Trebinjac Sabine

Biography

In China, music is a generator of legitimacy and a symbol of power, being so closely linked to the political arena. Leaders set great store by it, but a vast network of musical institutions was established. Called upon to collect the different types of music in China, the tens of thousands of bureaucrats they employ work on producing one Chinese national music. Tradition thus gives way to state traditionalism. It is also through music that Sabine Trebinjac has examined Uyghur identity and encompassment. The perseverance of identity promoted by the Uyghur people cannot be understood without first grasping their relationship to the other. There is no denying that the Chinese state has a propensity for integrating the other. China encompasses: it is the encompassing element of Dumont’s encompassing/encompassed dichotomy. Being in the role of the encompassed, the Uyghur found their perpetuation principle in their relationship with the other and its vicissitudes. Sabine Trebinjac has developed an analysis of this Central Asian mindset, which enables a population, the Uyghur, to perpetuate themselves and preserve their memory and identity, and this in the face of – or rather alongside – an encompassing authoritarian power represented by the Han.

Research Interest

Political sociology, ethnomusicology, music and political power, ethnography of Central Asian Turkish populations, state traditionalism