The sound of salvation : voice, gender, and the sufi mediascape in China (Guangtian Ha)

Abstract

The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China (Guangtian Ha). New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Guangtian Ha completed 'The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China’ while undertaking his Ph.D. dissertation for Columbia University. As an anthropologist who conducted ethnographic research, he was mired in uncompleted fieldwork. When writing this book in 2021, he remarked that the COVID-19 global pandemic was in its second year, leading to the deaths of over half a million people in the United States and an unknown number in China, where the total number of deaths has been kept secret by the government. Even before the pandemic, the role of Islamic seminaries in Ningxia had been substantially reduced due to political pressure. But when the pandemic hit the region, most religious locations, such as mosques and Sufi graves, were ordered to close their doors to outside visitors. Even though much of his fieldwork was already completed in 2018, he lamented that much had changed in the intervening years, and so noted that the book had been written with a deep sense of loss.