Open AccessFrom Religion to Revolution…and Nationalism
Author(s) -
Ady Van den Stock
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
asian studies/asian studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2350-4226
pISSN - 2232-5131
DOI - 10.4312/as.2019.7.1.173-199
Subject(s) - marxist philosophy , nationalism , historical materialism , ethnic group , china , materialism , gender studies , identity (music) , sociology , politics , religious studies , relation (database) , social science , political science , aesthetics , anthropology , philosophy , epistemology , law , database , computer science
The work of the Marxist historian Jamāl al-Dīn Bai Shouyi (1909–2000), a member of the Chinese Muslim Hui ethnic group, offers a window into the close and complex relation between the contested categories of politics, religion, and ethnicity in modern Chinese intellectual history, particularly with respect to the historical development of Chinese Muslim identity in its encounter with Marxist historical materialism. In this article, I provide a limited case study of this broader problematic by analysing Bai’s writings on Hui identity. In doing so, I attempt to contextualise his arguments with reference to the changing status of religion in contemporary Chinese Marxist discourse, and reflect on the entanglement of nationalism, religion, and ethnopolitics in modern China.