Surviving the Socialist Market:

In the late 1970s, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese state introduced two major economic changes: first, the Household Responsibility System, and then, after 1992, the "socialist market economy." In their terms, this "liberated the productive forces." This meant that people in China could once again set up individually run businesses. These included businesses conducted by Uyghur craftspeople in Xinjiang. Until the mid-1990s, these individual Uyghur craftsmen had some success in creating a re-embedded, traditional economic system and joining the socialist market economy. However, it did not last long because of the challenges of industrialization and competition from mass-produced goods.

This talk looks at ways in which Uyghur craftsmen tried to adapt to major economic and political changes in the post-reform socialist market. It shows how they engaged with the historical past to make sense of the changes wrought by the transition to a socialist market economy. In particular, the talk examines the importance of hüner (craft knowledge) and their efforts to reassert value. through private history-making. These suggest that economic decisions are not solely driven by immediate needs but by long-held values, priorities, and memories. This talk provides examples of Uyghur felt-makers' ways of history-making and emphasizes the importance of symbolic capital in the rural craft community.

Mukaidaisi Muhetaer is a Uyghur anthropologist whose work focuses on rural communities in Northwest China and Central Asia. She employs a combined approach of history and ethnography to examine the process by which state and community “complicitly” reshape or co-produce society. Her current book project investigates how variations in state power have led to changes in the types of social status/symbolic capital, how people’s livelihood strategies have been affected, and the responses of these communities in Northwest China.

Dr. Mukaidaisi Muhetaer received her Ph.D. in Asian Studies from Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, in 2024. Prior to joining Yale University, she held a Horizon Europe Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Palacký University.