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Author

Matthew S. Erie

Other affiliations: Cornell University
Bio: Matthew S. Erie is an academic researcher from University of Oxford. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Chinese law. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 27 publications receiving 308 citations. Previous affiliations of Matthew S. Erie include Cornell University.
Topics: China, Chinese law, Sharia, Islam, Dispute resolution

Papers
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MonographDOI
01 Sep 2016
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the intersection of two critical issues of the contemporary world: Islamic revival and an assertive China, questioning the assumption that Islamic law is incompatible with state law and found that both Hui and the Party-State invoke, interpret, and make arguments based on Islamic law, a minjian (unofficial) law in China, to pursue their respective visions of 'the good'.
Abstract: China and Islam examines the intersection of two critical issues of the contemporary world: Islamic revival and an assertive China, questioning the assumption that Islamic law is incompatible with state law. It finds that both Hui and the Party-State invoke, interpret, and make arguments based on Islamic law, a minjian (unofficial) law in China, to pursue their respective visions of 'the good'. Based on fieldwork in Linxia, 'China's Little Mecca', this study follows Hui clerics, youthful translators on the 'New Silk Road', female educators who reform traditional madrasas, and Party cadres as they reconcile Islamic and socialist laws in the course of the everyday. The first study of Islamic law in China and one of the first ethnographic accounts of law in postsocialist China, China and Islam unsettles unidimensional perceptions of extremist Islam and authoritarian China through Hui minjian practices of law.

58 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the capacity of residents of Chinese cities to protect their property rights using new media to produce alternative discourses on law in the urbanization process, and develop a theory of legal surrealism characteristic of the position of law in reform era China.
Abstract: Despite recent legislation and regulations to protect homeowners’ rights in the process of urbanization, forced eviction remains one of the most prevalent causes of violence in contemporary China. This article examines the capacity of residents of Chinese cities to protect their property rights using new media to produce alternative discourses on law in the urbanization process. Fieldwork conducted in Beijing, from 2007 to 2008, a period during which the national capital underwent massive development schemes for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, shows that homeowners create virtual precedents, backed not by the authority of the court, but by that of the media. Evictees of so-called dingzihu (nail-houses) facing chaiqian (demolition and relocation) develop arguments based on the 2007 case of Wu Ping, the first new media superstar in (post-)socialist China. The article, following poststructuralist formulations, develops a theory of “legal surrealism” characteristic of the position of law in reform era China. Whereas social media is equated with revolution elsewhere, in China, the lesson of the role of new media in effecting social change may be one of limitation. While digital mass communication technologies may assist individual “victories,” challenges to eviction face both intrinsic and extrinsic obstacles for collective action.

50 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the capacity of residents of Chinese cities to protect their property rights using new media to produce alternative discourses on law in the urbanization process, and develop a theory of legal surrealism characteristic of the position of law in reform-era China.
Abstract: Despite recent legislation and regulations to protect homeowners’ rights in the process of urbanization, forced eviction remains one of the most prevalent causes of violence in contemporary China. This article examines the capacity of residents of Chinese cities to protect their property rights using new media to produce alternative discourses on law in the urbanization process. Fieldwork conducted in Beijing from 2007 to 2008, a period during which the national capital underwent massive development schemes for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, shows that homeowners create virtual precedents, backed not by the authority of the court, but by that of the media. Evictees of so-called dingzihu (nail-houses) facing chaiqian (demolition and relocation) develop arguments based on the 2007 case of Wu Ping, the first new media superstar in (post-)socialist China. The article, following post-structuralist formulations, develops a theory of ‘legal surrealism’ characteristic of the position of law in reform-era China. W...

42 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, Mauss's analysis, the gift exists in the context of a homogenous system of values, but in fact, different types of normative systems can inhabit the same social field.
Abstract: In Marcel Mauss's analysis, the gift exists in the context of a homogenous system of values. But in fact, different types of normative systems can inhabit the same social field. This is the case among Hui, the largest Muslim minority group in China, for whom the “freedom” of the gift resides in the giver's capacity to follow the rules underlying gifting, in this case, the rules of sharia. I call this capacity “minjian (unofficial, popular) autonomy.” Hui follow sharia in pursuit of a good life, but their practices are also informed by mainstream Han Chinese gift practices and by the anxieties of the security state. In their gifting practices, Hui thus endeavor to reconcile the demands of Islamic, postsocialist, and gift economies. [gift economy, autonomy, sharia, charity, China, Islamic finance, ethics] 按照马塞尔·莫斯的分析, 馈赠存在于均质化价值观体系的背景中。但实际上, 在同一社会领域中可以存在着不同类型的社会规范体系。中国最大的穆斯林民族-回族就是这样的案例, 对他们来说 馈赠的"自由"取决于馈赠者按照馈赠的深层次规则行事的能力, 在这里, 规则即指“设若尔提” (伊斯兰教法) 。我将这一能力称之为“民间自主权” (非官方的, 大众化的) 。在追求美好的生活时, 回族会遵循“设若尔提”, 但他们的做法同时也会受到汉族主流的馈赠礼物的做法和“安全国家”焦虑的影响。因此, 在馈赠礼物时, 回族人会努力协调伊斯兰教、后社会主义经济和礼物经济的不同要求。[礼物经济, 自主权, “设若尔提”, 慈善, 中国, 伊斯兰金融, 伦理]

31 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the case of dispute resolution among Chinese Muslim minorities (the Hui) to re-examine the relationship between state law and Islamic law and argue that the Hui case shows codependence between the types of law.
Abstract: Many sociolegal studies have investigated the relationship between state law and informal law, examining alternative dispute resolution and popular justice as intersections between state law and informal law. However, such questions have received little attention in East Asian authoritarian states. I use the case of dispute resolution among Chinese Muslim minorities (the Hui) to re-examine the relationship between state law and Islamic law. Based on nineteen months of fieldwork in Northwest China, I argue that the Hui case shows codependence between the types of law. Law is deeply embedded in social relationships between the Hui and the Party-State. An analysis of personalistic relationships shows the ways in which religious and secular authorities access each other, transforming each other’s law to augment their own legitimacy, but not without the potential for violence. The China case illuminates dynamics between Muslim communities and states that are prevalent elsewhere, particularly in the post-9/11 period.

26 citations


Cited by
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: The four Visegrad states (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

3,056 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Mahmood as discussed by the authors explores the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt.
Abstract: WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

1,398 citations

Journal Article

865 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

593 citations