| This dissertation examines Uighur family change in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uighur. Autonomous Region, during the period from the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China in 1949 to the present. I argue that the process of Uighur family change among the educated urbanites of Urumqi—from a pre-modern system before 1949 to a modern system by 1999—constitutes evidence in favor of a modified convergence model of the evolution of the family in modernizing societies. William Goode, the earliest and most influential proponent of the convergence model, contends that universal, inevitable changes in economic systems, especially industrialization, are the. primary cause of alterations in family systems. I present evidence that these alterations, which include neolocal residence patterns, a multilineal family system, late age of marriage, young people freely choosing their spouses, and lower fertility rates, have, in fact, begun to occur to the educated urbanite segment of Urumqi's Uighur population. Yet the historical trajectory of these changes has not followed Goode's model, thus demanding a modification of what, in Goode's model, is essentially a linear path of change.; While conceding the importance of industrialization and urbanization as important factors in family change, I contend that Chinese state power has played a crucial role in causing Uighur family change. The overwhelming power of socialist China in the 1950s to change family strategies is simply not accounted for in the classic convergence model. Goode predicts that as societies become industrialized the ties between the extended family as well as the generations within the nuclear family become looser and less binding. In the post-1978 reform period, after nearly three decades of intense industrialization, we have seen the strong kin and non-kin personal networks that bind together the educated urbanite Uighur community. |
