Promotional Information

This is an innovative, thought-provoking, and important contribution to our understanding of contemporary Chinese society. -- James Leibold, coeditor of Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority At a time when minority identities and conflicts between minorities and the state have become increasingly salient for our understanding of China and its politics, we need to pay more attention to the question of what Han identity means for the Han themselves and how conflict between Han and minorities is explained by the nature of Han identity. The Han makes an important contribution to this understanding. -- From the foreword by Stevan Harrell, author of Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China

Table of Contents

Foreword by Stevan Harrell

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Narrating “the Han”

2. Contemporary Narratives of Han-ness

3. Topographies of Identity

4. Othering, Exclusion, and Discrimination

5. Fragmented Identities, the Han Minzu, and Ethnicity

Epilogue

Notes

Glossary of Chinese Characters

References

Index

About the Author

Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi is a postdoctoral researcher of social and cultural anthropology at Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, and a Crossroads Asia Research Fellow.

Reviews

"Contemporary anthropological research infrequently focuses on the Han, who constitute 91.5 percent of the Chinese population. Social anthropologist Joniak-Lüthi takes a big step “to explore the Han and Han-ness”… An ambitious work, similar to defining America and Americanism. Recommended."
*Choice*

"This should be a must-read for anyone interested in historical and contemporary notions of identity in China."
*New Books Network*

"I am constantly intrigued by what it means to be Han. . . . Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi's remarkable new book casts light on this question, and reveals Hanness as a slippery and multivalent designation. . . . The fieldwork undertaken by the author for this study, and the deep analysis to which she has subjected it, has produced a wonderful contribution to scholarship on the Han, but I believe it illumines also the ways in which we all see ourselves."
*New Books Asia*