Uyghur Identity and Culture

A Global Diaspora in a Time of Crisis

Rebecca Clothey editor Dilmurat Mahmut editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:3rd Jun '24

£135.00

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Uyghur Identity and Culture cover

Uyghur Identity and Culture brings together the work of scholars, activists, and native Uyghurs to explore the history and growing challenges that the Uyghur diaspora face across the globe in response to shifting government policies forbidding many forms of cultural expression in their homeland.

The collection examines how and why the Uyghur diaspora, dispersed from their homeland to communities across Australia, Central Asia, Europe, Japan, Türkiye, and North America, now has the responsibility to preserve their language and cultural traditions so that these can be shared with future generations. The book critically investigates the government censorship of Uyghur literatures and Western media coverage of the Uyghurs, while centralizing real reflections of those who grew up in the Uyghur homeland. It considers the geographical and psychological pressures that the Uyghur diaspora endure and highlights the resilience and creativity of their relentless battle against cultural erosion.

Uyghur Identity and Culture is a key contribution to diaspora literature and calls to attention the urgent need for global action on the ongoing human rights violations against the Uyghur people. It is essential reading for those interested in the history and struggles of the Uyghur diaspora as well as anyone studying sociology, race, migration, culture, and human rights studies.

“Since 2014, PRC state violence conducted in the name of the ‘People’s War on Terror’ has caused accelerated numbers of Uyghurs to hemorrhage into every corner of the globe. This volume, edited by two established experts on Uyghur education, religion, culture and folklore, first outlines coercive practices of cultural erasure in the Uyghur homeland. It then proceeds to explore how Uyghurs in diaspora attempt in that context to maintain, preserve (but also adapt) their language and culture, across generations, in the face of ongoing anxiety, trauma and depression. Many contributors are themselves members of the Uyghur diaspora. In sharing their extensive fieldwork (in some cases, pseudonymously), they emerge sensitively as scholars, advocates and, above all, human beings.”

- Joanne Smith Finley, Reader in Chinese Studies, Newcastle University, UK

ISBN: 9781032305271

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 453g

190 pages