In State and Ethnicity in China's Southwest, anthropologist Xiaolin Guo sets out to study the history of political integration of two adjacent counties in northwest Yunnan Province, chosen because of their similarities as “frontier” regions (ie, between the traditional Han, Tibetan and Yi polities) and their differences in ethnic composition, environmental economic conditions. One of her main side goals is to critique the theoretical dualities of Han/non-Han and state/society that have emerged in much of the recent literature on Chinese society.

The book is organized in three sections. Chapters one and two provide an introduction to the broader history of the Southwest from the time of the Mongol conquest, and lay out some of the book's key themes – ethnic identity (including contact and assimilation), and differences in kinship and economy. Chapters three and four are studies of two communities (officially “townships”) – one ethnically Mosuo (Yongning) in Ninglang Yi Autonomous County, and the other Han (Jinguan) in Yongsheng County. The final two chapters deal with the political and economic histories of the two counties in their entireties, with particular attention to the role of ethnicity, and how local culture influences the implementation of national policy. Guo's research combines traditional ethnographic methods and a thorough familiarity with published histories, ethnographies, and state documents.

While clearly important as a node in the Imperial system of indirect rule using appointed “native chiefs” (tusi), the choice of the Yongning basin and its Mosuo inhabitants as exemplary of frontier society is questionable. With their strong links to Tibetan Buddhist institutions (but with stay-at-home, non-celibate monks), and increasingly famous system of matrilineal kinship with visiting sexual relationships, the Mosuo (a.k.a. ‘Na’) are atypical of the region's many Tibeto-Burman groups. The Mosuo population and area of habitation is also quite small compared to their Pumi (classified as Tibetans across the border in Sichuan), Naxi, and especially Yi (sub-group Nuosu) neighbours, who have long held de facto political control in the broader region.

Guo's depiction of Mosuo society is somewhat monochromatic. Household size and composition, kinship practices and sexual relations (including marriage) – which vary not only across classes, but also regionally (ie, outside the Yongning basin, as discussed by Weng, Shih, and others), receive scant attention in her account, as does the presence of some cultural features identified as ‘Mosuo’ among neighboring groups – especially Naxi and Pumi/Tibetans – with whom they have deep relations (for contrast, see work by Harrell, Wellens, and this reviewer). Guo's comparisons between modern Mosuo and ancient Qiang are methodologically untenable.

While the Mosuo in Guo's account appear exotic, the Han of Jinguan are largely unremarkable from the standpoint of Han cultural institutions, with the notable exception of zhaipo – unmarried daughters who assume household leadership from their parents – whose prevalence and possible connections with Mosuo matriliny are unclear. Descendants of Ming soldiers garrisoned in the basin because of its value as a defensive position (protecting Dali to the south) and a transportation node for Yunnan–Sichuan trade, the Han population (originally Hunanese) by-and-large supports religious, marriage, kinship and household institutions similar to Han in other areas of Yunnan, and to some of their more Sinicized neighbours – especially Naxi in the Lijiang basin, and Bai in Dali and Jianchuan. Guo's repeated reference to the literature on Han kinship, lineage, and household structure from Southeast China (Guangdong and Fujian) to highlight differences in Jinguan Han social organization (namely, weak patrilineages) only confuses things. The extended corporate patrilineages of the Southeast, and their associated deep ancestral cults, have long been recognized as regionally specific.

The real strength of Guo's work comes in the fifth and sixth chapters, where she focuses on political integration in the two counties, and its impact on economic development. She underlines the communist strategy of relying on indigenous elites to govern in minority areas – drawing a parallel to the imperial institution of “native chiefs” – and provides a sensitive account of how difficult and valuable to both local community and the state the job of low-level minority cadre can be (ie, balancing directives from above with incompatible cultural institutions below). In the mix, state policies are often amended and sometimes flatly ignored. On the other hand, I would question her assertion that “ethnicity does not constitute a basis of political factions in government offices” (p. 234). Tensions between Mosuo and Yi in Ninglang – over the question of tourism, for example – are pronounced, and often voiced in ethnic terms.

The political and economic pictures Guo paints of Yongsheng are broadly transferable to many of the mid-elevation basins of Yunnan, and quite valuable in that respect. Han political supremacy and regular government administration are centuries old, and while double cropping of rice has traditionally provided a decent subsistence for small-hold farmers, it does not allow for much “development” nowadays. As elsewhere in Yunnan, there was a big push in the 1980s and 1990s to develop tobacco as a cash crop, but the market has proved undependable, leading to resistance from farmers often labelled as “conservative.” Recent attempts to develop tourism in Yongsheng on the models of Lijiang and Xianggelila (Shangrila) counties – including ethnic exoticism (we are descendant from “Han fathers and Yi mothers”) – have not yet yielded significant results.

An important point Guo makes with respect to economic development in both Ninglang and Yongsheng counties is the increasing reliance on state subsidies. With the national push to “open up the West” (xibu da kaifa) starting in 2000, money has been flowing into the region. The label of “poverty-stricken county” has opened the doors to many new projects, but also brought about new problems, including waste from expanding bureaucracies, and the (sometimes gross) misappropriation of state funds.

Guo's attempt to simultaneously explicate cultural, political and economic differences over such a long historical frame in two such culturally and environmentally different areas is ambitious and highly commendable, but not entirely successful. There are a lot of variables, and how they should be weighted is debatable. Guo emphasizes environmental factors. She regards the reliance on livestock (with more limited agriculture) and trade in the cooler, higher Yongning basin as leading to a need for diversified labour, which in turn she links to the relatively large size, matrilineal structure, and unusual sexual and residence patterns of Mosuo households. By contrast, it is the availability of productive rice land and water in the lower, warmer Jinguan basin that has allowed the area's Han population to develop in the direction of small, self-sufficient, nuclear households, for whom a reliance on extended patrilineal networks is less pronounced than in Southeast China. While I would certainly agree that environment has a strong influence over the traditional economies of these two basins, Guo's claim that the specific social organizational features of the resident communities are largely a response to environment is undermined by examples of similar areas along the Sino-Tibetan frontier in which very different forms of social organization occur.

State and Society in Southwest China is a brave undertaking – sophisticated in conception, and rich in ethnographic, political and economic detail – that will reward a wide range of social scientists and historians concerned with ethnic and political processes along China's southwest frontier. Minor weaknesses that arise from the sheer scale of the project are more than compensated up for by its value in debunking the received wisdom that frontier politics in China are, or ever have been, based on a simple opposition between Han and non-Han peoples, or local society and the state.