Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Anthropological Research on Religious Conversion, Women, and Islam in Southern Mexico

博士论文改进补助金：墨西哥南部宗教转变、妇女和伊斯兰教的人类学研究

• 批准号: 0921797
• 负责人: Shannon Speed
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2011-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921797&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Anthropological

University of Texas doctoral student Sandra Canas, under the supervision of Dr. Shannon Speed, will undertake research on the growing Muslim community in southern Mexico, where hundreds of poor indigenous people are reported to have converted in recent years. The focus of Canas' research will be Mayan women converts in Chiapas and the relation between their conversion and their struggles for land entitling. The research is important because religious conversion under conditions of socioeconomic stress is known to be a worldwide phenomenon, but the conversion of indigenous people to Islam in Latin America is a more recent and less well-understood development.For more than 10 years, indigenous Muslims in Chiapas, along with other indigenous people, have struggled to regularize their use of urban lands, which they occupied after being forced off rural agricultural land. Preliminary resarch has found that women have actively participated in the land regularization struggle, and some use Islam as a resource to do so. At the same time they show increasing interest in learning about their new religion, in discussing the sacred texts, and in attempting to selectively incorporate Islamic tradition into their daily lives and their changing understandings of citizenship and nation. The investigator will undertake 12 months of anthropological field research in Chiapas. She will conduct household surveys, carry out extended participant observation, do unstructured interviews, and explore archival resources. Her overarching research goals are to: (a) explore religious conversion, gender dynamics, and citizenship among Mayans Muslims in Southern Mexico; and (b) analyze the relationship between conversion processes and social mobilization. Ethnographically grounded research on new Muslim communities is important for deepening our understanding of conversion processes within globalized and multiethnic environments. This is especially the case for Latin America, where almost no research has been done on conversion to Islam.

德克萨斯大学的博士生桑德拉·卡纳斯将在香农·斯皮德博士的指导下，对墨西哥南部日益增长的穆斯林社区进行研究，据报道，那里的数百名贫困原住民近年来已经皈依了宗教。卡纳斯的研究重点将是恰帕斯的玛雅女性皈依者，以及她们的皈依与她们争取土地权利的斗争之间的关系。这项研究很重要，因为在社会经济压力下皈依宗教是众所周知的世界性现象，但拉丁美洲土著人民皈依伊斯兰教是最近的发展，人们对此了解较少。十多年来，恰帕斯的土著穆斯林和其他土著人民一起，一直在努力使他们对城市土地的使用合法化，他们在被迫离开农村农地后占领了这些土地。初步研究发现，妇女积极参与土地正规化斗争，有些妇女利用伊斯兰教作为资源。与此同时，他们越来越有兴趣了解他们的新宗教，讨论神圣的经文，并试图有选择地将伊斯兰传统融入他们的日常生活，以及他们对公民身份和国家不断变化的理解。研究人员将在恰帕斯进行为期12个月的人类学实地研究。她将进行家庭调查，开展广泛的参与者观察，进行非结构化采访，并探索档案资源。她的主要研究目标是：(A)探索墨西哥南部玛雅穆斯林的宗教皈依、性别动态和公民身份；以及(B)分析皈依过程和社会动员之间的关系。对新的穆斯林社区进行基于民族志的研究对于加深我们对全球化和多民族环境中的转变过程的理解是重要的。拉丁美洲的情况尤其如此，那里几乎没有关于皈依伊斯兰教的研究。