Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China

Centred on two Republican‐era Chinese sexologists, Zhang Jingsheng (1888–1970) and Pan Guangdan (1899–1967), this article explores the intellectual context in which the western category of ‘homosexuality’ was introduced to Chinese culture, thereby highlighting its production of a key epistemological rearrangement in the social significance of same‐sex desire in modern China. The article proposes and develops the analytic rubric of ‘epistemic modernity’ to illuminate the pertinent discursive apparatus of cultural translation and negotiation, on the basis of which explicit claims of (sexual) knowledge‐making were imbricated with implicit claims about cultural indicators of traditionality, authenticity and modernity.     

Media,Language Policy and Cultural Change in Tatarstan: Historic vs. Pragmatic Claims to Nationhood

Abstract. The politics of national identity in the Republic of Tatarstan are complex and often contradictory. Although sometimes posed in terms of an historical legacy, claims to nationhood are also strongly shaped by more pragmatic contemporary concerns. In addition to more conventional forms of political mobilisation, national identity is also contested in cultural arenas. Examining policies on language reform and media development, for example, sheds light on the processes through which a sense of national identity is currently being renegotiated in Tatarstan. The Republic's official multicultural policy is situated in the context of a range of distinct conceptions of Tatarstan's identity, from radical Islamic nationalism to a view of the republic as a Russian province.