A Funeral as a Festival: Celebrations of Life in the Mosuo Tribe in China
Feng, Huichao and Xiao, Jieling (2019) A Funeral as a Festival: Celebrations of Life in the Mosuo Tribe in China. Architecture and Culture, 6 (3). ISSN 2050-7828
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Abstract
This article attempts to provoke a discussion concerning the definition and nature of festivals by considering the process of Mosuo funerals in Southwest China as a festival event. The role of women and men in daily life and within the funeral ceremony is discussed – the Mosuo is a matriarchal society – as are the vernacular architectural settings which have evolved for both ritual and everyday activities. The article looks at the religious perception of death in Mosuo culture, which considers funerals as celebrations of a life cycle including birth, growing up and death; through onsite observations, it documents the process of a Mosuo funeral in relation to its physical space. Even though, unlike most other festivals, funerals occur at unpredictable times, it is argued that for the Mosuo the funeral event is also
a festival.
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