Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (review)

Dru C. Gladney's Dislocating China further strengthens his important position in the study of China's Muslim population. It also advances his research, perhaps more than his previous publications, to a noteworthy place in the overall study of China's minorities as well as contemporary China. In his examination of ethnicity, identity, and nationalism in the context of minority-majority and minority-state relationships, this volume helps to develop "our understanding of China" (p. xi), since minority subjects can help us "learn much about the construction of majority identity in China, and the state of society in general" (p. 92).

The value of the volume can be judged first by Gladney's research resources. His discussion and analysis are based mainly on his years of experience in China's Muslim communities; his interviews with both the minorities and the Han informants inside and outside China; his research on art pieces, films, literary publications, folk legends, genealogies, maps, Internet sites, cell phone communications, et cetera; his interpretation of documents and statements in official and unofficial forms; and his favorable and critical use of social science theories. These resources lay a solid foundation for a successful anthropology project.

In sixteen chapters (composing seven parts) plus the Preface, Gladney builds up a strong theoretical framework in which important issues are particularly addressed in parts 1 and 2. Questioning the majority/minority, center/periphery, and primitive/modern mentality in Western scholarship, the following key arguments are presented. First, "The so-called peripheral minorities have played a pivotal role in influencing and constructing contemporary Chinese society and identity," and these minorities "are no longer marginal to our understanding of contemporary China" (p. 54). Second, "nationness" and "Chineseness" are seen in their "multicultural complexity" (p. 1), relating ethnic peoples' identities to China's national identity and then to the construction of the modern nation-state in twentieth-century China. In a "marked category," argues Gladney, the identity of the minorities, in opposition and contrast to the majority, characterize "the 'unmarked' nature of Han identity" (p. 63). Third, ethnicity and nationalism are examined in "power relations" between minority peoples and the state (p. 52) and interpreted in light of the theory of "internal colonialism." Fourth, China's internal minorities are linked to the external context in many ways. For example, Hanness in China is compared with "whiteness" in the United States (p. 83); China's Muslim nationalities are connected to the Muslim world beyond China proper; and the Muslim minorities are studied according to their visible roles in China's foreign policy-making. Gladney offers either his own interpretation or a fresh analysis of these theoretical issues.

With this theoretical framework established, the Hui (who are spread all over China) and the Uyghur (who live mostly in Xinjiang) are the two main Muslim nationalities investigated. In part 3, the Hui identity is examined in the Hui communities throughout China at the local level. Historic tombs and related legends are used to trace "the root of their ethnic identity as Hui" (p. 148) and to explain their diversity within and unity outside. Ethnic identity in this case is argued to be formed in a "dialogical interaction" or often a "dialogical opposition" between the minorities and the state (p. 159). How the Hui see themselves is discussed separately from how the state sees them.

Part 4 suggests three styles of discourse of ethnic nationalism: diaspora for the Hui (Dungan), indigeneity for the Uyghur, and transhumance for the Kazakh. Ethnic identities are illustrated as "relational, relative, and grounded in a historical representation in which the people . . . situate themselves" (p. 189). Gladney concludes the discussion here, again, with the political opposition between the officially recognized (as well as unrecognized) groups and the nation-state, and points out that the identities of these groups "have now moved above and beyond the bounds of the Chinese nation-state" (p. 204).

Part 5 discusses the Uyghur...