Asian Ethnicities (8)—Dynamics of Ethnicity (d)

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Asian Ethnicities
A year ago on Round and Square (21 July 2012)—Fieldnotes From History: Provincial Elections (q)
Two years ago on Round and Square (21 July 2011)—Longevity Mountain: Introduction

[a] Seasonal RF

In the next dozen entries, I will be posting an initial draft of a book introduction on Asian ethnic groups. It is meant for the blog, and does not represent anything like what will eventually be published. I do so especially because this represents a compilation of my thoughts after a full year of intensive teaching and research on Asian ethnicity. The introduction to this series shows some of my thoughts from last year—before I taught my advanced seminar by the same title as this series. This is something of a culmination of the process, even though I will be now moving in many new directions in the teaching and study of Asian ethnic groups.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

IV

Northern and Central Asia (b)

[b] Respite RF

Today’s central and northern Asia has a complex dynamic that has been shaped by the changing power—and financial—configurations of the former Soviet Union, today’s Russia, and a growing power from the People’s Republic of China. The first things to contemplate are the vast spaces between urban centers and trading networks. Unlike the major urban centers in Japan, Korea, and China—where large cities dot the most common thoroughfares along the Tokkaido, or Eastern Sea Route, the coastal line in China from Tianjin to Fuzhou, or even the links from the southern tip of the Korean peninsula to the mid-north—travel respites of any size are far more scarce in central and northern Asia.
 

The reasons for this are as distinct as the differences in the geographical areas. To begin, it is often difficult to place the precise “settlement date” of a Mongolian city, and for practical reasons that few people in the southerly provinces of China would understand. The cities—they moved. Ulan Bator is just one example of a mobile city that created a semi-nomadic patterning of stasis and change that makes it impossible to place an “origin,” as one can do for Kaifeng or Rome. It literally and figuratively moved up and down the river, and has been, as city boosters might say “a city on the move."

[c] Moving RF

The underpinnings of this idea can tell us a great deal about life beyond the “settled” regions of China. To begin, the presence of constant agriculture (even in conditions in the north and northwest that were not particularly well-suited to it) marks a great break in the growth of civilization and empire. The early Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote that little children in the far north and northwest grew up riding sheep, sitting up in their already formidable stirrups, and shooting rodents on the prairie, even at a tender age. The contrast with the children of cultivated China—and, of course, this phrase has several connotations—are dramatic. Although Mongols, Manchus, and many groups that were prominent in earlier Asian history (such as the Xiongnu), could wreak havoc on the Chinese plains, they were not “built” for a lasting presence unless they found ways to accommodate the presence of a vastly larger and far more urban agricultural and commercial population.

[d] Vast RF

In the north, even today, the distance between even small cities is often vast. Today, the Jeep, long-distance trucks, as well as several train routes, figure in long journeys. Even the centers themselves are quite intriguing when we contemplate the history of these transportation nodes. Many began as Buddhist monastic sites, and grew only slowly into communities with a presence beyond the Buddhist orders. Even in their early incarnations as small cities, they partook of what the French ethnographer Marcel Mauss described as a dynamic of travel and respite. The centers provided places of rest and regeneration in the cold months, before pastoralists would take their herds to farther-flung destinations in the spring, summer, and autumn. This patterning of movement and reconnection is so much a part of central and northern Asian life that it must be considered as one of the great dynamics in its history.

The contrast with settled areas of China and Korea (and Japan, although no conqueror penetrated its shores until the twentieth century) is enormous. Settled agricultural life, with its concomitant market centers and precise agricultural calendar, created a dynamic that led to great domination in all cases, except when northern (or central) groups organized into large conquering forces. The latter happened several times in the past thousand years of Chinese history (and that narrative takes up, arguably, more than half of that time). This is hardly insignificant, and these entries will help to show the ethnic persistence of some of these group

