Constructing the Kam Ethnic Identity in Narratives

Abstract

Against a backdrop of accelerating process of integration and assimilation of ethnic minorities in China, this study explores the Kam people’s representation and negotiation of their ethnic identity through a linguistic ethnography of examining the narratives embedded in interviews with the Kam villagers. Taking a social interactional approach to narrative, this study analyses the interview narratives as discursively constructed activities that provide profound insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of the Kam people’s social and cultural practices.The narratives of the Kam communities build our understandings of the ways in which their education, mobility experience, perceived and actual distance from home, and work experience impact on the identification and representation of their ethnic identities. In general, this study demonstrates a linear relinquishing of Kam ethnic identity along with distance from their Kam home village.