Contesting the Words that Wound: Ethnicity and the Politics of Sentiment in China

Abstract

Nation is as much a sentimental community as an imagined community. This paper is an attempt to study the role of sentiment as a motor of ethnopolitics in China. Using as a heuristic device the recent Mongolian cadres' protest at 'Mongol Doctor' – a Chinese ethnic slur against the Mongols, the paper examines the formation of the Mongol sentimental community vis-à-vis the Chinese sentimental community historically and especially in the twentieth century.

Concepts of "Russia" and their Relation to the Border with China

“…Anthropologists writing about Mongolia have been intrigued by the different engagement of pastoralists with land and space, and they interpret the Mongolian concept of the landscape as an interactive field of engagement, where cyclical movement between different seasonal encampments can be viewed as passage from one kind of space to another, each time requiring an engagement in relations with the spiritual powers of the locality (Tserenhand 1993;Humphrey and Onon 1996;Bulag 1998;Sodnompilova 2005, and others). They argue that pastures are traditionally not held as private property, since people associate land with spiritual and temporal agencies who are considered to be the "owners", "masters", or "stewards" of the land from which people live.…”

Prostitution and the Transformation of the Chinese Trading Town of Ereen

“…5 The Mongoljin Mongols used to have an elders' assembly, övgödiin chuulgan, which led a major rebellion against the Qing in1860-1864 (see Tai and Jin 2008). 6 A cursory discussion of the campaign can be found inBulag 2008.…”