Yu Luo
Yu Luo (B.A. in Environmental Economics, Beijing University; M.Phil and Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology, Yale University) is the Suzanne Wilson Barnett Chair in Contemporary China Studies at the University of Puget Sound. She was an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong from 2017 to 2021 and a 2016–2017 postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California Berkeley. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Guizhou, her research examines conservation and development in multiethnic southwest China. Her interests broadly include ethnicity and environment, heritage and tourism, Asian borderlands, and the China-Africa nexus.
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Papers by Yu Luo
valorizing core features similar to those of “indigeneity,” including cultural distinctiveness and
environmental stewardship of ethnic, rural peoples. “Yuanshengtai” stands to deflect attention
away from historically and politically contentious issues and transnational claims for rights that
would call for official recognition of “indigenous peoples” by the Chinese state. Such a
romanticized rhetoric instead helps reassert the polyethnic nation’s worthiness, mostly through
cultural industries since the early 2000s. This article, based on interpretive readings and
ethnographic observation, zeroes in on the example of Guizhou to explore how “yuanshengtai”
has been widely constructed as an emergent eco-cultural brand through a combination of
academic forums, media events and cultural industry promotions. It argues that the construction
and promulgation of “yuanshengtai” allows regional elites to reiterate local uniqueness and
provincial identity while embracing state agenda and global aspiration, precisely because
“yuanshengtai” hinges upon the state-market mechanism in contemporary China.
Books by Yu Luo
To the extent that ethnic minorities have been the symbolic placeholders for the Other in China, close, historically contextualized interpretive readings are required to identify just what it is that they contrast. The counterpart of minorities has been commonly amalgamated into the monolith Han/state/urban/intellectual/elite/ masculine/modern/civilized/center, and so on. This implies a complementary signifying chain in which representations of the non-Han would bundle the feminine, the natural, the primitive and myriad other associated attributes. But when these characteristics appear constant over time, what keeps them in place? And alternately, what allows for exceptions and mutations in the signifying chain? Who, exactly, is doing the Othering? When minorities represent themselves, what is reworked and what is reiterated from dominant culture? These questions are engaged in the following pages, along with contributions from Luo Yu on yuanshengtai (原生态) and on relevant mainland scholarship, concluding with an intimation of a rising post-alteric imaginary.
valorizing core features similar to those of “indigeneity,” including cultural distinctiveness and
environmental stewardship of ethnic, rural peoples. “Yuanshengtai” stands to deflect attention
away from historically and politically contentious issues and transnational claims for rights that
would call for official recognition of “indigenous peoples” by the Chinese state. Such a
romanticized rhetoric instead helps reassert the polyethnic nation’s worthiness, mostly through
cultural industries since the early 2000s. This article, based on interpretive readings and
ethnographic observation, zeroes in on the example of Guizhou to explore how “yuanshengtai”
has been widely constructed as an emergent eco-cultural brand through a combination of
academic forums, media events and cultural industry promotions. It argues that the construction
and promulgation of “yuanshengtai” allows regional elites to reiterate local uniqueness and
provincial identity while embracing state agenda and global aspiration, precisely because
“yuanshengtai” hinges upon the state-market mechanism in contemporary China.
To the extent that ethnic minorities have been the symbolic placeholders for the Other in China, close, historically contextualized interpretive readings are required to identify just what it is that they contrast. The counterpart of minorities has been commonly amalgamated into the monolith Han/state/urban/intellectual/elite/ masculine/modern/civilized/center, and so on. This implies a complementary signifying chain in which representations of the non-Han would bundle the feminine, the natural, the primitive and myriad other associated attributes. But when these characteristics appear constant over time, what keeps them in place? And alternately, what allows for exceptions and mutations in the signifying chain? Who, exactly, is doing the Othering? When minorities represent themselves, what is reworked and what is reiterated from dominant culture? These questions are engaged in the following pages, along with contributions from Luo Yu on yuanshengtai (原生态) and on relevant mainland scholarship, concluding with an intimation of a rising post-alteric imaginary.