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In this book Sam Tynen, one of the last Uyghur-speaking ethnographers to do embedded fieldwork in Xinjiang, chronicles the Chinese government's escalation of state terror and political control over the region and its citizens, describing the increase in surveillance, securitization, and militarization of everyday life.
Using government documents, and their own observations and interviews, they describe neighbourhood-level policing and a bureaucracy that systematically tracks and records the poorest and most vulnerable people, and has led to the detainment of members of the native Uyghur community for mass internment. Tynen also delves into the everyday lives of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang - describing how they have found spaces of resistance and freedom amidst state oppression. Tynen also shares groundbreaking insight into minority experiences amongst the Uyghurs themselves - particularly women and queer people - who face exclusion and marginalization, not only by the Chinese state, but also by Uyghur society itself.
The rich ethnographic detail of this study presents a story of how a people united and divided by inequality, and driven by fear and hope, resist and endure in a military police state.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Mass Internment Camps in China: How Did We Get Here?
2. First Chapter: Surveillance and Policing: Creating a Database of the Poorest and Most Vulnerable
3. Second Chapter: Dispossession and Displacement: Escalating the Removal of Uyghurs from the City
4. Third Chapter: Quiet Resistance: Finding Moments of Pleasure, Escape, and Hope
5. Fourth Chapter: Survival: Coping in the Midst of Poverty and Desperation
6. Fifth Chapter: The Female Body: Navigating Expectations of Sexuality
7. Sixth Chapter: Queer Uyghurs: Hiding with Nowhere to Go
8. Conclusion: Inequality and Oppression: Where Do We Go from Here?
Index
About the author
Sam Tynen is a Research Fellow at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czechia. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from University of Colorado Boulder and his research focuses on state-building, nationalism, and ethnic conflict in Asia. His research is based on five years of fieldwork in China from 2009-2017. His previous publications have appeared in Political Geography, Geopolitics, and Territory, Politics and Governance, among others.
Summary
In this book Sam Tynen, one of the last Uyghur-speaking ethnographers to do embedded fieldwork in Xinjiang, chronicles the Chinese government’s escalation of state terror and political control over the region and its citizens, describing the increase in surveillance, securitization, and militarization of everyday life.
Using government documents, and their own observations and interviews, they describe neighbourhood-level policing and a bureaucracy that systematically tracks and records the poorest and most vulnerable people, and has led to the detainment of members of the native Uyghur community for mass internment. Tynen also delves into the everyday lives of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang – describing how they have found spaces of resistance and freedom amidst state oppression. Tynen also shares groundbreaking insight into minority experiences amongst the Uyghurs themselves – particularly women and queer people – who face exclusion and marginalization, not only by the Chinese state, but also by Uyghur society itself.
The rich ethnographic detail of this study presents a story of how a people united and divided by inequality, and driven by fear and hope, resist and endure in a military police state.
Foreword
An exploration of everyday Uyghur lives amidst heavy military surveillance and repression.
Additional text
“Through careful storytelling this book shows how Uyghur suffering and survival is inflected by colonialism, poverty, gender and sexuality. It lays bare the political stakes of inaction.”
