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A Case Study of Identity Transformed by Social Space

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A Case Study of Identity Transformed by Social Space Scott Drinkall Lijiang, China 1 Lijiang, China: A Case Study of Identity Transformed by Social Space Space, place, and landscape—including landscapes of leisure and tourism—are not fixed but are in a constant state of transition as a result of continuous, dialectical struggles of power and resistance among and between the diversity of landscape providers, users and mediators. (Aitchison, 1999, 25) Lijiang: A Heritage Site Joseph Rock’s renowned work The Ancient Na-khi Kingdom of Southwest China (1947) provides an historical narrative of the Lijiang district and its geography, boundaries— physical and social—and influences from the surrounding areas. After twelve years of living amongst the Naxi tribe of Yunnan Province, studying their literature and the land they occupy, and collecting copious amounts of Chinese texts (including ancient pictographic manuscripts), Rock produced an extensive and profound three volume series of the Naxi people and the forces that shaped them. This seminal work now provides a contrasting backdrop for investigating the contemporary forces that shape the Naxi identity and how that identity is produced by and reflected on the material and vernacular landscapes of Lijiang, China. Since the early 1990s, notable shifts have taken place in Lijiang on multiple scales producing a ripe environment to illustrate geographic theories in cultural tourism, identity construction, and spatial hegemony. In this setting, various stakeholders—the local Naxi population, domestic and foreign tourists, and the state— coalesce and transform (both socially and physically) a constructed and evolving space worthy of detailed and extensive thought. In Rock’s initial voyage into Lijiang, the entire second chapter of the first volume is devoted to the trek into Lijiang, dramatizing the role of explorer—encountering exotic terrain and peoples. Around that time, the old caravan road Rock traversed was replaced with a “motor-road” with the intent to increase ease of travel. Peter Goullart, in his notable work Forgotten Kingdom (incidentally, dedicated to Rock), likewise devotes a chapter to the “caravan journey to Likiang,” but along the new motor way (the Burma Road). Goullart writes, “[W]e travelled in utter solitude through a rolling country with nothing but forests and great mountains in the distance. Soon, however, the majestic Mount Satseto moved into view, with its glittering glaciers reflected in the beautiful blue lake of Lashiba ….Slowly we climbed up to the gap that led to Likiang” (1957, 12). In lyrical tone, he continues, “I had to dismount and contemplate this scene of paradise. The air was like champagne; the weather, warm but with a tinge of freshness that came from the great Snow Range dominating the valley” (13). Scott Drinkall Lijiang, China 2 Today, the lure of a forgotten kingdom continues to draw outsiders, namely tourists, and modern facilities meet their needs. Perhaps the most luxurious of the hotels is Banyan Tree Lijiang. On its Web site, the five-star hotel harkens to Dr. Joseph Rock’s journey (“whom introduced Lijiang to the West”), proclaiming the historical import of its location: the hotel is located along an intra-providence trade route from Yunnan to Tibet. Banyan Tree Lijiang’s advertisement describes the Lijiang Old Town as an “authentic outpost of Yunnan culture and architecture” (Banyan Tree Lijiang). The journey to the modern outpost, however, is significantly less arduous than in Rock’s or even Goullart’s day, with the Lijiang airport nearby. In 1997, Lijiang (along with forty-five other locales) was designated a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). UNESCO’s official Web site (www.unesco.org) proclaims: The Old Town of Lijiang, which adapted itself harmoniously to the uneven topography of this key commercial and strategic site, has retained an historic townscape of high quality and authenticity. Its architecture is noteworthy for the blending of elements from several cultures that have come together over many centuries. Lijiang also possesses an ancient water-supply system of great complexity and ingenuity that is still functioning effectively. (World Heritage Committee) Partly due to this honor, as well as an emerging domestic tourism industry within China, Lijiang has become a distinguished travel destination, continuing to advance the lure of an authentic-exotic—the mythological narrative. The Naxi The Naxi populate the northwestern part of Yunnan Province and the southwestern part of Sichuan Province, China. Until recently, they have maintained trade links with India and Lhasa, Tibet—their previous homeland. While they are