***  *** 

[e] Trucks RF

The challenge for understanding central and northern China today lies in balancing the dynamic histories of these areas with a rapidly changing economic, political, and social climate. The central, northern, and northeastern areas of Asia have figured prominently in the larger East Asian historical narrative, but only for several centuries at a time. Today’s areas are in the vice-lock of an aging (former) Soviet Union and a growing and increasingly aggressive People’s Republic of China. This can be seen in several examples that would ordinarily be overlooked by analysts. Which “way” do the railroads run? Well, mostly they still run to Moscow, or at least its environs. On the other hand, which way do the trucks drive? To Beijing (or its environs)—and even on bumpy, problematic, and uneven roads. The earlier pull of the former Soviet Union still affects mining cities all over northern Asia. The same pressure plays into all of the politics and economics of the central Asian countries, which have always been an amalgamation of complex ethnic, religious, and economic entities. 

[f] Force RF

There is nothing analytically “simple” about understanding this region. For example, Buddhism is a powerful force that is not tied—at least not in a direct sense—to environment or the modes of production. As in China, and the rest of Asia, it has a powerful place in the history of the region, and affects everything from the written languages of the various central and northern regions to their traditions. One anthropologist recently told me of an encounter she had with a stunned Mongol, who was surprised by her deft use of language and context. “You must be a reincarnated Mongolian,” she was told. From there, I have learned of a tremendous wave of fictional kinship ties that can be extended very far into personal family networks…or kept evasively distant, depending on the situation.Finally, linguists have noted many of these dynamics for the past two millennia. Even the Ballad of Mulan is widely known to be of Turkic descent. The entire history of East Asia has much more to do with the cultural dynamics of central and northern Asia than many current textbooks show. And, indeed, even the ethnic histories of eastern Asia show a complex mixing of ethnicity, region, and circumstance than we ordinarily see in overviews of the region 

***  *** 

We turn now to a consideration of East Asia, and China’s pivotal historical role within it.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

[g] Powerful RF

---

Notes

[1] Sima Qian, Historical Records [史記] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1982), juan 110.

[2] Marcel Mauss, Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo: A Study in Social Morphology [Translated by
     Ian Cunnison] (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 76-77.

[3] Chen Sanping, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 39-41.

Asian Ethnicities (7)—Dynamics of Ethnicity (c)

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Asian Ethnicities
A year ago on Round and Square (20 July 2012)—Fieldnotes From History: Provincial Elections (p)
Two years ago on Round and Square (20 July 2011)—Seinfeld Ethnography: Motor Oil

[a] Gobi RF

In the next dozen entries, I will be posting an initial draft of a book introduction on Asian ethnic groups. It is meant for the blog, and does not represent anything like what will eventually be published. I do so especially because this represents a compilation of my thoughts after a full year of intensive teaching and research on Asian ethnicity. The introduction to this series shows some of my thoughts from last year—before I taught my advanced seminar by the same title as this series. This is something of a culmination of the process, even though I will be now moving in many new directions in the teaching and study of Asian ethnic groups.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

III

Northern and Central Asia (a)

The three large bioenvironmental zones of central and northeastern Asia are the tundra, the taiga, and the steppe. These constitute a large portion of the region, with the mountainous areas and strings of desert-oases making up a much smaller—although culturally more important—portion of central and northeastern Asia. The region is heavily landlocked, and even the coastal regions do not have ready access to the outside world. Scarcity—of resources, opportunities, and even people—is a determinate common factor throughout the region. Peoples settling here faced great difficulties if they wished to survive, and archaeological research tells us that a number of them, beyond the more than 120 distinct ethnie surviving to this day, did not meet this challenge. They needed great inventiveness and readiness to adapt to their material circumstances. An entirely unique (one might say revolutionary) lifestyle, that of pastoral nomadism, is perhaps the best example of such widespread and historically successful innovation.

[b] Open RF

What we can learn from this is that potentially nation-creating ethnic identity in central and northeastern Asia was based less on shared language and common history (often one of the most frequently cited factors of ethnicity), and more on circumstances and things tied to basic survival. On one level, this can be narrowed down to a few items provided by nature.

