Terror Capitalism: Producing the 'Terrorist-Worker' through Uyghur Subtraction in Northwest China
Key information
- Date
- Time
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5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
- Venue
- Virtual Event
About this event
Darren Byler (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver)
Abstract
This talk focusses on some of the key ideas of Darren Byler's ethnographic monograph Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City . Drawing on more than 24 months of ethnographic research in the Uyghur region of Northwest China and nearby Kazakhstan between 2011 and 2020, it considers how Muslim farmers can be turned into unfree workers under the sign of terrorism. By placing these accounts in the context of broader economic transformations in the region and considering how the rise of the “terrorist-worker” figures in scholarship of the frontiers of global economy, the talk makes a broader argument about a global turn toward techno-political systems of capital accumulation and state power. Specifically, it considers the roles that dataveillance and legal frames of exclusion play in the rise of what it calls terror capitalism—an ethno-racialized system of data and labour expropriation and social control that operates under the sign of the “terrorist.” It shows how such a system can generate capital by holding targeted groups in place through biometric and social surveillance, producing forms of self-discipline and unfree labor for private manufacturers. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, the talk contends that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.
Recording
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About the speaker
Anthropologist Darren Byler is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of an ethnographic monograph titled Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (Duke University Press 2022) and a narrative-driven book titled In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony (Columbia Global Reports 2021). His current research and teaching is focused on infrastructure development and global China in the context of Xinjiang and Malaysia.
Registration
This webinar will take place online via Zoom from 5pm - 6.30pm, GMT / 12pm - 1.30pm, EST. Click here to register.
Chair: Professor Rachel Harris, SOAS University of London
Organiser: SOAS China Institute
Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk
