
slightly subtler performance of tradition and family affects how residents view their own positions within

households and justify the decisions they make vis--vis other household members.

These internal flawed reps go hand in hand with the current

homogenizing resolution that misunderstands and invalidates
China by assuming a unified, simplistic P.R.C. that can be
engaged with as a whole.
Parenti 13 [International Institute Lorenzo de Medici in Rome, Italy. Oct. 10, Geography, Chinas Path And State-Society Relations: Redressing Western Misinterpretations, Human Geography: A New
Radical Journal, 6(2): 137-150.] GK

The complexity of Chinas is often underestimated by state-society relations , or completely neglected,

Western commentators, journalists, politicians and, , academics. at times There especially seems

The outcome of underestimation is

to be a lack of theoretical ideas and systematic analysis in geographical studies. overall said the proliferation of

misinterpretations on the meaning of power, people and -sense evolving relational configurations between

places in China. Hence the Western ability ) to understand (institutions and common people and judge, as

, is concretely invalidated
objectively as possible, ongoing socio-economic and political trends in China, its hybrid experimental path and general development trajectory . Starting
from this standpoint and drawing from different sources, this paper first suggests that the changing characteristics of the current Chinese multi-scalar politico-socio-economic processes cannot be simply reduced to capitalism.
Secondly, to get a better understanding of China in a comparative perspective by analyzing the countrys direction of development and governance I summarize some instructive traits of state-society relations, arguing that

the nature and significance differ, of these when they are not quite the reverse, from the prevailing

(mis)interpretations by Western agents. I specifically refer to the need to (re)interpret two points from a comparative standpoint: a) the states
popular legitimacy and socio-economic dynamism, and b) the variegated modes of conflict resolution and financial governance.

The homogenizing lens of orientalism creates a mindset that

justifies colonialism, hypersexualization, and otherization
Bakli 14 (Sara, Free-lance writer and blogger, Published by Jenn Incorporation, Published April 17 2014, What is Orientalism, and how is it also racism?, http://reappropriate.co/2014/04/what-is-orientalism-and-
how-is-it-also-racism/) RR Jr

Orientalism led to a Western fascination with Asia as

While an exotic land equal parts captivatingly romantic and

barbaric
terrifyingly perhaps the most important aspect of Orientalism is how it defined Asian men and women against the Western norms of gender identity. Compared to stalwart European men and chaste

Asian men and women

European women, recast as specific counter-points were in the European imagination

to norms: Asian women became hypersexualized,

these expected gender , unsatiable creatures in one Medieval text
described as standing thirteen feet tall and having ox-tails emerging from their genitals, whereas described by Marco Polo as either dainty courtesans or voracious prostitutes whereas Asian men are portrayed as slight, stooping,

meek and unassertive barbarians who attack in faceless hordes to make up for their easy defeat in single combat by European men. Furthermore, in Orientalism, the land of the Orient is,
itself, feminized, which invites subsequent conquest in overtly sexual language by the virile West. Polo discusses the many Asian wives that

Orient
Western traders take, literally wresting the Asian woman from the Asian man. Columbus endeavour to discover Asia by sea was cast as taking possession of these lands. Thus, in Orientalism, the is not merely

stands as a prize or trophy, to be

the Other of the West, but an Other that conquered dominated or by the West. Importantly, when

the West is the standard against which the Orient is defined, the Orient
cannot , be a point of empath
, by definition y. As defined in its distance from norm, Asia instead becomes a thing to be possessed, and populated with a people who are not

Orientalism becomes
quite normal and therefore not quite human. In short, when the Orient becomes a land of the Other, the people of the Orient become the Other, too;
dehumanization. This, not surprisingly, paved the way for multiple Western efforts to colonize economically, culturally, and militaristically Asia. I neednt go into the many examples of the

perception that the West has a moral and cultural

Wests incursions into the East, all of which share at their core the

imperative to subdue the Eastern Other through whatever means necessary the bizarre traditions and abnormal people of based entirely upon
the Orients deviancy.

Thus-when tasked with the question of whether or not the

USFG should engage with the P.R.C., we must first consider the
implications of such a question
In response to the resolution, we advocate that this debate
space criticizes homogenizing structures and spreads Mosuo
narratives of themselves in order to defeat orientalist
epistemology. Specifically, we embrace and seek to understand
the Mosuo standpoint, but reject the idea that we can
understand identity as a whole. Rather than utilizing the same
imperial logic that justified status quo dehumanization, we
choose to engage in a critical investigation of epistemology
and method, signaling a shift in ideology through our
realization of the Mosuo. By privileging voices of the Mosuo
themselves, we realize this moment of crisis as a microcosm
for change, an opportunity to realign and dismantle Orientalist
thought.
This realignment opens new spaces for non-homogenizing,
non-othering epistemology and solves for misreps.
Rosen 2k (Steven L. Rosen, Faculty of Intercultural Communication Hiroshima Women's University, Intercultural Communication, November 4 th Issue, Japan as Other: Orientalism and Cultural Conflict,
http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr4/rosen.htm) RR Jr

What might be the way out of the prison house of cognitive structures which have spawned the historically mediated illness of Orientalism? Can there be a way out of this epistemological nightmare or crisis of understanding? A
program of emancipation has been proposed by professor Antonio T. DeNicolas in his translation/interpretation of the Hindu document, the Bhagavad Gita. In his book Avatara: The Humanization of Philosophy Through the Bhagavad

a plan for emancipation from an ethnocentric

Gita (1976), he argues that the Gita itself proposes just such

orientation wherein epistemological structures condition ourparticular which

interpretations of other peoples /cultures have come to be embodied - " a crisis wherein the present is fed by the habits of the past- a theoretical past substituting

To escape
for the actual present." (1976:252) imperialist interpretations from the seemingly no-exit situation of of Asian or other foreign people- of Japan

