Ethnicity Construct And Maintain

This dissertation centered on the Xidaotang, an Islamic group in Northwest China, and aim at studing the Chinese Muslims by anthropological theories and methods. In this dissertation, we attempted to integrate the theories of ethnicity with the practices in the history and at present, and tried to analysis, interpret, and understand the constructions, maintenances, and continuities of the collective identity.In the dissertation, we paid attention to combine the fieldwork of anthropology to philology methods in history, and described the Xidaotang by dialogue between the historical datum and fieldwork datum, which break through the past methods in studies. At the same time, we adopted the theory of ethnicity to study the Xidaotang, which alter the trend in study of ignorance of theoretic analysis. And we advanced a method in the past studies that discuss it in the historical background of the Islamic society in Northwest China. This method would put it into a historical, complex network of the social relation, by which we revealed the affections that embody in the expressions of collective identity, from the network of the social relation on the constructions, development, and continuity of the Xidaotang.This dissertation include eight chapter expect the introduction and the conclusion. The four chapters ahead would describe, analysis, and discuss it in frame of the change in local society history, which were based1 on the historical literature, and integrated the fieldwork datum. In order to reveal the constructions, development, and maintenances of the Xidaotang in the history relied on the natural geography and social space, we show the marginality of the Lintan community in Gansu province, which embody in the historical geography, distribution of culture, and systems of power. What's more, we point out the characters of the natural geography and social space. Because the constructions of a religious group can not be divorced from the grate tradition in the social background, so we display the Sufism tradition and the source of the Maqixi's thoughts, that was interested in illustrating the social and cultural source which were chose by the Xidaotang. If we want to understand affects from the relations among the sects and among the ethnic groups, we should comprehend the historical backgrounds under which the Xidaotang had established in the concrete relations of the local society. In addition, as a tropism of the Xidaotang's practice in thehistory and a formulations of its collective identity, the interactions between the Xidaotang and several ethnic groups, power of nation, the scholars out of the local society, by which the Xidaotang could deploitate much greater subsistent space beyond the local society.The narrative of the rest four chapters, which aimed at making an ethnographical describe, analysis and interpretation on the relations within the Xidaotang and the expressions of collective identity in daily life, were based on the fieldwork datum and got assistance from the historical datum at the time. In these chapters, we mentioned the religious leader, and revealed its status in the collective identity of the Xidaotang. The analysis of structural system, which the relations within the group relied on, intended to show that its ethnic identity were choose up and organized under the structural system framework. In the field, we could find the distinctions on dress, strategy of marriage, religious convenience, funeral and so on, which display the distinctions on expressions of identity between the Xidaotang and others menhuan(门宦).In the last chapter, we centered on the great ritual within the group, and exhibited collective identity of the Xidaotang by describing and interpretating its process.In the conclusion, we discussed the Xidaotang's practice in the history and at present as a case study about the constructions and maintenances of ethnicity. In this case, we considered that the constructions, development and maintenances of the Xidaotang were based on social relation under the special natural and soci...