The dilemmas of pro-development actors: viewing state–ethnic minority relations and intra-ethnic dynamics through contentious development projects

Studies of ethnic minority peoples in Asia have long focussed on the relations between ethnic minority communities and the modern state and on the role of development in shaping these relations. This paper is concerned with how ethnic minorities respond to the state-led development. While there are numerous studies focussing on the collective agency of ethnic minorities opposing development projects, few studies consider the agency of pro-development actors. Pro-development actors are usually dismissed as co-opted, manipulated, inauthentic, or elite-driven, yet they can offer crucial insights into understanding state–ethnic minority relations and particularly intra-ethnic minority relations. This paper concentrates on pro-dam actors from the Lepcha minority in the Indian state of Sikkim to make four interlinked arguments. First, examining pro-development actors breaks the homogenous view of state–ethnic minority relations and shifts the focus to intra-ethnic relationships. Second, collective agency of ethnic minorities is not fixed in a particular relationship with the state nor does it have a particular position on development. Third, the long-term experience of development is vital in understanding how ethnic minorities manoeuvre and alter their position on contentious projects. Lastly, analysis of pro-development actors creates major dilemmas for researchers which are not easily overcome.     

Constructing border ethnic identities along the frontier of Central and Eastern Europe

The analysis is based on an empirical sociological study (interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: nations between states along the new eastern borders of the European Union Project) aimed at exploring the various aspects of people’s diaspora affiliations and their ethnic and national identity on the Eastern borderland of Europe. We surveyed ethnic minority groups in eight countries along the frontier of Central Eastern Europe. With the ethnic minorities having a similar ethnic status along the border, we demonstrated how ethnic minorities ‘deal’ with their minority status in their ‘host’ country. The analysis reconstructs the image of the ethnic minority at the societal level. We model personal and collective ethnic identities as a stock of knowledge based on cognitive and affective components, and test them along the different ethnic dyads. The paper shows how successive generations are able to transfer the pattern of ethnic identity within the family, and also how language use practices and personal networks play a role in preserving personal ethnic identity.     

‘Nation‐state’ and ‘minority’ types of discourse ‐problems of communication between the majority and the islamic minorities in contemporary bulgaria

Ethnic problems may be investigated via either or both of two types of discourse — ‘nation‐state discourse’ and ‘minority discourse’. The first type constitutes a declarative, dia‐chronic‐oriented type of discourse, centred around easily perceivable semiotic codes (language, history, tradition, religion). These codes are invested with qualities which relate to the existence and sustainability of the nation‐state. As a consequence the defence of such codes is experienced as a defence of the nation‐state. By contrast a ‘minority type’ of discourse does not, in principle, centre on nation‐state semiotic codes. In Bulgaria, the discourse of the Islamic communities of the country (Turks, Pomaks, Turkish Gypsies) revolves, by and large, around issues of integration and accommodation, especially of either a demographic and/or economic character. The paper surveys domains that display a close interaction between the nation‐state institutions and the Bulgarian minority communities, namely the mass media, national holidays, educational bodies, army and police. It is argued that a careful and critical appraisal of existing attitudes with respect to these domains is necessary if ethnic conflicts, most likely to emerge during the present atmosphere of post‐totalitarian changes, are to be avoided.

The study of ethnic relations relies on two types of discourse: ‘nation‐state discourse’ and ‘minority discourse’. In the present paper, the minorities under investigation are the Islamic minorities of the Bulgarian Turks and the Pomaks, and the Gypsy minority.     

‘Civilising’ Deaf people in Tibet and Inner Mongolia: governing linguistic,ethnic and bodily difference in China

The People’s Republic of China is home to over 20 million d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, many among them belonging to ethnic minorities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two minority regions, the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, this article comparatively discusses findings on sign language use, education and state welfare policies. The situation in these domains is analysed through the framework of the ‘civilising project’, coined by Harrell, and its impacts on the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing among ethnic minorities are shown. For instance, through the promotion of Chinese and Chinese Sign Language over and above the use of local sign and written languages as well as through education and the medicalisation of disabilities.     

