Citation:
Date Presented:
10 February 2012Abstract:
This thesis examines the social dynamics that animate the relations between Burmese and Chinese (Hui) Muslims in and around the Jinghong Mosque in Jinghong City (Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan, China), which ultimately contributes to a broad, but primarily speculative, body of literature surrounding the influence of interaction with foreign Muslims upon the Islamic practices and perceptions of Muslims in post-Cultural Revolution China. I contend that each of the two ethnic groups in the Jinghong community maintains its own standard of what defines Islamic authenticity, which limits the degree and depth of intellectual and spiritual exchange between the Hui Chinese and Burmese communities. Further, I probe the various mechanisms of boundary making that reify and maintain the salience of ethnic difference between the two groups, drawing upon a wide spectrum of classical and modern social theory. Throughout the work, I insert my discussions and conclusions into broader historical, anthropological and sociological arguments surrounding the construction of the Chinese Muslim identity and ethnic/national identity in China and Burma/Myanmar at large. My methodology is ethnographic, and my primary data derives from participant observation research and formal interviews that I conducted in and around the Jinghong Mosque in July and August 2011.