Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T17:16:26.142Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Why Don’t You Go to the Mosque?” Epistemic Deference and Everyday Religious Practices in Hui Muslim Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2020

David R. Stroup Open the ORCID record for David R. Stroup [Opens in a new window]
David R. Stroup*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The study of everyday ethnicity emphasizes the importance of seeking the perspectives of the masses regarding processes of ethnic identity formation and ethnic boundary maintenance. In contrast to elite-centered approaches, everyday ethnicity attempts to understand how ethnicity is constructed from the bottom-up. However, seeking the everyday presents researchers with a number of distinct challenges. Prevalent among these obstacles is a tendency of non-elite respondents to direct scholars to elite authorities when responding to questions about ethnic identity, claiming they lack expertise or qualifications to speak on the subject. This epistemic deference toward elite sources may be particularly acute in ethno-religious communities, where the hierarchies of religious orders may reinforce the gulf of “knowledge” between clergy and lay believers. This article examines the problem of epistemic deference through a case study of everyday ethnicity in urban Hui Muslim communities in China. Drawing on data collected over the course of 152 interviews and numerous ethnographic observations conducted in four cities in China (Beijing, Jinan, Yinchuan, and Xining) between July 2015 and July 2016, the article illustrates the challenges posed by epistemic deference to field researchers in religious communities.

Keywords

everyday ethnicityeveryday religionHui MuslimsIslamChina
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 48 , Special Issue 6: Special Issue on Everyday Nationalism in World Politics , November 2020 , pp. 983 - 999
Check for updates
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Ahram, Ariel I., and Goode, J. Paul. 2016. “Researching Authoritarianism in the Discipline of Democracy.” Social Science Quarterly 97 (4): 834–849.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldridge, Alan. 2013. “Religion.” In Social Divisions, edited by Payne, Geoff, 221–243. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Allina-Pisano, Jessica. 2009. “How to Tell an Axe Murderer: An Essay on Ethnography, Truth, and Lies.” In Political Ethnography, edited by Schatz, Edward, 53–73. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. 2007a. “Introduction: Observing Modern Religious Lives.” In Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, edited by Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, 1–16. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. 2007b. “Studying Everyday Religion: Challenges for the Future.” In Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, edited by Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, 219–235. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barth, Fredrik. 1969. “Introduction.” In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference, edited by Barth, Fredrik, 9–38. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Google Scholar
Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi. 2005. The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China . Harvard East Asian Monographs 248. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2012. “Religion and Nationalism: Four Approaches.” Nations and Nationalism 18 (1): 2–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, Feischmidt, Margit, Fox, Jon, and Grancea, Liana. 2006. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chagas, Gisele Fonseca. 2012. “Preaching for Converts: Knowledge and Power in the Sunni Community in Rio de Janeiro.” In Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practice, edited by Dupret, Baudouin, Pierret, Thomas, Pinto, Paulo G., and Spellman-Poots, Kathryn, 71–80. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2009. “Making Causal Claims about the Effect of ‘Ethnicity.’” In Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, edited by Lichbach, Mark Irving and Zuckerman, Alan S., 376–412. Cambridge;, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, Sumi, Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, and McCall, Leslie. 2013. “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis.” Signs 38(4): 785–810.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Cathy J. 1996. “Contested Membership: Black Gay Identities and the Politics of AIDS.” In Queer Theory/Sociology, edited by Seidman, Steven, 362–394. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum (140): 139–167.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–1299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denny, Frederick Mathewson. 2006. An Introduction to Islam. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Eickelman, Dale F. 1992. “Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Societies.” American Ethnologist 19 (4): 643–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eickelman, Dale F., and Piscatori, James P.. 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia. 1996. “Religion and Ethnicity.” In Ethnicity, edited by Hutchinson, John and Smith, Anthony D., 197–202. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Erie, Matthew S. 2015. “Muslim Mandarins in Chinese Courts: Dispute Resolution, Islamic Law, and the Secular State in Northwest China.” Law & Social Inquiry 40 (4): 1001–1030.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erie, Matthew S. 2016. China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erie, Matthew S., and Carlson, Allen. 2014. “Introduction to ‘Islam in China/China in Islam.’” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 12: 1–13.Google Scholar
