CESR
Central Eurasian Studies Review

Publication of the Central Eurasian Studies Society

ISSN 1538-5043 (Print)
ISSN 1543-7817 (Electronic)

Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2003

Editors - CESR Vol. 2 No. 2

Editor-in-Chief: Virginia Martin (Huntsville, Ala., USA)
Section Editors:
Perspectives: Robert M. Cutler (Ottawa/Montreal, Canada), Edward Walker (Berkeley, Calif., USA)
Research Reports and Briefs: Laura Adams (Boston, Mass., USA), Jamilya Ukudeeva (Riverside, Calif., USA)
Reviews and Abstracts: Shoshana Keller (Clinton, N.Y., USA), Resul Yalcin (London, England)
Conferences and Lecture Series: Peter Finke (Halle, Germany), Cengiz Surucu (Bloomington, Ind., USA)
Educational Resources and Developments: Daniel C. Waugh (Seattle, Wash., USA), Philippe Fort (Zurich, Switzerland)
Production Editor: John Schoeberlein (Cambridge, Mass., USA)
Web Editor: John Schoeberlein (Cambridge, Mass., USA)
Copy Editor: Michael Davis (Kirksville, Mo., USA)

[Contents]

Perspectives

Detours from Utopia on the Silk Road: Ethical Dilemmas of Neoliberal Triumphalism[1]

Morgan Y. Liu, Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., USA, mliufas.harvard.edu

Neoliberalism - that family of ideas, policies, institutions, and practices explicitly promoting what is called "developed capitalism," along with its assumed sociopolitical concomitants such as civil liberties and democratic institutions - has been the governing framework for Western assistance to the "developing" world since the 1980s. Since the dissolution of the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1991, neoliberal policies have been deployed in Central Eurasia with a particular vigor, indeed triumphalism. The scholarly literature about contemporary Central Eurasia does not question this neoliberal framework or its suitability for Central Eurasian societies. Rather, it takes for granted the neoliberal goals of economic and political reform as neoliberalism defines them. All phenomena in the region today, it seems, are understood according to the grand narrative of the "transition" to free markets or representative democracy, while all current problems are ascribed simply to the transition's incompleteness. The purpose of this Perspectives article is to provide evidence urging us to think differently about neoliberalism and how it applies to Central Eurasia today. Using a series of suggestive cases in point, I will argue for the importance of looking at what actually happens on the ground, of recognizing how people fashion new economic and social arrangements in practice, and of taking seriously the ethical dimensions of the region's dramatic transformations. In conclusion, I synthesize these insights into a critical evaluation of neoliberalism in Central Eurasia.

The Big Importance of the Small Scale

Scholars of contemporary Central Eurasia fail to question the nature and applicability of neoliberalism to the region in part because they tend to confine their analyses to large-scale, top-level issues of national economies and political elites. Such analyses tend to miss the complexities of how those issues actually play out on the scale of communities and individuals. When they do consider the small scale, they often assume it to be a straightforward instantiation of the macrotrends. There is little theorization about unintended consequences and newly emergent phenomena that arise from the play of forces at local levels, where political and cultural contestation can occur over ways of interpreting economic situations and imagining alternative possibilities (Burawoy and Verdery 1999a). This is a significant gap in our knowledge of the region, because human actors come up with the most innovative and unexpected practices for coping under conditions of dramatic, disruptive state transformation (see Greenhouse 2002). Considering the everyday lifeworlds of people and communities is important not only for knowing how people are actually being affected by the tremendous structural changes in Central Eurasia today. Analyses of the "spatial and temporal rhythms of the routines of daily life" (Burawoy 1999: 301) also provide, moreover, unique leverage on grasping the big picture itself. Attending to the complexities and ambiguities on the ground may reveal the non-deterministic, creative aspects of everyday practice that can influence macro outcomes (Burawoy and Verdery 1999a: 7). The actual processes of how new institutions or values like citizen initiative or entrepreneurship might take root (or fail to do so) take place at the level of mundane life (1999a: 6). Sensitivity to the small scale could greatly benefit the study of Central Eurasia at any scale and from any disciplinary perspective, because it can reveal the inaccuracies and qualifications of the currently dominant grand narratives of the region's marketization or democratization.

