Down to earth : the territorial bond in South China / edited by David Faure, Helen F. Siu.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Helen F. Siu and David Faure -- Lineage on the sands : the case of Shawan / Liu Zhiwei -- Territorial community at the town of Lubao, Sanshui County, from the Ming Dynasty / Luo Yixing -- Ordination names in Hakka genealogies : a religious practice and its decline / Chan Wing-Hoi -- Notes on the territorial connections of the Dan / Ye Xian'en -- Notes and impressions of the Cheung Chau community / James Hayes -- Reinforcing ethnicity : the Jiao Festival in Cheung Chau / Choi Chi-Cheung -- The alliance of ten : settlement and politics in the Sha Tau Kok area / Patrick Hase --Lineage socialism and community control : Tangang Xiang in the 1920s and 1930s / David Faure -- Subverting lineage power : local bosses and territorial control in the 1940s / Helen F. Siu -- Conclusion : History and anthropology / Helen F. Siu and David Faure.

Bringing local history to bear on major questions in Chinese social history and anthropology, this volume comprises a series of historical and ethnographic studies of the Pearl River Delta from late imperial times through the 1940's. The delta is a rich and socially complex area of south China, and the contributors - scholars from the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States - have long-standing ties to the region.

The contributors argue that local society in the Delta was integrated into the Chinese state through a series of changes that involved constant redefinition of lineages, territories, and ethnic identities. The emergence of lineages in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the deployment of deities in local alliances, and the shrewd use of ethnic labels provided terms for a discourse that reified the criteria for membership in Chinese local society. The ideology produced by these developments continued to serve as the norm for the legitimation of power in local society through the Republican period.

In reconstructing the 'civilizing process' in the Delta, whereby local inhabitants, both elites and commoners, used symbolic and instrumental means to become part of Chinese culture and polity, the book confronts a central question in history and anthropology: How do we conceptualize the historical development of a state agrarian society with hierarchies of power and authority, attachment to which is both unifying and diversifying?