For most of the inland regions, the crucial enablers in the struggle to survive were the horse and the various livestock (primarily camel and sheep) that provided livelihood for their cultivators. In the coastal or riverine areas, fish or sea mammals are similarly requisite sources of survival. In this sense, our search for primary distinction (“identity”) may justifiably lead us to refer to “fish people” along the maritime coasts, “horse people” on the vast grasslands, and “reindeer people” on the tundra. It may be tempting to say, therefore, that development of ethnic identity in Central and North-Eastern Asia was primarily based on environmental factors that determine lifestyle. After all, we know that Chinggis Khan claimed to rule not merely over the Mongols or the various Mongol ethnie, but rather “all of the people living under the felt tent.

[c] Flow RF

Nonmaterial aspects of traditional life in central and northeastern Asia exhibit similar broadly applicable elements. Nature’s power, in all of its manifestations, was ever-present and ever-felt. The incessant struggle for survival provided little opportunity for peoples of the region to indulge in contemplation about this harsh reality. Superhuman forces—wind, cold, rain, thunder, and frost—had to be feared, respected, and pacified. Their aid had to be sought and purchased for every undertaking. At the very least, every effort had to be made to avoid the supernatural “anger.” This is something that histories of more temperate climates do not usually consider—at least in their life-taking ferocity. It is one of the key differences between the worlds of central and northern Asia, on the one hand, and the more southerly climates that prevailed in much of China, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and southern stretches in Korea. For guidance, one had to turn to the world beyond the living, the spirit-world. Gifted and practiced men and women, the shaman, performed the crucial tasks of guiding and mediating the communication with this other world—the world that could bring great benefits or utter disaster. Rituals and practices aimed at achieving the requisite state of ecstasy bear considerable similarity among the region’s peoples.

[d] Common RF

In looking for the roots of ethnic identity in central and northeastern Asia, we must turn to kinship, lineage, and, in the end, the notion of belonging. A common utterance that speaks to both kinship, fictive kinship, and identification with locality addresses this.

     Me against my brother; me 

     and my brother against the 

     neighbor; me and my brother 

     and our neighbor against the 

     next village; me and my brother 

     and our neighboring villages 

     against outsiders.

The daily task of survival—from landing a sea mammal to tending a large flock of sheep—called for coordinated group effort. It was natural for every member of a family to participate, but greater tasks called for larger teams. This resulted in blood ties being extended through fictive kinship networks to work-and habitat-related connections, with eventual development of shared habits, customs, and language. The formation of clans and tribes was formalized by the (self-) naming and (self-) identification of these human communities—a major cultural development that would influence the history of Asia in profound ways.

[e] Organized RF

Small groups tended to organize themselves along the lines of extended families. However, clans and tribes needed to be controlled, organized, and administered in new ways. Rulership in central and northeastern Asia tended to reflect the inhabitants’ views of transcendental authority. Although there existed a concept of a supreme divinity (e.g. the sky-god Tengri), a number of other divine forces were also recognized and celebrated. Similarly, earthly rulership often included a modicum of specialization. A military leader was tasked with bringing success in wars, while another leader was often empowered with the administration of daily life in peacetime—with perhaps another to provide spiritual guidance.

Although this particular configuration of rulership was eliminated by the power gained by monotheist Islamic rulers after the sixteenth century, it is still indicative of the multi-dimensional nature of central and northeastern Asian rule during much of the last three thousand years. It would parallel the history of Chinese civilization (which it bordered—from the central and northeastern perspective—to the east and the south) in some ways and diverge profoundly from it in others. Yet one stark reality should be noted. In the last thousand years of Chinese history, northern groups from outside of China “proper” have ruled large swaths of the Middle Kingdom for more than half of that time. In short, it is not an option to pretend that Chinese civilization can be viewed in isolation from its northern and central neighbors, no matter how often popular textbooks seem to imply that very notion.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

[f] Vast RF

Asian Ethnicities (6)—Dynamics of Ethnicity (b)

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Asian Ethnicities
A year ago on Round and Square (19 July 2012)—Fieldnotes From History: Provincial Elections (o)
Two years ago on Round and Square (19 July 2011)—Middles: Utopia

[a] Serpentine water creature RF

In the next dozen entries, I will be posting an initial draft of a book introduction on Asian ethnic groups. It is meant for the blog, and does not represent anything like what will eventually be published. I do so especially because this represents a compilation of my thoughts after a full year of intensive teaching and research on Asian ethnicity. The introduction to this series shows some of my thoughts from last year—before I taught my advanced seminar by the same title as this series. This is something of a culmination of the process, even though I will be now moving in many new directions in the teaching and study of Asian ethnic groups.
 

