Overview
- Explores Han and Uyghur identities in Xinjiang drawing on critical race theories
- Brings together academic discussions of ‘racial’ identities in China, with recent work on the situation in Xinjiang
- Presents the latest book building upon ethnographic research carried out after the Ürümqi Riots in 2009
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
In one of the only works drawing on interviews with both Uyghurs and Han in Xinjiang, China, and postcolonial perspectives on ethnicity, nation, and race, this book explores how forms of banal racism underpin ideas of self and other, assimilation and modernisation, in this restive region.
Significant international attention has condemned the CCP’s use of forced internment in ‘re-education’ camps, as well as its campaign of cultural assimilation. In this wider context, this book focuses upon the ways in which ethnic difference is writ through the banalities of everyday life: who one trusts, what one eats, where one shops, even what time one’s clocks are set to (Xinjiang being perhaps one of the only places where different ethnic groups live by different time-zones).
Alongside chapters focusing upon the coercive ‘re-education’ campaign, and the devastating Ürümchi Riots in 2009, this book also unpacks how discourses of Chinese nationalism romanticise empire and promote racialised ways of thinking about Chineseness, how cultural assimilation (‘Sinicisation’) is being justified through the rhetoric of ‘modernisation’, how Islamic sites and Uyghur culture are being secularised and commodified for tourist consumption. We also explore Uyghur and Han perspectives, including of each other, giving insight into the diversity of opinions within both groups.
Based on many years of living and working in China, and fieldwork and interviews specifically in Xinjiang, this book will be valuable to a variety of readers interested in the region and Uyghur and Han identity, ethnic/national identities in contemporary China, and racisms in non-western contexts.
Reviews
“David O’Brien and Melissa Shani Brown’s ethnography People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China: Territories of Identity examines the way the identities of Uyghurs and Han are shaped by everyday forms of racialization in northwest China. … The book is the product of a long-term ethnographic research project conducted between 2009 and 2019 in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. … This book is a significant contribution to the study of contemporary racialization.” (Darren Byler, The China Quarterly, February 15, 2024)
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
David O’Brien is a Research Associate with the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. His research focusses on ethnic identity in contemporary China and the interplay between ethnicity and politics.
Melissa Shani Brown is affiliated with the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Her research interests include the conceptual uses of ‘silence’ in critical theory and cultural texts, and intersectionality.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China
Book Subtitle: Territories of Identity
Authors: David O’Brien, Melissa Shani Brown
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3776-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-19-3775-0Published: 15 November 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-19-3778-1Published: 16 November 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-19-3776-7Published: 14 November 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 353
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 32 illustrations in colour
Topics: Ethnicity, Class, Gender and Crime, Ethnography, History of China, Politics and Religion