Combining ethnic heritage and national unity: A paradox of Nuosu (Yi) language textbooks in China

Abstract

Since the reform of the Chinese Communist Party's ethnic minority policies in 1984, education in minority languages has been heavily promoted in many areas. Although they participate enthusiastically in minority-language education, political and educational elites in minority areas are faced with conflicting demands between their feelings of local and ethnic pride, on the one hand, and the requirement to promote the Party's policies of ethnic solidarity and national unification, on the other. These conflicting demands are only partially resolved in the curriculum materials in the Nuosu (Northern Yi) language used in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southern Sichuan Province. This article analyzes first- through third-grade Nuosu-language readers in a case study of this contradiction and of attempted resolutions.

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Notes on contributors

Bamo Ayi

The research leading to this paper was enabled by a Chinese Fellowship for Scholarly Development from the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, supplemented by a grant from the China Studies Program at the University of Washington. We are thankful for the help of both these organizations.

We have also benefitted from detailed comments on earlier drafts by Laura Rein, Mark Selden, and Janet Upton. In addition, we are grateful for the opportunity to present this material to the China Colloquium at the University of Washington.

Note: The authors use italics for Chinese words and bold face for Nuosu words in this article. Ed.