Hmong Studies Journal (Jul 2020)
The Gu: An Anthropological Viewpoint on the Stigmatization of the Miao-Yao People
Abstract
The Gu in Chinese “蛊”, is a kind of witchcraft. There are still some unfounded rumors that the keepers of the Gu gather hundreds of worms and perform magic arts in order to murder for gain. However, as it coincided with the southern environment, local diseases and regional culture, from the Sui and Tang dynasties on, it came to be regarded as an evil custom peculiar to some areas of southern China. With the gradual development of the South, the scope of the legendary “Gu” moved south as mainstream culture expanded into the southern regions of China; as far as Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and the Southwest, the south of the Yangtze River. Rather than being a simple matter of witchcraft, “Gu” embodies the self-centered, beggar-thy-neighbor way in which the ruling clique imagines and constructs the other. Consequently, the ruling group imagined and constructed the boundary between mainstream society and the marginalized society of “Gu”, in order to maximize national resources and power and the high integration of its own society, while excluding those societies who still practiced the “Gu”. Step by step, the ethnic group accused of having the “Gu” thus internalized and absorbed the stigma imposed onto them by mainstream society, reflecting the subtleties that exist, such as stigma, within marginalized cultures who must confront the dominant culture.
