
Minority Rules
The Miao and the Feminine in China's Cultural Politics
Louisa Schein(Author)
Duke University Press
Published on 3. February 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-0-8223-2444-7 (ISBN)
Description
Minority Rules is an ethnography of a Chinese people known as the Miao, a group long consigned to the remote highlands and considered backward by other Chinese. Now the nation's fifth largest minority, the Miao number nearly eight million people speaking various dialects and spread out over seven provinces. In a theoretically innovative work that combines methods from both anthropology and cultural studies, Louisa Schein examines the ways Miao ethnicity is constructed and reworked by the state, by non-state elites, and by the Miao themselves, all in the context of China's postsocialist reforms and its increasing exchange and fascination with the West. She offers eloquently argued interventions into debates over nationalism, ethnic subjectivity, and the ethnography of the state.
Posing questions about gender, cultural politics, and identity, Schein examines how non-Miao people help to create Miao ethnicity by depicting them as both feminized keepers of Chinese tradition and as exotic others against which dominant groups can assert their own modernity. In representing and consuming aspects of their own culture, Miao distance themselves from the idea that they are less than modern. Thus, Schein explains, everyday practices, village rituals, journalistic encounters, and tourism events are not just moments of cultural production but also performances of modernity through which others are made primitive. Schein finds that these moments frequently highlight internal differences among the Miao and demonstrates how not only minorities but more generally peasants and women offer a valuable key to understanding China as it renegotiates its place in the global order.
Based on extensive, multisite fieldwork, this book will interest scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, gender studies, postcolonialism, ethnic studies, and cultural studies.
Posing questions about gender, cultural politics, and identity, Schein examines how non-Miao people help to create Miao ethnicity by depicting them as both feminized keepers of Chinese tradition and as exotic others against which dominant groups can assert their own modernity. In representing and consuming aspects of their own culture, Miao distance themselves from the idea that they are less than modern. Thus, Schein explains, everyday practices, village rituals, journalistic encounters, and tourism events are not just moments of cultural production but also performances of modernity through which others are made primitive. Schein finds that these moments frequently highlight internal differences among the Miao and demonstrates how not only minorities but more generally peasants and women offer a valuable key to understanding China as it renegotiates its place in the global order.
Based on extensive, multisite fieldwork, this book will interest scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, gender studies, postcolonialism, ethnic studies, and cultural studies.
Reviews / Votes
"Minority Rules is breathtaking. Combining sophisticated cultural analysis with sharp attention to political economy, Schein illuminates not only the way the Miao have been constructed historically but how they shape their own identities through cultural performances, whether in state theater or for tourists."-Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Veiled Sentiments and Writing Women's Worlds "A highly readable exploration of the cultural politics of reform-era China that deserves a broad readership among anthropologists, historians, and those in cultural studies."-Ann Anagnost, author of National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern ChinaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
42 b&w photographs, 1 table, 1 map
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
588 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8223-2444-7 (9780822324447)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2000
1st Edition
Duke University Press Books
€218.99
Available for download
Person
Louisa Schein is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University.
Content
Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Part I. Nation / Representation
2 Of Origins and Ethnonyms Contested Histories, Productive Ethnologies
3 Making Minzu: The State, the Category, and the Work
4 Internal Orientalism: Gender and the Popularization of China's Others
5 Reconfiguring the Dominant
Part II. Identity and Cultural Struggle
6 Songs for Sale: Spectacle from the Mao to Market
7 Scribes, Sartorial Acts, and the State: Calling Culture Back
8 Displacing Subalternity: The Mobile Other
9 Performances of Minzu Modernity
10 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Part I. Nation / Representation
2 Of Origins and Ethnonyms Contested Histories, Productive Ethnologies
3 Making Minzu: The State, the Category, and the Work
4 Internal Orientalism: Gender and the Popularization of China's Others
5 Reconfiguring the Dominant
Part II. Identity and Cultural Struggle
6 Songs for Sale: Spectacle from the Mao to Market
7 Scribes, Sartorial Acts, and the State: Calling Culture Back
8 Displacing Subalternity: The Mobile Other
9 Performances of Minzu Modernity
10 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index