Between God and Caesar? Christianity, Ethnic Identity, and Resistant Politics in Shimenkan, China

Abstract

This paper focuses on the politics of religious space and hybridized cultural identity in the reconstruction of Miao ethnicity in China. With a case study of the entanglement of ethnic language and ethnic minority's relationship with Han Chinese cultural hegemony, this paper examines the translocal production of cultural hybridity and the political potentials of religion and religious space in a multiethnic social milieu. It is argued that translocal flows of cultural resources should be taken into account in order to investigate the ongoing production and changing political connotations of hybridized cultural identities in heterogeneous time–spaces. In this study dynamics of political negotiation and community belonging inspire us to adopt a perspective looking into the dialectics of the religious and the political, inter alia the historically contingent construction of sociocultural boundaries. We suggest that the creative use of translocally constituted hybridity is an act of resistance which negotiates hegemonic ideologies undergirding cultural dominance. This paper contributes to the study of the politics of minority ethnic identities in China by examining Han–minority power relations, with specific focuses on cultural reconstruction and resistant actions.