Coming to terms with the nation : ethnic classification in modern China / Thomas S. Mullaney ; with a foreword by Benedict Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn)

Series:

Asia--local studies/global themes ; 18.

Asia--local studies/global themes ; 18

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Ethnic classification in modern China

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying minzu and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a "scientific" survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities.

Contents:

Identity crisis in postimperial China

Ethnicity as language

Plausible communities

The consent of the categorized

Counting to fifty-six

Conclusion: a history of the future

Appendix A: Ethnotaxonomy of Yunnan, 1951, according to the Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission

Appendix B: Ethnotaxonomy of Yunnan, 1953, according to the Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission

Appendix C: Minzu entries, 1953/1954 census, by population

Appendix D: Classification squads, phases one and two

Appendix E: Population sizes of groups researched during phase one and phase two.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612917882

9781282917880

1282917889

9780520947634

0520947630

OCLC:

695991316