Ethnicity in China talk

 

Ethnicity in China
Dr Elena Barabantseva (University of Manchester)
Tuesday 03 May 2011, 12.30 -1.30pm, The Kanaris Theatre, The Manchester Museum, Oxford Road
 
Continuing with The Confucius Institute Public Talks on China at The Manchester Museum,  we are delighted to have Dr Elena Barabantseva speaking on the topic of Ethnicity in China.
Until recently, the People’s Republic of China has been largely perceived and studied as an ethnically homogenous society. With the recent ethnic clashes in Xinjiang in 2009 and in Tibetan areas in 2008, ethnic diversity and ethnic relations in China have been increasingly high on the political agenda of China's leadership and captured the attention of the audiences worldwide. However, popular accounts rarely take notice of China's ethnicities beyond the Tibetans and Uyghurs. If they do, the Uyghur and Tibetan cases often serve as the lenses for perceiving other ethnic minorities' lives in China.

The prevailing popular accounts present ethnic minorities as suppressed and marginalized people who struggle to express their non-mainstream identities beyond the child-like or rebellious portrayals imposed on them by the Chinese state. In contrast, this talk will highlight some of the many complex facets of ethnic relations in China which often remain unaccounted for in the Western public discourse

This talk is for members of the general public as well as students