Fear, Hope and Survival in Xinjiang: Uyghur Life in China's Military Police State

Description

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.

Sam Tynen holds a PhD in Human Geography from University of Colorado Boulder, USA. They lived in China from 2009-2017. Their research focuses on state-building, nationalism, and ethnic conflict in Asia. Their publications have appeared in Territory, Politics and Governance, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Space and Culture, Geographical Review, and Geopolitics, among others.

"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." * Dr Darren Byler, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA *