The Lisu: Far from the Ruler - Softcover

Zack, Michele

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607326035 ISBN 13: 9781607326038

Verlag: University Press of Colorado, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

This book brings the ironic worldview of the Lisu to life through vivid, often amusing accounts of individuals, communities, regions, and practices. One of the smallest and last groups of stateless people, and the most egalitarian of all Southeast Asian highland minorities, the Lisu have not only survived extremes at the crossroads of civil wars, the drug trade, and state-sponsored oppression but adapted to modern politics and technology without losing their identity.

The Lisu weaves a lively narrative that condenses humanity’s transition from border-free tribal groupings into today’s nation-states and global market economy. Journalist and historian Michele Zack first encountered the Lisu in the 1980s and conducted research and fieldwork among them in the 1990s. In 2014 she again traveled extensively in tribal areas of Thailand, Myanmar, and China, when she documented the transformative changes of globalization. Some Lisu have adopted successful new urban occupations in business and politics, while most continue to live as agriculturists “far from the ruler.”

The cohesiveness of Lisu culture has always been mysterious—they reject hierarchical political organization and traditionally had no writing system—yet their culture provides a particular skillset that has helped them navigate the terrain of the different religious and political systems they have recently joined. They’ve made the transition from living in lawless, self-governing highland peripheries to becoming residents and citizens of nation-states in a single generation.

Ambitious and written with journalist’s eye for detail and storytelling, The Lisu introduces the unique and fascinating culture of this small Southeast Asian minority. Their path to national and global citizenship illustrates the trade-offs all modern people have made, and their egalitarian culture provides insight into current political choices in a world turning toward authoritarianism.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michele Zack is an award-winning writer, journalist, and historian whose work has been twice recognized by the American Society for State and Local History. She also received the Pfleuger Local History Prize from the Historical Society of Southern California. She reported for AsiaWeek and Far Eastern Economic Review in the 1990s when residing in Thailand, where she also wrote economic development speeches for three prime ministers and other officials. In California, she worked with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, writing federal grants and developing contextual programs to link local to national history and improve the teaching of American history.

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The Lisu

Far from the Ruler

By Michele Zack

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2017 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-603-8

Contents

Prologue, 
Preface, 
Acknowledgments, 
Note on Use of "Burma" and "Myanmar", 
Introduction, 
Book I: MEET THE LISU, 
Part 1. Lisu World, 
1. Who Are the Lisu?, 
2. Mythic Origins, 
3. History and Origin Theories, 
4. Modern Times, 
5. Migration, 
6. Identity and Cultural Flux, 
7. View from the Village, 
Part 2. Being a Lisu, 
8. Childhood: Learning by Doing, 
9. Men, Women, Courtship, and Marriage, 
10. The Household: The Place for Family and Work, 
11. Cosmic Views, 
12. Economy, 
Book II: THE LISU BY COUNTRY: CONTEMPORARY SKETCHES, 
1. Comparing Lisu National Scenes: Full of Opportunities to Be Wrong, 
2. Thailand, 
3. Burma/Myanmar, 
4. China, 
Conclusions, and Notes on Where Lisu Might Go from Here, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Who Are the Lisu?

When you've lost your myido (repute) it's already too late, You can't pick up spilt water.

—Lisu proverb

The Nujiang gorge of Yunnan Province (ITL?ITL means "angry" and jiang, "river" in Chinese) is also known as the Salween River. It is the heart of Lisu country. Thirty percent of the world's Lisu live in this dramatic environment, where mountains — increasingly treeless in areas given over to agriculture, still forested in others — spring vertically from a narrow gorge carved by the torrential river. The Biluo mountains (13,000 feet, or 4,000 meters) bank it on the east and the Gaoligong mountains (16,500 feet, or 5,000 meters) on the west. Vertical drop to the river below is 3,000 to 4,000 meters (10,000 feet to 13,000 feet). Un-tethered boats in its powerful current are rare, and it gives up few fish. The steepest part of the gorge extends 310 kilometers, with a valley floor ranging from a few hundred meters wide in most areas to a couple of kilometers in a few places. The Nujiang wasn't conventionally bridged until the 1980s and remains un-dammed — one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the world. Lisu settlements perch in wooded valleys above and behind the big gorge, and trails and a single narrow road paralleling it are the main highways.

