The Miao Festival Crowd: Mediations of Presence, Body Politics, and an Ethnic Public in “Minority” China

This essay begins by juxtaposing two images of ethnic minorities in China: news photographs of ethnic minority representatives attending national political meetings and shots of large crowds at ethnic Miao festivals as seen in locally produced videos. Through this contrast, I investigate a series of interlocking concerns in the anthropology of crowds, festivals, and media publics by taking the mediation of ethnic Miao festival crowds as my analytical focus. I argue that the visual objectification of Miao festival crowds in local videos concretizes a distinctly ethnic public based on a body politics of presence. In this vernacular media form, presence illuminates a majority Miao world. Making sense of body politics and ethnic publics requires an expanded media ethnography that takes presence seriously as a potentially political intervention. Images of Miao festival crowds are therefore doubly significant: first, by contributing to future ethnic imaginaries (both emic and etic), and second, by visually priv...