Fellowships: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Peter A. Blitstein, History: [renewal] Stalin's Nations: Soviet
Nationality Policy between Planning and Primordialism, 1934-1953. The Soviet regime managed a multinational state by manipulating the ethnic
identities of its subjects. The measures and institutions of this "nationality
policy" were firmly established only in the mid-1930's, as Stalin consolidated
his personal rule and as the system which carries his name came into being.
From this point forward, the regime's nationality policy relied on an
essentialist interpretation of ethnic identity to support a program of
"nation-building" among the non-Russian peoples. This interpretation of
ethnicity conflicted with the regime's modernist, centralizing strategy of
rationally planning all spheres of political, social, and economic life. The
result was a fatal contradiction between the ideas upon which nationality
policy was based and the institutions that implemented it. The origins, logic,
and consequences of this hybrid policy are the subject of this dissertation.
See more information on Peter Blitstein
Susan K. McCarthy, Political Science: [renewal] Ethnicity, State, and Nation in the People's Republic of China. This project considers how ethnic identity and organization influence the goals
and tactics of state builders. In exploring this issue, Ms. McCarthy
investigates the links between state power and the control of cultural
institutions and practices, particularly those of an ethnic and religious
nature. She does this through an analysis of the Chinese Communist Party's
attempts to build its organizations among minority nationalities in the
post-1949 era. Specifically, she compares the experiences of the Dai, Bai and
Muslim Hui of Yunnan Province to see whether ethnic difference made a
difference in the ability of party cadres to gain support for the goals and
ideology of the CCP, and in the manner in which that support was sought. She
also explores official and parochial conceptions of the category "minzu"
(nationality) and the manner in which these groups' minority nationality status
mediates their membership in the Chinese nation-state.
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Susan Larson, Social and Cultural Studies in Education: Dynamics of Change and Coexistence: Motivations for Language Identity and Shift in Finland
Through a series of open-ended interviews with bilingual families in
Swedish-Finland, Ms. Larson will explore motivations for one of the most
radical, yet subtle, shifts in linguistic and cultural identity in Finland
since the mid-1800's. She will discover motives for resistance to linguistic
homogenization and link this resistance with individual perceptions of cultural
and economic gains through language identification. Moreover, she will attempt
to determine whether they are part of a larger perceptual shift in attitudes
about Finland-Swedish, as well as Finnish, identity. Patterns in the
registration of children by parents readily illustrate the shift in cultural
status applied to the Finnish and Swedish languages in Finland, but the cause
for choices in child registration is not well understood. Although the language
of registry is viewed as determining a number of official matters beyond mere
census registration, it is unproved whether this system provides a particularly
good indication of individual linguistic identity. This study, therefore, will
seek to understand the personal motivations of individual families, as well as
to comprehend the larger societal influences involved. Although the shift in
registration is well-documented demographically, this project will be the first
systematic study of the families represented by the statistics. Ms. Larson's
goal is to fill this gap in the research, as well as to make it part of a
larger comparative work on linguistic minorities in Europe.
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