Competition for males led to the belief in witches in Chinese society
Anthropologists from Britain and China was watching relationships of people in a small Chinese community, which is divided into two groups: the “witches” and “non-witches”. And found out that the deep reason for the stigmatization of “witch” — the competition between women.
Empirical data that would show how the label of “witch” structure relations in real communities, very little, although belief in witches and sorcerers are still exist in archaic communities, for example in some areas of China and Africa.
Scientists have studied a small community, Mosuo in a rural area of China, which consists of 800 households. The main occupation of its inhabitants is agriculture. Families help each other during planting and harvest, together they build houses, donate money for the funeral of other members of the community.
A curious feature of the family unit, mowa — traditional guest marriage. A man usually comes to his wife only at night and in the morning returns home. With the formalization of a relationship a man can eat my wife and give gifts to her family members. The children live with the mother and her family. With this arrangement, the sisters and their children usually live as one family, with them spend the whole day their brothers.