Annika Benz
Student Team MemberResearch Interests
political anthropology, anthropology of religion, law and religion, production of political discourse, sustainable development, non-religiosity, social construction of gender, popular culture, (post)colonial art and photography, feminist literature and translation
Research Areas
Indonesia, China
Profile
Annika is the student team member of the DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group ‘The Bureaucratization of Islam and its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia’, which is based at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. She is currently working towards her BA in Anthropology at the University of Leipzig, with a particular focus on political anthropology, Islam, and East and Southeast Asia.
Prior to her arrival at the MPI in Halle, Annika studied at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where she wrote for Scotland’s oldest student newspaper, The Gaudie, on topics ranging from gender and societal issues to developmental dynamics in East and Southeast Asia.
Annika’s thesis project focuses on the representation of Hui Chinese ‘Muslimness’ in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of north-central China. The project aims to address the controversies around state-influenced ideas of Islam in China and the meaning of Chinese Islam within a global Muslim community. How is Chinese Islam displayed in the Hui Chinese Culture Park in Yinchuan, Ningxia, and how is it rendered visible and understandable to outsiders? Are Hui Chinese Muslims incorporated into a larger community of Muslims and, if so, what are the pertinent performative, political, and hermeneutic subtexts underlying this incorporation? These are some of the initial questions that the project aims to answer by gaining insight into how a religious minority in China is represented in an internationally advertised ‘culture park’.