Book Project My current book project examines the interplay between state coercion and ethnic minority responses to that coercion in China. It asks two questions: Why does the Chinese party-state make concessions toward ethnic groups it actively represses? How do ethnic minorities respond to these actions? To answer these questions, I focus on the holiday celebrations of the Mongol, Uyghur, and Tibetan ethnic groups. This project argues that the party-state co-opts the celebrations as a subtle form of coercion. In response, ethnic minorities celebrate their holidays in accordance with their own traditions. Notably, unlike government-sponsored holiday activities, private ethnic minority holiday celebrations are devoid of politics. Their response, however, makes a political statement. Through a concept called apolitical politics, this project shows that minorities challenge the meaning of state-sponsored celebrations by regarding their own celebrations as apolitical. While the minorities' actions are not political from their perspective, the state interprets them that way. Support for these statements derives from interviews and ethnographic data collected at celebrations in the ethnic minority autonomous regions during two years of field-work. The research was funded by a National Security Education Program (NSEP) grant, a GWU Sigur Center for Asian Studies Summer Research Grant, and a GWU Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies Hoffman Grant.
Ongoing Research I have two ongoing projects beyond my dissertation. In “Chinese Values and Views in the Wake of the Kunming Attacks,” co-author Jackson Woods (postdoctoral fellow, University of Pennsylvania) and I ask whether terrorist attacks in China change citizens' views of minorities for the worse. Secondly, we ask whether people become more authoritarian after violent incidents. Drawing on the literature on the authoritarian personality in American politics, we hypothesize that Chinese citizens will become more authoritarian and more intolerant toward out-groups. To test our hypotheses, we use sentiment analysis of Chinese social media (Weibo) and interviews with Han Chinese regarding their attitudes toward minorities. We find that while there are no sustained negative feelings toward Muslims, there is the possibility that the party-state uses these violent events as a means to repress ethnic minorities it views as dangerous.
My other research related to holidays and politics includes a co-authored project (Lisel Hintz, Visiting Professor at Barnard College) entitled “It's MY Party: Holiday Celebrations as Sites of Minority Identity Contestation in China and Turkey.” We ask what role nationally celebrated holidays play for ethnic groups that are not considered part of the majority nation of a state. Drawing on data derived from participant observation and interviews, we argue that holidays are salient sites of identity contestation. We compare the Hui in China with the Kurds in Turkey, finding that the Hui re-imagine the Spring Festival in accordance with their ethnicity, while the Kurds make use of Navruz as a vehicle for resistance.