Nation, religion and social heat: heritaging Uyghur mäshräp in Kazakhstan

Rachel Harris and Ablet Kamalov

Central Asian Survey, 2021, vol. 40, issue 1, 9-33

Abstract: This article brings together archival and ethnographic research to explore the ways that expressive culture and intangible cultural heritage flow across national borders, how transnational communities in Central Asia engage with discourses and practices of preservation and revitalization, and how local heritage initiatives can respond to the pressures of economic marginalization, migration, Islamization and cultural assimilation. Mäshräp gatherings involving music, dancing and joking have played a prominent role in modern imaginings of Uyghur national identity, and in local processes of community-making. Since 2009, Uyghurs in Kazakhstan have engaged in new forms of ‘heritaging’ mäshräp, attempting to revive their role as a medium for strengthening communities and sustaining language and culture. We argue that the unruly, affective and performative aspects of mäshräp are key to the success of these social goals, and we highlight their role as a space for the negotiation of tensions between religion, nation and hot sociality.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02634937.2020.1835825 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ccasxx:v:40:y:2021:i:1:p:9-33

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ccas20

DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2020.1835825

Access Statistics for this article

Central Asian Survey is currently edited by Raphael Jacquet

More articles in Central Asian Survey from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().