Ethnological and anthropological studies are undertaken in the Institute of Ethnology and Institute of Ethnic Literature, with the number of researchers totalling 38, of whom 16 are full professors,10 are associate professors,12 are research assistants.5 of the research staff have acquired doctoral degrees. Taking advantage of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the province, the researchers of ethnological studies have made themselves prominent in their respective fields. Their areas of study extend over a wide range of subjects, including ethnicity, laws governing the formation and development of ethnic groups, friendly coexistence of different ethnic groups and stability of border areas, and new issues that arise in matters concerning ethnic minorities in the drive for modernization. In the area of ethnicity study, researchers have now developed a thorough knowledge of the location, population and modes of society of the various ethnic minorities living in the province on the basis of the large-scale survey on ethnic groups conducted in the 1950s and 1960s in which they participated. The rich materials they have accumulated in this regard have laid a solid foundation for the further development of the subject. After the 1980s, the researchers again made large-scale in-depth investigation in the field among various ethnic minorities, and developed a full set of strictly-defined methods for ethnological studies and made important achievements on the subject, such as the program on the "Features and Laws of Societal Devleopment of Ethnic Minorities in the Elementary Stage of Socialism", which explored ethnic issues from a historical perspective by taking into consideration the features of Chinese socialism, on the basis of which it proposed theories that are highly scientific, closely relavant to reality, highly systematic and foresighted.Since the 1990s, the researchers have focused their~attention on issues related to preservation, protection and modernization of ethnic cultural traditions, development of tourism in minority areas and sustainability of development. They intiated the move to build Yunnan into a "showcase of ethnic cultures", which directly led to the current thriving of cultural undertakings in the province.
Dr.Yang Fuquan doing field
work in Mankang County, Tibet.
Researchers of The Institute of Ethnology taking pictures in Mojiang Hani Autonomous County when doing the fieldwork.
Researchers of the Institute of Ethnology workers comparing notes and discussing work together..
Visual anthropologists recording scenes of life of ethnic minorities
Publications on issues related to ethnic minorities
Publications on ethnic history and ethnography.
Researchers from the Institute of Ethnic Literature on their way to field work.