Introduction

This edited volume explores the social and cultural hybridity or ‘in-between-ness’ of the Uyghurs, an officially recognized minority mainly inhabiting the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, with significant populations also living in the Central Asian states. It seeks to bridge a perceived gap in our understanding of this group, which too often has fallen between two regional traditions of scholarship on Central Asia and China: Central Asian studies, with its focus on the post-Soviet Central Asian states, and Sinology.