Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China

Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China PDF Author: Wei Wang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000412881
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Based on three years of fieldwork in Zhanli, a remote Kam Village in Guizhou Province, Wang and Jiang explore the complex dynamics between the discursive practices of the local government and the villagers in relation to the reconstruction of Kam identity in response to social change, particularly the rise of rural tourism. China’s profound demographic and socio-economic transformation has intensified the dominance of Han culture and language and seriously challenged the traditional cultures in ethnic minority areas. The authors draw on multiple empirical sources, including in-depth interviews with Kam villagers and local officials, field observations, media discourse, local archives and government documents. They present an engaging account of the significant compromises that government and villagers have made in relation to ethnic identity in the name of economic development, and of the tensions and struggles that characterise the ongoing process of ethnic identity reconstruction. Students and researchers in sociolinguistics, ethnography, and discourse studies, especially those with an interest in Chinese discourse, and everyone interested in issues around ethnicity (minzu) issues in China, will find this book a valuable resource.

Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China

Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China PDF Author: Wei Wang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000412938
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Based on three years of fieldwork in Zhanli, a remote Kam Village in Guizhou Province, Wang and Jiang explore the complex dynamics between the discursive practices of the local government and the villagers in relation to the reconstruction of Kam identity in response to social change, particularly the rise of rural tourism. China’s profound demographic and socio-economic transformation has intensified the dominance of Han culture and language and seriously challenged the traditional cultures in ethnic minority areas. The authors draw on multiple empirical sources, including in-depth interviews with Kam villagers and local officials, field observations, media discourse, local archives and government documents. They present an engaging account of the significant compromises that government and villagers have made in relation to ethnic identity in the name of economic development, and of the tensions and struggles that characterise the ongoing process of ethnic identity reconstruction. Students and researchers in sociolinguistics, ethnography, and discourse studies, especially those with an interest in Chinese discourse, and everyone interested in issues around ethnicity (minzu) issues in China, will find this book a valuable resource.

People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China

People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China PDF Author: David O’Brien
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811937761
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In one of the only works drawing on interviews with both Uyghurs and Han in Xinjiang, China, and postcolonial perspectives on ethnicity, nation, and race, this book explores how forms of banal racism underpin ideas of self and other, assimilation and modernisation, in this restive region. Significant international attention has condemned the CCP’s use of forced internment in ‘re-education’ camps, as well as its campaign of cultural assimilation. In this wider context, this book focuses upon the ways in which ethnic difference is writ through the banalities of everyday life: who one trusts, what one eats, where one shops, even what time one’s clocks are set to (Xinjiang being perhaps one of the only places where different ethnic groups live by different time-zones). Alongside chapters focusing upon the coercive ‘re-education’ campaign, and the devastating Ürümchi Riots in 2009, this book also unpacks how discourses of Chinese nationalism romanticise empire and promote racialised ways of thinking about Chineseness, how cultural assimilation (‘Sinicisation’) is being justified through the rhetoric of ‘modernisation’, how Islamic sites and Uyghur culture are being secularised and commodified for tourist consumption. We also explore Uyghur and Han perspectives, including of each other, giving insight into the diversity of opinions within both groups. Based on many years of living and working in China, and fieldwork and interviews specifically in Xinjiang, this book will be valuable to a variety of readers interested in the region and Uyghur and Han identity, ethnic/national identities in contemporary China, and racisms in non-western contexts.

The Kam People of China

The Kam People of China PDF Author: D. Norman Geary
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780700715015
Category : Dong (Chinese people)
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The Kam are still essentially a 'hidden people' - very little has been published in English about them. This book aims to fill a gap in the English literature, by providing a comprehensive introduction to Kam culture. The conclusion looks to the future for the Kam people and their culture.

Corporate Women in Contemporary China

Corporate Women in Contemporary China PDF Author: Xinyan Peng
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000577066
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Based on extensive, multi-sited ethnographic research, this book focuses on the culture of work in today’s urban China and on how it has permeated beyond the workplace to shape bodily training, family life, and kinship and social relationships among white-collar women in their twenties and thirties. Facing challenges to cope with the increasingly intensified dual burden of work and family, whitecollar women are not turning their backs on their jobs but are turning their bodies and homes into work. In an era when the state and society heighten pressure on individual young women’s productivity and reproductivity at the same time, the book examines how white-collar women seek to protect their right to work, embody a work ethic, and make their reproductive life a productive domain. Integrating studies of labor, the body, gender, and kinship, this book shows how the ethics and strictly defined discipline of hard work and overtime work are transposed from the office cubicle to the gym and home. It thereby demonstrates how the emergence, embodiment, and extension of a work culture perpetuate the hegemony of the work ethic, and how they have exerted a profound impact on women’s bodies, selves, and lives.

