TY - BOOK ID - 138775409 TI - Coming to terms with the nation PY - 2011 SN - 1282917889 9786612917882 0520947630 9780520947634 0520272749 9780520272743 9781282917880 6612917881 9780520262782 0520262786 9780520272743 0520272749 PB - Berkeley University of California Press DB - UniCat KW - China KW - Population. KW - 1954 ethnic classification project. KW - asia. KW - chinese government. KW - communist government. KW - controversial. KW - cultural histories. KW - distinct languages. KW - diversity. KW - ethnic classification. KW - ethnic communities. KW - ethnic histories. KW - ethnic nationalities. KW - ethnic representation. KW - ethnographers. KW - global politics. KW - minzu shibie. KW - minzu. KW - modern china. KW - modern history. KW - multiculturalism. KW - nationalism. KW - non party chinese ethnologists. KW - nonfiction. KW - oral histories. KW - policy on nationalities. KW - yunnan. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:138775409 AB - China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying minzu and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a "scientific" survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities. ER -