Book Description

Because of the strong emotions and sudden ruptures caused by death in a community, expressive culture relating to death offers special contexts to study ethnic culture, social structures, and inequality. This dissertation analyzes death-related folklore, specifically, talks and practices about death, the deceased, funerals, and lethal supernatural powers in an ethnic Hui (Chinese Muslim) village in China. Analysis is based on my ethnographic fieldwork conducted from Summer 2014 to Summer 2015 in a Hui village located in Shandong Province. Using a folkloristic approach, I conduct qualitative study by analyzing folk narratives and beliefs in their spatiotemporal specificities. I interpret “death” as a power that produces specific social spaces shaping how different social agents interact. I argue that death related genres of expressive culture form social spaces where different social norm and hierarchies are highlighted and become susceptible to challenges. In these spaces, tensions between social groups are more open to discussion, and various social actors are mobilized to interact in order to confirm or contest, stabilize or liquidize certain social structure, be it of a family, a neighborhood, a community, a religious institute, or an ethnic group. The dissertation is divided into four chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter 1 contextualizes one man’s death in the village. Each aspect of this man’s death is used to lead a discussion of one relevant methodological or theoretical concern. Chapter 2 discusses two funerals during which conflicts arise. I focus on intensive negotiations between mosque clergies and families of the deceased, arguing that conflict helps disclose tensions between the religious and mundane and consequently unsettles religious hierarchies. Chapter 3 addresses laymen’s critiques of religious men and even of the “symbol of Islam,” the village mosque. I suggest that religious space for many laymen in the village is most clearly manifest during death rituals and thus harsh critiques of mosque clergies tend to emerge during those moments. In Chapter 4 I look at how villagers relate lethal supernatural powers to the village landscape, to come to terms with death, and negotiate with, question or challenge death and even God. I conclude the dissertation by restoring “everydayness” to death, observing that although death ruptures social life and disturbs the everyday routine, it is also a resource for people to address social problems and sustain the vitality and stream of everyday life.