Although today there are modern bridges, until the late 1980s Lisu still often found it more convenient to cross the torrent at a height of a few hundred feet on a cable slung across the gorge at narrow points. Most cable bridges have been replaced with pedestrian suspension bridges only in the last few years. Some still exist; in 2014 remaining old cables were well-known enough that people stopped along the road at these spots in hopes of capturing an image or video of a human crossing on their Galaxies and iPhones. As recently as 2010, on market days it was not unusual to see Lisu men, women, and youth use the old cables as the regular mode of transportation across the river, carrying children, produce, and other possessions. Suspended aloft in a rope sling with a wood or metal slider, they get a big push to start and then pull themselves the rest of the way when momentum ceases. Showing fear is not Lisu custom.

* * *

Lisu are distinct from the Akha, Lahu, Haw, Hmong, and other minorities with whom they have intermingled, married, and shared villages and outsider status, as well as from Han Chinese, Burmese, and Thai majority populations. Lisu men are known as highland farmers and crossbow-wielding hunters with a flair for languages and storytelling. Lisu women in traditional dress are impossible to confuse with others. They are also distinguished by a reputation for being entrepreneurial, as hardworking equals of their men, and as family purse-string holders. Those who marry Lisu are very likely to "become Lisu" themselves. Early explorers and geographers used terms such as "fine race," "superior people," and "fair complexioned" to describe them. In 1933 Major C. M. Enriquez of the Burma Rifles noted that Lisu are "armed and independent, and ready to migrate if interfered with in the smallest degree."

However, anything more than superficial study reveals fluidity and a culture impacted by a dizzying number of influences. A relatively small and widely dispersed group, even among minority populations, Lisu today live mainly in China's Yunnan Province (700,000), Myanmar's north, east, and central areas (400,000), and Thailand's north (50,000). Numbers are only slightly more reliable today than in the past. National bureaucracies have made progress in counting Lisu and other minorities in the twenty-first century but do not always make data public. Perhaps a thousand live in Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, at the northwestern limit of the Lisu, and small Lisu settlements exist in Laos and Tibet.

Numbers and even names applied to minority groups by nations are not consistent and shouldn't be assumed to be accurate, particularly in areas of conflict. This is most true in Myanmar, where the government counts people but doesn't release ethnic identity data. Census data may be intentionally inaccurate and identities ambiguous — groups exaggerate their population to appear "bigger" as they vie for political power. Questions of what constitutes or how to define an ethnic group (or its political activities) are becoming more, not less, contested today than in the past.

In Myanmar, for example, most Lisu live in Kachin State. Lisu there are classed as Kachin by the government, along with the largest ethnic minority, the Jingpaw, and three other minorities. However, they are not particularly close linguistically or culturally to the Jingpaw, who dominate Kachin State and whose insurgent army has battled the central government for fifty years. The convenience of the state or reasons unconnected to identity often end up defining groups.

It is not my purpose or within my expertise to sort out these hugely significant issues; however, they must be acknowledged. Self-identification as Lisu is the single criterion I used to define who is a Lisu in this work.

There is much to be learned from the Lisu — a strong people with a culture that defies space and has deflected annihilation throughout its long unwritten history. In spite of being so few and scattered, they have continued to adapt their unusually egalitarian culture without losing identity. The hardships of living in the crossfire of many countries' national conflicts, politics, and wars, their land pillaged by international logging interests, the drug trade, and environmental disaster, hasn't defeated them.

What is their essential strength, and how does it renew itself? What can the Lisu teach us?

Language is the most obvious characteristic shared by Lisu across differing habitats and national settings. Despite a 25–30 percent difference in vocabularies among the dialects spoken in Thailand, Myanmar, and areas of China, all Lisu understand each other after brief contact. Beyond this, defining traits that never fail to be noted — whether by anthropologists, missionaries, development workers, or government officials — are pride, individualism, and intolerance of authority.

These traits support each Lisu's desire to accumulate and increase his or her myi-do, or repute. Myi means name but also connotes fate and productive capacity, and do means power in the sense of accomplishment, according to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University Press of Colorado
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607326035
• ISBN 13: 9781607326038
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar