Minzu Identity under the Nation-State Context, Ethnic Identity in the Local Discourse : Case Studies in the Zang (Tibetan)-Yi Corridor

Abstract

There were more than 400 self-claimed ethnic groups in China when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government took the first census in 1953. However, from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, the National People’s Congress, supreme legislative body of the PRC, identified only 55 non-Han minzu. Since then almost all the Chinese ethnological and anthropological research regarding ethnic identities has focused on the minzu identities under the context of nation-state. Meanwhile, many ethnographic works have shown that, in addition to the identifying practice of the 56 minzu under the nation-state context, the identifying practice of ethnic groups in the local discourse has never ceased. Though the two kinds of practices are different from each other they are often intertwined. In this paper, based on fieldwork and textual research, the author advocates a return to the mainstream approach of anthropology that clearly recognizes the function of ethnic identity as a body of knowledge about the society and culture of others. In other words, instead of identifying the ethnicity of the group under study according to the etic view, the author takes an emic view and investigates how people construct their own ethnicity through social organization of cultural difference. By changing perspectives on ethnic identity research, the author believes we would be able to better understand the reality and socio-cultural implications of ethnic identification practices under both nation-state and local contexts. Eventually, this change will lead to a better grasp of the meaning of ethnic identification in general.