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In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in "reeducation camps" is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism-a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state's enforcement of "Chinese" cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men-who are the primary target of state violence-and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.
List of contents
Note on Language vii
Note on Pseudonyms ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction. What is Terror Capitalism? 1
1. Enclosure 31
2. Devaluation 61
3. Dispossession 95
4. Friendship 133
5. Minor Politics 163
6. Subtraction 189
Conclusion 221
Notes 231
References 243
Index 261
About the author
Darren Byler
Summary
Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, showing how it has led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethno-racialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism.
