About the Author

Chuan-kang Shih teaches Anthropology and Asian Studies at the University of Florida.

Reviews

"In Quest for Harmony Shih painstakingly uses historical records, earlier untranslated work of Chinese ethnographers, and his own fieldwork, ongoing since 1987, to argue that the highest Moso goal was household harmony ... Quest for Harmony, the definitive Moso ethnography, is essential for scholars seriously interested in comparative family systems and women's rights." - Nancy S. Netting, Journal of Comparative Family Studies "The scholarship in this work is superb. Shih has an excellent command of the relevant Chinese and foreign language sources on the Moso which, combined with his exhaustive fieldwork over two decades, makes this the most stimulating and complete treatment of Moso social organization in any language. From the mountains of southwest China, it raises questions about the nature and universality of marriage, sex and gender that will challenge anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and students of gender studies for years to come." - Charles McKhann, Whitman College "Quest for Harmony is a painstaking investigation of a system of sexual union that Clifford Geertz called "a hippie dream or Falwell's nightmare." Shih's careful account of pre-1956 Moso society and his detailed comparison of variations on the Moso visiting system set his book apart from all other ethnographies of Moso kinship. This book should help us finally decide if Moso have invented a unique arrangement that will upend our ideas about kinship." - Erik Mueggler, University of Michigan