Abstract
This final chapter turns to the recurring theme of ‘assimilation as modernization’ in Xinjiang, tracing the ways in which Mandarin language education, and the adoption of ‘Han secular values’, are positioned as ways of ‘becoming-modern’. We explore the different views some of our interviewees had towards the relationship between language and identity, and religion—arguing ultimately that the positioning of ‘modernity’ as the property of only one cultural heritage is one of the most problematic features of official discourses around contemporary ethnic cultures.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Brown (2021) for a similar pattern: focusing on ethnic minority cultures more broadly, her Han interviewees did not think of ethnic minority cultures as already ‘Chinese’, emphasising instead their ‘exoticness’ and ‘difference’. As noted by Stroup (2019a), despite the political emphasis on “Ethnic minorities are inseparable from the Han. The Han are inseparable from ethnic minorities. All minzu are mutually inseparable”, ‘Chineseness’ more broadly is equated with the Han.
- 3.
Min Kao Min 民考民, literally, an ethnic minority individual educated in a predominantly minority school and mostly through Uyghur; conversely Min Kao Han 民考汉 is an ethnic minority individual educated in a predominantly Han school, and through Mandarin.
- 4.
This is of course a familiar and common pattern in diaspora communities.
- 5.
As put succinctly in Memtimin’s (2018) statement: “the implementation of Mandarin education has been heavily resisted by the invisible black hand [不见的黑手] [of religious extremism], and religious extremist forces preach that ‘people who learn Mandarin and speak Chinese are not Muslims’, causing many Uyghur people to be kidnapped by religion and to be afraid and unwilling to let their children learn Mandarin”. As noted before, this ignores the fact that numerous Mandarin speakers are Muslims.
- 6.
This should be noted—this is describing a discussion going on among educated Mandarin-speaking Uyghurs; evidencing that having good Mandarin, and having a higher education, certainly does not preclude what would certainly be perceived in the current context as ‘religious extremism’, such as the debate over whether women should be veiled.
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O’Brien, D., Brown, M.S. (2022). Becoming-Modern: Sinicisation, Existential Threats, and Secular Time. In: People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3776-7_9
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