Fibiger, Thomas. 2015. “Marja’iyyah from Below: Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religious Authority.” Journal of Shiʻa Islamic Studies 8 (4): 473–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Jon E., and Miller-Idriss, Cynthia. 2008a. “Everyday Nationhood.” Ethnicities 8 (4): 536–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Jon E., and Miller-Idriss, Cynthia. 2008b. “The ‘Here and Now’ of Everyday Nationhood.” Ethnicities 8 (4): 573–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 1981. Muslim Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 1991. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic . Harvard East Asian Monographs 149. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 1999. “Making Muslims in China: Education, Islamicization and Representation.” In China’s National Minority Eduction: Culture, Schooling, and Development, edited by Postiglione, Gerard A., 55–95. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Glasius, Marlies, de Lange, Meta, Bartman, Jos, Dalmasso, Emanuela, Lv, Aofei, Sordi, Adele Del, Michaelsen, Marcus, and Ruijgrok, Kris. 2018. Research, Ethics and Risk in the Authoritarian Field. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goode, J. Paul, and Stroup, David R.. 2015. “Everyday Nationalism: Constructivism for the Masses.” Social Science Quarterly 96 (3): 717–739.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graw, Knut. 2012. “Divination in Islam: Existential Perspectives in the Study of Ritual and Religious Praxis in Senegal and Gambia.” In In Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion, edited by Samuli Schielke, Joska and Debevec, Liza 17–32. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Jessica. 1997. “Religion and Ethnicity: Dual and Alternative Sources of Identity Among Young British Pakistanis.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 20 (2): 238–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaschok, Maria. 2012. “Sources of Authority: Female Ahong and Qingzhen Nüsi (Women’s Mosques) in China.” Women, Leadership, and Mosques, January, 37–58.Google Scholar
Kalmbach, Hilary. 2012. “Introduction: Islamic Authority and the Study of Female Leaders.” In Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, edited by Bano, Masooda and Kalmbach, Hilary, 1–27. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Lipman, Jonathan N. 1998. Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Lipman, Jonathan N. 2015. “Epilogue to" Islam in China/China in Islam."” Cross-Currents:East Asian History and Culture Review 3(2): 601–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipman, Jonathan N. ed. 2016. Islamic Thought In China. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Barry. 2001. “Religion, Authority, and Identity: Intergenerational Politics, Ethnic Resurgence, and Respect in Chimborazo, Ecuador.” Latin American Research Review 36 (1): 7–48.Google Scholar
Macey, Marie, and Carling, Alan H.. 2011. Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Inequalities: The Perils of Subjectivity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsden, Magnus. 2005. Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackerras, Colin. 1999. “Religion and the Education of China’s Minorities.” In China’s National Minority Education: Culture, Schooling, and Development, edited by Postiglione, Gerard A., 23–55. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McGuire, Meredith. 2007. “Embodied Practices: Negotiation and Resistance.” In Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, edited by Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, 187–200. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minei, Elizabeth, and Bisel, Ryan. 2013. “Negotiating the Meaning of Team Expertise A Firefighter Team’s Epistemic Denial.” Small Group Research 44 (1): 7–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murata, Sachiko, and Chittick, Willliam C.. 1994. The Vision of Islam. New York: Paragon House.Google Scholar
Orsi, Robert A. 1985. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Orsi, Robert A. 1992. “The Religious Boundaries of an Inbetween People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920-1990.” American Quarterly 44 (3): 313–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orsi, Robert A. 1997. “Everyday Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion.” In Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice, edited by Hall, David D., 3–21. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, Herbert J., and Rubin, Irene S.. 2011. Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.Google Scholar
