Re-Fusing Ethnicity and Religion: An Experiment on Tibetan Grounds

Saxer, Martin (2014): Re-Fusing Ethnicity and Religion: An Experiment on Tibetan Grounds. In: Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Bd. 43, Nr. 2: S. 181-204

Abstract

The relation between ethnicity and religion has had a troubled history in the People’s Republic of China. Conflating religious prac-tice with ethnic culture is considered to carry the risk of breeding “splittism” – especially in Tibet and Xinjiang. While in the post-Mao era the outright hostility against religion has given way to a religious revival, keeping religion and (nationality) politics separate has re-mained a major concern for the Chinese Communist Party. Religion is supposed to be a private matter that does not interfere with pol-itics. Against this backdrop, a recent phenomenon in the Tibet Au-tonomous Region is all the more remarkable: the (re-)fusion of eth-nicity and religion under the label of cultural heritage and its protec-tion. This paper approaches this officially endorsed re-fusion ethno-graphically and examines its wider implications. I argue that endors-ing religion as an attribute of Tibetan heritage corresponds to the concept of defining public spaces and events in which religious prac-tice is legitimate and expected. Simultaneously, religious practices outside these dedicated spaces and events become even more prob-lematic, leading to everyday Buddhist practices, such as circumambu-lation, being seen as (and performed as) political acts.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Publikationsform: Publisher's Version
• Fakultät: Kulturwissenschaften > Department für Kulturwissenschaften und Altertumskunde > Ethnologie
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaft, Soziologie ; 900 Geschichte und Geografie > 950 Geschichte Asiens
• Sprache: Englisch