In The Name Of The "Father"-on Misunderstanding Of Moso People’s Visiting Marriage Culture By Cai Hua

Since the sensation and curiosity stirred up by Moso culture have beenstupendous, the Moso identity has been constructed based on a series of performancesin which the text, discourse, tourism as well as the medium propaganda for a longtime which interrelated and interacted with one another and Moso culture has arousedstrong repercussion since it is kind of an alien image.As one of the ethnic group culture, the misunderstanding of Moso culture is afactor rarely noticed in the research of whole Moso culture. However, after analyzingand comparing the researches of the Moso culture, we may find it easier to seek outthe differences and similarities between them. Among them, Cai Hua’s study on Mosoculture is most controversial. In this dissertation, Cai Hua’s book A Society withoutFathers or Husbands: the Na of China is selected as a case study. Cai’s book is full ofanecdotes and they were borrowed without reference from the Chinese ethnographicsbased on fieldwork done in the1960s, Cai’s claim that Na society is a “society withneither father nor husband” is indeed controversial.This study aims to rectify the misunderstanding of Moso culture which is mainlybrought about by Dr. Cai Hua’s monograph from the perspective of the emic and eticproposed by American linguistic anthropologist Kenneth Pike and culturalanthropologist Marvin Harris. I mainly quote their emic and etic perspective theory insupport of my argumentation. By analyzing the mortuary ritual process,offspring-recognition ceremony as well as baby’s one-month old ceremony which isstrongly recommended but ignored by Dr. Cai Hua and also the nuptial ceremony ofwalking marriage which is absent in his book to get my conclusion that Moso societyis not a “single-parent” or fatherless society, mother is adored but it doesn’t mean tohold father—the pseudo-uncle in less esteem or even unvalued.Through the study of cultural misunderstanding, all kinds of factors involved incultural misunderstanding such as cultural difference, social conventions and the researcher’s personal background are seen and explored helps to understand Mosoculture in a much wider context.