ABSTRACT
Chapter Two, in political science parlance, is a theoretical section that generates hypotheses for answering the book's two research questions: first, what leads certain actors to become core players in the WUC network; and second, what leads to divisions within the WUC network? I use an ecological – or niche – perspective, which is a construct I utilized in a previous work to illustrate generalized ethnic mobilization (Chen, 2009). Having adopted this perspective, the importance of both “framing” and “resources” in placing certain actors at the center of the Uyghur movement and in sharpening the divisions among potential Uyghur supporters are postulated. These hypotheses will be tested in subsequent chapters.
