No place for soul calling: Cultural factors affecting post-resettlement housing modification of the Wa ethnic group in China

While planned relocation is increasingly implemented in diverse development contexts across the Global South, the cultural dimension of resettlement housing remains relatively underexplored. This study explores post-resettlement housing modifications and their underlying cultural mechanisms in a Wa ethnic community in Yunnan, China, that transitioned from vernacular dwellings to project-provided housing. Building on Rapoport's framework on culture and the built environment, we conducted an interdisciplinary investigation of 41 houses in the new village through 3D scanning, architectural mapping, statistical analysis, and ethnographic interviews. The findings reveal a 95% rate of structural modification and the universal installation of altars across every occupied household. The most prominent preference is spatial enlargement to accommodate altars, motivated by the need to sustain religious practices, particularly the Wa soul-calling ritual. The findings further reveal the widespread reinstatement of hearths and the reconfiguration of toilets. The study thus identifies three structural types of activity systems— constitutive , compound , and regulated —each marked by a distinct mode of cultural operation that generates a corresponding pattern of post-resettlement negotiation. These patterns constitute what we term post-resettlement vernacularization , through which residents reconstruct spatial conditions that sustain cultural life and substantively address the functional reductionism embedded in housing provision. These findings call for housing-adequacy assessments beyond physical indicators and satisfaction proxies, and contribute an analytical pathway toward enhancing the operationalization of culture by enabling the spatial logic of cultural life to be more effectively identified, diagnosed, and responded to in resettlement practice.