GROWING OLD WITH DAUGHTERS: AGING, CARE, AND CHANGE IN THE MATRILOCAL FAMILY SYSTEM IN RURAL TIBET by JING WANG Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August, 2018 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Jing Wang candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy*. Committee Chair Melvyn C. Goldstein Committee Member Vanessa Hildebrand Committee Member Lihong Shi Committee Member Peter Yang Date of Defense June 6th, 2018 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. To My Parents TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents .............................................................................................. i List of Tables .................................................................................................... ii Acknoledgements ............................................................................................ iii List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................ vi Abstract ......................................................................................................... vii Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter Two: Field Site and Research Methods .............................................. 29 Chapter Three: Family, Marriage, and Household Economics .......................... 63 Chapter Four: Living Arrangements, Filial Piety, and the Status of the Elderly .... ..................................................................................................................... 121 Chapter Five: The Protective Mechanisms of the Matrilocal Family System for the Elderly Well-Being .................................................................................. 166 Chapter Six: Conclusion ................................................................................ 196 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 204 i LIST OF TABLES Table 2–1 Demographics and Landholding 2015 ................................................ 46 Table 3–1 Marital Status of Villagers Aged 30 and Above 2015 ......................... 67 Table 3–2 Landholding Neolocal vs. Inherited Households 2015 ....................... 75 Table 3–3 Marriage Types 2015 .......................................................................... 80 Table 3–4 Post-marital Residence 2015 .............................................................. 88 Table 3–5 Post-marital Residence Across Age Group 2015 ................................ 89 Table 3–6 Household Structure and Size 2015 ................................................... 93 Table 3–7 Mean and Median Income 2015 ......................................................... 97 Table 3–8 Family Structure and Economic Stratification 2015 ........................... 98 Table 3–9 “Going for Income” 2015 .................................................................. 100 Table 3–10 Household Headship of Dekyi, 2015 .............................................. 112 Table 3–11 Adult Male Presence and Migration Status 2015 .......................... 116 Table 4–1 Living Arrangements of the Elderly Parents in 2015 ........................ 127 Table 4–2 Headship among Households with Elderly 2015 .............................. 143 Table 4–3 Pension Management Arrangements in Dekyi in 2015 ................... 144 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of my dissertation committee members for their steadfast support through graduate school. My advisor and gen-la, Melvyn C. Goldstein-la, has been especially encouraging and understanding at every stage of this work, for which I am deeply grateful. I am extremely fortunate to receive rigorous training and valuable guidance from him over the years. I thank Vanessa Hildebrand for her warm encouragement, passionate support, and insightful feedback. I always feel energized after our interactions. I have also benefited enormously from numerous conversations with Lihong Shi and I appreciate the rich and thoughtful comments she has given me. I thank Peter Yang for agreeing to be my committee member and for providing fresh and actionable feedback. I am grateful to my Tibetan gen-la, Tsewang Namgyal Shelling-la. Unwaveringly generous, compassionate, and patient, he taught me Tibetan language and helped me navigate the Tibetan culture. I thank Cynthia M. Beall for always giving me the greatest advice and fresh insights. And I thank Katia Almeida for her enthusiastic support, advice, and encouragement. iii I thank the Anthropology Department of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Wadsworth Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship, and Dissertation Seminar Fellowship, and the Eva L. Pancoast Memorial Fellowship for providing funding to support my research. I am grateful for the support and friendship provided by professors, colleagues and friends at CWRU have provided me through graduate school. Ariel Cascio was my "buddy" when I first came to the department and has become a wonderful friend ever since. I thank Ariel Cascio for her sense of humor, wisdom, and support. I am grateful to Jonathan Metcalfe for taking extreme trouble to help me and being unfailingly supportive. I thank Stephanie McClure, Laura Howard, and Smaranda Ene for good memories in Cleveland. Yunzhu Chen and I have become each other's dissertation buddy and I thank her for keeping me motivated. I am also thankful to Chunden-la for feeding me delicious Tibetan food when I miss it and for her support throughout my years in Cleveland. I thank my friend, Janice Cogger, for her love, insights and passionate expressions of support. And I am grateful to Savery and Loius Rorimer for generously sharing their home with me and introducing me a new perspective on life in Cleveland. iv My deepest gratitude goes to the many people in Tibet whom I am not able to name here—friends, mentors, and particularly the villagers who participated in my research—who went out of their way to help me and make this work possible. I am humbled by their compassion. I thank Kate Mason for inspiring me to study anthropology in the first place and for being not only a superb friend, but an exceptional mentor with her thoughtful advice and enormous support and friendship. I am grateful to Denise Ho for her unceasing encouragement and guidance that were tremendously valuable in helping me navigate graduate school and beyond. I also thank Margaret for her friendship, warmth, enthusiasm, advice, and all the good recipes I have learned from her that keep me happy and content. I thank Chen Wei for her delightful friendship since college and generous support during my fieldwork, assisting me financially, bringing me delicious snacks, and helping me throw a fantastic farewell party in the village I studied. I thank my gang in Lhasa—Mary, Kunsang, Lobsang, and Xiaoqi—for their companion and friendship. My biggest debt of gratitude goes to my family members whose love I can never repay. v LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS CCP Chinese Communist Party ch. in Chinese FHH Female Head of Household HH Household Head PLA People's Liberation Army PRC People's Republic of China TAR Tibet Autonomous Region tib. in Tibetan vi Growing Old with Daughters: Aging, Care, and Change in the Matrilocal Family System in Rural Tibet Abstract By JING WANG Based on 18 months of fieldwork conducted in Dekyi, a matrilocal village in Phenpo County in Tibet Autonomous Region, China, this dissertation ethnographically examines the aging experiences of the elderly in the matrilocal family system amidst rapid socioeconomic transformation. This dissertation is one of the first few studies that present data on the matrilocal family system in Tibet. Despite the socioeconomic changes that tended to erode the care the elderly in patrilocal areas receive, the elderly in Dekyi have been spared some of the negative impacts induced by such changes. Especially revealing was that while only half of the Dekyi elderly had control over economic vii resources, all of the elderly were satisfied with the care they received from their co-residing children and children-in-law and were content with their situations. Villagers claimed that their fortunate lots were precisely due to their matrilocal practice in which they kept their daughters at home instead of sons. As a result of the matrilocal practice, the elderly would receive care from their own daughters, who were considered to be more caring than sons and daughters-in-law. The data collected lent support to this claim, but also revealed a more complex picture. That is, daughters' desired care was made possible through the protective mechanisms of the matrilocal family system that tended to foster women-headed and conflicts-free households. On the one hand, as household heads, the daughters controlled household income, which gave them economic power to provide for their parents materially and financially. On the other hand, the matrilocal households tended to have fewer family conflicts than the patrilocal households did due to the less pronounced parent- and son-in-law conflicts. As a result, the elderly in matrilocal households experienced harmony and security, which were essential to their psychological well-being. Moreover, friendly