Lunchtime Seminar – 16 June – Muhetaer Mukaidaisi

Survival skills: Uyghur Felt-Makers and the Chinese State

Muhetaer Mukaidaisi (Palacký University & MIASU Visiting Scholar)

How do communities with precarious status adapt to political and economic changes in rural areas? What is the primary resource they draw on for adaptation, and what forms of capital do they rely on at critical junctures? This talk analyses these critical questions by looking closely at a Uyghur felt-making community in rural southern Xinjiang, northwest China. It traces the history of the changing lives of Uyghur felt-makers by drawing on oral histories, family memories, textual analysis, and participant observation.

Conventional studies of craft have tended to focus primarily on technical skill and crafts as material culture. However, this talk understands skill as a combination of physically embodied and socially, culturally, and religiously embedded forms of knowledge. This broader understanding of skill fundamentally shapes people's ideas of status, inclusion, gender roles, and their sense of belonging. By exploring the concept of hüner, the term which is used in Uyghur to refer to a holistic craft knowledge, and the history of socialist de-skilling, this talk discusses the interplay between power, skill, and marginalisation in the context of political and economic change in a minority region of China.