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| RELATIONAL BUILDING AND THEORETICAL INTERPRETING OF CHINESE HUI COMMUNITIES WITH A SCATTERED LIVING IN SMALL AREAS: A CASE STUDY OF KAIFENG |
| AI Shao-wei1, CHEN Xiao-fei2, LI Wei-wei1 |
1. Research Center for Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development, Kaifeng 475000, China;
2. Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China |
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Abstract Relational Building had become an important content in "relational turn" and "relational economic geography" in the past few years. As the most familiar strangers, the relational building of Chinese Muslim community had been growing concerned by multiple disciplines. Based on the contextuality, path-dependence and contingency, the paper constructed a theoretical framework of the relational building on Chinese Muslim community. Based on a case study of urban and rural Hui communities in Kaifeng, some valuable conclusions have been shown:① the geographical structure of Hui community has significant characteristics of "large-scale decentralized" and "small-scale concentrated" in scattered-mixed regions, as is consistent with "large dispersion and small concentration" characteristics at the national macro-scale; ② the "strong ties" maintaining "Hui endogamy" is the fundamental guarantee of constructing Hui social relations, and the "weak ties" maintaining "Hui-Han marriage" is the important way of expanding Hui social relations; ③ urban and rural Hui communities have a big difference from each other due to resource endowment, geographic location and traditional business model in scattered-mixed regions; ④ the construction of religious relationship has a strong "Jiao-Fang" tradition, and the spatial mobility of mosques' imams is very obvious path-dependence to specific provinces.
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Received: 13 March 2014
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2015, Vol. 30 
