Everyday heritaging: Sino-Muslim literacy adaptation and alienation

Abstract

Abstract What we in this article describe as “Sino-Muslim heritage literacies” have existed in China for as long as there have been Muslims in the region (since the 7th century according to the best evidence). The community’s religious and heritage literacy practices can incorporate a systematic Arabic representation of Chinese, systems of Chinese characters representing Arabic pronunciation, and more contemporary digitalised manifestations of heritage literacy in everyday life. Using a social practice approach to literacy, this paper reports on multi-generational interviews, artefact collection, and ethnographic observations with two families in Xi’an (Shaanxi, China) to explore how heritage literacy practices maintain a presence in Sino-Muslim life through traditional systems of community and religious education and contemporary social and material networks. We discuss what these empirical cases reveal about literacies in Sino-Muslim religious life, with respect to how heritage is adapted or diminished across generations. We also argue that it is crucial to situate Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in spaces beyond rigid and state-defined ethnic and religious discourses which tend to confine the identity of Sino-Muslims into officially designated categories. Doing so, we contend, has useful theoretical and methodological import, and can shed light on inquiry about heritage literacy in other minority settings.