Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T22:09:12.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Is This “Chinese” in Overseas Chinese? Sojourn Work and the Place of China's Minority Nationalities in Extraterritorial Chinese-ness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2012

Chris Vasantkumar
Get access

Abstract

This essay argues that to adequately answer the question its title poses, anthropological approaches to national and transnational China(s) must be grounded in the history of Qing imperial expansion. To this end, it compares and explores the connections between three examples of the “sojourn work” that has gone into making mobile, multiethnic populations abroad into Overseas Chinese. The first example deals with recent official attempts to project the People's Republic of China's multiethnic vision of Chinese-ness beyond its national borders. The second highlights the importance of the early Chinese nation-state in the making of Overseas Chinese community in Southeast Asia in the first decades of the twentieth century. The final case foregrounds the late imperial routes of nascent Chinese nationalism to argue that, in contrast to much of the current rhetoric on the Chinese “diaspora,” national and transnational modes of Chinese community emerged together from the ruins of the Qing empire. Together the three examples point to the need to question the usual ways scholars have conceptualized (Overseas) Chinese-ness.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 423 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Ahearn, Emily Martin, and Gates, Hill, eds. 1981. The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Axel, Brian Keith. 2001. The Nation's Tortured Body: Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora.” Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bockman, Harald. 1998. “China Deconstruct? The Future of the Chinese Empire-State in a Historical Perspective.” In Reconstructing Twentieth-Century China: State Control, Civil Society, and National Identity, eds. Brødsgaard, Kjeld Erik and Strand, David, 310–46. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Melissa, ed. 1996. Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Melissa. 2004. Is Taiwan Chinese: The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2002. The Mongols at China's Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2006. “Going Imperial: Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism and Nationalisms in China and Inner Asia.” In Empire to Nation, Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World, eds. Esherick, Joseph W., Kayalı, Hasan, and Van Young, Eric, 260–95. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Callahan, William. 2003. “Beyond Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism.” International Organization 57(3):481–517.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
China Tibet Information Center. n.d.a. “100 Questions and Answers about Tibet.” http://www.tibetinfor.com/tibetzt/question_e/5/094.htm (accessed July 21, 2010).Google Scholar
China Tibet Information Center. n.d.b “Xizang Zizhiqu dui Huiguo Tanqin Zangbao Jiedai Guanli Gongzuo de Kaizhan Qingkuang.” http://zt.tibet.cn/zhengfu/zheng200242393642.htm (accessed January 13, 2010).Google Scholar
Chow, Kai-wing. 1997. “Imagining Boundaries of Blood: Zhang Binglin and the Invention of the Han ‘Race’ in Modern China.” In The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan, ed. Dikötter, Frank, 34–53. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Chow, Kai-wing. 2001. “Narrating Nation, Race and National Culture: Imagining the Hanzu Identity in Modern China.” In Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia, eds. Kai-Wing Chow, K. Doak, and Fu, P., 47–83. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. 2005. “Nationality and Difference in China: The Post-Imperial Dilemma.” In The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China, ed. Fogel, Joshua A., 138–58. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Susan. 2005. Song and Silence. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diemujiangteng, . n.d. “Huidao Women de Guxiang” [Returning to Our Hometown]. Zhongguo Minzu Zazhi. http://www.56-china.com.cn/mztj/2/yi3-3M11.htm#; (accessed November 22, 2009).Google Scholar
Dikötter, Frank. 1992. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dikötter, Frank. 2005. “Race in China.” In China Inside Out: Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism, eds. Nyíri, Pál and Breidenbach, Joana, 177–204. New York: Central European University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1997. “Nationalists among Transnationals: Overseas Chinese and the Idea of China 1900–1911.” In Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, eds. Ong, Aihwa and Nonini, Donald, 39–60. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Freedman, Maurice. 1979 [1964]. “The Chinese in Southeast Asia: A Longer View.” In The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, 3–21. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Freedman, Maurice. 1979. The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gallison, Peter. 2003. “Specific Theory.” Critical Inquiry. http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v30/30n2.Galison.html (accessed July 21, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 1991. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 1994. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Minority/Majority Identities.” Journal of Asian Studies 53(1):92–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 2004. Dislocating China: Reflections on Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Guo, Yingjie. 2003. