Social Science Research Council

"NGOs and Narratives of Gendered Development in Xinjiang, China"

My dissertation project focuses on the conjuncture of gendered development visions in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I will explore how the recent arrival of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) alters the ways in which different groups and individuals imagine and instantiate “development.” In particular, I seek to understand how the introduction of common NGO discourses (e.g., sustainability, human rights and empowerment) and techniques (e.g., participatory research, training modules and evaluation matrices) inflects how Chinese bureaucrats and Uyghurs conceive of gender and development. At the same time, I will examine how negotiations with multiple layers of the Chinese state, as well as Muslim Uyghur communities involved in the project, change NGO concepts and practices. Most importantly, I will develop an understanding of how women perform, adopt, reinterpret and/or deflect new gendered development norms, and how in the process they preserve and reshape Islamic norms of female piety and virtue, as well as Uyghur values of family and community. Rather than assume monolithic responses on the part of any group, my research seeks to understand how different people within the state, NGOs and Uyghur communities respond to each other. I am particularly interested in how people interact with discourses and technologies of development and in the process shape dynamic narratives of self and community.