Doing ethnicity in contemporary China : ethnicity construction, struggle, and division among the Zhuang

Abstract

Previous studies have provided a variety of paradigms for examining ethnicity and ethnic identity. Broadly, these perspectives revolve around themes of primordialism, constructivism, and border theory. However, there are distinct difficulties when adopting these paradigms to study minority groups in the Chinese context. The present study brings elements of these different perspectives together, while exploring how ethnic groups “do their ethnicity” in China. I define “do(ing) ethnicity” as an ongoing social process through which people inherit, perceive, learn, perform, and construct their ethnic identity by making and using various identity markers. Specifically, this study explores the largest ethnic minority group in China: the Zhuang. The data consists of empirical data and secondary literature. The empirical data is collected from one year’s worth of field research, in multiple field sites, in Guangxi in China, which is the home for most Zhuang people in China. Three identity markers are selected and discussed in detail through the framework of “doing ethnicity.” They are the Zhuang language, the god of the Zhuang (Baeuloqdoz), and a Zhuang ancestral hero (Nung Zhigao). The case of Zhuang languages reveals two countervailing processes: language loss among ethnic cadres and young generations, and language revival attempts by groups that I term ‘language lovers.’ The lack of ethnic language as a cultural tool has resulted in different forms of identity crisis. Projects of language revival also reveal competitive dynamics revolving around different versions of Zhuang languages, and these competitions, in turn, highlight how power affects the ability to use language as an identity marker among different ethnic actors. The case of the god (Baeuloqdoz) and the case of the hero (Nung Zhigao) are comparable in terms of their processes of construction. The former case was initiated as a top-down process, as the cultural elites promoted the localization of the god. The latter case of an ethnic hero, by contrast, involved the grassroots actions of indigenous villagers, who constructed their understanding of ancestral heroism through the mechanisms of fictive kinship and collective memory. Both cases demonstrate interactions and negotiations among indigenous people, the local government, scholars, and business forces, and both make use of nationalistic narratives and derive power from underlying economic motives related to the development of the tourism industry. In sum, this study attempts to shed light on the process of creating identity markers that can be used to distinguish an ethnic group from others. In the account presented here, identity markers are not natural or biological. Rather, they are best understood as ‘cultural traits.’ The processes of identity formation described here offer a response to debates surrounding subjectivism and objectivism as they relate to ethnicity; as well as constructivism and primordialism. Empirically, this study hopes to provide a better understanding of the marginalized spaces where ethnic minorities dwell, while also increasing awareness of the types of agency that ethnic minorities in China possess—an agency that is exercised amid negotiations with a variety of contextual factors that constrain and enable the performance ethnicity in contemporary China.