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

德克萨斯大学博士生桑德拉·卡纳斯（Sandra Canas）将在香农·斯皮德（Shannon Speed）博士的指导下，对墨西哥南部不断增长的穆斯林社区进行研究。据报道，近年来，那里有数百名贫穷的土著居民皈依了伊斯兰教。卡纳斯的研究重点将是恰帕斯州皈依玛雅的妇女，以及她们的皈依与争取土地权利之间的关系。这项研究很重要，因为众所周知，在社会经济压力条件下的宗教皈依是一种世界性的现象，但拉丁美洲土著人民皈依伊斯兰教是最近才发生的，人们对这一现象的了解还不够充分。十多年来，恰帕斯州的土著穆斯林与其他土著人民一道，一直在努力使他们对城市土地的使用合法化，这些土地是他们被迫离开农村农业用地后占领的。初步研究发现，妇女积极参与了土地正规化斗争，有些妇女利用伊斯兰教作为资源来这样做。与此同时，他们对学习他们的新宗教表现出越来越大的兴趣，在讨论神圣的文本，并试图有选择地将伊斯兰传统融入他们的日常生活和他们对公民身份和国家的不断变化的理解。调查员将在恰帕斯进行12个月的人类学实地研究。她将进行入户调查，开展扩展参与性观察，进行非结构化访谈，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；(b)分析转换过程与社会动员之间的关系。基于民族志的新穆斯林社区研究对于加深我们对全球化和多民族环境中的转换过程的理解非常重要。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。

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.