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

II

Defining Terms

Asian Ethnic Groups

Let us begin with three key words from our title—Asian, Ethnic, and Group. The basic terms are surprisingly challenging, and even the modifiers (North, Central, and East) are more complicated than they might seem at first glance. Let’s spend a little bit of time unpacking them and see how they might fit together to make reading of the individual entries both more accessible and more useful. “Asian Ethnic Groups” is a powerful combination of words, and they will sustain us through all of the discussions in this book.

[b] Intersected RF

“Asian"

First, what do we mean by “Asia?” Europe and Asia blend together in complex ways, and the history of each has intersected at several points over the past three thousand years. “Asia” is a considerable landmass, and has no obvious borders. It is not like Africa, North America, or South America that way. In our cartographic experiences from school we can “picture” those, even if we must add on the linkages and appendages (such as Madagascar or the Falkland Islands) that complicate our mental sketches.

As any thirteenth century Mongol schoolchild could tell us, Asia blends fairly seamlessly into Europe, and at least one conquering force—those very same Mongols—negotiated the land far better than they did when trying to put out to sea. While it is easy enough to picture “East Asia” and “Western Europe,” there is a great deal of blending in-between, and the histories of empires, nation-states, and ethnic groups in what is sometimes called “Eastern Europe” and “Western Asia” (or even the Near East, in an earlier idiom) are uncertain.

[c] Complicated RF

That very uncertainty is what makes the topic both perplexing and fascinating. Asia, in short, is a large span of landmass; “Eurasia” is even bigger, and much more confusing (even the word—a portmanteau—speaks to uncertainty). The beauty of this volume is that it does not try to cut things too finely into pieces. To be manageable, of course, each encyclopedia in the series has had to define a part of the world. These are large, and span many historical and cultural patterns, however. This volume, covering north, central, and eastern Asia, has the enormous advantage of bringing central and northern Asia fully into a picture that has been dominated too much by the powerful (and often overpowering) cultural influence of Chinese civilization. By widening the picture—and even going beyond the fifty-six ethnic groups officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China—this volume “complicates” the picture of Asian ethnicity in a way that will help every reader understand it more deeply.

“Ethnic"

The term “Asia” seems complicated, but “ethnic” is even more so. The greatest challenge in studying ethnicity lies in the very orientation of this volume. It is impossible to understand the units that make it up without careful study of individual groups. We cannot study “themes” and adequately understand what makes the groups sense their togetherness, their history, and the possibility of a shared future. On the other hand, no understanding of individual groups can provide us with the larger questions that make up this introduction.

[d] Peak peek RF

What we have all over the world, really, is bundles of overlapping ethnicities. I first confronted this problem in naming my own college course on the subject. Although it was tempting to use the title “Asian Ethnicity,” I was troubled by how unproblematic the phrase seemed. It sounded just a little too neat, well defined, and even “objective.” I knew well that the study of ethnicity is messy (like the mangled rugs in our example, above). Yes, it is an endlessly fascinating “messiness,” but it is patched and prodded in ways that a “clean” term like “Asian Ethnicity” can never convey. It makes it sound as though ethnicity is a thing—one thing.

Instead, I chose “Asian Ethnicities” for the course title. It acknowledges that there is more to our studies than analyzing the functioning of individual engine parts—smooth, separable systems working together in a powerful machine. This latter image is precisely what the People’s Republic of China is trying to convey in its own presentation of ethnicity, and it is a powerful message (and by no means “untrue”). The problem is that ethnicity only seems to be clear and separable. To the extent that we perpetuate the “parts of the whole” rhetoric, we fail to underline just how much merging and assimilating and, frankly, fighting has gone into every aspect of ethnic discussion in Asia—and beyond.

[e] Cosmological RF

This leads to our next problematic definition, “group."

“Group"

Let’s use a quick example. Even delineating an ethnic group in a few short lines can be highly problematic. The following line is paraphrased from a widely circulated Chinese tourism text. Just the single sentence below presents several challenges.

     …the Bai people live near Lake Er in Yunnan 
     Province, wear colorful clothing, and make 
     toys of bamboo…”

Although it may seem innocuous, it is actually quite ideological and pointed. While none of the information is wrong, it creates a picture that “essentializes” (carves into an “essence”) the Bai people. It just sounds more “objective” than it is, and creates a picture of Bai people as “like” these characterizations. Part of the problem with the sentence is the combination of “happy” images that seem to convey a life different from the toil and tussle in busy, haggling, urban centers. That is a side of it, but I take a more sympathetic tone. This happens in almost every characterization we can make when describing “groups.” Even in the best writing about individual ethnic groupings, it is hard to convey dynamism and change, so we are left with the implication that such groups are “like” this or “like” that. Yet if we study the dynamism and change, we often learn only fragments of information about the groups themselves. We learn what makes them interact, but not as much about what makes them cohere.

[f] Variation RF

There is no solution to this problem other than to turn one’s gaze “smaller” and “larger” in sequence—to remember large themes that link the histories of groups, and to study the particulars of individual groups (and individuals within them) as well. In short, the very idea of “ethnic groupings” creates a profoundly mixed-up jumble of “subjectivities” that are not told well if they seem too clear and clean—like the minority group dolls in native dress that can be purchased in department stores all over China.

I want to think of this introduction and this volume as a variation on those paper dolls, in which the very same clearly articulated and perfectly dressed figures start blending together, fighting, resolving disputes, coming to power, losing, and intermarrying…over three thousand years of history. Imagine the ethnic dolls with children and grandchildren of their own, living in cities of many millions, trying to get top-rate educations, worrying about global market forces, and concerned about health care in their old age. Now imagine many generations of intermarrying, moving, worrying, and change. That is Asia today. Ethnicity—it is supposed to be complicated, and the best way to read this volume is to move back-and-forth between the entries themselves, this introduction, and then other entries that complicate and “further” our picture of Asian ethnic groups.

Let’s turn now to some of the themes and patterns that link large swaths of Asia throughout its history, and especially in the dynamics of the present day. Northern and Central Asia are related in challenging ways to a resurgent China and the rest of the East Asian world.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

[g] Patterns RF

Asian Ethnicities (5)—Dynamics of Ethnicity (a)

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Asian Ethnicities 
A year ago on Round and Square (18 July 2012)—Fieldnotes From History: Provincial Elections (n) 
Two years ago on Round and Square (18 July 2011)—Le Tour de la France: Reaching France

[a] Interacting RF

In the next dozen entries, I will be posting an initial draft of a book introduction on Asian ethnic groups. It is meant for the blog, and does not represent anything like what will eventually be published. I do so especially because this represents a compilation of my thoughts after a full year of intensive teaching and research on Asian ethnicity. The introduction to this series shows some of my thoughts from last year—before I taught my advanced seminar by the same title as this series. This is something of a culmination of the process, even though I will be now moving in many new directions in the teaching and study of Asian ethnic groups.
 

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

I

Multi-Layered Culture 

Imagine a little doll, six inches high and clad in spectacular ornaments, with bright-colored clothing and highly gendered—in almost all cases female—rendering. Next to it stands another small figure, the same height and arrayed in different ornaments and colors. Still female. As your gaze widens, you see more and more dolls, more and more ornaments, and many more colors. You have to take a step back until you can grasp the full range of fifty-six little figurines, each representing a distinctive—yet powerfully linked—place in a complex social world. The close-up will tell you the story of each doll. Only the step-back perspective will tell you how they happen to fit together.

