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China and Inner Asia
Jeffrey Weng
National Taiwan University, United States
Jeffrey Weng
National Taiwan University, United States
Jeffrey Weng
National Taiwan University, United States
Benno Weiner
Carnegie Mellon University, United States
Kevin Carrico
Monash University, Australia
Dru Gladney
Pomona College, United States
Session Abstract: Recent interethnic strife and state repression in China’s far west has prompted renewed interest in the processes by which non-Han regions and peoples have been conceptualized, incorporated, and governed since the collapse of the imperial system. Drawing from historical, anthropological, and sociological viewpoints, this panel examines the construction of China’s majority and minority populations over the past century. We contend that today’s tensions are not an anomalous turn in ethnic relations, but rather a possibility inherent in the logic of ethnic knowledge production and boundary making since the fall of the Qing empire in 1911. Scrutinizing early twentieth-century Chinese historiography, historian Julia Schneider shows how republican-era (1911–1949) historians built a discourse of “inclusive exclusion” regarding non-Han peoples that continues to inform policy today. Examining how the Han majority itself had to be constructed as well, sociologist Jeffrey Weng argues that the invention of a national language in republican China was a key part of this boundary-making process. Moving into the early years of the People’s Republic, historian Benno Weiner focuses on intra-Tibetan conflict in 1950s Amdo to demonstrate the Communist government’s efforts to construct minorityhood in part by quelling pre-existing divisions within non-Han communities. Bringing us into the present day, anthropologist Kevin Carrico investigates the curious sartorial politics of contemporary Xinjiang, in which the proliferation of public events incorporating Uyghur people dressed in traditional Han clothing signals not so much an unforeseeable “dark turn” in ethnic relations as a logical outgrowth of “longstanding assumptions” about majority-minority relations.
Paper Presenter: Jeffrey Weng – National Taiwan University
Paper Presenter: Benno Weiner – Carnegie Mellon University
Paper Presenter: Kevin Carrico – Monash University