- a seeing through of those structures which

bashing- the Gita proposes a radical program of sacrifice of one's perspectives , by their very

resist being seen through. Through this

nature, tend to "The multiplicity of radical sacrifice,

actual human empirical spaces interaction and communication may for mans [woman's]

be made possible. The 'other' way becomes emancipation for Krishna's of knowledge the possibility for and radical
constitution." (247) This program of emancipation requires that we not only acknowledge crisis as an element of man's life, but that we uncover its presuppositions." (248) Crisis, in this view, may lead either to despair (or Japan
bashing/people bashing)- or it may engender a radical reorientation- surrender to the control of those in authority- or the kind of orientation/activity which will make knowledge transparent to itself. Claire Kramsch says much the

it has a
same thing in her book, Context and Culture in Language Teaching, (1993) She argues that foreign language learning itself contains within it the means to facilitate cross-cultural communication insofar as n

quality
intrinsic to deconstruct invariant structures of ways of knowing.
of tending It is principally

through dialogue crisis can become a catalyst for change it

, in her view, that /conflict , because

involves, "fundamental realignments of value and perceptions among the participants." (232) This
means that cross-cultural communication can become part of a systematic effort to desensitize one's embodied/invariant ways of knowing- the way out of the no-exist world of interacting with one's projections. Ethnocentrism is this
kind of invariant way of cognizing or imagining, and Orientalism an historical instance of this fixation-projection, a stance which occludes any adequate vision of either the other or ourselves. Unfortunately, at this particular juncture
in history, Orientalism seems to be the predominant context for interpretations and interactions with Asian peoples, and programs for emancipation have yet to become apart of mainstream culture.
And this abandoning of the search for objective knowledge
about an identity of China, or of the Mosuo, or of anyone in
favor of critical analysis of representations and discourse
solves. This is a better methodology and framework. Plus-
engagement requires a study of representations.
Pan 12 Chengxin Pan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University, former visiting professor at the University of Melbourne, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Peking
University, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from the Australian National University and an LL.B. and LL.M. from Peking University, 2012 (Preface, Knowledge, Desire and Power in Global Politics: Western
Representations of China's Rise, Published by Edward Elgar Publishing, ISBN 1782544240, p. vii-viii)

Among the most reported stories in the first decade of the twenty-first century, topping the list was not the global financial crisis, the long-running Iraq War, or even the 'September 11' terrorist attacksit was the rise of China.1
These findings, announced by Global Language Monitor in 2011, were based on a study of global media reporting trends among 75000 print and electronic media sources. Were there a similar survey on the issues concerning the
international scholarly community, China's rise would almost certainly rank among the most closely scrutinised as well. Long gone, it seems, are the days when an American publishing company did not publish a single book on China
for fifteen years.2 With such extensive coverage on China's ascendancy today, there seems hardly a need for yet another study on this subject. Existing commentaries, books, and articles must have already covered a sufficiently

wide range of perspectives. Despite or precisely because of the vast amount of literature on this issue, I feel compelled to join the chorus. However, in doing so this book does not , as do many other books, seek to examine

whether China is rising or not, or what its rise means. This is not because I believe such questions are unimportant or have already been settled; I do not. Rather, I believe what China's rise means cannot be
independently assessed in isolation from what we already mean by China's rise. Though tautological it might sound, the latter question draws attention to the meaning-giving subject of China watchers. It turns the spotlight on our

this is not a cunning

thoughts and representations of China's rise, which constitutes the main focus of this book. Though it may appear that way in the eyes of some, going along path

attempt to score
of finding a literary niche in an increasingly crowded field some cheap points while dodging all the the heavy lifting of

complex 'real-world' issues

tackling surrounding China. Nor is it to deliberately court controversy or strike an affected pose of malaise about an otherwise vibrant field of

this is a necessary move justified on both theoretical and practical

study. To me, book

grounds the book rejects the assumption about the dichotomy

. Theoretically, prevalent

between reality and representation we cannot bypass thoughts and . Contra positivism,

representations to come into direct contact with China as it is. What we

see as 'China' cannot be detached from discourses and representations various

of it. Works that study China's as if it were empirically

purport to rise, a transparent and

observable then become

phenomenon out there, are always already inextricably enmeshed [end page vii] in representations. In all likelihood, those works will

themselves part of such representations, focus on through which still later studies will gaze at 'China'. In this sense, my

representation is an ontological and epistemological necessity

less expedient choice than . On practical

study of discursive representation is

grounds, given the inescapable immanence of representation and discourse in the social realm, a proper not a

a genuine engagement
retreat from the real world but with it in the full sense of the words. Perhaps with the exception of sleepwalking or unconscious twitching, no human action
(let alone social action) can do without thought and representation. Constructivists are right in saying that words have consequences. But we may add that all social domains and human relationships are mediated through and
constituted by thought and representation. China's relationship with the West is certainly no exception. With regional stability, prosperity and even world peace at stake, there is now an urgent, practical need to understand how the
various strains of representation and discourse pervade and condition this critical and complex relationship. For these reasons, this book turns to Western representations of China's rise. In particular, it focuses on two influential
paradigms: the 'China threat' and the 'China opportunity'. Commonly held by their respective exponents as objective truth about the implications of China's rise, both paradigms, despite their seemingly contrasting views, are
reflections of a certain Western self-imagination and its quest for certainty and identity in an inherently dynamic, volatile and uncertain world. While understandable, such a desire often proves elusive in the social world. With no
lasting law-like certainty in sight, the desire for certainty then often comes full circle to two subsets of desire: namely, fears and fantasies. For these forms of desire can provide some emotional substitutes for the holy grail of

discursive embodiments
certainty and truth. In this book, I will argue that the two China paradigms are, respectively, of these two popular types of emotional substitutes. As such,

are not objective China knowledge, but are

they Western self- closely linked to habitual

imagination and power practice. By probing the interrelationship into

between knowledge, desire and power, aims to deconstruct the book

contemporary Western representations of China' s rise. Although it will tentatively point to some methodological openings for what

promises no ready-made alternative

one might call 'critical China watching', due to its scope and ontological stance as well as limits of space, it

toolkit through which to better understand China as it is the 'China as it . Alas,

is' simply does not exist except in our ingrained desire and conventional
imagination .

