Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (Volume 18) (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes)

Mullaney, Thomas

ISBN 10: 0520272749 / ISBN 13: 9780520272743

Published by University of California Press, 2010

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (Volume 18) (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes)
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520272749
• ISBN 13: 9780520272743
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Thomas S. Mullaney is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.