Ethnicity is a highly politicized issue in China. Officially sanctioned social science classifies the majority group, the so-called Han, at the pinnacle of modernization and other groups as "primitives". This book explores how Han in Kunming, regard ethnic minorities and by extension themselves.

Exploring popular notions of ethnic identity in China, Portraits of Primitives provides the first comprehensive analysis of Han perspectives on minorities. Employing portraits of those ethnic groups perceived as most visibly different, Susan Blum illustrates how the majority Han view other ethnic groups. She traces political, scholarly, and popular concerns with classifying the Han at the pinnacle of modernization and civilization and other ethnic groups as primitive. The book places questions of identity, alterity, and self in the context of a complex nation-state where ethnicity is a highly politicized topic shaped in part by the official language of national harmony and unity and twentieth-century nation-building. Providing a broad cultural and political context for her nuanced discussion of identity, Susan Blum 's book will be an invaluable guide for those working in China studies, anthropology, and ethnic studies