Dissonant Voices in China’s Harmonious Society: From Cassettes to WeChat, Nation to Anashid

Harris, Rachel

Abstract

This chapter takes a medium-term view of developments in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over a period of twenty years, during which the indigenous Turkic Muslim Uyghurs were collectively transformed in official discourse from “ethnic separatists” to “religious extremists.” It considers the factors that impelled a shift in the voicing of dissent from the “new folk” songs of the 1990s to radical anashid in the 2010s, in the period leading up to the securitization and mass incarceration of Uyghurs in 2017. It focuses on the roles played by different forms of technology in the circulation and reception of these sounds and how they affect the relationship between the sounds of dissent, the territories they contest, and the communities they hail.

Citation

Harris, R. (in press). Dissonant Voices in China’s Harmonious Society: From Cassettes to WeChat, Nation to Anashid. In N. Manabe, & E. Drott (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190653866.013.0034

• Acceptance Date: Aug 28, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Mar 20, 2025
• Deposit Date: Feb 3, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 21, 2026
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music
• ISBN: 9780190653866
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190653866.013.0034
• Keywords: Uyghur, Xinjiang, China, nationalism, Islam, anashid, social media, dissent, soundscapes