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Du Shanshan. - Chopsticks only work in pairs: gender unity and gender equality among the Lahu of southwest China. Columbia University Press. 2002.
In the best tradition of the anthropological literature Du Shanshan studies in depth to Lahu de Yunnan, discovering for the scientific community and the public in general, what it had spent unnoticed for the numerous ethnologists who have dealt with the Lahu before her.
His interest in the Lahu began on having discovered the high proportion of suicides that was taking place between his young people. From here on, the authoress is investigating every time in major depth the culture and the symbolic life of the Lahu, thinking that it is high suicides proportion stems from the contradictions that a society based on a concept is experiencing diádico of genre equality.
This concept diádico of the society lahu, different from the opposition between put up in the theory of the yin-yang of the Chinese mentality, expresses to itself in the proverb lahu: "The toothpicks only are employed at the pairs."
Analyzing the society lahu from this new point of view, Du Shanshan discovers that the concept diádico of the existence penetrates every activity in the traditional society lahu. From the same beginning of his mythical history, like sample his myth "Muphamipha" where his deity diádica celestial XeulSha (XeulYad de facto and ShaYad) do the sky and the ground create joined, as well as the first couple of human beings on her.
Everything in the Lahu world takes existence as a part of a pair. Every person is not considered to be a part of the society until it turns into half of a pair diádico. That's why, between the Lahu, the step rite coincides with the same wedding, which logically has two parallel ceremonies. One in the house of the fiancée and other one in that of the fiancé.
The pair that is constructed during the wedding, will have to remain joined forever. Even in another world the couple will remain close. A world that in turn pairs off like a half with the world of the living beings. His funeral ceremonies have good taken care in showing this belief.
Between the Lahu, the aspects of the life more commonly associated with a genre, they are even shared by husband and wife. The pregnancy only the women realize it for expediency, but not because there is something in the body of the men that it prevents. The whole process of pregnancy, childbearing and upbringing tasks shared by both are, between them. The different types of leadership in the villages, they are even shared by a couple where the woman and the man have the same importance.
In fact, Du Shanshan discovers between the Lahu, a society where the finished genre equality still survives in the first years of XXIst century.
This vision of the society lahu, hidden to the eyes of many investigators before her, shows a hope beam for the slightly well-known world of the ethnic groups of China. We hope that a scientific, free approach of the political prejudices that have distorted most of the investigations of last decades, should allow to show to the interested readership, the surprising societies developed by the ethnic groups who live inside China.
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