Thomas S. Mullaney > Quotes

“In a distribution map published in 1951 for internal circulation, the Yunnan Province Nationalities Affairs Commission listed 132 groups.5 In 1953, the commission revised this map somewhat, reducing the total number of groups to 125.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“The region was first brought into the eastern imperial orbit when the kingdom of Dali was overtaken by the Mongols in 1253 and incorporated into the Chinese administered area that would become known as the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). The Yuan garrisoned multiple towns in the newly formed province of Yunnan, which thereafter became magnets for Chinese merchants.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“The important work of Miriam Sweeney at the University of Alabama shows how Microsoft’s Ms. Dewey was a highly sexualized, racialized, and gendered avatar for the company (see fig. 9.1). Her Bitch interview about fembots is a perfect entry point for those who don’t understand the politics of gendered and anthropomorphized robots.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Your Computer Is on Fire

“One simply cannot understand ethnic diversity in Yunnan, for example, without taking into account the topography of the province. Cut up by complex river systems and marked by rapid fluctuations in elevation, Yunnan’s geography doubtless has contributed to the splintering of communities and linguistic diversification. Likewise, another key factor has been the province’s location at the crossroads of migration and cultural exchange emanating from the civilizational centers of modern-day Southeast Asia, Tibet, and China. This complex and layered history of migration is undoubtedly constitutive of modern Yunnan and its resident communities. The fifty-six-minzu model was not produced by way of discourse alone.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“Focusing on Yunnan, one finds a number of answers to these questions, none of them consistent. In a report dating to 1951, published for internal circulation, the Central Nationalities Affairs Commission in Beijing listed 107 groups in the province.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“The identities of China’s non-Han minority groups, it would seem, were carefully unearthed from beneath accumulated layers of misunderstanding.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“More specifically, the national minorities of Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Guizhou would be afforded one of three options were the CCP to gain power over the mainland: first, to “separate from the Chinese Soviet Republic and establish their own state”; second, to “join the [Chinese] Soviet federation” or third, to “establish autonomous regions within the Chinese Soviet Republic.”48 More concretely, the 1931 congress committed the regime to the development of minority-language education, minority-language publishing houses, the use of local languages in the execution of government in minority areas, and the training of minority cadres.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“We can make, bootstrap, and science the shit out of this.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Your Computer Is on Fire

“The Ethnic Classification Project was not undertaken as part of a preexisting or even premeditated Communist goal of taxonomic reductionism. To the contrary, it was carried out in response to a political crisis that had emerged precisely because of the party’s radically liberal experiment with practically unfettered self-categorization. Had the PRC carried out its inaugural census according to conventional governmentalist models, using existing models in circulation at both the central and provincial level Nationalities Affairs Commissions, it is highly likely that there would now be far more officially recognized minzu in Yunnan, and nationwide, than there are today.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“However, the study cautiously and uncritically portrayed the Classification as little more than a process of discovery.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

“As every historian knows, brief and passing moments like this have the capacity to reroute us, hurtling us down unexpected paths that can require years to traverse, but leave us richer for the journey.”
― Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Typewriter: A History