officially categorized as a minority group, they constitute the great majority in Lijiang Naxi autonomous county, in northwestern Yunnan province (White, 2002, 132). One of fifty-six minority groups officially recognized by the Chinese state, they are considered to be a relatively “advanced.” Controversy—mostly confusion—exists in who exactly constitutes the Naxi group, as the national government couples the Mosuo (a matriarchical, ‘fatherless’ society) with the Naxi. Tourist guidebooks and travel agencies perpetuate the confusion, as evidenced by a number of travel Web sites (e.g. Off-The-Beaten-Track.net: Lijiang and Shangri-La). Lijiang Old Town, with its abundance of historic buildings, canal system, and cobblestone streets, has come to represent the everyday urban fabric of the Naxi people. The Naxi have been well studied, and much has been written about the Naxi Scott Drinkall Lijiang, China 3 religion, hieroglyphic script, indigenous music, and art and architecture. The politics of tourism and its transformation on and by agency and the tourism landscape, however, has been neglected, at least in the English language (Su & Teo, 2009, 13). Likewise, the spatial boundaries, such as the line that separates the Old Town from the New City, and the conflicts and collaborations across those boundaries, deserve further attention. Negotiation of Identity in Lijiang Grouping Theory Behind the World Heritage Site rhetoric, the “continuous, dialectical struggles of power and resistance” that Aitchison succinctly conveyed (see epigraph above) are evident in Lijiang, and these struggles have continued to shape both Lijiang and the Naxi minority group who call it home. The forces that shape today’s place and space, however, differ from those of Joseph Rock’s era, as the web of globalization and (international) tourism have dramatically affected, and been affected by, both people and place. While many agencies (and sub-agencies) have impact, three major stakeholders on this pivot point are the state, tourists, and locals. At the onset, however, the term “group” warrants some discussion. Rogers Brubaker (2004), in Ethnicity without Groups, finds a gap in social sciences literature in its inattentiveness to the term (7). He coined this gap groupism, defining it as “the tendency to take discrete, bounded groups as basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis” (8). Even beyond statuses of race, ethnicity, and nationalism, groupism involves combinations of myriad relations, such as religion, minority status, age, and so on (8). Of course, these groups are not bounded, homogenous actors with unified purposes. Analyzing groups in this evolving and fractured frame unfolds a plethora of social theories, including rational choice, game theory, network theory, cognitive theory, feminist theory, and generally an entire constructivist stance about the “fragmentary” and “ephemeral” natures of the boundaries that form/separate those groups (8). Brubaker reifies ethnicity by severing it from the group, creating a discourse that focuses on the processes through which the categories are created and in particular how ‘ethnic’ violence is framed. This spirit of questioning units of analysis should inform further discussion of the interactions among the Naxi, neighboring minority groups, the Han, and Westerners that dominate the cultural literature in the Chinese context. This reification of ethnicity has already been applied in situ. Jan Nijman (2006), in re- categorizing identity in Miami, beyond race, asserts that “in contrast to old notions of identity as singular and fixed, the concept of identity is now argued to be multi- dimensional and naturally in flux. Any individual or group is likely to have a plurality of identities that may be complementary or complete with each other” (177). Drawing upon Scott Drinkall Lijiang, China 4 Appadurai (1990), Nijman repositions ethnic categories to a globalization context, describing an analysis of “ceaseless flows of people, things, money, information, and ideas” resulting in a “restless” landscape and “de-territorialisation” (176). Identity Theory At this juncture, the term of “identity” also warrants discussion. Brubaker and Cooper (2004) argue that the term is “too ambiguous, too torn between ‘hard’ [essentialism] and ‘soft’ [constructivism] meanings, essentialist connotations and constructivist qualifiers, to serve well the demands of social analysis” (29). They find inherent faults with considering identity as ‘fluid’ (ignoring its congealed states) and ‘multiple’ (ignoring the strive for singular identities) and ‘fragmented’, pronouncing the term “heavily burdened” and “deeply ambiguous” (35). As such, they offer three clusters of “less congested” terms: identification and categorization; self-understanding
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