A prosaic state? Development visions, banal state encounters and indigenous politics in south-west China

Abstract

This article examines state–society relations expressed in the politics of land in Lugu Lake, south-west China, inhabited by an ethnic group called Mosuo. Since the 1980s, Mosuo people have spearheaded successive waves of construction booms in the lakeshore lands to enliven a grassroots tourism economy, while economic empowerment has played a key role in reviving traditional household organization, familial relations and cultural practices. However, since the early 2000s, grassroots development initiatives have been subject to increasingly stringent regulation imposed by the local state, on the ground of conserving the natural environment and protecting the cultural authenticity of built environments. Based on this case study, this article aims to enrich our understandings of how the state and society are contingently constituted amidst indigenous development. It does so by arguing for: (1) the ambivalence, multiplicity and uncertainty of the state; (2) the articulations of capitalist ethos, communal interests and moral values in grassroots development practices; and (3) the contestations and tensions among competing development visions, a concept that we elaborate here. Engaging with the notion of the prosaic state, this study pays special attention to the banal encounters through which local Mosuo people make sense of statecraft and state power.