Awareness of these potential complexities entails a certain caution in employing notions such as "the market," "the state," "civil society," etc. While these concepts certainly have their proper uses, we must realize that the phenomena on the ground that they are asserted to describe are radically inchoate, fragmented, contested, and inflected by local meaning (Ries 2002). Describing the Russian economy during the 1990s, for example, Caroline Humphrey (2002d: xx) writes,

The market is there, and yet somehow it does not operate as theory predicts, and the same is true of "electoral democracy" and other such categories developed to explain Euro-American actualities. Yet it would be a mistake to take the line that the standard concepts are fine in the abstract but they do not work in Russia, having simply run foul of something called "Russian culture."

Indeed, such a line of argument treats specific cultures as obstacles to processes that are assumed to be universal in applicability. As famously expressed in Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis (Huntington 1996), culture is seen as a pre-given independent variable, considered important in determining economic and political outcomes only in non-Western contexts. However, institutional practices such as market relations or civic participation are as embedded in and as dependent on cultural frameworks in the West as they are anywhere in the world, as originally noted by Weber in his classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1958 [1920]). Western analysts tend to miss this because they tend to be blind to their own cultural assumptions. Given the power relations between "the West" and "the rest," and given their own place in the reproduction of those power relations, little compels them to question this blindness. We need to acknowledge that culture is an integral aspect of any economic or political order rather than an entity standing in opposition to them. Instead of scapegoating culture in order to preserve the integrity of grand theories, we should allow intellectual integrity to compel us to acknowledge that human reality is far too complex to be fully captured by any general scheme of explanation. This does not mean abandoning the search for systematic trends and underlying causes, but only tempering and qualifying them with the "messiness" one almost invariably finds on the ground (Mertz 2002). When we abandon the compulsion of parsimony at all costs, "untidy" details cease to sully the big picture and instead enhance it.

To illustrate how attention to the small scale illuminates the large, let us take the issue of civil society, which is of particular importance to Central Eurasia today. Civil society - today defined as that realm of public life held to be separate from the state and the market - is asserted to be what "totalitarianism" negated and what postsocialist liberalizations are supposed to develop along with the creation of the new states and markets (however, see Hann 2002a: 9 for a critical appraisal). Citizen-initiated activity manifesting in a robust layer of independent organizations would, the theory goes, help create the conditions for democratization of political institutions and marketization of economies. "In strengthening grassroots citizen organizations, such programs strengthen principles of citizen participation and activism, of government accountability to citizen concerns, and of civil rights - including the basic right of citizens to organize in order to press for more rights" (Ruffin 1999: 4). The larger goal is to "affect a nation's political culture, help mitigate authoritarian, xenophobic, or insular attitudes ... and diminish the constituencies of extremist leaders and movements" (1999: 5).

Individuals' responses to structural constraints and opportunities on the ground, however, can have unintended consequences that subvert those goals. For example, because international donors often cannot locate truly self-initiated and self-run organizations in post-Soviet Central Asia, they recruit promising individuals (often Soviet-era elites) to start them. These resulting so-called DONGOs (donor organized NGOs) are in reality subservient to donor agendas. "[They] do not have the same grassroots, civic character as the classical NGO. Their activities necessarily express goals and values of those in control of the budgets they depend upon" (Ruffin 1999: 12). When Ruth Mandel undertook a study of locally hired employees of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Kazakhstan from 1994-2000 (Mandel 2002), she found that those whom the NGOs hired locally learned quickly that their success depended on the extent to which they could master the language of "NGO-speak" and "parse the world," according to the rubrics predefined by USAID (pigeonholing complex problems as simply a "women's issue" or a "democratic transition issue").