[b] Steppe RF

This is not fiction. The dolls are part of an elaborate construction of ethnicity that is known as the fifty-six ethnic groups of the People’s Republic of China.

They are just a small glimpse into ways that the ethnicity “plays out” in the today’s Asian world, with ethnic groups adjoining and sometimes overlaying one another in what we might think of as a truly cavernous room—like a large reception hall in a government building. The ethnic groups are big, diverse, and truly different. The reception hall contains all of them under its roof. This is the image conveyed if you buy a set of the fifty-six figurines, walk to the fifth floor of the Shanghai Municipal Museum, or watch the annual New Year’s Eve gala produced by CCTV, which has almost half a billion viewers for every late-January or early-February show. The groups—each in dynamic movements and splendid dress—swirl and twirl through almost half of the four-hour television production. You might even remember the Beijing Olympic Games opening ceremonies in 2008. Again, the fifty-six ethnic groups had a prominent place, and far beyond the ten percent of the population that fifty-five of them occupy.

[c] Uzbek RF

And it is fifty-six—not sixty (as the cosmologists might prefer) or seventy. There are fifty-six ethnic groups in today’s People’s Republic of China. These classifications have become a standard that has dominated the discussion of ethnicity in China—and, in profound ways throughout the rest of East Asia—for the last sixty years. Fifty-six discrete ethnic units, like rugs in a vast, open hall.

Think about that. This image of rugs in a great hall works well to clarify our mental picture of the dolls. Asian ethnic groups have all sorts of things that hold them together as independent, self-defined entities—like the swirling, one-of-a-kind designs on a Central Asian rug. First, imagine over a hundred rugs spread neatly through the vast space. Got it? Now, imagine further a rousing event in the big hall. People come and go, assortments shuffle and shift, and great movements shake things up (dancing, festivities, and a few fistfights). At the end of the evening, the rugs have moved, overlapped, folded, and changed their appearances.

[d] Samarkand RF

Now imagine twenty or more centuries of those events in that very same hall.

The rugs don’t look quite so neatly organized anymore, and all sorts of changes have taken place that will alter their configurations. Even the rugs themselves have been “replaced”—updated to fit whatever customs or particular needs of the present are in place. No matter how often the custodians rearrange the rugs, they keep moving, shifting, changing place, running up against other rugs.

Ethnicity is a lot like that.

***  ***

This book presents you with well-researched portraits of each of 150 ethnic groups in Asia. It is a great tribute to the authors that each entry reads with an accuracy and scholarly care that allows readers to grasp both key points about each group and a sense of their history, changing cultures, and social lives. One of the great advantages of encyclopedic works like this one is the manner in which readers can focus on individual elements—like the rugs in our imaginary hall or the individual figurines in the Chinese ethnic doll set—and get a sense of their weave, texture, thickness, color, and shape. Without this, we would only have generalities. This book will give you the specifics, and give you ways of thinking about particular ethnic groups in Asia and the dynamics of their interactions.

[e] Hong Kong RF

This last idea also conveys a hidden challenge. Encyclopedic works also contain within their structures a small disadvantage, because individual entries cannot, in themselves, show the dynamics of large-scale movements, patterned change, and historical upheaval. It cannot, in short, tell how the rugs came to be all heaped into piles upon the floor—in the manner of, say, 3,000 years of intermarriage, movement, travel along all directions of the Silk Road, and seafaring will do.

The individual entries masterfully tell bits of that story from the perspective of each group. That is their job. It is the purpose of this introduction to make explicit some of the larger matters that are difficult to see through the lens of individual ethnic group entries. If the title of this volume is Ethnic Groups of North, Central, and East Asia, let’s think of this introduction as “Ethnicity in North, Central, and East Asia”…or even “Asian Ethnicities.” It is as though we are supplementing the high-powered microscope used to create the individual entries and adding to our research a wide-angle lens camera. This well help readers see how entries as disparate as “Tajik” and “Ainu” can be discussed in a wider framework, and how ethnicity has come to play a powerful role in not only contemporary nationalism throughout Asia, but in a burgeoning tourism industry as well. 

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

[f] Mongolian morning RF