2. Methodologies My empirical-historical analysis will be conducted in a methodological frame of a historically oriented, content and textual analysis, and critical discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is widely used in different ways. In regards to school textbook research, specific attention will be paid to the ‘relationship between language use and social structure’ (Deacon et al., 1999: 146-148). This analysis also focuses on ‘forms of representation in which different social categories, different social practices and relations are constructed from and in the interests of a particular point of view, a particular conception of social reality’ (148). My project will also adopt a comparative thematic content analysis. It will do so capturing and comparing the dominant themes in different texts, and decoding the emphasis, analysing the background and foreground information, especially the different ways of describing the same thing or different ways of defining the same term. The adoption of discourse analysis is closely linked to the method of narrative analysis in this report. Narrative analysis is another useful qualitative methodology in this part of research. One of the clearest explanations of this method can be found in Connelly and Clandinin’s (1990) work, that ‘humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and collectively, lead storied lives. Thus the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world’ (2). Griffin (1992) noted ‘the use of narrative mode to examine and exploit the temporality of social action and historical events’ (Griffin, 1992: 402). He defined the historical from the nonhistorical in sociological justification which is a product of converging comprehension of the “new” historical sociology. Historians and sociologists challenge the conventional view of the possibility of representing or “mirroring” sociohistorical actuality by the use of particular concepts, organisational techniques, and theories without speculating about the nature of the circumstances under investigation. Maines (1993) for example, classified and organised a story ‘through the use of plot, setting, and characterization that confer structure, meaning, and context on the events selected’ (21).Narrative is defined as the organisation of simultaneous actions and
cooperation between the Han and other minorities in China in order to defend China against a shared opponent. 4.3 The interpretation of minority groups – separation and combination The construction of the self is always intertwined with the construction of other. The understanding and interpreting of minority groups was simultaneously altered with changes in the representation of Han. The term zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation) appeared in academic discussion in the late Qing. The shift of the term and the meaning it referred to can be generally summarized in three ways: firstly it referred to all the independent nations within Chinese territory or Chinese history, in China. This meaning was mostly adopted by Japanese edited textbooks. For example, in Jitzuzõ’s (1899) work, although he claimed that the Han was the most important group in the Asian history by promoting Asian civilization, he did not mention the Han was the dominant group in Chinese history. On the other, the term minzu can sometimes mean the collection of nations, among which the Han performed an absolute dominance. For example, Liu Shipei (1906), in his zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu (The Textbook of Chinese History), included the mentioning of other minzu within the Chinese territory when he discussed national integration and separation; however, the term minzu only referred to the Han when he was dealing with the term zhongguo renmin (Chinese people). This understanding of minzu was often mixed with the third interpretation of the term that exclusively referred to the Han nation. The latter two interpretations were mainly used in Chinese written or edited textbooks. The long-term Chinese cultural tradition was constructed based on a potential rule that assumed there had been a natural hierarchy of ethnicities within China, with Han Chinese at the top while the minorities existed at the bottom. In various dynasties, some Hanese criminals were made to settle in the territory of those minorities, usually as a form of punishment. Moreover, hanhua (Hanization) was defined and widely accepted by elites as well as the Han public, as the only way of achieving civilization for those minority groups. Han intellectuals considered that it was their