Minorities and Sociocultural Change in Western China
ANTH 31958–INTL 31956
Stuart Wright
Department of Anthropology, Gender Studies, and International Studies, City College of New York (CCNY), City University of New York (CUNY).
Summer 2020.
Course description: This course will introduce students to a range of issues relating to minority nationalities in western China in the late twentieth century until the present. We will focus on five interrelated themes: identity, culture and religion (Tibetan Buddhism and Islam); households, livelihoods and gender; development and modernization; education and social exclusion; and protest and conflict. Beginning with some historical background, the course will allow students to gain an understanding of China’s ethnic minority theories and policies, development policies aimed at fully integrating western regions, the implications of educational policies for minority identity, expressions of identity and resistance through pop music, and the counter-hegemonic influence of religious leaders on minority identity and cultural preservation.
1. Introduction
2. Governing China’s multiethnic frontiers
3. Tibet in China? China in Tibet?
4. Cultures, religions, and mountain deities
5. Chinese Muslims in contemporary China
6. Minority nationalities and social change in Yunnan province
7. The ‘gift of development’ and ‘boomerang aid’?
8. Nomad sedentarization
9. Gender, polyandry, and matriarchy
10. Minority education
11. Shifting Tibetan views of secular education
12. The political potency of Tibetan identity in pop music and dunglen
13. Reimagining Buddhist ethics on the Tibetan plateau
14. Symbiosis and ethnic conflict
15. Protests, riots, and self-immolations
16. The securitization of Xinjiang