Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949

Studies of halāl (permissible) food production and consumption have often been linked to the assimilation of Muslim communities into the fabric of secular and/or non-Muslim nation-states. Much of the academic discourse on this subject has centered on the boundaries that religious dietary requirem...

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Main Author: Faizah Zakaria
Other Authors: School of Humanities
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2021
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146152
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1461522023-03-11T20:06:25Z Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949 Faizah Zakaria School of Humanities Humanities::History Qingzhen Historical Ethnography Studies of halāl (permissible) food production and consumption have often been linked to the assimilation of Muslim communities into the fabric of secular and/or non-Muslim nation-states. Much of the academic discourse on this subject has centered on the boundaries that religious dietary requirements create between an in-group of faithful adherents to the religion and an out-group of those who do not belong. Republican China (1920–1949), with its significant population of Hui and Uyghur Muslims largely concentrated in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the country, offers a new window onto this picture of socialization through commensality. The present article flips the ethnographic lens from viewing Muslim communities alone to viewing the historical perspective of outsiders who interacted and broke bread with Muslims in the Republican period, thus bringing to the surface heretofore overlooked factors that impacted the process of Muslim social boundary-making through consumption. This approach contributes to the historiography and anthropology of Islam in China by spotlighting discretionary agency and by moving away from a focus on practices of exclusivity on the part of Muslim populations or strategies of coercive repression on the part of the nation-state. This has become especially important since the rise of Communism in China, for fasting is one of the rituals of overt religiosity that the communist state has been keen to suppress. From a comparative perspective, this article also demonstrates that gender, class asymmetries, and politics may be as crucial as religion in explaining the dining strategies of Muslim minority communities. Published version 2021-01-28T05:00:50Z 2021-01-28T05:00:50Z 2018 Journal Article Faizah Zakaria (2018). Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and Muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949. Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 3(2), 21-42. doi:10.2979/jims.3.2.03 2470-7066 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146152 10.2979/jims.3.2.03 2 3 21 42 en Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies © 2018 North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies. All rights reserved. This paper was published by Indiana University Press in Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies and is made available with permission of North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::History
Qingzhen
Historical Ethnography
spellingShingle Humanities::History
Qingzhen
Historical Ethnography
Faizah Zakaria
Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949
description Studies of halāl (permissible) food production and consumption have often been linked to the assimilation of Muslim communities into the fabric of secular and/or non-Muslim nation-states. Much of the academic discourse on this subject has centered on the boundaries that religious dietary requirements create between an in-group of faithful adherents to the religion and an out-group of those who do not belong. Republican China (1920–1949), with its significant population of Hui and Uyghur Muslims largely concentrated in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the country, offers a new window onto this picture of socialization through commensality. The present article flips the ethnographic lens from viewing Muslim communities alone to viewing the historical perspective of outsiders who interacted and broke bread with Muslims in the Republican period, thus bringing to the surface heretofore overlooked factors that impacted the process of Muslim social boundary-making through consumption. This approach contributes to the historiography and anthropology of Islam in China by spotlighting discretionary agency and by moving away from a focus on practices of exclusivity on the part of Muslim populations or strategies of coercive repression on the part of the nation-state. This has become especially important since the rise of Communism in China, for fasting is one of the rituals of overt religiosity that the communist state has been keen to suppress. From a comparative perspective, this article also demonstrates that gender, class asymmetries, and politics may be as crucial as religion in explaining the dining strategies of Muslim minority communities.
author2 School of Humanities
author_facet School of Humanities
Faizah Zakaria
format Article
author Faizah Zakaria
author_sort Faizah Zakaria
title Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949
title_short Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949
title_full Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949
title_fullStr Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949
title_full_unstemmed Qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican China, 1920–1949
title_sort qingzhen from the perspective of the other : consumption and muslim boundary-making in republican china, 1920–1949
publishDate 2021
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146152
_version_ 1761781692683517952