Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects

by Dru C. Gladney

Until quite recently, Western scholars have tended to accept the Chinese representation of non-Han groups as marginalized minorities. Dru C. Gladney challenges this simplistic view, arguing instead that the very oppositions of majority and minority, primitive and modern, are historically constructed and are belied by examination of such disenfranchised groups as Muslims, minorities, or gendered others.

Gladney locates China and Chinese culture not in some unchanging, essential "Chinese-ness," but in the context of historical and contemporary multicultural complexity. He investigates how this complexity plays out among a variety of places and groups, examining representations of minorities and majorities in art, movies, and theme parks; the invention of folklore and creation myths; the role of pilgrimages in constructing local identities; and the impact of globalization and economic reforms on non-Han groups such as the Muslim Hui. In the end, Gladney argues that just as peoples in the West have defined themselves against ethnic others, so too have the Chinese defined themselves against marginalized groups in their own society.

Genres: China, History, Anthropology, Research, School

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book 10 years ago as an expat living in China. This was a great book at the academic level exploring the relationship between the majority Han in China and the minorities. There were several groups of Muslim minorities in the south (Hui) people and of course the Uighurs in the northwest. Gladney really dives in and explore even the divides within the Han.

I got a lot of out of it and it's a good primer to explain perhaps how other Asian societies view minorities.

[MA · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I ever met to discuss PRC’s ethnic policies. There are a lot of provoking points in this outstanding books. As a Chinese minority myself, I am impressed by his analysis of how PRC represented and constructed minorities’ image, which is exactly what I experienced. However, I never ponder the credibility of those narratives and the motivations behind them before. Meanwhile, this book provides precious materials for knowing more about overseas uyghurs human right organizations and what they did at the early period which was definitely different from what government publicized. Sadly, his prediction of China’s expanding internal colonialism finally became the fact. With nationalist sentiments prevailing in China, subaltern minorities’ living are facing a harder situation.

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gladney makes a persuasive case that "minorities" are central to majority Han self-definition, while at the same time stressing the regional differences internal to the Han that are obvious to the Chinese themselves but lost on many Western "China hands."
Precisely because Gladney's work is such a crucial critical intervention its disappointing that as a book Dislocating China is so poorly done. Gladney refers to his own work relentlessly, and is constantly providing the same examples and statistics, so that the book reads like previously published articles and conference papers thrown together rather than a coherent work. A decent editor could have cut fifty pages and dramatically improved readability.