ABSTRACT
This book is important and timely. First, it showcases ethnographic and textual research among Uyghurs in a period when scholars' access to the region is exceptionally difficult. The richly detailed chapters provide a textured and complex understanding of people often reduced to snapshots and sketch portraits. Second, and relatedly, this complexity is important given the depictions in Chinese and even international media of Manichaean struggles between good and bad Uyghurs and between Uyghurs and Hans. In this book people encounter individuals making thoughtful choices about their own lives and their relationships to larger collectivities, declining to be pawns in larger political games and yet unable to evade completely the influence of those games on their lives. The focus of the chapters is pressure and how individuals respond to it. Uyghurs are under extraordinary pressure these days such as cultural, linguistic, religious, demographic, and political.
