Collaborative Nationalism The Politics of Friendship on China's Mongolian Frontier

by Bulag, Uradyn E.

• ISBN13: 9781442204317
• ISBN10: 1442204311
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-16
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Cosmopolitanism and friendship have become key themes for understanding ethnicity and nationalism. In this deeply original study of the Mongols, leading scholar Uradyn E. Bulag draws on these themes to develop a new concept he terms _collaborative nationalism._ He uses this concept to explore the paradoxical dilemma of minorities in China as they fight not against being excluded but against being embraced too tightly in the bonds of _friendship._ Going beyond traditional binary relationships, he offers a unique triangular perspective that illuminates the complexity of regional interaction. Thus, Collaborative Nationalism traces the regional and global significance of the Mongols in the fierce competition among China, Japan, Mongolia, and Russia to appropriate the Mongol heritage to buttress their own national identities. The book considers a rich array of case studies that range from Chinggis Khan to reincarnate lamas, from cadres to minority revolutionary history, and from building the Mongolian working class to interethnic adoption. So-called friendship and collaboration permeate all of these arenas, but Bulag digs below the surface to focus on the animosity and conflicts they both generate and mask. Weighing the options the Mongols face, he argues that the ethnopolitical is not so much about identity as it is about the capacity of an ethnic group to decide and organize its own vision of itself, both within its community and in relation to other groups. Nationalism, he contends, is collaborative at the same time that it is predicated on the pursuit of sovereignty.

Author Biography

URADYN E. BULAG is reader in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: Triangulating China's Ethnopolitics	p. 1
Subimperial Desires
Hunting Chinggis Khan's Skull and Soul	p. 31
Lamas to the Rescue: Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism and Imperial Nationalisms	p. 65
Collaborative Nationalism
Friendship, Treason, and Collaborative Nationalism	p. 101
Yearning for Friendship: The Political in Minority Revolutionary History	p. 133
Interethnic Intimacy
The Flight of the Golden Pony: Socialism and the Stillbirth of the Mongolian Working Class	p. 167
Interethnic Adoption and the Regime of Affection	p. 199
Conclusion: The Specter of Interethnic Friendship	p. 243
References	p. 249
Index	p. 275
About the Author	p. 283
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