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

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910785433403321
• Autore: Mullaney Thomas S (Thomas Shawn)
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2011
• ISBN: 1-282-91788-9; 9786612917882; 0-520-94763-0
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (258 p.)
• Collana: Asia--local studies/global themes ; ; 18
• Disciplina: 305.800951
• Soggetti: Ethnology - China - History - 20th century; Ethnicity - China; Minorities - Government policy - China; China Population
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 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.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.