In consequence, rather than a sui generis class of local development workers, [these individuals] represent the local stratum of the larger class of international development professionals" (Mandel 2002: 287). Moreover, these people's very socialization into Western professional practices produces their failure to become influential models for the rest of Kazakhstani society. They instead become increasingly alienated from it, continue in careers connected with the international community, and may emigrate (sometimes by marrying Western aid workers). A talented young Kazakh employee of an USAID office that Mandel interviewed went on to work for the local Coca-Cola office. She turned down a prestigious job with President Nazarbayev's transition team in the new capital of Astana not only because the pay was half of Coke's, but also because, "I'm not sure I would want to work in that type of organization [i.e., the Kazakhstani state] - I wouldn't have the freedom I have in my job now" (2002: 288). Other interviewees, who had experienced USAID training in modern professional practice, also expressed an unwillingness to return to local work environments because of their strict hierarchy, clientelism, and stifling of individual initiative. And so, the personal disincentives for these new internationalized elites to work within their societies militate against the possibility of these foreign-directed NGOs influencing the general culture of the recipient country.

Yet another factor visible on the small scale can subvert the goals of those who promote the development of civil society in Central Eurasia: attempts to encourage "grassroots" initiative may end up reinforcing such illiberal institutions as patriarchy and clientelism. For example, post-Soviet Uzbekistan has embarked on a campaign for "national renewal" by farming out social welfare functions to mahalla committees - neighborhood-based councils supposedly representing "native" community organization (even though they had been co-opted and reconstituted by Soviet authority) (Jalilov 1995). As a result, women are being subjected to the paternalism and favoritism of local male elders, with attendant threats to their welfare (Kamp 2003). Kamp's insights into such dynamics are possible only because she has spent much time living in mahallas and interviewing women extensively.

Research focused on the small scale is valuable even when studying global issues. This is so because globally circulating ideas and values intersect with local needs and sensibilities in diverse ways through small, concrete encounters in the everyday lives of those born and living in the region. For example, regular direct air connections to cities such as Dubai, Mecca, Istanbul, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Beijing promote a bustling flow of people, goods, and money that results in the presence of an explosive variety of merchandise available in the newly constructed stalls, kiosks, and bazaars. This has led to the development of classes of consumer tastes and preferences that characteristically accompany identity formation in capitalist systems. Not only do Central Eurasian male youth who watch foreign movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan receive ideas about being masculine and modern: such media are usually their only window onto the world. An entire generation is forming its attitudes towards the U.S., the West, and the "outside" world under the influence - sometimes the exclusive influence - of how these are depicted by Hollywood, Hong Kong, and other centers of media concentration in the developed and developing worlds.

Their attitudes are likewise formed by the implicit lifestyle messages carried by such commodities as Coca-Cola, Kodak, or the infamously low-quality Chinese products that flood the region's bazaars. Meanwhile, Central Eurasian Muslims are being trained as clerics and returning from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey; Islamic books printed in the Middle East, Kazan, or Moscow find their way onto vendor tables outside mosques refurbished with Saudi money. How Islam is presented and taught through these channels affects how these Muslims understand morality, community, the state, and the world. Those basic understandings influence, in turn, their attitudinal predispositions concerning domestic policies, interethnic relations, and foreign affairs. It is impossible to construct an accurate understanding of how globally circulating ideas and practices are worked into the life of Central Eurasian societies without a keen awareness of all these specific elements - from material commodities to Islamic knowledge - contribute to the larger picture.

Innovative Responses on the Ground

Small-scale views on the ground reveal the variety and creativity of the responses of people on the ground in Central Asia as they live through the region's seismic economic and political shifts. A focus on the small scale emphasizes agency, i.e., the capacity of individuals or collectivities to make choices and act in ways that are not all determined by circumstances, habits, or "traditions" (Berdahl 2000: 4-5). There is a prevailing assumption inside and outside of academia that "traditional societies" are locked into reproducing unchanging norms and practices unless an external modernity imposes change. Yet numerous anthropological studies worldwide provide irrefutable grounds for radical criticism of such a view. These studies reveal how social agents create alternative avenues of thought and action in the most straitjacketed of circumstances, and even under severe macroeconomic constraint. Under postsocialism, traditions become resources of familiar language and themes that are not deterministic templates for social action but instead form "repertoires of imagination" (Humphrey 2002d: xxi).