Sachedina, Abdulaziz Abdulhussein. 2011. Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Principles and Application. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schatz, Edward. 2009. “Introduction: Ethnographic Immersion and the Study of Politics.” In Political Ethnography, edited by Schatz, Edward, 1–22. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sciorra, Joseph. 1999. “‘We Go Where the Italians Live’: Religious Processions as Ethnic and Territorial Markers in a Multi-Ethnic Brooklyn Neighborhood.” In Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape, edited by Orsi, Robert A., 310–341. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Schielke, Joska Samuli, and Debevec, Liza. 2012. “Introduction.” In Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion, edited by Schielke, Joska Samuli and Debevec, Liza, 1–16. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Simon, Gregory M. 2009. “The Soul Freed of Cares? Islamic Prayer, Subjectivity, and the Contradictions of Moral Selfhood in Minangkabau, Indonesia.” American Ethnologist 36 (2): 258–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1998. “Religion, Religions, Religious.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Taylor, Mark C., 269–284. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Stroup, David R. 2017. “Boundaries of Belief: Religious Practices and the Construction of Ethnic Identity in Hui Muslim Communities.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40 (6): 988–1006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tweed, Thomas A. 1999. “Diasporic Nationalism and Urban Landscape: Cuban Immigrants at a Catholic Shrine in Miami.” In Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape, edited by Orsi, Robert A., 131–154. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,.Google Scholar
Veer, Peter van der, and Lehmann, Hartmut, eds. 1999. Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2010. “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science.” Annual Review of Political Science 13 (1): 255–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolford, Wendy. 2006. “The Difference Ethnography Can Make: Understanding Social Mobilization and Development in the Brazilian Northeast.” Qualitative Sociology 29 (3): 335–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woods, Eric Taylor, and Tsang, Rachel. 2013. “Ritual and Performance in the Study of Nationalism.” In The Cultural Politics of Nationalism and Nation-Building: Ritual and Performance in the Forging of Nations, edited by Tsang, Rachel and Woods, Eric Taylor, 1–18. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yusupova, Guzel. 2019. “Exploring Sensitive Topics in an Authoritarian Context: An Insider Perspective.” Social Science Quarterly 100 (4): 1459–1478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Interviews

BJ02082915. 2015. Imam at MaDian Mosque. Interviewed by author, August 29. Beijing.Google Scholar
BJ09091615. 2015. Tax cab driver. Interviewed by author, September 16. Beijing.Google Scholar
BJ14092415. 2015. Imam at Landianchang Mosque. Interviewed by author, September 24. Beijing.Google Scholar
BJ154090515. 2015. Restaurant owner on Niu Jie. Interviewed by author, September 5. Beijing.Google Scholar
BJ30102415. 2015. Retiree. Interviewed by author, October 24. Beijing.Google Scholar
BJ65010716. 2016. Author and professor. Interviewed by author, January 7. Beijing.Google Scholar
JN27102015. 2015. Imam at Great Southern Mosque. Interviewed by author, October 20. Jinan.Google Scholar
JN33110115. 2015. Imam at Xi Zhangjiazhuang Mosque. Interviewed by author, November 1. Jinan.Google Scholar
JN35110515. 2015. Restaurant owner. Interviewed by author, November 5. Jinan.Google Scholar
JN43112415. 2015. Tea shop owner. Interviewed by author, November 24. Jinan.Google Scholar
JN52120415. 2015. Salesman. Interviewed by author, December 4. Jinan.Google Scholar
JN55120815. 2015. Restaurant owner. Interviewed by author, December 8. Jinan.Google Scholar
JN61121615. 2015. Convenience store owner. Interviewed by author, December 16. Jinan.Google Scholar
XN115041516. 2016. Professor of anthropology. Interviewed by author, April 15. Xining.Google Scholar
XN118041816. 2016. Tour guide at the Dongguan Mosque. Interviewed by author, April 18. Xining.Google Scholar
XN120042016. 2016. Small business owner. Interviewed by author, April 20. Xining.Google Scholar
XN128043016. 2016. Graduate student. Interviewed by author, April 30. Xining.Google Scholar
XN133050616. 2016. Unemployed (working as a caretaker and stay-home mother). Interviewed by author, May 6. Xining.Google Scholar
XN137051216. 2016. Tea shop owner. Interviewed by author, May 12. Xining.Google Scholar
XN150061516. 2016. Imam at the Nanguan Mosque. Interviewed by author, June 15. Xining.Google Scholar
XN151061716. 2016. Antique dealer. Interviewed by author, June 17. Xining.Google Scholar
YN77012816. 2016. Imam at Nanguan Mosque. Interviewed by author, January 28. Yinchuan.Google Scholar
YN99031816. 2016. Restaurant owner. Interviewed by author, March 18. Yinchuan.Google Scholar
YN92022216. 2016. Administrator at the Ningxia Academy of Social Sciences. Interviewed by author, February 22. Yinchuan.Google Scholar
YN152011816. 2016. Professor of Ethnic Studies. Interviewed by author, January 16. Yinchuan.Google Scholar
YN153011816. 2016. Professor of Anthropology. Interviewed by author, January 18. Yinchuan.Google Scholar