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| [a] Renewal RF |
If you can make it to the end of this post, you'll be rewarded with a retelling of the Ballad of Mulan (next week) that brings our understanding to new levels.
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| [b] Gathering RF |
After describing in detail the architectural and seasonal
solidity of the family grouping—and then proceeding to describe the deep
integration of the village unit (stretching credulity with fathers and uncles,
mothers and aunts, speaking as one)—Granet reaches the key point in his early analysis:
a social unit of such simplicity cannot survive because it is incapable of
renewing itself. Let's say that again. No basic kinship group can survive without renewal. Fundamental renewal. Unless the little backwater family wants to become a kind of royal family (with historically and genetically disastrous results), they had better bring in some new blood.
Of course, we think first of inbreeding. Farmers have understood this concept since the first coyote started eating "dog food"...and the pooches started to show a little more diversity. You see, the renewal called for here goes far beyond the common forms that we think about when our only focus is merely practical. Granet argues here for more than a little fresh conversation around the kitchen table and the avoidance of awkward tics. Society must renew and regenerate, just as the soil and the seasons must do the same. Granet stresses this point from start to finish.
The large undivided family, which, as the days went by, was self-sufficient
Of course, we think first of inbreeding. Farmers have understood this concept since the first coyote started eating "dog food"...and the pooches started to show a little more diversity. You see, the renewal called for here goes far beyond the common forms that we think about when our only focus is merely practical. Granet argues here for more than a little fresh conversation around the kitchen table and the avoidance of awkward tics. Society must renew and regenerate, just as the soil and the seasons must do the same. Granet stresses this point from start to finish.
The large undivided family, which, as the days went by, was self-sufficient
and lived in isolation, was, however, neither completely
independent nor
always closed. The
alternating distribution of work went with a strong
opposition between the
sexes expressed also by the prohibition on marriage
within the group of
kinsmen.
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| [c] Communal RF |
How did Chinese peasant villages, in Granet’s idealized recreation of the world of his sources, create social exchange and renewal? The brief answer lies in trading half of the village’s children in each generation to other villages and integrating their children into the domestic unit. The social structural necessity of this arrangement should not mask its pain for individuals and families. Many sources speak to the misery of young women leaving their families and villages to become daughters-in-law. Even twentieth-century accounts show similar themes. Necessity does not equal ease, and exchange was accompanied in many cases by great pain.
In each generation one half of the children, all those of one sex, had to
leave the familial village to go to marry into a neighboring
village, being
exchanged against a group of young people of the same sex and of
another
name. It is possible that the
exchange was in the first place of boys…But
from the time that the texts inform
us directly, the exchange was of girls:
the most pathetic plaint in the old
songs is that of the bride forced to go to
live in a strange village.
Regeneration comes from a mixing of names even more than
it comes from a mixing of blood. The
most idealistic picture has the young women of one village bringing new life—on
numerous levels—to what was a closed system of gender-divided labor and a
single surname. Regeneration, even at its most orderly, is as
painful as it is necessary; it requires crossing, whether that be on the plane
of fields of crops or marriage exchange.
The essential point was that marriage was made by a crossing of families,
The essential point was that marriage was made by a crossing of families,
just as the field were made by a crossing of
furrows. By this practice each
hamlet
received a group of hostages from a neighbor and in turn furnished it
with one. These periodic exchanges, by which a family
group obtained
pledges giving it a hold upon another group, also caused a
foreign influence
permanently to penetrate its inner life. They made evident the dependence
of the
domestic communities and the supremacy of the local community, a
wider grouping
of another kind.
“Caus[ing] a foreign influence permanently to penetrate its inner life,” the closed domestic order grudgingly (and of necessity) welcomes “foreign influence.” It is not done happily on either end. One village gives up its young women and receives another group whose members were influenced by “foreign” ways. Neither village is as inviting as it might imagine itself, and precisely because each is dominated by an “in-group” mentality. Ultimately, the domestic group is dependent upon these exchanges because they create something larger—for Granet, “society” itself—through the alliances that are formed.
This exchange and renewal is the Mulan legend, to which we now turn. Disney doesn't have a clue.
“Caus[ing] a foreign influence permanently to penetrate its inner life,” the closed domestic order grudgingly (and of necessity) welcomes “foreign influence.” It is not done happily on either end. One village gives up its young women and receives another group whose members were influenced by “foreign” ways. Neither village is as inviting as it might imagine itself, and precisely because each is dominated by an “in-group” mentality. Ultimately, the domestic group is dependent upon these exchanges because they create something larger—for Granet, “society” itself—through the alliances that are formed.
This exchange and renewal is the Mulan legend, to which we now turn. Disney doesn't have a clue.
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