Contesting Chineseness

Contesting Chineseness PDF Author: Chang-Yau Hoon
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813360968
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Combining a historical approach of Chineseness and a contemporary perspective on the social construction of Chineseness, this book provides comparative insights to understand the contingent complexities of ethnic and social formations in both China and among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. This book focuses on the experiences and practices of these people, who as mobile agents are free to embrace or reject being defined as Chinese by moving across borders and reinterpreting their own histories. By historicizing the notion of Chineseness at local, regional, and global levels, the book examines intersections of authenticity, authority, culture, identity, media, power, and international relations that support or undermine different instances of Chineseness and its representations. It seeks to rescue the present from the past by presenting case studies of contingent encounters that produce the ideas, practices, and identities that become the categories nations need to justify their existence. The dynamic, fluid representations of Chineseness illustrate that it has never been an undifferentiated whole in both space and time. Through physical movements and inherited knowledge, agents of Chineseness have deployed various interpretive strategies to define and represent themselves vis-à-vis the local, regional, and global in their respective temporal experiences. This book will be relevant to students and scholars in Chinese studies and Asian studies more broadly, with a focus on identity politics, migration, popular culture, and international relations. “The Chinese overseas often saw themselves as caught between a rock and a hard place. The collection of essays here highlights the variety of experiences in Southeast Asia and China that suggest that the rock can become a huge boulder with sharp edges and the hard places can have deadly spikes. A must read for those who wonder whether Chineseness has ever been what it seems.” Wang Gungwu, University Professor, National University of Singapore. “By including reflections on constructions of Chineseness in both China itself and in various Southeast Asian sites, the book shows that being Chinese is by no means necessarily intertwined with China as a geopolitical concept, while at the same time highlighting the incongruities and tensions in the escapable relationship with China that diasporic Chinese subjects variously embody, expressed in a wide range of social phenomena such as language use, popular culture, architecture and family relations. The book is a very welcome addition to the necessary ongoing conversation on Chineseness in the 21st century.” Ien Ang, Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University.

The People of China

The People of China PDF Author: Shu Shin Luh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1422294528
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
About 92 percent of China's 1.35 billion people come from the same ethnic group, the Han, who have dominated Chinese culture for more than 2,000 years. Nevertheless, China is by no means a homogeneous nation. In fact, China's government officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups, and at times their integration into Chinese society has presented difficult challenges for Beijing. The People of China presents an in-depth look at the largest ethnic groups in the world's most populous country. It examines each group's history, customs, beliefs, and aspirations--in the process revealing the complexities, and the politics, of ethnic identity in the People's Republic of China.

People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China

People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China PDF Author: David O'Brien
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789811937774
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In one of the only works drawing on interviews with both Uyghurs and Han in Xinjiang, China, and postcolonial perspectives on ethnicity, nation, and race, this book explores how forms of banal racism underpin ideas of self and other, assimilation and modernisation, in this restive region. Significant international attention has condemned the CCP's use of forced internment in 're-education' camps, as well as its campaign of cultural assimilation. In this wider context, this book focuses upon the ways in which ethnic difference is writ through the banalities of everyday life: who one trusts, what one eats, where one shops, even what time one's clocks are set to (Xinjiang being perhaps one of the only places where different ethnic groups live by different time-zones). Alongside chapters focusing upon the coercive 're-education' campaign, and the devastating Ürümchi Riots in 2009, this book also unpacks how discourses of Chinese nationalism romanticise empire and promote racialised ways of thinking about Chineseness, how cultural assimilation ('Sinicisation') is being justified through the rhetoric of 'modernisation', how Islamic sites and Uyghur culture are being secularised and commodified for tourist consumption. We also explore Uyghur and Han perspectives, including of each other, giving insight into the diversity of opinions within both groups. Based on many years of living and working in China, and fieldwork and interviews specifically in Xinjiang, this book will be valuable to a variety of readers interested in the region and Uyghur and Han identity, ethnic/national identities in contemporary China, and racisms in non-western contexts. David O'Brien is a Research Associate with the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. His research focusses on ethnic identity in contemporary China and the interplay between ethnicity and politics. Melissa Shani Brown is affiliated with the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Her research interests include the conceptual uses of 'silence' in critical theory and cultural texts, and intersectionality. .

Separate But Loyal

Separate But Loyal PDF Author: Wenfang Tang
Publisher: Policy Studies (East-West Cent
ISBN: 9781932728866
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Beijing has faced the challenge of granting autonomy to ethnic minorities but maintaining their loyalty to the Chinese state. This paper tackles complex issues of ethnic identity and nationalism among the most politically sensitive groups in China: the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongols, Huis, and Kazaks. Specifically, it draws on original research conducted by the authors, the 2006-2007 Chinese Ethnicity Surveys, to explore the extent to which ethnic minorities are sinicized and the meaning of being Chinese. With an analysis of current arguments about whether national identity in contemporary China is based on a Han-dominant Confucian tradition or a multiethnic society that originated during the Qing empire, Separate but Loyal examines ethnic identity through the lens of ethnic-language learning, religious practices, and interethnic marriage. It also provides an illuminating comparison of perceptions of group identity and national identity in China with those in the United States and Russia. The survey points to some surprising findings, including the fact that ethnic minorities in China showed higher levels of both ethnic identity and national identity than U.S. and Russian respondents. These findings seem to support the argument that national identity is based on the multiethnic Chinese state, and they offer a rare empirical perspective on how the government can maintain the balance needed to preserve its legitimacy.

China’s Energy Security and Relations With Petrostates

China’s Energy Security and Relations With Petrostates PDF Author: Anna Kuteleva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000406326
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia. Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China. China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.