Inside the Expressive Culture of Chinese Women's Mosques
'This Turmoil of the Soul'
- 272 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
This book presents a multi-voice narrative of the history and significance of current contestations over the increasing prominence of expressive piety in Hui Muslim women's mosques in central China.
By drawing on a 'Song Book' of chants, collected from the tradition of women's mosques, as context it reveals just how the increasing prominence of female voices has given rise to considerable misgivings among senior religious leaders over the potential destabilisation of orthodox Islamic gendered practices. Providing a historical introduction to the place and function of Islamic chants, jingge and zansheng, the book gives a conceptual framing of female silence, sound, and agency in local translations of Confucian and Islamic precepts, and women's personal accounts of the role played by traditional and modern soundscapes in transmitting and celebrating Islamic knowledge and faith.
As a study of women's soundscapes and the significance of legitimacy, ambiguities, and implications of female sound, this book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of Chinese society and culture, gender studies, cultural anthropology, and Islam.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Endorsements
- Half-Title
- Series
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Explanatory Notes
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Chants
- List of Acronyms
- Introduction: A Research Community of Discovery and Voice
- 1 The Songbook of Chinese Hui Muslim Women1: Recovering an Expressive Culture of Religious Piety
- 2 Chants as a Bridge to Remembering Past Lives1: Once Learned Never Forgotten
- 3 Theorizing Silence, Voice, Identity, and Cultural Fault-lines: Strategies of Silence and Powers of Omission
- 4 Vernacularizing a Global Faith: The Happier an Atmosphere
- 5 State Power, Women’s Liberation, and Traditions of Faith: Researching Spaces Owned, Spaces of Possibility
- 6 The Right to be Heard: Chants of Turmoil, Chants of Gladness
- 7 Remembering Chants of Commitment: Truth Lies With Father and Mother
- 8 Sustaining Faith During Times of Scarcity and Silence: To Live Through Such Times
- 9 A Space From Which to Speak: Harmonies and Discords
- 10 Sounding Silence and Turmoil of the Soul: Collective Agency and Legitimacy of Voice
- Epilogue
- Glossary
- Index