Title: Miao Identities, Indigenism and the Politics of Appropriation in Southwest China during the Republican Period
Abstract:This paper examines the conception of Miao identities in the writings of three indigenous intellectuals during the Republican period. Being members of three different indigenous groups who are classif...This paper examines the conception of Miao identities in the writings of three indigenous intellectuals during the Republican period. Being members of three different indigenous groups who are classified as Miao today, these writers imagined the Miao community differently in terms of geographical boundaries, cultural contents, and historical experiences. While these differences need to be explained by the writers' unique life histories unfolded in particular local, national and transnational contexts, these writers in general appropriated and domesticated Chinese ethnic categories to reformulate their own conceptions of the indigenous community in terms that stretched beyond the boundary of their own local groups, forming part of their political activism to struggle for official recognition of ethnic minority status in the Republican regimes' nation-building project. This politics of appropriation and recognition constitutes some indigenous groups' special form of activism in Southwest China to struggle for self-definition in the process of being integrated into the modern Chinese state. It shaped the historical conditions for indigenous responses to the Communist Party's minority policies, showing that indigenous people were not waiting passively for their historical fate of being classified according to some state-imposed supra-local ethnic identities after the Communist takeover.Read More
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 8
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