"Sexual Habits" Is Mapped By The Hui Nationality

Historically, Muslim women usually played a subordinate role in the male-dominated societies. In the1990s, the rise of the Islamic feminist movement made more Muslim women aware of their marginalized social status, so they began to come out of the narrow family circle and enter the social public areas usually dominated by males so as to declare their awakening of female consciousness. Particularly in the West, a large number of Muslim women scholars began to work on gender studies in the Muslim societies. Based on the case study of gender cultures of Muslim societies around the world, they dedicated to explore how the Islamic gender view can be formed and then give a profound impact to the social status of women in different cultures, rules and customs in an attempt to find the real cause why Muslim women have long been socially and culturally marginalized. In the circle of Hui studies in China, more and more researchers are keeping up with the upsurge of Islamic gender studies in the West, introducing the concept of gender among the Hui studies. In recent years, the gender study in the Hui society has always been one of the hot issues in the Hui studies. What this paper concerns about is the Islamic culture represented by the Hui nationality, and there’s no doubt that it is a product of combination of Chinese traditional culture and Islamic culture. However, we must realize the construction of social gender of Hui nationality cannot be analysed only from the political or religious point of view. From the aspect of "bodily habitus" to explore the issue is certainly a fresh perspective.Under the theoretical instruction of Bourdieu’s "bodily habitus" and adopting field research methods of Ethnology, this paper is intended to illustrate the formation of the bodily habitus, people’s observance of it and the remodeling process after people’s compliance to analyse the gender construction in Bafang Hui area, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province in the attempt to find a way out for Muslim women’s bodily autonomy. What we need to mention is that this paper only selects several cultural items about the bodily habitus and social gender in Bafang rather than concern all culture phenomenon for ethnographical descriptions. It begins with the elaboration on the social history structure and people’s socialization, which are regards as the main causes of the bodily habitus in Bafang Hui area; and then from the micro-level, people’s observance and violations of the habitus, the coincidence and discrepancy between "habitus" and "filed" are discussed, explaining how bodily habitus involves in the process of the construction of social gender in Bafang.This paper is totally divided into six parts.Chapter Ⅰ is mainly outspread from five sections, namely, origins and significance of the research, literature review, selection of the place for field work, related theories and Ethnological methods, and research ideas.Chapter Ⅱ consists of two sections, which focuses on the Islamic views of body and gender. In terms of body views, it discusses the relationship between God and human in Islam through the creation of human being by God and the body’s reflection of the whole universe; and in terms of gender views, different scholars have made different interpretations on religious classics, which leads to the academic disagreement on gender issues in Islam, so inevitably, those issues appeared in Qur’an are still in dispute nowadays. Amina Wadud, an Islamic feminist and Muslim scholar in the U.S., her analysis on gender in Qur’an is very typical.Based on Bourdieu’s double historicity of human mental structure, Chapter Ⅲ analyzes two different ways the habitus with gender differences arise in Bafang Hui area. The first one is the process of phylogenesis. In this research, it refers to the formation of the gender views influenced by both the Chinese traditional culture and Islamic culture. The second is the process of ontogenesis, which refers to the socialization process of the Hui children while they accept the family, school and religious education, and this paper emphasizes that the initial experience plays an important part in shaping children’s cognition of sex role, which is difficult to change.Chapter Ⅳ and Chapter Ⅴ illustrate how people observe and breach the habitus with the aid of body in order to examine the interactive relationship of people’s physical actions and the construction of gender roles. Chapter IV mainly discusses people’s voluntary or passive observance of the habitus from four aspects, namely, cooking, wearing (especially the hijab), reproductive and religious practice, which obviously have a close relationship with Muslim women’s body. In this process, the observance of the bodily habitus helps to reinforce the gender differences, because at the circumstance of coincidence between habitus and field, habitus cannot experience any resistance, which also enriches the field of this habitus. However, when the habitus is not in conformity with its field, violation of the body’s boundary and intimacy will ensue. Hence Chapter V develops from the marriage, which I believe can best reflect women’s bodily autonomy, to analyse the following questions. What kind of body experience do male and female respectively have in the marital conflicts and in the intermarriage families? How can they express their motility through violating the traditional habitus? What impact will the bodily habitus give to the remodeling of social gender? And what is the embodiment?The last part is conclusion, which first gives a summary on above illustrations based on one of Bourdieu’s famous sayings "Habitus is not fate". Secondly, it gives a local interpretation of "bodily habitus" in Bafang, namely, it is an body embodiment of feminine right conflicting with the male-dominated culture; besides that, it’s also an inheritance of the negative factors which can restrict women development and as well as an exclusion of the positive factors which can advance the development of Muslim women in Chinese traditional culture and Islamic culture. Such a process of inheritance and exclusion act on people’s body through the historic power of habitus to influence the gender construction of Bafang Hui society. Thirdly, Muslim women’s bodily autonomy can be finally achieved if they can develop their own subjective initiatives to change or eliminate those negative factors in the bodily habitus.