Overview

Exploring popular notions of ethnic identity in China, Portraits of PrimitivesO provides the first comprehensive analysis of Han perspectives on minorities. Employing portraitsO of those ethnic groups perceived as most visibly different, Susan Blum illustrates how the majority Han view other ethnic groups. She traces political, scholarly, and popular concerns with classifying the Han at the pinnacle of modernization and civilization and other ethnic groups as primitive.O The book places questions of identity, alterity, and self in the context of a complex nation-state where ethnicity is a highly politicized topic shaped in part by the official language of national harmony and unity and twentieth-century nation-building. Providing a broad cultural and political context for her nuanced discussion of identity, Susan BlumAIs book will be an invaluable guide for those working in China studies, anthropology, and ethnic studies

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9780742500914

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Reviews

...frequently both charming and insightful. Journal Of The Royal Anthropological Institute The book's strength lies in its ethnographic material. Western scholars have often paid attention to how Han Chinese talk about ethnic minorities, but until Blum, no one bothered to systematically investigate Han views. The China Journal Blum not only provides a unique study of majority Chinese attitudes towards minority groups, but also explains modern anthropological theories of ethnicity in a wonderfully readable way. This well-done and workmanlike study not only provides an excellent account of ethnic stereotyping in south China; it also would be an ideal case study to use in classes in ethnicity. Recommended for all levels, and for collections in contemporary China, ethnicity and identity, and stereotypes and the social construction of belief systems. CHOICE For examining issues of difference, identity, stereotypes, and cognition, the book will prove useful to scholars and students alike. Journal of Asian Studies Portraits of 'Primitives' tells a story with which we are in various ways familiar, but which has never yet been told with such clarity and thoroughness. The China Quarterly This is the first thoroughgoing study of Han perspectives about minorities. A very important contribution to our understanding of Chinese society and ethnicity in general. -- Dru Gladney, University of Hawai'i

This is the first thoroughgoing study of Han perspectives about minorities. A very important contribution to our understanding of Chinese society and ethnicity in general.--Gladney, Dru

Author Information

Susan D. Blum is associate professsor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

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