The Hakka are a minority group that has been in China since, at least 240 B.C. They have cultural markers that separate them from the majority Han Chinese Group. This book separates actual cultural markers from ethnic stereotypes.

In Global Hakka: Hakka Identity in the Remaking Jessieca Leo offers a needed update on Hakka history and a reassessment of Hakka identity in the global and transnational contexts. Leo gives fresh insights into concepts such as ethnicity, identity, Han, Chineseness, overseas Chinese, and migration in relation to Hakka identity. Globalization, transnationalism, deterritorialization and migration drive the rapid transformation and reformation of Hakka identity to the point of no return. Dehakkalization through cultural adaptation or genetic transfer has created an elastic identity in the global Hakka and different kinds of Hakka communities around the world. Jessieca Leo convincingly shows that the concept of ‘being Hakka’ in the twenty-first century is better referred to as Hakkaness – a quality determined by lifestyle and personal choices. "Among the Chinese, tradition long resisted the idea of migration. In practice, however, there were many layers of adaptation to different circumstances. The Hakka have been exceptional in having always been conscious of their migratory successes. This book explores with great sensitivity how Hakka history outside China influences the way they respond to the new global environment. Combining careful scholarship with self-discovery, Jessieca Leo captures the processes by which one group of Chinese became migrants who consider migration as normal. Her fascinating and original work takes the study of the Hakka to a higher level and offers fresh insights for understanding how other migratory Chinese are transforming tradition today." Professor Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore

The essays in this volume analyze and compare what it means to be Hakka in a variety of sociocultural, political, geographical, and historical contexts including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Taiwan, and contemporary China.

This title will be available online in its entirety in Open Access In and Out of Suriname: Language, Mobility and Identity offers a fresh multidisciplinary approach to multilingual Surinamese society, that breaks through the notion of bounded ethnicity enshrined in historical and ethnographic literature on Suriname.

Negotiating Identity addresses the missiological problem of why the Hakka Chinese Christian community in Taiwan is so small despite evangelistic efforts there for more than 140 years. Christofferson explores the tensions between being Hakka and being Christian in northwestern Taiwan and discusses what both Hakka non-Christians and Christians are doing and saying in the context of these tensions. This ethnographic study uses the lens of social constructionism and consequently offers an example of how social science scholarship can help missionaries and other Christian workers to gain significant insights into the thoughts, feelings, and actions of those living in their ministry locations. Of interest is Christofferson's conclusion that the missiological perspective which puts a primary focus on ministering to a "people group" is inadequate for explaining and engaging the complexities encountered in many ministry settings. He suggests that an awareness of the way people are negotiating their identities can help Christian workers to better understand and strategically engage people in a variety of ministry contexts throughout the world.

In this volume, Li Wei brings together contributions from well-known and emerging scholars in socio- and anthropological linguistics working on different linguistic and communicative aspects of the Chinese diaspora. The project examines the Chinese diasporic experience from a global, comparative perspective, with a particular focus on transnational links, and local social and multilingual realities. Contributors address the emergence of new forms of Chinese in multilingual contexts, family language policy and practice, language socialization and identity development, multilingual creativity, linguistic attitudes and ideologies, and heritage language maintenance, loss, learning and re-learning. The studies are based on empirical observations and investigations in Chinese communities across the globe, including well-researched (from a sociolinguistic perspective) areas such as North America, Western Europe and Australia, as well as under-explored and under-represented areas such as Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and the Middle East; the volume also includes detailed ethnographic accounts representing regions with a high concentration of Chinese migration such as Southeast Asia. This volume not only will allow sociolinguists to investigate the link between linguistic phenomena in specific communities and wider socio-cultural processes, but also invites an open dialogue with researchers from other disciplines who are working on migration, diaspora and identity, and those studying other language-based diasporic communities such as the Russian diaspora, the Spanish diaspora, the Portuguese diaspora, and the Arabic diaspora.

How do the people of a village that is both Chinese and Christian reconcile the contradictions between their religious and ethnic identities? This ethnographic study explores the construction and changing meanings of ethnic identity in Hong Kong. Established at the turn of the century by Hakka Christians who sought to escape hardships and discrimination in China, Shung Him Tong was constructed as an "ideal" Chinese and Christian village. The Hakka Christians translate "traditional" Chinese beliefs—such as ancestral worship and death rituals—that are incompatible with their Christian ideals into secular form, providing a crucial link with the past and with a Chinese identity. Despite accusations to the contrary, these villagers maintain that while they are Christian, they are still Chinese. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.