Abstract
My MA thesis is an ethnographic study of the Northern Wa that explores the cultural continuities between botanical knowledge, gender relations, and kinship. More specifically, my thesis is a description and analysis of how house architecture in general and house 'planting' (e.g. house building) in particular are imaged in terms of the botanical tree 'tip'/'root' (bai/dun) pair and where the logic of this pairing organizes both gender and kinship relations. The Wa house is organized around a married couple who set up their house at their marriage and where all their children, except the oldest son, establish their own house when they eventually marry. Two distinct flows of vital essence are made to intersect when 'planting' a new house (sum nyiiex sog) in order to make it 'live'. (The situation for the house of the eldest son is the same as for the new houses described immediately below except that the married couple succeeds the parents of that eldest son.) The first flow is a male-force (si miex), which enters the new house by the parents 'blessing' (nbuan) their son and daughter in-law. The male-force is thus passed down the generations from a parental (extent) house to a married son's house. The second flow of the vital essence is a female-force (si nbun), which enters the new house by a ritual specialist (an jian) 'recalling the vital female-force' (goug kuan) from the wife's natal house. The female-force is thus passed down the generations through daughters marrying virilocally in alternate generations between the cadet houses of the two original extent houses. This ideal is expressed both terminologically and behaviorally in the MB having the same term as WF and in encouraging FZD/MBS marriage. This form of marriage restricts the circulation of male- and female-force of the vital essence. The botanical 'tip'/'root' model is made to encompass FZD/MBS marriage. The wife of that new house is referred to reciprocally by both her own F and her MB/HF as a 'returning root child'. By extension the botanical 'tip'/'root' model is also made to encompass the relationship of founder house to all other village houses. The founder house is located next to the village 'ritual center' (nyiiex six lah) at the heart of the village. However, since the vital force is always and only reproduced through the two above mentioned flows of male- and female-forces, this means that the village is encompassed at contrasting but complimentary levels within the house of the founder and within the other houses of the village. The rest of my thesis explores critically the implications of my study of the northern Wa house for the anthropological literature on the house and especially so for the house in Southeast Asia.