Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City

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 capitalisma 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 states 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 menwho are the primary target of state violenceand 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 co\-constructed with a colonial relation of domination.