Foreword by Stevan Harrell

Preface

Acknowledgments

On Language and Orthography

Map of Research Area in Southwest China

Map of Bustling Township

Introduction

1. Muli: The Political Integration of a Lama Kingdom

2. Bustling Township: A Muli Township in the Post-Mao Era

3. The Premi House: Ritual and Relatedness

4. Premi Cosmology: Ritual and the State

5. Modernity in Yunnan: Religion and the Pumizu

Conclusion

Epilogue

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

This full-length study of the Premi, the first in a language other than Chinese, makes a valuable contribution to our ethnographic knowledge of Southwest China, as well as to our understanding of contemporary Chinese religious and cultural politics.

Koen Wellens is a researcher in the China Program of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.