The Wa Village:An Ethnography Of A Poverty-ridden Village In Northwest China

Adopting the perspective of anthropology,this paper studies the poverty of a Hui village in Guyuan,Ningxia,where poverty is regarded as a kind of knowledge produced rather than just a reflection of objective phenomena.The problem is to be solved not only as the relationship between human behavior and social environment,but also as that among people,that is,the behavior pattern and cultural adaptation formed and displayed by poor farmers in face of the complex and changeable natural and social environment.The livelihood of poor farmers is the core content of the village culture system,while cultural education,marriage and family,kinship,medical care for the sick and so on are the results of life adapted to the environment,determined and shaped by the livelihood in the culture system,and also influenced and restricted by the external environment,showing the role of adaptability in promoting or delaying livelihood.The content of this paper is mainly divided into seven parts:The first chapter is the introduction part,which mainly introduces the origin and problem consciousness of this research,combing the related literature review,key concepts,research methods and article content structure of poverty research at home and abroad.The main content of the second chapter is to make a diachronic analysis of the habitat ecological environment adaptability of Wa village,as a field investigation site,under the constraints of regional natural ecological environment and the influence of human ecological environment,so as to better understand the influence of natural ecological system on human survival at the time and space level and provide poor villages with habitat environmental adaptation to natural ecology.The third chapter mainly analyzes the impact of poor farmers’ livelihood structure and the logic behind it on the project implementation process from the perspective of time concept,spatial arrangement and mass communication of livelihood in Wa Village,and proposes "livelihood decision" and "livelihood balance".From the perspective of poverty alleviation agencies,this paper describes how a poverty alleviation project dedicated to improving the livelihood of poor farmers was"produced",analyzes the interactive process between the "development discourse"upheld by poverty alleviation agencies and the" hidden text" of poor farmers,points out that "target dislocation" is an important reason why poverty alleviation projects are difficult to continue,and puts forward the role and impact of information poverty alleviation practices on farmers’ livelihood in the Internet Age.The fourth chapter mainly discusses the current situation of schools in the compulsory education stage in Wa Village,the real difficulties they face and the generation of the reproduction mechanism of the bottom social identity under the condition that school education meets the living conditions in Wa Village.The fifth chapter is divided into three parts,namely gender division of labor and fertility system,marriage and kinship and family structure,from which we can find out the impact of poverty in Wa Village on gender division of labor and fertility upbringing,as well as the family poverty caused by high price bride price and the functional change of family structure in coping with poverty.The sixth chapter mainly dissects the village doctor’s habit of treatment and the doctor-patient interaction in the medical field from the patient’s feelings and experiences of disease treatment,including the patient’s own cognition of the disease,the behavior of seeking medical treatment,the choice of the way of seeking medical treatment,the treatment provided by medical institutions,the other treatment methods sought by patients and their families,the cultural attributes of the treatment objects(medical drugs and non-medical drugs),the relationship between doctors and patients,and the patient’s feelings and narration of disease pain,revealing the villagers’ logic of disease treatment in poverty,seeking the participation and value of cultural traditions in disease treatment and health maintenance,and trying to change dynamically from the medical field.The seventh chapter is the conclusion and prospect part.On the basis of the above contents,it summarizes the survival logic and consumption characteristics of poor farmers in the process of adapting to the culture of ecology,livelihood and life.On the basis of reflecting on the development discourse and respecting local knowledge,it puts forward the transformation of cultural anthropology path centering on the development of "human" so as to meet the basic needs of "human" as the ultimate goal of poverty alleviation and development.