Our injection of Mosuo descriptions of themselves into the

debate sphere gives Mosuo people themselves control over
their image of identity
Solving for misreps snowball- orientalism relies on the
dominance of Western misreprs of the Orient, rather than their
own reps of themselves, tearing down this pillar begins the
deconstruction of orientalism as a whole.
Said 78 (Edward Said, Frmr prof, English and Comp Lit, Columbia. PhD, Harvard)

Yet what German Orientalism had in common with AngloFrench and later American Orientalism was a kind of intellectual authority over
the Orient within Western culture. This authority must in large part be the subject of any description of Orientalism, and it is so in this study. Even the name Orientalism suggests a serious, perhaps ponderous
style of expertise; when I apply it to modern American social scientists (since they do not call themselves Orientalists, my use of the word is anomalous), it is to draw attention to the way Middle East experts can still draw on the
vestiges of Orientalism's intellectual position in nineteenth-century Europe. There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes
canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. Above all, authority can, indeed must, be analyzed. All
these attributes of authority apply to Orientalism, and much of what I do in this study is to describe both the historical authority in and the personal authorities of Orientalism. -My principal methodological devices for studying
authority here are what can be called strategic location, which is a way of describing the author's position in a text with regard to the Oriental material he writes about, and strategic formation, which is a way of analyzing the
relationship between texts and the way in which groups of texts, types of texts, even textual genres, acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large. I use the notion of strategy
simply to identify the problem every writer on the Orient has faced: how to get hold of it, how to approach it, how not to be defeated or overwhelmed by its sublimity, its scope, its awful dimensions. Everyone who writes about the
Orient must locate himself vis-a-vis the Orient; translated into his text, this location includes the kind of narrative voice he adopts. the type of structure he builds, the kinds of images, themes, motifs that circulate in his text-all of
which add up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader, containing the Orient, and finally, representing it or speaking in its behalf. None of this takes place in the abstract, however. Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even
of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions,
with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation-for example, that of philological studies, of anthologies of
extracts from Oriental literature, of travel books, of Oriental fantasies-whose presence in time, in discourse, in institutions (schools, libraries, foreign services) gives it strength and authority. It is clear, I hope, that my concern with
authority does not entail analysis of what lies hidden in the Orientalist text, but analysis rather of the text's surface, its exteriority to what it describes. I do not think that this idea can be overemphasized .

Orientalism is premised upon the Orientalist scholar, exteriority, that is, on the fact that , poet or makes the Orient

renders its mysteries plain

speak, describes the Orient, to the West. for and He is never concerned with the Orient except as the first cause of

What he says
what he says. is meant to indicate that the
and writes, by virtue of the fact that it is said or written,

Orientalist is outside the Orient, both as an existential and moral fact. as a

The principal product is of course representation of this exteriority : as early as Aeschylus's play The Persians the Orient is
transformed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that are relatively familiar (in Aeschylus's case, grieving Asiatic women). The dramatic immediacy of representation in The Persians obscures the fact
that the audience is watching a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made into a symbol for the whole Orient. My analysis of the Orientalist text therefore places emphasis on the evidence, which is by no means
invisible, for such representations as representations, not as "natural" depictions of the Orient. This evidence is found just as prominently in the so-called truthful text (histories, philological analyses, political treatises) as in the
avowedly artistic (i.e., openly imaginative) text. The things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great

The exteriority of the representation is

original. governed by the truism always some version of

that if the Orient could represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the
representation does the job, for the West, and faute de mieux, for the poor Orient. "Sie konnen sich nicht vertreten, sie mussen vertreten

about cultural
werden," as Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Another reason for insisting upon exteriority is that I believe it needs to be made clear

discourse within a culture what is commonly circulated

and exchange is not that by it

"truth" but representations. It hardly needs to be demonstrated again that language itself is a highly organized and encoded system, which employs many devices to

The
express, indicate, exchange messages and information, represent, and so forth. In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a re-presence, or a representation. value,

veracity of a written statement about the Orient

efficacy, strength, apparent relies therefore very

little, , on the Orient

and cannot instrumentally depend as such. On the contrary, the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made
supererogatory any such rear thing as "the Orient." Thus all of Orientalism stands forth and away from the Orient: that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient, and this sense is directly indebted

these representations rely upon

to various Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible, clear, "there" in discourse about it. And

institutions, , conventions, traditions agreed-upon codes of understanding , not upon for their effects

