Faith And Social Order: An Anthropological Analysis On The Headman System Of Lahu People In Meng Village

I did my field study in a Lahu village called Mong village in Xishuangbanna. There are some traditional headmen and leaders in the system of village autonomy leading by the country. The consistence of the headmen in this village is based on the cosmology of Lahu people. In other word, the structure of Lahu's cosmology and the supernatural power distribution decide the consistence of the headmen, and the headmen obtain their statuses by the role they played during the cycle of the cosmos and their functions of promoting the producing and living. The fundament of the con-consistence of these two systems in Mong village is the effective of the Livelihood strategies.In the life of the Mong village, the con-consistence of two systems is not fixed during history. Under the countrylization and historical changer, the Mong village social structure had experienced a gradually integrate. One obvious of this is the combining role of Kaxie as one headman in the traditional social structure and village head as one leading man in the system of village autonomy. Although the headmen take the traditional rules of Lahu people as his rules when dealing with affairs of his village, he tends to use the terms of national laws and the like in his words. This means the con-consistence of two systems of Mong village make total affect to the villagers, and the social order of Mong village is setting up on this basement.