| This study is based on twenty-seven months of field research among Hui Muslims in China from 1983 to 1986. Research was conducted primarily among four communities in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Fujian Province, Beijing City, and Chaoyang District, a suburb of Beijing. My thesis is that the wide diversity and unity of Hui identity is best understood by attention to the dialectical interaction of accepted meanings of descent from foreign Muslim ancestors with particular sociopolitical contexts. In each community, Hui identity and understanding of the concept of qingzhen is expressed differently in the specific social setting. I propose that government policy in the Chinese state plays a privileged role in influencing changes in the expression of Hui identity over time.; The introduction describes the problem presented by the Hui nationality for ethnicity theory. Wide sociocultural and religious expression is found among the Hui throughout China. The self-perceived unity of the Hui and their acceptance by the state as an ethnic group is problematic for traditional approaches to ethnicity that portray ethnic identity as mainly cultural or situational.; The succeeding chapters discuss how Hui ethnic identity is expressed with reference to cultural symbols that are relevant in different social settings. In the Northwest, Islamic belief and ritual embodies the most salient expression of Hui identity. In Hui lineages along the southeast coast, genealogical ideas of descent gain in significance for these Hui who no longer practice Islam. In urban areas, Hui identity is often expressed in cultural traditions of occupational specializations and dietary restrictions. In rural northern Hui villages, one of the main expressions of Hui identity is found in marriage endogamy. In the conclusion, I discuss the ethnogenesis of the Hui from Arab, Persian, Mongolian and Turkish emigrants who originally brought Islam to China. As a result of a 1200 year process of interaction with changing social contexts and state policies, the Hui people emerged as an ethnoreligious group, and this interaction with different social contexts continues to produce different expressions of Hui identity today. |
