Tom Cliff, “Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang” (U Chicago Press, 2016)

New Books in Sociology · Sep 4, 2018 · 1h 7m

Compared to the provinces’s native Uyghur population, Han Chinese settlers in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not attracted as much scholarly or indeed journalistic attention of late. But in a profoundly troubled and troubling present for Xinjiang, one that is thankfully now gaining somewhat more notice from concerned parties worldwide, Tom Cliff’s Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang (University of Chicago Press, 2016) offers us vital insight into precisely this group of people. Based on years of residence in Korla, an oil industry hub in southern Xinjiang, Cliff draws us…