Aids prevention,Stigma and migrant status

This article discusses how stigma has been applied to disease and also to foreigners, especially during epidemics. Foreigners, or migrants, fit particularly well into AIDS stigma, being both objects and originators of the generalised reaction: ‘it's somebody else's problem’. Material is presented from a European Community Concerted Action assessing AIDS/HIV prevention which surveyed programmes for short‐ and long‐term guest populations and ethnic minorities in twelve European countries. It is shown how the potential for stigmatisation seriously hindered the establishment of AIDS prevention efforts directed towards migrants. Basic shifts of programme focus which help overcome stigmatisation problems concerning migrants are defined, including: 1) making fine differentiations amongst migrant groups rather than considering ‘migrants’ as a generalised ‘other’, 2) basing programmes on a universal right to know rather than on the notion of risk group, and 3) working in real and effective collaboration with minority communities rather than imposing top down programmes.     

From undesirable immigrant to model minority: The success story of Chinese in New Zealand

Attitudes of the wider society towards Chinese in New Zealand have undergone a substantial change within the past 30 years, from the negative ‘undesirable immigrant’ to a highly positive ‘model minority’. Unlike many other ethnic minorities in New Zealand, Chinese are seen now to be an extremely acceptable group. This article examines some of the historical and social events that have culminated in this dramatic change in attitude.     

Assimilation as multiracialism: The case of Singapore's Malays

The myths of meritocracy and multiracialism ‘explain’ between them both the ‘fairness’ of the Singapore system and the subordinate role of the non-Chinese minority races. They also purport to assure the minorities that they enjoy full status as members of the nation-building project and that their cultural and religious mores are embraced and protected within its framework. Using the Malay minority as its case study, and arguing from archival, oral, official government and secondary sources, this paper argues that the Singapore systems of meritocracy and multiracialism have not been concerned primarily with intercommunal tolerance since the 1970s, but are now programmes of assimilation of the racial minorities into a Chinese-dominated society.     

Children,Kitchen, Church: does ethnicity matter?

Ethnic differences in the allocation of non-market time are important, as they may shed more light on the integration level of ethnic minorities and on the factors that affect both household productivity and ethnic identity. In this paper we examine the role of ethnicity and gender by analyzing differences in the time spent on a range of activities employing the 2000 UK Time Use Survey. Based on the economics of religion and identity economic models, we hypothesize that if ethnic minority women have lower opportunity costs of time and a strong ‘ethnic’ or ‘traditionally female’ identity, they will engage more in ‘traditional’ home activities. Double-hurdle regression results indicate that while the effect for childcare is not significant when estimated for parents only, non-white women spend significantly more time on food management and particularly religious activities than white women, with the greatest effect of the latter being for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women.     

A discourse of civilization/culture and nation/ethnicity from the perspective of inner Mongolia,China

After tracking the Chinese historical trajectory on the discursive relationship between Chinese civilization and the northern nomadic group, this paper examines the official discursive construction of the ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ of ethnic minorities in contemporary China. Through the analysis of the Grassland Culture Research Project (caoyuanwenhua yanjiu xiangmu), an official project conducted in China in recent decades in response to the emergence of nomadic civilization studies as a distinct academic field, this article aims to show the way in which the concepts of civilization and culture are utilized in order to correspond to the official discourse of nation state and ethnicity in China, and the process by which Mongolian culture is thereby transformed. Civilization as a larger body supposed to include cultures was/is entitled to Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu), and a culture (wenhua) of a certain ethnic minority could only be a part of the Chinese civilization in Chinese academia today. ‘Grassland culture ’ is defined as a culture that is static, ahistorical, and therefore has to be reframed within the larger system of Chinese civilization. The concept of ‘grassland culture’ seems to be based more on the particular territory, rather than on the types of culture that have created and are owned by different ethnic groups. Therefore, it might be concluded that the project emphasized the geo-body of the Chinese nation state in order to retain the culture within the territory of China.     

Sensorial Place-Making in Ethnic Minority Areas: The Consumption of Forest Puer Tea in Contemporary China

This article examines sensorial place-making through analysing the taste and other sensory experiences of forest Puer tea in its consumption among the urban middle class in mainland China. In the process of creating the ‘terroir’ of forest Puer tea, sensorial experience has been frequently linked to its place of origin. I argue that ethnic minorities who cultivate the tea play a vital part in the imagination of the tea's terroir. Trips by consumers to the mountains where the tea is cultivated, which aim at facilitating a ‘full experience’ of the tea and its culture, have generated a special pattern of interactions between the urban middle class who consume the tea and the ethnic minorities who cultivate it. The consumption of Puer tea, which brings about social imaginary and transcendent economic value, has become a driving force for producing the locality of ethnic minority areas.     

