Zouping Christianity as Gendered Critique? An Ethnography of Political Potentials

During the past two decades in Zouping County, rural north China, the Protestant church has both grown explosively and become overwhelmingly female. This article contrasts the gendered cultures of banqueting and Christianity in Zouping, and asks whether female Christianity can be considered an implicit critique of male banqueting culture. In reference to a growing critique of the conceptual overuse of “resistance,” and debate over the place of politics in ethnography, it explores modes of ethnographic writing that are sensitive to the problems of both de‐ and overpoliticization.