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Making a Cantonese-Christian family: Quotidian Habits of language and background in a transnational Hongkonger church.
- Source :
- Population Space & Place; Nov/Dec2011, Vol. 17 Issue 6, p756-768, 13p
- Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Studies of the Hong Kong-Vancouver transnational migration network seldom pay close attention to religion in the everyday lives of Hongkonger migrants. Based on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork at St. Matthew's Church, a Hong Kong church in Metro Vancouver, this paper examines the tacit assumptions and taken-for-granted quotidian practices through which a Hongkonger church is made. I argue that St. Matthew's Church has been constructed as a Hong Kong Cantonese-Christian family space through the everyday use of language and invocations of a common educational background. This argument extends the literature on Hongkonger migration to Metro Vancouver by grounding it in a religious site whose intersections with Hong Kong migration to Vancouver consolidates the church as a religious mission with a specifically Hongkonger migration narrative. This consolidation is problematised as I show that contestations in church life by migrants from the People's Republic of China over language and asymmetrical educational backgrounds both reinforce and challenge the church as a Hongkonger congregation. Through an examination of these everyday interactions at St. Matthew's Church, this paper advances the geography of religion as I demonstrate that specific geographical narratives and networks shape quotidian practices in religious sites. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- CHRISTIANS
TRANSNATIONALISM
IMMIGRATION & religion
ETHNOGRAPHIC analysis
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15448444
- Volume :
- 17
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Population Space & Place
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 66213489
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.640