With Dr. Rachel Harris (SOAS, University of London)
Rachel Harris draws on the notion of territorialization to probe current developments in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where a “Peoples War against Islamic Extremism” has developed into an assault on Uyghur cultural identity, massive securitization of the region, and the detention of over a million people. Focusing on the 2014-15 campaign that compelled Uyghurs in Xinjiang to take part in weekly singing and dancing sessions in the name of tackling Islamic extremism, and the ongoing use of singing revolutionary songs within the internment camps, she argues that sound is a crucial aspect of territorialization; the soundscape like the landscape is also a site of struggle; and cultural development, state power, and the shaping of habitus are all played out through sound.
About the speaker: Rachel Harris is Reader in the Music of China and Central Asia, and Research Co-ordinator for the School of Arts at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on musical life in China’s Muslim borderlands. She has co-edited several volumes including the music textbook Pieces of the Musical World (2015) and Theory and Practice in the music of the Islamic world (2017), and she currently edits the Routledge SOAS Musicology Series. She also works with various outreach and applied projects relating to Central Asian and Chinese music. She led the Leverhulme Research Project ‘Sounding Islam in China’ (2014-2017) and is working on a new monograph Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam. She is currently working with Turan University in Kazakhstan on a British Academy Sustainable Development Project to revitalize Uyghur cultural heritage in the diaspora.
