An Eco-anthropological Study Of Livelihood Changes Of Dai People In Mazizhai Village Of Yuanjiang County

Livelihood mode is the sum total of various survival ways and survival strategies, which produces and develops in the interactive process between human and environment. It has to do with natural and social cultural environment, environment change will inevitably lead to livelihood changes. Mazizhai is a Dai village in Yuanjiang County, where has a long history and outstanding ethnic culture. In this paper, livelihood changes of villagers was studied in the perspective of eco-anthropology and the way of field work. Rice agriculture has been as the traditional livelihood of villagers in a long historical period, and they formed a strong culture of rice around the crop. The local crop planting structure has been changed with the development of tropical area and the introduction of economic crops after the 1950s. Sugar cane, anti-season vegetables, jasmine, tropical flowers has become the important crops successively. They completed from the great change of rice to flowers, and the profound changes of traditional livelihood mode have taken place in. The land rent and the work income have become important livelihood source of villagers after the land circulation and the rise of tropical flowers planting in 2003, which formed collectively the diversification trend of livelihood strategy changes along with the cultivation of diversified crop. Livelihood changes have a lot of impact on social culture in the village. Food, shelter, entertainment of social life of villagers was influenced in different degrees by livelihood changes and economic development. It showed a new characteristic that was different from the traditional life-style. Professional ties of interpersonal relationship were strengthened and became an another important influence on social relations after blood and geopolitical ties. Changes of the belief and ritual were mainly reflected in the transmutation of "Long" sacrifice ritual. The primitive belief was thinned and the ritual process was simplified gradually from the traditional "three days and four places" into current "one day and three places". The integration of rising tropical flowers planting and traditional rice agriculture formed a unique indigenous ecological knowledge of rice-flowers rotation. It has a certain relief for local land degradation.The research shows that political factors was the main reason of local livelihood changes, and reveals a characteristic on "passive reception" and "active adaptation". "Passive reception" refers to the livelihood of villagers were forced to change under strong political factors, livelihood changes was restricted by the local government and national policy for the most part. "Active adaptation" refers to villagers took full advantage of various livelihood resource and livelihood knowledge to adapt to culturally the specific link to livelihood changes, such as the cultivation of diversified crop, the the land circulation and the land rent, the increase of work income. They created and developed a unique indigenous ecological knowledge of rice-flowers rotation. They reflect a human agency to respond to environmental change. But culture is not always "adaptation", also can appear "inadaptation" for the situation in the specific process of adaptation. How to deal with the problem of the decline on traditional cooking, dwelling culture and primitive religious ritual in the livelihood changes, how to practice the inheritance and protection of ethnic culture under the background of modernization, it needs more attention and discussion.