From vice to virtue: changing portrayals of minorities in China's official media

This study considers the official media's portrayal of minority groups in the People's Republic of China. Based on a content analysis of minority-centered articles appearing in the People's Daily newspaper between the years 1950 and 2001, it is found that minorities are most frequently depicted as representatives of primitive cultures. How the government presents this image of primitive minorities, however, has been subject to significant refinement over the years. The government has stepped away from its earlier practice of characterizing ‘primitive’ minority cultures as pathologies detrimental to the political and economic development of the state in favor of a more recent emphasis on the virtues associated with minority lives. The authors suggest that this transformation in government rhetoric is attributable to changes in both Chinese politics and society.     

‘Singing acts’ from the deep North: critical perspectives on northern exotics,contemporary ethnic music and language preservation in Sámi communities

This paper discusses the relationship of northernness and performances of contemporary ethnic popular music, within the context of critical geography and postcolonial theory. The focus is on the Sámi ethnic minorities of northern Finland. The North of Finland, ‘nature-Finland’, is understood here as an imaginative region which over the course of several centuries has been constituted through various forms of stereotyping, mystifying, exoticising and othering of Sámi minorities in accordance with the nationalist endeavours of Southern Finland. While these stereotypes and preconceptions of northernness have delimited northern cultural activity, contemporary ethnic music is conceived here as a strategic tool with which stereotypes of northernness can be contested and the work of the preservation of ethnic heritage put into action. The focus is on the works of Inari Sámi-singing rap musician Amoc, Skolt Sámi-singing heavy rock girl Tiina Sanila and the North Sámi-singing hard rock band SomBy. Their music is approached as ‘singing acts’ that work as tools for the preservation of ethnic culture and minority languages and for the deconstruction of stereotypes directed at northernness. The paper claims that contemporary contexts and genres within which singing in Sámi languages takes place may inspire the audience to ponder and reconsider their own ways of perceiving Sáminess and northernness.     

Outsider ethnic minorities and wage determination in China

While some studies on urban ethnic minorities in China indicate that they earn lower wages relative to the Han majority, others show little evidence of this gap. To understand this contradiction, the authors propose that the primary issue is a failure to fully disaggregate ethnic minority groups’ labour market experiences. Leveraging a large data set looking at China's ethnic minorities, findings suggest that “outsider minorities”, such as Tibetans and Turkic groups, suffer a significant wage penalty when controlling for covariates, while minorities in aggregate do not. These findings are robust across various specifications and have notable theoretical and policy implications.     

Civic,ethnic, hybrid and atomised identities in Central and Eastern Europe

While the topic of identity of ethnic minorities abounds in theoretical insights, most discussion is still clustered around the civic–ethnic divide while assuming conclusions with limited empirical evidence. By contrast, this article uses a four-category typology of identity that considers both in-group and out-group attachments to address hypotheses about competing identities and about factors influencing minorities to adopt one identity type over others. Based on unique data evidence of 12 ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, this study concludes that the ‘hybrid’ identity, rather than the literature-assumed ‘ethnic’ identity, tops the identification preference of minorities, although there are differences in levels and patterns when controlling for various covariates. The choice of identity depends on the socialisation process, the economic status, the perceived discrimination and intergroup tensions, reflecting variations in the system of values common to a region with complex ethnic dynamics.     

A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-first Century: ‘De-politicization’ of Ethnicity in China

All multiracial and multi-ethnic nations are confronted with the important issue of how to handle ethnic relations and of the role that government should play in guiding the direction of such relations. In viewing ethnic minorities, ‘culturalization’ has a tradition of thousands of years in China. Until the late Qing dynasty, that tradition resulted in a united-pluralistic polity with a huge population by assimilation and prosperous economy. Under the new historical conditions of the twentieth century, however, China has adopted the policies of the former USSR since the 1950s and given ethnic minorities more political emphasis, what is called the ‘politicization’ of ethnic minorities. This paper proposes that, in the twenty-first century, China should learn from its own historical heritage and the lessons of the US, the former USSR and other nations, and redirect its policy from ‘politicization’ to ‘culturalization’ of ethnic issues so as to strengthen national identity among its ethnic minorities. This new perspective might also be insightful to other multiracial or multi-ethnic nations around the world in the new century.     

