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Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang

Online ISBN:
9780226360270
Print ISBN:
9780226359939
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang

Tom Cliff
Tom Cliff
Australian National University
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Published online:
19 January 2017
Published in print:
10 June 2016
Online ISBN:
9780226360270
Print ISBN:
9780226359939
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

The experience of being Han in Xinjiang is part of the broader experience of migration and frontier settlement in PRC-era China. Drawing on analysis of history, biography, and social structure, Oil and Water dispels the notion that Han settlers in Xinjiang are homogenous, or that their interests necessarily align with those of the state. The book argues that it is more by default than by their own design that Han in Xinjiang are colonists, although colonists they are. Each of the core chapters has a strong biographical element, and is concerned with how formal and informal structures, agency, and chance interact to shape lives. Each chapter also focuses on one or more of the classic topics of sociological studies of China, including urbanization, the socialist-style work unit (danwei), state discourses and collective memory, social connections (guanxi), marriage and the family, and mass protest. From this socially-grounded and ethnographic perspective, the book illuminates key aspects of the relationship between China’s core area and Xinjiang-as-periphery. The “uncivilized periphery” remains essential to China’s national identity, and an integral part of Han settlers’ psychology. The frontier has been seen throughout history as simultaneously a place of exile and a place where liberation is possible, and that continues to be the case. Indeed, the search for freedom–of many different kinds–is what drives migration in contemporary times. Colonialism may be a metropolitan project, and somewhat abstract to elites in the metropole, but it is the superstructure of life for those on the periphery.

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