丁香园AV

Education

Ph.D. University of Washington, Socio-Cultural Anthropology
M.A. Columbia University, East Asian Studies
B.A. Kent State University, History & Visual Journalism

Areas of Specialization

• Anthropology
• Forced migration
• Gender
• Labour
• Political economy
• Religion and politics
• Security studies
• Science, Technology and Society Studies

Research

Darren Byler is a sociocultural anthropologist whose teaching and research examines the effects of surveillance on stateless populations and the role of infrastructural state power in contemporary capitalism and colonialism in China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. 
 
His monograph,鈥�鈥�&苍产蝉辫;(Duke University Press, 2022), examines emerging forms of media, infrastructure, economics and politics in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia (Ch: Xinjiang). The book, which is based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among Uyghur and Han internal male migrants, argues that Chinese authorities and technologists have made Uyghurs the object of what it names 鈥渢error capitalism.鈥� It shows that this emergent form of internal colonialism and capitalist frontier-making utilizes a post-9/11 discourse of terrorism, what he shows produces a novel sequence of racialization, to justify state investment in a wide array of policing and social engineering systems. These techno-political systems have 鈥渄isappeared鈥� hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in 鈥渞eeducation鈥� camps and other forms of productive detention while empowering millions of state workers and private contractors who build the system. The book considers how the ubiquity of pass-book systems, webs of technological surveillance, urban banishment and mass internment camps have reshaped human experience among native Uyghurs and Han settler-colonizers in the capital of the region 脺r眉mchi. Ultimately, the book presents an analysis of resistance to terror capitalism, what he terms a 鈥渕inor politics of refusal,鈥� that emerges from the way Uyghurs and Han allies use new media and embodied practices of care taking to oppose this colonial formation. The book was awarded the 2023 Gregory Bateson Award from the Society for Cultural Anthropology and the 2023 Margaret Mead Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology and the American Anthropology Association.  
 
His current research follows up on the argument of his first book to consider how contemporary capitalism and colonialism travels through digital infrastructural systems from China to Malaysia. This multi-sited project, supported by funding from Columbia University's鈥疓lobal Reports series and a Luce Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies Early Career Fellowship involves field research and in-depth interviews with technology workers, former detainees and other stateless Muslim populations affected by the infrastructural power of digital surveillance along China鈥檚 New Silk Road.鈥�

As part of this project, he published a narrative-driven book titled鈥� (Columbia Global Reports 2021). Drawing on fieldwork with stateless populations in Kazakhstan and internal Chinese police files, this book examines effects of the AI-assisted mass surveillance and internment system that has been implemented in China鈥檚 internal colony Xinjiang. He has also co-edited a volume called (Australia National University Press 2021). This open-access book is written as an undergraduate textbook, featuring chapters from over a dozen authors. It offers students and educators a resource to understand the origins and modalities of the internment camp system in Northwest China not only from a human rights and international law perspective, but also as directly related to global history and the global economy.

He is currently completing an academic monograph that synthesizes and expands on some of the claims made in these previous publications titled Thinking with Violence: Narratives of Thought Reform & Infrastructural State Power in Northwest China. This archive driven project presents a genealogy of policing, carceral and legal systems, and education in Northwest China. It seeks to understand the way Chinese authorities built the capacity to enact an atrocity crime. He is also developing an additional project to look at the effects of Chinese-built 鈥渟afe city鈥� systems in Malaysia. 

In public-facing work regarding the crisis confronting the Uyghurs and others in Northwest China, he has worked in an advisory capacity with faculty and researchers at the University of British Columbia and 丁香园AV to build a鈥�鈥� featuring personal testimonies and archives, internal police reports, translations and other documents concerning the ongoing detention of Turkic Muslims in China and the erasure of their native knowledge. He has also written a regular column on these issues for the journal鈥�, as well as essays for other鈥痯ublic outlets such as the鈥�,鈥�,鈥痑苍诲鈥�. His work has also the topic of an hour-long discussion on the national radio show. He has also been asked to contribute expert witness testimony on Canadian and Australian foreign policy issues before the Canadian House of Commons and the Australian Parliament, and he has written policy papers on technology and policing for the Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. 

As part of his work in amplifying the voices of Uyghur cultural leaders he has co-translated a Uyghur language novel titled鈥� (Columbia University Press 2022). The novel is written鈥痓y a leading modernist author Perhat Tursun鈥痺ho disappeared into the internment camp system in Northwest China in 2018. Following its publication, it was named one of the 鈥渂est books of 2022鈥� by The New Yorker and described by The Atlantic as 鈥渁 near perfect work of art.鈥�

Publications

Books

Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City鈥� (Duke University Press, 2022; also published in translation in Taiwanese).