a Orient
distant and amorphous . The difference between representations or the Orient before the last third of the eighteenth century and those after it (that is, those belonging to what I call modern Orientalism) is
that the range of representation expanded enormously in the later period. It is true that after William Jones and Anquetil-Duperron, and after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, Europe came to know the Orient more scientifically, to live
in it with greater authority and discipline than ever before, But what mattered to Europe was the expanded scope and the much greater refinement given its techniques for receiving the Orient, When around the turn of the
eighteenth century the Orient definitively revealed the age of its languages- thus outdating Hebrew's divine pedigree-it was a group of Europeans who made the discovery, passed it on to other scholars, and preserved the discovery
in the new science of Indo-European philology. A new powerful science for viewing the linguistic Orient was born, and with it, as Foucault has shown in The Order of Things, a whole web of related scientific interests. Similarly William
Beckford, Byron, Goethe, and Hugo restructured the Orient by their art and made its colors, lights, and people visible through their images, rhythms, and motifs. At most, the "real" Orient provoked a writer to his vision; it very rarely
guided it, Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of
relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it. My analyses consequently try to show the field's shape and internal organization, its pioneers, patriarchal authorities, canonical texts, doxological ideas, exemplary figures, its
followers, elaborators, and new authorities; I try also to explain how Oriental ism borrowed and was frequently informed by "strong" ideas, doctrines, and trends ruling the culture. Thus there was (and is) a linguistic Orient, a Freudian
Orient, a Spenglerian Orient, a Darwinian Orient, a racist Orient-and so on. Yet never has been such a thing as a pure, or unconditional, Orient; similarly, never has there been a nonmaterial form of Orientalism, much less something
so innocent as an "idea" of the Orient. In this underlying conviction and in its ensuing methodological consequences do I differ from scholars who study the history of ideas. For the emphases and the executive form, above all the
material effectiveness, of statements made by Orientalist discourse are possible in ways that any hermetic history of ideas tends completely to scant. Without those emphases and that material effectiveness Orientalism would be
just another idea, whereas it is and was much more than that. Therefore I set out to examine not only scholarly works but also works of literature, political tracts, journalistic texts, travel books, religious and philological studies. In
other words, my hybrid perspective is broadly historical and "anthropological," given that I believe all texts to be worldly and circumstantial in (of course) ways that vary from genre to genre, and from historical period to historical
period.

Embracing the aff is a critical starting point to break down

orientalist knowledge production
Vukovich 12 (professor of critical and cultural theory as well as postcolonial and China studies at Hong Kong University, Daniel, China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC,
pgs. 1-2, 2012)//DD

When one recalls the Marxist cultural analysis of capital as such, namely as an historical force of abstraction that makes unlike things alike on the basis of some third thing called the value-form (their exchange value or general
equivalent), the relationship between this orientalism and global capitalism appears in sharper relief. Sinological-orientalism is in an important sense a capital-logic, just as historical capitalism betrays an orientalist one. As Said
himself made clear (in at least my reading of him), orientalism and colonial dis- course may precede the rise of capitalism, but in the modern era they are hand in glove. So, too, for the present moment, whereby

Western investment strategies are rationalized on being

and constrainment often the basis of these

beneficial to the Chinese as well as and their progression towards democracy and human rights (what- ever these mean), helping

balance and protect the rest of Asia from Chinas rise. I further address the relationship between orientalist and capital logics in a final chapter. My argument is a totalizing, functionalist one about the integral

The conditions of possibility for global

relationship between capitalism and orientalism. But then, so is the thing. historical a Sinological-
orientalism are counter-revolutionary changes within China itself the momentous if not its

and the Wests economic, political, and discursive

Dengist era of reform and opening up dating from 1979

responses to this rise to prominence. This paradoxical relationship subsequent global

is captured in the logic of becoming- same ness: China is still not normal (and has been tragically different), but is engaged in a universal

Whether it wants to or not. That is the presentfuture

process such that it will, and must, become the same as us.

offered to China within this discourse, and as anyone who watched the 2008 Olympics opening ceremonies knows (one world, one dream)

it is also one taken up within China itself. I turn to the question of Occidentalism below, and at other times make refer- ence to

the internalization of orientalism within China

Westernized/liberal views within China. But I only partially address and the current Party

the global dimensions and

state. That is surely an important matter worthy of its own book. But my focus here reflects in part my conviction that it is Western now fully

roots of orientalism are the main problem that underlying the often dysfunc- tional, neo-colonial relationship between China and the West. My

concern the production of knowledge is about the P.R.C. outside of China and the cultural, ide- ological, and other politics that subtend this. One could
write a different project focused on the representation of China from within the mainland; this would have to include indigenous constructions and essentializations of China outside of, as well as prior to, foreign imperialism or

orientalism. But the impact in China of modern imperialism and contact remains decisive for all of us, and once we reach this era we need engage the necessarily

orientalist and post-colonial questions. There will be no new Sinology until this
conversation at least begins.

Advocating with the Mosuo and promoting knowledge and

research of the Mosuo reverses the erasure and replacement
of a Mosuo cultural identity- crisis is the catalyst for change
Gatusa 05
Lamu 20 Mosuo individual http://www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com/gatusa.html

The matriarchal family and marriage patters of the Mosuo people are not immutable. They are not a living museum , and life is full of changes, a philosopher
once said: "The only permanency in life is change." The Mosuo are a small ethnic group of 30.000 people and surrounded by much larger groups. In the past they faced the onslaught of the Han culture, Tibetan culture, Yi culture,

and it is a problem for the Mosuo to conserve their culture own and find an adjustment between survival and
development. If a family has only male descendants and all of them practice "visiting marriage", the family will not have any children. Mosuo people adopt appropriate measures to deal with this situation. One of the brothers' lovers
may be selected as "Dabu" one who is virtuous, fair and capable. After a trial period, all family members will accept her and the life of the family can be continued. If family members aren't satisfied with this approach, they will train
a female successor coming from a maternal relative's family to enable the family to have descendants. This family will be changed into a coexistent family with a matrilineal part and a patrilineal part (patrilineal part refers to the
couples marriage pattern), if a male family member marries a woman from a different clan. However, the family will go back to the matrilineal pattern, if there are several female members born into the next generation. A matrilineal
family with only one son who marries a woman definitely will change into a patrilineal one and may go back again when the third generation occurs with enough girls. A family with only daughters will let one of them marry a man
definitely who lives in her clan-house, and the others practice "visiting marriage" as usual. According to the needs of the families flexibility is the order of the day. These flexibilities serve to maintaining matriarchal culture and are the
expression of the wisdom of this small ethnic group. It is sometimes more difficult for the Mosuo people to keep out foreign cultures, as it is to preserve their own. the period of " in communist China (1966-1976), the During the "Great Culture Revolution

central government carried out what was called " according to which the patrilineal marriage of one man and one woman was couples pattern). The government dispatched working teams to publicize policies and
the "Marriage Movement only permitted (the patriarchal marriage

