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.

About the Author
Uradyn E. Bulag is reader in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews
Bulag's brilliant new book examines China's 'culture of intimacy,' in which minorities like the Mongolians and Tibetans are embraced in a suffocating hug. In a theoretical tour-de-force, Bulag overturns old conceptions of majority-minority relations, replacing them with a notion of society as a triadic space of possibilities. This is an essential book for understanding China, seeing it not as a unity but as a field of collaboration and contention. -- Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge
Uradyn Bulag, a distinguished ethnographer of Mongolia, explores emotional and political ties between Mongols and Chinese in this intriguing new book. Mongolia, as a former great empire that divided into an independent nation and a subordinated ethnic group within China, offers an unusual and fascinating case study that will interest students of nationalism and of Chinese history, as well as theorists of contemporary identities in the age of globalization. -- Peter Perdue, Yale University
Bulag has succeeded in capturing-or recapturing-the significance of Inner Mongolia to the geopolitics of East Asia. In showing how virtually all twentieth-century regimes in Northeast Asia competed to appropriate the world-conquering symbolism of Chinggis Khan, and, paradoxically, the spiritual power of Lamaism, Collaborative Nationalism makes a case for Mongol agency in this exemplary study of the 'new' political history. -- Prasenjit Duara, National University of Singapore


Awards
Winner of International Convention of Asia Scholars Social Sciences Book Prize 2011.



Book Information
ISBN 9781442204317
Author Uradyn E. Bulag
Format Hardback
Page Count 302
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 610g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 162mm * 24mm