David R. Stroup, Pure and True : The Everyday Politics of Ethnicity for China’s Hui Muslims

As a historian who has a lot of distance from her subjects (they are all long dead), I sometimes find that ethnographers overstep into the lives of their subjects, providing too much analysis from one-time observations.At the same time, the methodological boundaries between history and anthropology often seem almost insurmountable, as if the two disciplines barely have anything to say to one another.I am very happy to report that neither of these remarks ring true with David Stroup's new book on Hui Muslims living in urban China.Stroup does a fabulous job personalizing his subjects while keeping a professional distance from them.He also grounds his observations in history, rooting his research not only in the field of Hui studies but in the history of urban development in China more broadly (see, for example, Friedman 2022).His deep and thorough fieldwork allows him to draw from a multitude of different interviews from his four research sites (the Chinese cities of Beijing, Jinan, Yinchuan, and Xining) to make insightful and thoughtful conclusions about the ways that Hui Muslims negotiate the expression of their "everyday ethnicity" (27).After two introductory chapters, Stroup divides his book thematically.Chapters 2-5 focus on different themes named after active verbs: "Choosing," "Talking," "Consuming," and "Performing."The conclusion and the epilogue tie together his observations and provide an ominous report on developments in Hui communities since he finished his fieldwork in 2016.He centers his analysis on understanding "how the complex interactions between changing urban landscapes and tactics of authoritarian governance influenced the daily expression of Hui identity" (xv).In the introduction, Stroup argues that by focusing on urban Hui in four very different Chinese cities, he gets at the ways that "cross-cutting identity cleavages like class, region, education level, and sect" provide urban Muslims with enough ways to "express their Hui identity" without coming into direct conflict with the state (6).This isn't always the case though, as the authoritarian party-state looms heavy in the daily lives of Hui Muslims.As Hui navigate their status as one of the fifty-six state-designated ethnic groups (minzu) in China (with the Han being the largest), Stroup explains the peculiarities and particularities that distinguish the Hui from the other Muslim minority groups in China, such as the Uyghurs or the Tajiks.Throughout the introduction, Stroup also offers historical context about the ways that the relationship between the Hui and the state have vacillated over time-at times being more congenial and at others being both violent and oppressive.This provides a setting for the current "de-Islamification" campaigns being carried out in Hui communities, as the party-state attempts to lessen expressions of Islam in public spaces by doing things like removing Arabic signage from shops and taking minarets off mosques.Yet, Stroup also shows how the Hui themselves sometimes underpin, and are often complicit in reinforcing, state-crafted narratives about the place of ethnic minorities within the People's Republic of China, especially if it proves to be economically advantageous for them.Chapter 1 explains some of the ways that the current regime under the leadership of Xi Jinping deals with Islam.Stroup argues that because the state officially recognizes Ha, Guangtian.2022.