Eastern Turkestan, now known as Xinjiang or the New Territory, makes up a sixth of China's land mass. Absorbed by the Qing in the 1880s and reconquered by Mao in 1949, this Turkic-Muslim region of China's remote northwest borders on formerly Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Mongolia, and Tibet, Will Xinjiang participate in twenty-first century ascendancy, or will nascent Islamic radicalism in Xinjiang expand the orbit of instability in a dangerous part of the world? This comprehensive survey of contemporary Xinjiang is the result of a major collaborative research project begun in 1998. The authors have combined their fieldwork experience, linguistic skills, and disciplinary expertise to assemble the first multifaceted introduction to Xinjiang. The volume surveys the region's geography; its history of military and political subjugation to China; economic, social, and commercial conditions; demography, public health, and ecology; and patterns of adaption, resistance, opposition, and evolving identities.

Alphabetically arranged entries offer a comprehensive overview of the definitions, politics, manifestations, concepts, and ideas related to identity.

National Identities in France explores nationalism, national identities, and the various ways in which these concepts are accepted, adapted, discarded, or internally disputed across ideological divides. The popular assumption that automatically regards nationalism as a largely right-wing concern, occludes the many ways in which nationalism and national identities have contributed to social imagination and political or literary discourses across the right-left spectrum. The critical grounds on which such reflections are undertaken are rich and varied. The idea of invented traditions has long suggested how such a thing as the modernnation-state could vest itself in the creatively assembled robes of a dim and distant past. In plotting the ground on which nationalisms are located, previous studies have shown, among other things, the uses and limitations of the distinction of ethnic and civic nationalism. Studies on national development reveal the imitative process that brought about nation building in former colonies of the Western powers. Each chapter asks important questions concerning nationalism and national identities in relation to France. With nationalism, apparently stable distinctions collapse under the pressure of French national identity. The signs are that French national identities and nationalisms are in a constant state of reinvention and negotiation, of periodic crisis and constant rebirth. If political classes attempt to manipulate national identity for some larger project, they have no monopoly on the social imaginary. National mobilization is a multiple and polysemic process, not a univocal and rigid ideology.

Presenting cutting-edge ethnographic research on contemporary worlds of work and the experiences of workers from a range of contexts, this volume offers fine-grained, exploratory ethnographic data to provide insights unmatched by other research methods.

Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott have brought together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to consider the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with treating identity as a variable, offer a synthetic theoretical framework, and demonstrate the possibilities offered by various methods of measurement.

As the world changes, so sexual identities are changing. In a context of globalisation, mass communication and technological advances, individuals find themselves able to make lifestyle choices in new and different ways. In this increasingly confusing world, sociologists have argued that identities are in flux, and that traditional patterns of identity and intimacy are being disrupted and reshaped, with all the implications for sexual identities that this suggests. Changing Gay Male Identities draws on the powerful life stories of twenty-one gay men to explore how individuals construct and maintain their sense of self in contemporary society. The book draws upon theoretical debates on topics such as gender, performance, sex, class, camp, race and ethnicity, to explore four aspects of identity: the role of the body in who we are relationships and communities performing in everyday life reconciling different aspects of our selves (such as religion and sexuality). In Changing Gay Male Identities Andrew Cooper assesses the magnitude of these social and sexual changes. He argues that although there are many opportunities for new forms of identity in a changing world, the possibilities can be significantly constrained, and that this has major implications for the freedoms and choices of individuals in contemporary societies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, sexuality studies, gender studies, and GLBTQ studies.