Darren Byler: December 14, 2021

Dec 14, 2021

Darren Byler spent years living in Xinjiang and befriending the Uyghur communities there. Soon after leaving the region to continue his doctoral studies, Chinese authorities began a massive detention and incarceration campaign in the region. Byler became one of the earliest scholars to monitor and analyze the latest crackdown in Xinjiang. He joins the club to explain the matrix of state control and economic incentives which produce and maintain and ongoing police state in the region and his deeply personal connection to the people most deeply affected.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER: Darren Byler holds a  PhD from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington in 2018. His research focuses on Uyghur dispossession, infrastructural power and what Byler has termed “terror capitalism”. He teaches anthropology at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of two books on Xinjiang: “Terror Capitalism” (2022) and “In The Camps.” (2021). Byler has also helped translate “The Backstreets,” from the renowned Uyghur writer Perhat Tursun.