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity under Reform. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1996 [1986]. “What Is This Black in Black Popular Culture.” In Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. Morley, David and Chen, Kuan-Hsing, 465–75. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harrell, Stevan. 1990. “Ethnicity, Local Interests and the State: Yi Communities in Southwest China.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32(3):515–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrell, Stevan. ed. 1995. Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Harrell, Stevan. 2001. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Hsiao, Frank S.T., and Sullivan, Lawrence R.. 1979. “The Chinese Communist Party and the Status of Taiwan, 1928–1943.” Pacific Affairs 52(3):446–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karl, Rebecca E. 2002. Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2010. “An Attempt at Writing a Compositionist Manifesto.” http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles (accessed July 22, 2010).Google Scholar
Leibold, James. 2004. “Positioning ‘Minzu’ within Sun Yat-sen's Discourse of Minzuzhuyi.” Journal of Asian History 38(2):163–213.Google Scholar
Leibold, James. 2010a. “The Beijing Olympics and China's Conflicted National Form.” The China Journal 63:1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibold, James. 2010b. “More than a Category: Han Supremacism on the Chinese Internet.” The China Quarterly 203:539–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litzinger, Ralph. 1998. “Memory Work: Reconstituting the Ethnic in Post-Mao China.” Cultural Anthropology 13(2):224–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litzinger, Ralph. 2000. Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mair, Victor. 2005. “The North(west)ern Peoples and the Recurrent Origins of the ‘Chinese’ State.” In The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China, ed. Fogel, Joshua A., 46–86. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Makley, Charlene E. 2007. The Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkki, Liisa. 1997 [1992]. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees.” In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations In Critical Anthropology, eds. Gupta, Akhil and Ferguson, James, 52–74. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
McKeown, Adam. 2001. Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mongia, Radhika. 2003. “Race, Nationality, Mobility: A History of the Passport.” In After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation, ed. Burton, Antoinette M., 196–213. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mueggler, Erik. 2001. The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullaney, Thomas S., Stéphane Gros, James Leibold, and Vanden Bussche, Eric, eds. 2012. Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa, and Nonini, Donald M., eds. 1997. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Potter, David M. 1973. “Historians and the Problem of Large-Scale Community Formation.” In History and American Society: Essays of David M. Potter. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rack, Mary. 2005. Ethnic Distinctions, Local Meanings: Negotiating Cultural Identities in China. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Sautman, Barry. 1997. “Myths of Descent, Racial Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities in the People's Republic of China.” In The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan, ed. Dikötter, Frank, 75–95. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Schein, Louisa. 2000. Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China's Cultural Politics. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sheehan, James J. 1981. “What Is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography.” The Journal of Modern History 53(1):2–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siu, Paul C. P. 1952. “The Sojourner.” The American Journal of Sociology 58(1):34–44.Google Scholar
Skinner, G. William. 1957. Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Tu, Wei-ming. 2005 [1991]. “Cultural China: Periphery as the Center.” Daedalus 134(4):145–67.Google Scholar
Tuttle, Gray. 2005. Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
van Slyke, Lyman P. 1970. “The United Front in China.” The Journal of Contemporary History 5(3):119–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waley-Cohen, Joanna. 2004. “The New Qing History,” Radical History Review 88:193–206 (winter).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gungwu, Wang. 1981a [1976a]. “A Note on the Origins of Hua-Ch'iao.” In Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese, 118–27. Singapore: Asian Studies Association of Australia.Google Scholar
Gungwu, Wang. 1981b [1976b]. “The Limits of Nanyang Chinese Nationalism 1912–1937.” In Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese, 142–58. Singapore: Asian Studies Association of Australia.Google Scholar
Gungwu, Wang. 1991a [1985]. “External China as a New Policy Area.” In China and the Overseas Chinese, 222–39. Singapore: Times Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gungwu, Wang. 1991b [1989]. “Patterns of Chinese Migration in Historical Perspective.” In China and the Overseas Chinese, 3–21. Singapore: Times Academic Press.Google Scholar
Wong, Edward. 2009. “Tibetan Monks Tell Tale of Escape From China.” The New York Times, June 20. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/world/asia/21tibet.html?ref=edward_wong (accessed July 27, 2010).Google Scholar
Zhao, Suisheng. 2004. A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar