Down a narrow road : identity and masculinity in a Uyghur community in Xinjiang China / Jay Dautcher.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-338) and index.

Foreword / Stevan Harrell -- pt. I. Local Identities of Space and Place -- 1. The Blessed Home: Residence and Identity in a Uyghur Neighborhood -- 2. Yining's Mehelle as Suburban Periphery -- 3. Desettling the Land: The Destruction of Uyghur Chthonic Identity -- pt. II. Gender and the Life Cycle -- 4. Gleaming Eyes, Evil Eyes: Cradle and Cure in Uyghur Child Rearing -- 5. At Play in the Mehelle: The Language and Lore of Uyghur Childhood -- 6. Marriage, Mistresses, and Masculinity: Gender and Adult Social Life -- 7. The Pretty Olturash: Masculinity and Moral Order in Adult Play -- 8. "Women have hair, men have nicknames": Uyghur Nicknaming Practices -- pt. III. Markets and Merchants on the Silk Road -- 9. Merchants and Markets in the Mehelle -- 10. Yining's Border Trade: Trader-Tourism and Uyghur Sojourning -- pt. IV. Islam in the Mehelle: The Social Dimensions of Uyghur Religious Practice -- 11. The False Hajim and the Bad Meshrep: Piety and Politics in Uyghur Islam.

"This ethnography presents a thick description of life in the Uyghur suburbs of Yining, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, and situates that account in a broader examination of Uyghur culture. Its four sections explore topics ranging from family life to market trading, from informal socializing to forms of religious devotion. Uniting these topics are an emphasis on the role folklore and personal narrative play in helping individuals situate themselves in and create communities and social groups, and a focus on how men's concerns to advance themselves in an agonistic world of status competition shape social life in Uyghur communities."--Jacket.