Abstract

Under the globalized new economy, ethnic minority cultural practices are increasingly transformed from symbols of identity and cultural preservation into marketable economic resources. As a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage of the Yi ethnic minority in southwest China, Yi embroidery has become deeply entangled with heritage tourism, cultural industries, and rural revitalization initiatives. Drawing on the theoretical framework of pride and profit (Heller & Duchêne, 2012), the study examines how Yi embroidery is semiotically constructed as ethnic heritage, profitable cultural capital, and gendered labor under neoliberal cultural production. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted periodically between August 2024 and February 2026 in a Yi ethnic community in Yunnan province, data were collected through participant observations, semi-structured interviews, field notes, visual materials and artefacts. Findings indicate that Yi embroidery semiotically constructs Yi ethnic identity through culturally recognizable motifs. Findings also show that Yi embroidery is semiotically commodified as a profitable ethnic cultural IP for heritage tourism and transnational consumer markets. Through processes of resemiotization and recontextualization, traditional motifs are simplified, redesigned, and hybridized with Western aesthetic elements in commercial collaborations, transforming ethnic culture into marketable symbolic capital. The study contributes to the understanding of the increasingly complex power relations and the multiple effects of practices constituting the dynamic shift between resemiotization and recontextualization at the periphery.

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