You shall sing and dance: contested ‘safeguarding’ of Uyghur Intangible Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This article examines the politics of China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) policy and practice in Xinjiang through a study of the profound transformation of three interlinked Uyghur oral traditions ostensibly safeguarded as UNESCO or national-level cultural heritages: muqam, mäshräp and dastan. Based on fieldwork in Xinjiang and among the Uyghur diaspora, it shows how an intensive process of social reengineering, taking place in the nexus of contested state ICH policies and its ‘War on Terror,’ has transformed complex religio-cultural traditions into simplified and exoticized patriotic ‘song and dance’ performances. While the state defines these staged versions as ‘authentic’ heritage that should not be deviated from, community elders and cultural practitioners see them as ‘fake’; they violate community values and disembed fluid oral traditions from everyday life, which is where they are reproduced and generationally transmitted. The rhetoric of ‘safeguarding’ thus represents a disavowal of its actual effects and the severe restrictions on spaces available for cultural practice in Xinjiang.

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