supervise the execution of the same in Mosuo villages. with their particular marriage patterns a and backward tradition. Those who didn't follow the new instructions wouldn't be provided with their daily needs, such
Mosuo matriarchal families were regarded as primitive

as tea, salt, sugar, cloth and so on. It was a curious occurrence that sometimes three generations in one family went to draw their marriage certificate at the same time. Many Mosuo people went back to their own homes and didn't
pay any attention to the certificates any more after the working teams left, because the traditional convictions and culture couldn't be eliminated in such a short time. However, due to certain pressures which were applied, some
people did observe the new regulations and suffered a lot of emotional stresses as a consequence. The government changed policies and allowed the local traditions to be practiced again after the "Great Culture Revolution" ended.
The Mosuo recovered from this upheaval and went back to the tradition of "visiting marriage", and many of the Mosuo people had been reluctant anyway to get married in the first place. Any culture will continue to exist as long as it
has vitality. A culture develops through mutual exchange with its social environment. But it will not lose itself, if cultural exchange is based on equality for both sides without the attitude to wipe out the opposite side. The Mosuo
culture is now confronted with a new onslaught and new challenges and has to find a new road into the future. The current situation to follow the traditions and still face the challenges of the future. To explain this I want to give the

tourism has
example of Luo Shui village: Mosuo people are still following the matriarchal patterns and the concept of "visiting marriage" in their lives nowadays. Tradition is followed as usual. But

brought the latest onslaught the influence to Mosuo culture. People from many different cultures are now visiting the Mosuo, but especially

of the internet are taking their toll. changing Mosuo values

television, newspapers, phone and Their influence is

and concepts. This is happening on a daily basis and we will be able to

observe it and learn a lot from it . It is a great fortune that only one village is really badly affected by the changes, the fishing village Luo Shui. Most other Mosuo villages are outside of the main tourist areas.

This is why research , is so vital for the the reason into the changes, which have taken place in this village

understanding of the change process . In 1983 the Chinese Government set up the Lugu Lake Provincial Tourism Area, in Luo Shui County in order to affect
the low income of this region. However, the Mosuo people did not understand how tourism functioned and how to generate finances from it in spite of government programs to educate them. They regarded the tourists as friends and
entertained them and were ashamed to receive money for this. One village elder once told me: " The government encourages us to develop tourism, but we do not know how to do it." During this time one woman, Ceng Lacuo, had
her own ideas how to go about it. She started a small hotel in her house with twenty beds and began to receive tourists who usually are male. This caused quite some upheaval in the village. Although it is very natural for the Mosuo-
women to receive men in their houses, the Mosuo did not want Ceng Lacuo to charge for this as they felt it would give them a bad reputation. Furthermore, the elders of the villages saw clearly that older people and children would
suffer the most under this new economic situation. Now in case it came to difficulties between the visitors and the Mosuo. Finally, Ceng Lacuo agreed to take responsibility for any problems, and the village committee agreed to let
her go ahead with her plans. She earned 30.000 Yuan without any of the anticipated problems materializing. This was a huge sum of money for the Mosuo. As a consequence many villages imitated her scheme and set up private

former harmonious communities

hotels. This however caused problems because now there were all these villages competing for the customers, and

changed into commercial communities. To face this problem the women who owned hotels and the elders got together to find a solution. They came
up with the idea that the owners of hotels distributed their boats and horses to the families, who did not have hotels, to enable them to earn some money from the tourists by offering boating-trips and horse-riding. This helped them
to be on good terms again with each other. So tourism really began to take off in Luo Shui County for two years. One of the results is that many non-local people married Mosuo women now because of the considerable wealth which
is generated by tourism. Family quarrels and even separations became more common, and the Mosuo have to face more difficult challenges. Some companies set up in the area and began to employ Mosuo people during the tourist

season. The clan-mothers saw this as an opportunity for their children to gain knowledge and encouraged their children to pick up jobs with these companies . Many Mosuo girls went back to their

saw the difference

homeland after working in Kunming, Shengzhen, Shanghai, Beijing for years. They clearly in how they were treated at home and how unhappy they felt when they were away

This experience of discovering

from home. that the sparkling modern world does not keep its promises turned them
advocators and supporters of culture. their own Preservation of ones culture and seeking development are the two sides of one coin. Preservation without development leads to powerlessness. On the other

, this is problem worth pondering for Mosuo people. To reject education is anti-intellectual. Tourism alone can not be the only answer to the need for development and to gain access to
hand, loss outweighs gain if development is carried out without preservation. How can we find a balance between development and preserving our culture

mainstream society. There are some shortcomings in the Mosuo culture which threaten their survival: First, the life of the family is in the centre of attention to the detriment of the larger community. For
It is possible that in a few decades the real Mosuo culture will have disappeared.

example, the Luo Shui County has no cultural facilities, even though there are enough finances available. Secondly, their main focus is on traditional family education and school education is rejected which would give them access to
science and technology. As a result this ethnic group will die out, if the current trend continues. Thirdly, because of the strong position of the mother in Mosuo families the children do not develop a strong sense of independence and
have little pioneering spirit. They will find their development potential is not very great, especially after leaving their community. Fourthly, population increases slowly, it actually is on the decrease. If there are one or two children in
a family already, the women will stop to have any more children. Mosuo people who intermarry with people from other ethnic groups will lose their children to these other groups because of two reasons: Mosuo-men leave the
 I do not believe
children to the mothers as usual. But Mosuo-women have to leave their children to their partner's families, too, because these families are patrilineal. As I have stated above

that we can avoid the interface with the civilisation, I suggest we strong modern and

adjust and reconstruct our culture It . We should learn to choose and develop in a sustainable way and find a path between tradition and modernization.

is of paramount importance that the situation at Lugu Lake is being

studied and researched Mosuo people are as increasingly the impact of outsiders is changing the face of the culture of the Mosuo.

aware that they should hold the paddles of their own boats.

We do this because: The Mosuo people ask others to engage

with and promote awareness of their standpoint
Mosuo Cultural Development Association 05
Lugu Lake 20 http://www.mosuoproject.org/culreli.htm Lugu Lake
Mosuo Cultural Development Association - Mosuo Cultural Preservation Committee consisting of Mosuo people.

culture and religion

We tie in the Mosuo culture, the two are so together because,

closely interwoven having only an oral

. The native Mosuo religion, Daba, is in many ways the repository of Mosuo history and culture;

language, the Daba priests have the responsibility to memorize a

long, detailed oral tradition that encapsulates much of the Mosuo
history and culture. focus in
And, of course, much of the Mosuo culture are derived from the influence that both Daba and Tibetan Buddhism have had on them. Our

this regard is two-fold; both to engage in projects that promote

cultural preservation, and to promote awareness of the Mosuo
culture among other people.

And you can XAP Gatusa 05 here too

 Contention 2 - Framework
The political framework of strictly resolutional debate further
forces subjective groups such as the Mosuo into the
peripherals of society- normative definitions exclude our aff
and more- thus we refuse to debate the orientalist China
politics of the resolution without first understanding the
violent implications of doing so.
Bilgin 4 (Pinar Bilgin is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara. Regional Security in the Middle East, 01 November 04, First Edition, RoutledgeCurzon,
p. 49-51)

The positions of Gray and Garnett regarding the theory/practice relationship are similar to that of their conception of theory. Both authors are Pasts, presents and futures of security in favour of and open about the role theories play

those who do
in informing practice. However, their conception of practice is restricted in that they understand practice as policy-making and implementation at governmental level. In this sense,

not engage in issues directly relevant for policymaking are not considered
to be engaging with practice . This position hints at a narrow view of politics where it is considered only to do with governance at the state level. This, in turn, flows from the

once an
objectivist position adopted by the authors where the study of strategy in particular and academic enterprise in general is viewed as a politics-free zone. This is a powerful move, for

approach is regarded as objective, others that are critical of it are

immediately labelled propaganda at best subjective or political in a derogatory sense, and at worst . It is not only the conception of practice adopted by Gray
and Garnett but also that of theory that is restricted in that both conceive theory as problem-solving theory, in Robert Coxs (1981) terms; it is there to assist policy-makers in solving problems (Gray 1992: 62631). Security Studies,

This, in turn,
in this sense, is supposed to deal with issues that are deemed problematic by policy-makers, leaving untouched other issues that do not make it to governmental agendas.

creates a vicious circle where issues on the agenda decided by to be put security are

policy-makers alternative views are dismissed

and analysed by those who they consider as experts. Those who propound as mere

and the issues

propagandists , such as structural violence, are not allowed
they identified on
security agendas. This position is still prevalent in certain strands of security thinking in the post-Cold War era (see, for example, Walt 1991). Moreover, Garnett argues that strategists, even if they adopted a critical stance (and were
allowed to get their voices heard) would not make much difference. He maintains that: if a conflict-oriented view of international politics has caught the public imagination ... this is not because it is propagated by strategists but
because it offers the man in the street a more plausible interpretation of international reality than any of the alternatives to which he has been exposed. (Garnett 1987: 22) This statement is yet another manifestation of Garnetts

restricted notion of theory (which, in turn, is representative of Cold War thinking on security). After all, what the man in the street views as a more plausible interpretation of international reality (Garnett 1987: 22) is

shaped by theories and discourses that were/ are dominant at the time . Garnetts statement
also hints at an underestimation of the power of theories in informing not only governmental policies, but also individuals conceptions of the world. These conceptions that individuals absorb, accept and live uncritically constitute
what Gramsci calls common sense which helps sustain the status quo by making situations of inequality and oppression appear to them as natural and unchangeable (Forgacs 1988). To go back to Kaldors argument regarding the
Cold War, it was the imaginary war discourse of realist Security Studies that informed men and women in North America and Western Europe of the relevance, legitimacy and inescapability of power politics, tough responses and
brinkmanship. In sum, it was these objectivist conceptions of theory and the theory/practice relationship, a restricted notion of theory as problem-solving theory and practice as governmental policy-making that have, for long,
sustained an underestimation of the role theories play in helping constitute reality and narrowed the ethical and political horizons of security thinking and practice. Contra Garnett, the role of theories is not to take these conceptions
as given but to try and enter into peoples common sense and to present them a critical understanding of their own situation. Accordingly, theory is viewed as constitutive of the reality it seeks to explain. As Steve Smith has
argued: Theories do not simply explain or predict. They tell us what possibilities exist for human action and intervention; they define not merely our explanatory possibilities but also our ethical and political horizons. (Smith 1996: 13)

privileges or
The argument here is not that theories create the world in a philosophical idealist sense of the term, but that theories help organize knowledge, which, in turn, informs, enables,

legitimises certain practices whilst marginalizing others inhibiting or (as with the relationship between Middle

critical reflection becomes

Eastern security discourse and the invention of the Middle East). Given this self-constitutive potential of security thinking, self

crucial The role of the students is to be self-

for students of critical approaches to security. of security, in this sense, try and

conscious about the normative relationship between theory and and mutually constitutive

practice rather than feeding common sense

in their thinking and writing back into the system hiding behind a notion of objectivity.

In-round affirmation of the need to reject Western

perception of the assemblies of the East is a necessary
real world step in the right direction. Academic
discussions in this debate form real world discourses.
Bleiker 97 (Roland Bleiker, worked for two years in a Swiss diplomatic mission in Panmunjom, the Korean DMZ. He held visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt,
Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Jan 1997, Forget IR Theory, Alternatives, Vol 22, Sage Publications Inc, p. 22)

Discourses
The doorkeepers of IR are those who, knowingly or unknowingly, make sure that the disciplines discursive boundaries remain intact. , in a Foucaultian sense, are subtle mechanisms that

frame our thinking process determine the limits of what can be thought, . They

talked, and written of in a normal and rational way . In every society the production of discourses is controlled, selected,

create systems of exclusion that elevate one group of

organized, and diffused by certain procedures. They

discourses to a hegemonic status while condemning others to exile the . Although

boundaries of discourses change , at times gradually, at times abruptly, they maintain a certain unity across time, a unity that dominates and transgresses
individual authors, texts, or social practices. They explain, to return to Nietzsche, why all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason thereby becomes improbable.28

Academic disciplines are powerful mechanisms to direct and control the production and

discourses.
diffusion of are considered proper
They establish the rules of intellectual exchange and define the methods, techniques, and instruments that

for the pursuit of knowledge . Within these margins, each discipline recognizes true and false propositions based on the standards of evaluation it established to assess
them.

And XAP Pan 12 from first contention

Thus to even engage with China or produce any meaningful
debates, we must first uproot orientalist knowledge. If you
want a world where affs can be topical without being horribly
Orientalizing and racist, you must start by voting for methods
such as the aff

Our framework strives to create more ethical forms of debate

by weighing the epistemological and methodological impacts
our dialogue has on ourselves and on others. This seeking of a
more ethical self allows for successful micropolitics that
spillover - thus we dont need to change the world in one fell
swoop changing ourselves is in and of itself a solvency
mechanism
Chandler 13 Professor of IR at Westminster, (The World of Attachment? The Post-humanist Challenge to Freedom and Necessity, Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 41(3), 516 534)

The world of becoming thereby is an ontologically flat world without the traditional hierarchies of existence and a more shared conception of agency. For Bennett, therefore, to begin to experience the relationship between persons
and other materialities more horizontally, is to take a step toward a more ecological sensibility.78 Here there is room for human agency but this agency involves a deeper understanding of and receptivity to the world of objects and

object Rather than

relations. focus on transforming the external world, the
the hubristic

ethico-political tasks are those of work on the self to erase liberal hubristic

traces of existential resentment. Work on the

subject-centric understandings, understood to merely create the dangers of

self is the only route to changing the world . As Connolly states: To embrace without deep resentment a world of becoming is to work to
become who you are, so that the word become now modifies are more than the other way around. Becoming who you are involves the microtactics of the self, and work on the self can then extend into micropolitics of more
conscious and reflective choices and decisions and lifestyle choices leading to potentially higher levels of ethical self-reflectivity and responsibility. Bennett argues that against the narcissism of anthropomorphic understandings of

Rather than imagining that we

domination of the external world, we need some tactics for cultivating the experience of our selves as vibrant matter. hubristically

can shape the world the ethical responsibility we live in, Bennett argues that: Perhaps of an individual human now

resides in ones response to the assemblages in which one finds oneself

participating. Such ethical tactics include reflecting more on our relationship to what we eat and considering the agentic powers of what we consume and enter into an assemblage with. In doing so, if an image of inert matter helps
animate our current practice of aggressively wasteful and planet-endangering consumption, then a materiality experienced as a lively force with agentic capacity could animate a more ecologically sustainable public. For new

the object to be changed

materialists, or transformed is the human the human mindset. By changing the way we think
about the world and the way we relate to it by including broader, more non-human or inorganic matter in our considerations, we will have overcome our modernist attachment disorders and have

.
more ethically aware approaches to our planet In cultivating these new ethical sensibilities, the human can be remade with a new self and a new self-interest.

True engagement requires an understanding

Newlink 16 Horizontal Consulting: Engagement, Collaboration, Culture
and Communications. Retrieved January 18, 2017, from
http://www.newlink-group.com/en/media/view/engagement-through-
collaboration-culture-and-communications/154
Engagement designed to co-create value requires a deeper understanding beyond of collaboration that goes

just interacting , to co-create value. Engagement requires understanding how culture

impacts beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Engagement requires
communications to fuel conversation the primary activity of today's collaboration which is .

Our criticism calls into question the ideology that justifies the
harms directed against the Mosuo. This thought process
constitutes reality, becoming even more important than action
itself.
Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, The Post-Development Reader, 19 97 , p. 340

Yes, as we have seen , ideology becomes

important component of power at the same time an increasingly , a pillar

It becomes
providing it with both excusatory legitimacy and an inner coherence. As this aspect grows in importance, and as it gradually loses touch with reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real strength.

reality itself that ) may have even greater

albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one on certain levels (chiefly inside the power structure

weight than reality . The significance of

as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it

phenomena derives from their locus as concepts in the

no longer from the phenomena themselves, but

ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse .

power
Thus draws its strength from theory and becomes
gradually draws closer to ideology than it does to reality: it

entirely dependent on it power begins . This inevitable leads, of course, to a paradoxical result; rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power,

to serve ideology . It is as though ideology has appropriated power from power, as though it had become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes
decisions that affect people, and not the other way around.

Change cannot be effected in the world unless there is a

vocabulary to construct subjects- ethical decision-making
requires attuning our ways of knowing to prevent complicity
only our affs micropolitical interruption can challenge the
hidden violence of dominant knowledges
Scott 9 prof of philosophy @ Vanderbilt
(Charles, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 34: 350367, Foucault, Genealogy, Ethics)

Foucaults analysis of May 1968 uprising

In said that even though the in France, he

things were coming apart there did not exist any vocabulary capable of
expressing that process there did not exist a way of (Foucault, 2000, 271). We could say on Foucaults terms that

knowing language and concepts suited for the complex event of

(a subject of knowledge) and the

transformation. A momentous event happened without adequate

Frances

tools for its analysis Consequently

recognition, the , and appropriation. , in the following dispersion of quarreling groups and political factions,

1968 crisis did not become an effective discursive event that opened up
at first

a full range of transformations require a knowing

apparent problems and for formal knowledge. That would

subject that was turned away from the strongest discursive options, such as those of the current Humanists, Marxists, Maoists, French colonialists, and French cultural supremacists. So much was falling apart in France

a subject of knowledge was needed

at the time that informed by that formed in the interconnecting French crises, a subject

marginal experiences marginalized experiences

in comparison to the experiences recognized by the dominant discourses,

like those of prisoners, people oppressed by colonialism

Algerian soldiers, French French , people hammered down by
Stalins communism or the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and people in highly energized, non-French cultures: a subject that developed with the voices and experiences that were on the margins of the older and

authoritative French way of life. In spite of the stammering and stumbling in its aftermath, however, May, 1968 opened an opportunity for a
new vocabulary, a new discourse, and a new ethos for recognizing and knowing. Its event made possible a transitional and transformative knowing subject whose relative freedom and lack of
establishment constituted a major, constructive epistemic difference from the accepted discourses. Much more could be said on this issue, but my present, limited points are that in the context of Foucaults thought,

transformation of the knowing subject constitutes an ethical event ; and ethics

on an individual level takes place as people work on themselves to be able to

change themselves to know differently enough and to transform what is evident about others (Foucault, 2000, 2412).14 These two kinds of
transformation take place in genealogical knowing as Foucault conceives and practices it. Two different senses for ethics are at work here. One sense refers to ways of life that are constituted by discourses, institutions, and
practicesby all manner of power formations that are not authored by singular individuals and that are ingrained in peoples lives inclusive of their judgment, knowledge, and codes of behavior. A society, of course, can have a
variety of overlapping or competing ways of life, a variety of ethical environments, and changes in these environments would compose ethical changes in this broad sense of ethical. The knowledge that genealogy generates
comprises a different discourse from many established ones and puts in question many aspects of Western society, especially around the topics of madness, sex, crime, normalcy, social/political suppression of people, and
mechanisms of regulation and control. It challenges significant parts of our social environment, encourages deliberation and critique, and intends to make a differential impact on contemporary ways of life. In addition to his writing,
Foucault was active in many causes designed to change political and social formations and to have a broad social impact. He played a leading role, for example, in support of Vietnamese boat people who were fleeing from
persecution and being ignored by Western governments. He was active in prison reform movements. He spoke out against what he found to be unacceptable injustices in Poland and equally unacceptable silence in their regard in the
West, against a Realpolitik that ignores suppression of people and their liberties in countries other than ones own. He showed in multiple ways that passionate support of institutional transformation and of suppressed and suffering

people can be carried out without Humanism or other forms of universalizing or totalizing discourse. A second sense of ethics for Foucault means a work on the self by the
self. 15 He understood, for example, his writing (and his interviews) as processes of self-formation: I havent written a single book that was not inspired, at least in part, by a direct personal experience, an experience that
he wants to understand better by finding a different vocabulary, changed combinations of concepts, and the mutations they bring by connecting with aspects of experience that are barely emerging at the borders of his awareness
(Foucault, 2000, 244). His books, he says, compose experiences inclusive of his own metamorphosis as he writes them and comes to a transformed connection with their topics. He would also like for his books to provide readers

with something akin to his experience, to bring us to our limits of sense where transformations can occur (Foucault, 2000, 244). The sense of ethics is individual
in this case focused by

experiences and altering their behavior

the care they exercise in connecting with them. In care for themselves, they work at maintaining or

and attitudes to appropriate themselves to their experiences.16 Foucault says that his books are like invitations and public gestures to join in the books process, a process that he finds transformative
of aspects of contemporary life and potentially, should individuals join in, transformative of the way they understand and connect with themselves (Foucault, 2000, 2456). Care for self has a very long lineage that Foucault spent
his last years investigating. Indeed, understanding himself without metaphysical help or universalized solutions was one aspect of his caring self-relation. He carried out a project, deeply rooted in a Western tradition that makes

inseparable
caring for oneself change in his self-
from the ways one knows oneself, the world, and others. In his own process, he finds repeated instances of

world relation experiences the impact of what he is coming to know at

as he

the borders of his knowledge and identity. When these boundary-experiences (he calls them limit-experiences) occur, he says, the clarity of
some aspects of his identity dies in the impact of what he is coming to find. His affections and behavior often change. As an author he attempts to write into his books these very processes for the readers possible engagement.

If I find a way of knowing that makes clear

through one of his books, for example,dangers in a some of the inherent

well-established body of knowledge or institution, I have an a mainstream

opportunity for assessing those and choosing how I will connect with dangers

them and my experience of them. I might find that what I know and the way I know are violated by what Foucaults work shows. I might find his approach and the knowledge that it offers highly questionable or irrelevant

I might experience new questions, a need for change, an unexpected

for my life.

dissatisfaction with what I have been accepting as true and good. If Foucaults works carry

I am engaged in an experience
out their intention and if I read them carefully, that will make that he found transformative and

room for an altered discourse

choices and problems that I can experience and that might bring me to an edge where what I know meets a limit and the possibility for

and subjectivity. The

Coming in this way to an edge, a limit of the way I know and who I am in such knowing brings together the epistemic and personal aspects of ethical experience. very

act of caring for myself interrupts the processes of normalization in this instance subliminal

and sets in motion the emergence of a different

another kind of dynamics as I come to the limits of my authorized experience and

kind of experience. I am caring for myself, impacting my own affections, values, and way of knowing. The dynamics of what Foucault calls biopower (the powerful complex of social forces that
regulate human behavior by means of, for example, health care delivery, education, and moral legislation in both broad and corpuscular ways) are interrupted by a different dynamics that builds individual autonomy. Self-caring

instead of the anonymous dynamics of normalization begins to form my selfs relation to itself. How will I appropriate the experience of limits and their transgression by emerging voices, realities, and intensities? Who
shall I be in their impact ? How will I present myself to myself and my environment should I affirm what is happening in the margins of my established identity?