Jingwei LI

This paper argues that ethnic paintings connotate situational ethnicity, adjusted by social change and ethnic boundaries. Based on anthropological fieldwork focusing on painter and mercantile communities, social-political connotations of ethnic art are discussed by applying an analysis of social semiotics in three discourses, employing the case of post-1990 Nepal. In particular: 1) Modern visual expressions of ethnicity are adopted into anti-hierarchical representations, as people engage in ethnic politics and cultural activities. 2) The two genres of ethnic painting, paubhā, and thangka, which were developed by traditional creators and informed by ethnicity, have experienced and developed a cross-boundary mode of operating in industries in response to social change. 3) In the market and mass media, the narrative of value construction regarding the tradition of ethnic art reveals a sign arena that identifies a drift toward the nation, the state, and civilization, prepensely attempting to mobilize semiotic resources through the lens of politics, the market, and global values.

Yoga has become prevalent as a fitness choice in China. Its commercial development is based on imported knowledge and is also constructed through a traditional way of interpretation, reflecting the localization of an "exotic" body technique. Although the related literature focuses primarily on Western and South Asian societies, the subjectivities of a new yoga "school" require examination for a better evaluation of present theory. By combining historical analysis, personal interviews, and auto-ethnography, this article investigates yoga from different perspectives to illustrate the practice's social connotations. Particularly, this study shows how yoga has experienced continuous translation and transformation during the interaction of interpreters and learners, and eventually become a consumption category associated with "wellness" and "elegance." Incorporating ontological anthropology and Pierre Bourdieu's theory, this article defines yoga as a multi-faceted habitus mediated among scenarios constructed by different actors, which sets with the time lag between the Chinese present and the past originated from the west and India. In this process of cross-cultural practice, yoga reveals two sets of conflicting values that embody the particularities of Chinese discourse.

This book explores the situations of people caught between religions and power. As Joel Lee describes and as its history has repeatedly revealed, the Dalit religion is founded on self-awareness yet often remains in the structural pitfalls of the existing social order and historical change. Lee focuses on the sanitation labour castes and reports their current numbers as 1.7 million in Punjab and 3.8 million in Uttar Pradesh (20). Based on historical investigations of the period 1870–1920, oral histories, and participant observation in Lucknow, the author explores the subtle Dalit religion specifically against the background of Hindu majoritarianism in Indian politics...

Following the 1990s, the ethnic hierarchy in Nepal moved to a multicultural discourse marked by the constitution of Nepal and the consequent enactment of its policies. The present-day educational system has enabled a revival of the minority language education through instruction in the mother tongue and by encouraging children to speak their mother tongue in a small group of schools in Nepal. In Simultaneous Identities: Language, Education, and the Nepali Nation, Uma Pradhan has examined the ongoing changes in education based on a study of two schools that employ the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Using Bakhtin’s notion of simultaneity, Pradhan argues that ethnic and national identities are mutually inclusive rather than exclusive. Meanwhile, contest and dominance also exist in minority language education, which is referred to as a “zone of contact” (17)...