EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY: A STUDY OF THE ETHONOLOGY OF CHINA'S NATIONAL MINORITIES

This study is a critical assessment of the historical development of ethnology in the People's Republic of China, through an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the dominant role played by Lewis Henry Morgan's theories in shaping the growth of this field. It combines diachronic and synchronic methods of analysis to probe the major issues involved in evaluating the impact of evolutionary models of social development on studies of China's national minorities and explores alternative ways in which the ethnological data presented in these studies might be explained.;The synchronic section of the work draws upon ethnographic data relating to China's national minority societies--such as the Naxi, Kazak, Dai, Nu and Yi--to shed new light on questions raised by 19th century evolutionary theorists, questions which still remain unresolved in contemporary anthropology. The major issues considered are the significance of and the role played by social-religious, ecological and technological factors in shaping particular forms and variations in kinship and social organization between related Chinese minority societies.;This study has several purposes: to introduce Western readers to a hitherto little known field of Chinese ethnology; to contribute to the understanding of fundamental problems of general social anthropological interest; to provide insights into such sinological topics as the role of the social sciences within Chinese society and the effects of particular governmental policies on the social institutions of minority groups; and, finally, to encourage the current trend toward developing a more diversified theoretical orientation within Chinese ethnology.;The diachronic section of the work presents a historical overview of Chinese ethnology, with an emphasis upon the shift and vicissitudes that have occurred within this field of study since the Revolution of 1949. This section begins by tracing the way the evolutionary theories of social development of Morgan and other social theorists were first introduced to China and how these theories interacted with other Western anthropological approaches. It then examines the ways in which Morgan's ideas, after being refined in the light of Marxist concepts of historical materialism, became the pillar of both theoretical and practical ethnological work in the People's Republic of China.