Did you know, that since the end of the Cold War, a majority of the violent conflicts worldwide have been civil wars? You may have heard of the bloodshed in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Yemen. This violence is often fueled by ethnic nationalism–the idea that a nation-state should be associated with a chosen racial or cultural group–and tragically followed by genocide. How can we prevent future catastrophes such as these from occurring?
Like in many countries around the world, the people of China have also experienced violence and genocide associated with some of their minority peoples, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.
While most Uyghurs are not mobilized for a violent independence movement, China fears it. Besides, their homeland has seen its share of violence in recent years. For example, ethnic tensions in the Uyghur autonomous region bubbled to the surface during a deadly riot in July 2009 and several car bombings and knife attacks by Uyghurs in China from 2013-2015.
Since then, the Chinese state has systematically detained approximately one million Uyghurs, both men and women, young and old.
In some ways, this is not a unique case: Policing, incarceration, and genocide have historically been used as modes of control in territorially contested regions. Such modes–surveillance and incarceration of a minority–are some of the more visible forms of state power. Indeed, learning about China’s camps can help us better interrogate illiberal governance, prompting us to ask questions such as: How far will a country’s leaders go to disregard the humanity of its own citizens in order to maintain power and control?
However, the recent focus in the media on visible aspects of state power, such as camps, police, and prisons, overlook the invisible and nefarious aspects of the everyday and inherent violence of the nation-state itself. I use long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Xinjiang to study some of the more invisible and dangerous aspects of state political power.
My dissertation project, Uneven State Territorialization: Governance, Inequality, and Resistance in Xinjiang, China, addresses these questions of state security, territorial nationalism, and ethnic conflict and how they affect people’s everyday lives.
I use qualitative research methods conducted in Xinjiang from 2014-2017, including in-depth interviews and textual documents, to study the lived experiences of majority and minority ethnic groups’ relationships to state territorial modes of control. From four empirical angles, I concentrate on 1) bureaucracy as a mode of governance; 2) policing the poor in the city; 3) quiet opposition to police; and 4) development discourses of Han Chinese migrant workers.
While many scholars have argued that territorial control should be understood as sovereign and legal power over specific pieces of land, my research emphasizes that cultural performances at different scales of the body and household both constitute and protest territorial control.
For example, Uyghurs engage in everyday practices that reflect affiliation with the Muslim world and disrupt Chinese territory. In this way, Chinese territorial control can be better understood as a net: all-encompassing but with significant gaps.
Uneven territorial control in the pattern of a net shows the importance of holistic spatial and scalar patterns to the study of government and the production of social space. In other words, space and territory are key nodes in interconnected social, political, and economic networks.
In conclusion, I look at China in a global context and how we can better understand authoritarian state-building and the impact of development projects on territorial sovereignty. My work also emphasizes China’s diversity along ethnic, class, and gender lines, insisting that we think of China outside of its homogenous stereotypes to include all people in its territory. My ultimate goal is to prevent future genocides and better understand how we can create more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable communities.
