ABSTRACT
Owing to complex historical processes, the modern Uyghurs may be conceived as a people caught between Central Asia and the People’s Republic of China on a number of levels, including political, economic, and socio-cultural. As an ‘inbetween’ people, the group as a whole is obviously a fascinating subject for the study of identity formation and negotiation, as witnessed by the already sizeable body of knowledge on relational identities constructed against the Han (Gladney, 1994, 1996, 2004; Smith, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2007; Cesàro, 2000; Bellér-Hann, 2002; Bovingdon, 2002) and on intra-ethnic socio-cultural identities among rural and urban Uyghurs (Bellér-Hann, 1997, 1998, 2001; Rudelson, 1997; Clark, 2001). Yet though the minkaohan 民考汉 [Ch. Uyghurs educated in the Chinese language] arguably struggle hardest with this sense of ‘in-between-ness’, the complex self-identity of the group to date remains strangely unexplored.1 Given the escalating urban trend of placing Uyghur children in Chinese-medium schools or classes and the socioeconomic conditions that have produced it, this acute example of Uyghur hybridity constitutes an important direction for ongoing research.
