Mapping loss, remembering ancestors: genealogical narratives of Kazakhs in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Genealogical narratives are important aspects of Kazakh social life in China and the formation of self-identifications. They reflect tensions in competing forms of history-writing through which the Chinese state maintains control over its frontier. Through ethnography and critical analysis of locally produced and circulated genealogy books, this article traces the connections between genealogy as a way of knowing and its creative agency under the Chinese settler order in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The article argues that Kazakh genealogy books as knowledge production are a response to Mao era assimilationist policies and reform era economic dispossession. Genealogy in this context mediates and mobilizes local histories, land epistemology, and gender ideals to construct Kazakh collective memory and belonging to ancestral places in northern Xinjiang.