Ecological Degradation and Endangered Ethnicities: China's Minority Environmental Discourses as Manifested in Popular Songs

Abstract

Much has been written in recent years about the environmental degradation in China's ethnic minority regions and the impact that this degradation and the policies that have been implemented to combat it have had on minority populations. To date, however, the research has focused mainly on the livelihood and lifestyle of minority herders and farmers. This article shifts the focus to the more symbolic realm of discourse and identity and to the minority educated urban elite, for whom this environmental degradation is linked primarily to ethnic politics. Based on an analysis of popular songs by famous Mongolian, Uyghur, and Tibetan musicians, along with interviews with the musicians who created them and other minority intellectuals, this article proposes that China's minority intellectuals have appropriated the global discourse of environmentalism to construct minority environmental discourses that they use to assert their ethnic identities, express ethnic concerns and aspirations, and make ethno-nationalist claims.

“Green-Colored Uyghur Poet”: Religion, Nostalgia, and Identity in Contemporary Uyghur Poetry

“…The depiction of the green, flourishing land is a metaphor for a symbolic past, in contrast to the dry, wretched present. This motif can be viewed as a criticism of the environmental damage caused mainly by the massive Chinese development in Xinjiang (Baranovitch, 2016: 189; see also Baranovitch, 2019). Uyghurs consider the distinct landscape of Xinjiang, like the city of Kashgar, to be a symbol of Uyghur identity.…”

Domesticating the Belt and Road: rural development, spatial politics, and animal geographies in Inner Mongolia

“…Here we can see clearly how ethnic subjectivity is combined with the discursive tropes of "green governmentality" (Yeh 2009) to enable a defence of a spatial identity and mode of land use ("nomadism") long stigmatized in official discourse (cf. Baranovitch 2016).…”

Pastoralism after culture: environmental governance and human‐animal estrangement at China's ecological frontier

“…This worked to counter the characterization of the land use practices of farmers and herders as ‘backward’ and destructive. In recent years, the notion that China's minority nationalities have a particular affinity for nature has been promulgated in literature and music (Baranovitch 2016).…”