The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang. Co-translated with Anonymous, (Columbia University Press, 2022).

Xinjiang Year Zero. Edited with Nicholas Loubere and Ivan Franceschini, (Australia National University Press, 2021).

In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony鈥�&苍产蝉辫;(Columbia University Global Reports, 2021; also published in translation in Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Persian, Slovak, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian).鈥�

Articles

鈥淭he smart camp as classroom: Control, education, and agency in Muslim internment in Northwest China.鈥濃��(International Journal of Comparative Sociology,鈥�0 (0).鈥�, 2024)

鈥淭he Camp Fix: Infrastructural Power and the 鈥楻e-education Labour Regime鈥� in Turkic Muslim Industrial Parks in North-west China,鈥� (The China Quarterly,鈥疦umber 255: 628-643,, 2022).

 鈥淭he Social Life of Terror Capitalism Technologies.鈥濃��(Public Culture 34 (2 (97)): 167鈥�193, 2022).

"Producing 'Enemy Intelligence.'" ( Volume 57, Number 2: 197-216, 2022).

(with MA) 鈥淎lienation and Educational 鈥楾hird Space鈥�: English Learning and Uyghur Subject Formation in Xinjiang, China.鈥� (Anthropology & Education Quarterly鈥�53: 396-415,鈥�, 2022)

鈥淎nticolonial Friendship: Contemporary Police Violence, Storytelling and Uyghur Masculinity鈥� (American Ethnologist, Volume 48, Issue 2鈥痯. 153-166, 2021). 

(with Amy Anderson) 鈥淓ating Hanness: Uyghur Musical Tradition in a Time of Reeducation鈥� (China Perspectives鈥�3: 13-22, 2019).

鈥淰iolent Paternalism: On the Banality of Uyghur Unfreedom鈥� (The Asia Pacific Journal,鈥�Volume 16, Issue 24, Number 4, 2018).

鈥淐laiming the Mystical Self in New Modernist Uyghur Poetry鈥� (Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, 1-20, 2018).

鈥淣ative rhythms in the city: embodied refusal among Uyghur male migrants in 脺r眉mchi鈥� (Central Asian Survey,鈥�1-17, 2017).

鈥淣ew Silk Road artworlds: The art of the hybrid and the marginal at the Xinjiang Contemporary Art Museum鈥� (Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 4, no. 1: 27-43, 2017).鈥�

Book Chapters

鈥淩eeducation Time: Surviving as Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang,鈥� (In The Central Asian World, Edited by Jeanne F茅aux de la Croix and Madeleine Reeves, Routledge, 2023). 

 鈥淐ontemporary colonial frontier making: Thinking from the operational digital enclosure of Muslims in Northwest China,鈥� (In Sage Handbook of Global Social Theory, Edited by Gurminder Bhambra, Kathryn Medien, Lucy Mayblin, Sage Press, 2023).  

 鈥淭wo-faced: Turkic Muslim camp workers, subjection, and active witnessing.鈥� (In The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the causes and consequences of China鈥檚 mass detention of Uyghurs. Michael Clarke, Manchester University Press, 154-180, 2022).  

鈥淭he Traveler in the City: Homelessness and the Religious Economy of Uyghur Reformist Islam鈥� (In鈥�Ethnography of Islam in China,鈥疪achel Harris, Guangtian Ha, Maria Jaschok eds. University of Hawaii Press, 2020).鈥�鈥�

鈥淐urious Images from Northwest China: Ethics and Poetics in Carolyn Drake鈥檚 Travel Photography鈥� (In鈥�Travel and Representation,鈥疎dited by Garth Lean, Russell Staiff, and Emma Waterton, London: Berghahn Press, 2017). 鈥�

鈥淭he Affect of 鈥楧isposable鈥� Bodies on Film in Xu Xin鈥檚 Karamay: Ritual and Embodiment in Chinese Central Asia鈥� (In鈥�Transnational Chinese Cinema: Corporeality, Desire, and the Ethics of Failure, Hong Kong: Bridge21/Transaction Press, 2014).

Teaching

• IS 105 Around the World through Film
• IS 314 National, Regional, and International Politics in Southeast Asia
• IS 365 Surveillance Capitalism in Global Contexts
• IS 465 China and World: Chinese International Development and Politics