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Book Cover for: Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City, Darren Byler

Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City

Darren Byler

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In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in "reeducation camps" is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism--a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state's enforcement of "Chinese" cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men--who are the primary target of state violence--and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Publish Date: Feb 9th, 2022
  • Pages: 296
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.62in - 0.87lb
  • EAN: 9781478017646
  • Categories: • Anthropology - Cultural & Social• Asia - China• Privacy & Surveillance (see also Political Science - Privacy

About the Author

Darren Byler is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University.

More books by Darren Byler

Book Cover for: In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony, Darren Byler

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: The Polis Project
The Polis Project
@project_polis
2 years

The Polis Project is a hybrid research and journalism organization.

📢 NEW PODCAST! How is China's capitalist and colonial ambitions annihilating the Uyghur community? In our latest podcast episode @suchitrav speaks to @dtbyler about his book "Terror Capitalism" to understand more. LISTEN NOW! https://t.co/lLQzRE2AQt

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Mentioner image for: New Bloom Magazine
New Bloom Magazine
@newbloommag
1 year

New Bloom is an online magazine covering youth culture and politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific.

Tomorrow night! We'll be having a talk with @dtbyler on his recent book, Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. Link: https://t.co/rS00IjTfdT https://t.co/r9ZEqaGMak

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Mentioner image for: The Bridge Initiative
The Bridge Initiative
@bridgeinit
2 years

A Georgetown University research project that extends information about Islamophobia to the public. RT ≠ endorsement. ❤ ≠ like. Website: https://t.co/MuhmgtmYVO

.@dtbyler's "Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City" analyzes how China’s drive for capitalist modernization undergirds the racial & economic hierarchies mobilized by the "People's War on Terror": https://t.co/vAbiZ5s951

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Praise for this book

"Darren Byler's Terror Capitalism provides critical insights into one of the most important and contested topics in international human rights. Drawing on an extensive archive of firsthand research, Byler gives a rich and detailed look at the persecution and cultural genocide of the Uyghur. An indispensable resource for studies in human rights, surveillance, China, Muslims, Islamophobia, capitalism, and more."--David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University
"Spelling out the full spectrum of what dispossession means for Uyghurs, Darren Byler offers a fine balance between political passion and scholarship as well as an important self-reflexivity about the role of an ethnographer in a context full of violence and terror. There is so little on what Uyghurs are going through, and it is vital that this information be made public. Terror Capitalism is one of the few works that bring such complex understanding to the situation in Xinjiang."--Lisa Rofel, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Remarkable ... compelling ... offers an important contribution for specialists and graduate students."--Aidan Forth "Los Angeles Review of Books" (11/8/2021 12:00:00 AM)
"There are many reasons to recommend Terror Capitalism, and not least for the way it gives voice to so many different Uyghurs, a people often reduced either to an abstract entity or a lone voice of victimhood."--Nick Holdstock "Times Literary Supplement" (1/5/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Byler's pioneering work vividly conveys the suffering that individuals experience under the regime's policies in Xinjiang"--Roger Garside "Literary Review of Canada" (3/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Some of the stories Byler's book recalls read like a scene straight out of Kafka's The Trial. . . . The author's attention to detail and commitment to thorough research is excellent."--JP O'Malley "Globe and Mail" (4/28/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Byler has written the definitive ethnography of the Uyghurs in the 2010s, a decade of increasing desperation."--Chris Hann "Eurasian Geography and Economics" (5/2/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Darren Byler's ethnography is an invaluable contribution, as he provides a rare micro, ground-level view of events and Uyghur social life in the past decade. His storytelling brilliantly plugs the reader into his characters' internal life and offers a remarkable insight into the Uyghur experience. He is also successful in his attempt to provide a refined, balanced and thorough scholarly analysis of the current crisis--with carefully chosen words and ethnographic vignettes. Byler's book is therefore a powerful tribute to his informants, Han or Uyghur, and to all those who suffer from Beijing's oppressive policies in the region."--Vanessa Frangville "China Quarterly" (5/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"What Byler has so forensically and movingly described in Terror Capitalism is a techno-capitalist model of settler colonialism. If the hallmarks of settler colonialism are the expropriation of the lands/property of indigenous Others and their physical removal and replacement by a new settler society, then contemporary Xinjiang is perhaps distressingly at the leading edge of settler colonialism in the twenty first century."--Michael Clarke "Ethnic and Racial Studies" (10/13/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Byler has in recent years emerged as one the most insightful and prolific chroniclers of the ongoing dispossession of the Uyghur community. . . . His richly theorized study provides readers access to a way of life largely invisible in Chinese state sources and infrequently represented in Uyghur official culture."--Joshua L. Freeman "Journal of Asian Studies" (11/25/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"While much of the heretofore published academic discussion of [Uyghur dispossession] revolves around its systemic elements, Byler calls on us to examine its devastating impact on a granular, personal level. Thus, the strength both of Byler's theoretical and methodological frameworks is made clear: his dissection of the dehumanization caused by terror capitalism, enacted through detailed ethnography, implores readers to remember that resistance begins by reasserting the humanity of the oppressed."--David R. Stroup "PoLAR" (1/27/2023 12:00:00 AM)
"Terror Capitalism offers vivid personal tales as well as a fine-grained analysis of China's intensified oppression in the region. . . . As the earlier chapters of Terror Capitalism masterfully elucidate, racial subjugation and colonization are not exclusive to China but rather are embedded in a global system; the West is complicit in and has benefited from Uyghur dispossession."--Yangyang Cheng "The Nation" (6/10/2023 12:00:00 AM)
"Byler's authority is grounded in years of on-site work, and he reveals a deep knowledge of his subjects. This highly accessible narrative will interest many readers. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals."-- "Choice" (11/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

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