Resettment,Livelihood And Acculturation:Ethnography Research On The Economic Life Of Tuanjie Village

The ecological resettlement project in Ningxia is a large-scale migration project that is started by Ningxia government to solve the poverty and ecological problems in southern Ningxia.This resettlement project has achieved some results,but meanwhile,some problems occurred,especially the problems in people's livelihood and acculturation.According to the theories of acculturation,the resettlers have to change the patterns of their life,livelihood and social relations from the original life in mountains to the present life in plains in the process of the resettlement.This means that the villagers have to give up parts of their original culture in order to adapt themselves to the new living environment,thus triggering a series of problems in acculturation,such as the adjustments in livelihood,social relations,identities and psychology.Therefore,it's necessary to focus on the studies on livelihood and acculturation in the academic field of the ecological resettlement.This paper focuses on the resettlers' economic life in Tuanjie Village from the prospect of economic anthropology,applying the method of field work,the most important method in Ethnology.The consumption,production,surplus,cash flows and so on are explored by means of participant observation and depth interviews,and then some discussions are given to the relations between the villagers' economic life and their acculturations.The villagers' family annual income should be higher than their expenses in order to survive in the new living environment.The villagers have lost their originl land in the mountains,so it is impossible for them to practice the self-supporting economy.The income and spending of a family shows in the form of the changes of currency amount,so the writer investigated the minimum living cost in the new village by means of family financial table.Then the writer investigated the villagers' livelihood,that is,how they solve the problems of bread and butter.The paper continues with discussions on the dilemmas in economy and acculturation that the villagers are facing,giving some reflections on the cultural and social significances of this ecological resettlement project,along with its gains and losses.