Lay Understandings of Health among Dai Lue in Xishuangbanna,China

This study analyses lay understandings of health among Dai Lue, an ethnic minority in China, and how they are played out in help-seeking practices. Interviews and focus groups with sixty-three rural villagers in Xishuangbanna, southwest China revealed that health was largely interpreted as a social experience embedded in Dai Lue culture and ethnicity. Salient to this interpretation was family, community connectedness and Dai Lue ceremonies and festivals, as well as connections with a socio-political context. Ethnicity and ‘othering’ was an important thread running through their lay health beliefs, especially distinctions between Dai and Han. The health research, policy and practice implications of the findings are also discussed, and are likely to be applicable to other ethnic minorities in China.     

Displacement,integration and identity in the postcolonial world

Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a compelling example, yet markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced. Using the case of the displaced ‘Urdu-speaking minority’ in Bangladesh, this article considers what contemporary discourses of identity and integration reveal about the nature and boundaries of the nation state. It reveals that the language of ‘integration’ is embedded in colonial narratives of ‘population’ versus ‘people-nation’ which structure exclusion not only through language and ethnicity, but poverty and social space. It also shows how colonial and postcolonial registers transect and overlap as colonial constructions of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ fold into religious discourses of ‘pollution’ and ‘purity’. The voices of minorities navigating claims to belonging through these discourses shed light on a ‘nation-in-formation’: the shifting landscape of national belonging and the complicated accommodations required.     

The Farmhouse Joy (nongjiale) Movement in China's Ethnic Minority Villages

In China, establishments known as ‘Farmhouse Joy restaurants’ (nongjiale) which originally emerged around the suburbs of big cities and were associated with the foodstuffs of ethnic majority Han Chinese farmers, have now, as a result of a variety of development projects and local initiatives, emerged in ethnic minority and other remote villages located deep in the mountains. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in villages in Hubei and Yunnan provinces, this study examines how a new conception of ‘original ecology’ has played a dynamic role in the transformation of these nongjiale in ethnic and remote areas. This transformation results from a new symbolic synthesis and rapprochement between what are commonly understood to be ‘farmers' foods’, desires to experience an original ecology and understandings of ethnicity in China, a synthetic construction clearly aimed at attracting urbanite consumption. Important differences have emerged between villages participating in this process of synthesis. Those villages with strong claims to ethnic minority status have to carefully convert what are in fact ethnic foods into what are seen as ethnically unmarked ‘farmers' foods' in their nongjiale, while villages without such ethnic backgrounds paradoxically have to construct artificial ethnic symbols by mechanisms of imitation or pretence.     

The enemies within: targeting Han Chinese and Hui minorities in Xinjiang

How can we account for the targeted pattern of violence in Xinjiang, in which Uyghur secessionist groups attack some second-order minorities such as the Han Chinese and the Hui, but not the sizeable populations of Kazak, Kyrgyz, and Mongol minorities? Based on a variety of primary and secondary sources, I argue that members of the Han minority, being the national majority in China but a ‘nested minority’ in Xinjiang, are doomed to become a primary target of secessionist attacks as they represent, in and of themselves, the state from which Uyghur nationalists are trying to secede. Han Chinese’s – and to a lesser extent the Hui’s – economic and political dominance over the Uyghurs, along with their lack of historical ties to Xinjiang, also motivates their targeting while reinforcing the bond between other indigenous and comparatively disadvantaged minorities.     

A ‘Minority’ on the Move: Boundary Work among Filipina Muslim Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East

This article analyses the migration of a religious ‘minority’ that is largely invisible within migration studies, namely Muslim Filipina domestic workers. More specifically, this research shows that the category of ‘minority’ is not fixed and is always negotiated through transnational spaces and boundary work. In doing so, the article highlights how religious belonging, the status of minority and migration intersect and are negotiated during the period prior to these women leaving their country, during their time in the country of destination, and when they return to the Philippines. How boundary work affects the religious belonging of this Muslim ‘minority’ is underlined by presenting the Middle East as an opportunity to perform norms of ‘Muslimness’. The performance of these norms as an opportunity for these women to challenge the status of being a ‘minority’ in the Philippines is also examined. Finally, this article shows how these Muslim ‘minorities’ gain access to a certain symbolic capital by becoming hajji and balikbayan (returnees) when they return home.