Unruly Speech

"Based on a long-term ethnography in China, the United States and Germany, "Unruly Speech" explores how Uyghurs in China and in the diaspora transgress sociopolitical limits with "unruly" communication practices in a quest for change. Saskia Witteborn situates her study against the backdrop of displacement as a communicative and spatial phenomenon and focuses on how naming practices and witness accounts can operate as tools of activism, resistance, and communication. Moreover, she analyzes social media, literatures on surveillance and digitized witness accounts to examine the way Uyghurs, their supporters and the Chinese state each use technology to their own ends: to set limits and to cross over those limits, respectively. The book provides a granular view of disruptive communication: its sociopolitical moorings and socio-technical control. Findings in this book inform studies of migration and displacement, language and social interaction, advocacy and digital surveillance, and a transnational China"--