| The core task of this project is analyzing the nature of the identity and social status of marginal, marginalized and ethnic groups in traditional China, originally also in Japan. I am interested both in the way in which these identities are established by outsider observers (historians, officials and the like) and then partly opposed by these groups, but also often taken over. By marginal I mean the more or less objective marginal existence of persecuted and/or criminalized groups (religious groups, Triads, so-called ethnic minorities such as the Yao and Hakka) or individual people (travellers, elderly women, Christian missionaries, etc.). I introduce the term marginalized to stress the process which precedes their marginal status. Ethnic groups are often marginal, but instead of their relationship to society as a whole and the observers who quasi-determine their status, their marginal location is determined by their relationship to an entirely different group. What is not clear is to what extent ethnic groups can be the result of prior social marginalization (as in the case of the Hakka). This project partly overlaps with my work in lay religion, since I am not merely interested in the outside perspective that justifies the use of such terms as marginal(ized) and ethnic, but also in the inside perspective in which the lay religious dimension tends to play a more important role. |
