The first social anthropology research seminar of the spring term was given by Dr James McMurray (University of Sussex). Titled ‘Uyghur homes as contested cultural space’, Dr McMurray’s paper contextualised contemporary political tensions, state repression and state logics of securitisation in Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in northwest China, with insights from long-term ethnographic research.
With a particular focus on education, language-use and the domestic sphere, he examined the cultural discourses of alterity that help to emphasise social divisions and antagonism between Uyghur and Han-Chinese people. As well as being enacted by Uyghur people in an attempt to maintain their cultural distinctiveness, such discourses, he demonstrated, are produced by the Chinese nation-state in order to reinforce its power in the region. Strikingly, this includes the expansion of state authority into Uyghur homes, whereby practices of everyday surveillance are used to police the expression of Uyghur cultural identity.
There was excellent attendance at the seminar, particularly from postgraduate students in the School.