The Discourse of Race in Modern China

Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 1994. Softcover. Good. 5x0x8. [RACE]. Dikotter, Frank. "The Discourse of Race in Modern China." Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. English language. Softcover. Text with black and white illustrations. 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 in. 22 x 14 x 1.5 cm. 12 oz. xii, 251 pp. Light discoloration on covers. Crease in back cover. Price in pencil on half-title. Ink underlining and marginalia. Dog-earring. Yellowing. Good. ISBN: 9780804723343."This is the first systematic study of a topic which cuts straight through the heart of many aspects of intellectual life in modern China and has hitherto remained unexplored because it has been deemed to be embarrassing and politically unfashionable: the discourse of race. This book looks at the emergence of racial stereotypes during the nineteenth century, the gradual formation of a racial discourse at the turn of the century, the conceptualization of racial nationalism at the beginning of the 1910s, and the institutionalization and habituation of this discourse by the academic community in the 1920s and '30s. It also provides the first analysis of eugenics--the pseudo-science of race improvement--in Republican China. The work is based on a wide variety of sources, some hitherto neglected by sinologists, such as primers on anthropology, genetics and eugenics, pamphlets on racial nationalism, medical handbooks, schoolbooks and caricatures.