Shao-yun Yang challenges assumptions that the cultural and socioeconomic watershed of the Tang-Song transition (800–1127 CE) was marked by a xenophobic or nationalist hardening of ethnocultural boundaries in response to growing foreign threats. In that period, reinterpretations of Chineseness and its supposed antithesis, “barbarism,” were not straightforward products of politic...(展开全部)

Ethnic Identity in Tang China is the first work in any language to explore comprehensively the construction of ethnicity during the dynasty that reigned over China for roughly three centuries, from 618 to 907. Often viewed as one of the most cosmopolitan regimes in China's past, the Tang had roots in Inner Asia, and its rulers continued to have complex relationships with a popu...(展开全部)

In 1644, the Manchus, a relatively unknown people inhabiting China’s rude northeastern frontier, overthrew the Ming, Asia’s mightiest rulers, and established the Qing dynasty, which endured to 1912. From this event arises one of Chinese history’s great conundrums: How did a barely literate alien people manage to remain in power for nearly 300 years over a highly cultured popula...(展开全部)

In 1644, the Manchus, a relatively unknown people inhabiting China’s rude northeastern frontier, overthrew the Ming, Asia’s mightiest rulers, and established the Qing dynasty, which endured to 1912. From this event arises one of Chinese history’s great conundrums: How did a barely literate alien people manage to remain in power for nearly 300 years over a highly cultured popula...(展开全部)

This volume is the first complete English rendition of the 45 famous tales in the monumental anthology masterfully selected and edited by Lu Xun (1881–1936). It is the most distinctive, authoritative, and influential chuanqi collection thus far, and many of the pieces are rendered for the first time. This is an important contribution to the field of Chinese studies in the Engli...(展开全部)

Society and the Supernatural in Song China is at once a meticulous examination of spirit-possession and exorcism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a social history of the full panoply of China's religious practices and practitioners at the moment when she was poised to dominate the world economy. Although the Song dynasty (960-1276) is often identified with the establ...(展开全部)

When originally published in Norway, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries marked the transition to a new era of ethnic studies. Today this much-cited classic is regarded as the seminal volume from which stems much current anthropological thinking about ethnicity. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries opens with Barth’s invaluable thirty-page essay that introduces students to important theoretic...(展开全部)

The Chinese territory is densely meshed with holy sites (mountains, caves, springs...) where the gods manifest themselves and where pilgrims come to meet them. The present volume, the result of a Franco-Japanese conference held in Paris in 2017, includes fifteen chapters in French and English, exploring the conceptions and practices at these holy sites; they build the analysis ...(展开全部)

Managing ethnic nationalism within the People's Republic of China has become increasingly challenging. As new reforms widen economic disparities between minorities and the Han majority, even the most assimilated of minorities, the Zhuang, have begun to demand special treatment from the central government. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially recognized the sixteen milli...(展开全部)

The scholarly culture of Ming dynasty China (1368–1644) is often seen as prioritizing philosophy over concrete textual study. Nathan Vedal uncovers the preoccupation among Ming thinkers with specialized linguistic learning, a field typically associated with the intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century. He explores the collaboration of Confucian classicists and Buddhist...(展开全部)