Repeatedly, we find that what may appear as "restorations" of patterns familiar from socialism are something quite different: direct responses to the new market initiatives, produced by them, rather than remnants of an older mentality. In other words, we find that what looks familiar has causes that are fairly novel.... Action employs symbols and words that...develop using the forms already known, even if with new senses and to new ends (Burawoy and Verdery 1999a: 1-2).

Not only does Central Eurasian reality not resemble either a neoliberal economy or a liberal polity, but also it does not even constitute a "socialist regression" from those ideal-types. As such, what is happening on the ground - "life itself" - calls into question the doctrinal assumption that current events represent any kind of a "transition" - even if a misdirected one - to either capitalism or democracy.

Precisely this phenomenon - the reconfiguration of markets and consumption - has been a prolific area of research since the collapse of state-organized distribution. This research reveals a tremendous variety of new arrangements in trade, finance, transport, and selling, as well as the innovation of new meanings entailed in the creation of commodities and in their consumption. These shifts involve newly relevant segments of the population (e.g., women, the elderly, children, certain ethnic groups, academics), indeed in general a much larger proportion of the population than previously, all of whom become directly involved in economic activity that had been entirely foreign to them during the socialist period.[2] This activity has meant increased mobility among those involved in shuttle trade or seasonal work, and the regularization of "social contacts" between groups that did not have such relations before. The unprecedented participation in shifting economies has had a tremendous impact on every aspect of life: family, gender roles, education, religious practice, community cohesion, crime, civic life, intellectual production, interethnic relations, local politics, and state institutions. We are only beginning to study this kind of impact. What happens on these local fronts is far from irrelevant to the course of the large-scale economic and political liberalization that continues to receive, by contrast, an exclusive overemphasis.

Consider, for example, the burgeoning of petty trade. This issue appeared to be on everyone's mind across the postsocialist world, particularly in the early 1990s, at which time almost all new economic activity was channeled into commerce because few opportunities lay in production so soon after the Soviet state imploded. Yet trade liberalization in these economies has not produced the "inevitable" transition to modern capitalist modes of exchange. An important reason for this lies in how the people actually conducting the commerce saw, experienced, and responded to the constraints and opportunities that confronted them.

For example, Caroline Humphrey identifies a complex of circumstances that conditioned how trade developed through the mid-1990s in provincial Russia. She cites an example of a trader who had a license to have her truck on the road, but not to enter the neighboring province (Humphrey 2002c: 76). The erratic regulation regime reflects not only the inexperience of administrations regarding this sector, but also an ambiguous attitude of the state toward free trade, an ambiguity reflecting the general Russian public's dubious regard of such trade. It is difficult for individuals actually living in such a situation to grasp the multi-level totality of all shifting, intersecting, and even mutually contradictory laws governing trade, much less obey them all. As a result, traders widely flout laws concerning finance and distribution, preferring instead networks built upon personal trust.

Humphrey distinguishes a number of new categories of traders operating in the Russian provinces during the 1990s, each employing different arrangements and strategies. For example, "resellers" [perekupshchiki] were small-time traders dealing with mostly locally-produced goods and working limited routes (often within a city), buying at one place, and reselling at a higher price elsewhere. They were often pensioners or children, with little capital or mobility. "Shuttlers" [chelnoki] also did their buying and selling personally but, by contrast to the resellers, they trafficked on longer circuits that crossed regions and international borders. Shuttling therefore required not only knowing friendly (bribable) customs officials and paying off appropriate racketeers for "protection," but also a deeper overall familiarity with authorities, local demand, travel conditions, and risks. "Entrepreneurs" [predprinimateli] dealt on a still larger and international scale than shuttlers: they were endowed with more capital, sometimes provided by foreign partners. They had access to fast travel and communication, which they used in order to take quick advantage of evolving local tastes for selected foreign commodities. Those who had the means to do so moved into the potentially more lucrative wholesale arena, which required a still greater level of networking, coordination, and appeasement of authorities. These examples point out how differently positioned individuals exploit opportunities in local demand in different ways, creating distinctive niches for themselves in an emerging commercial sphere. The poverty of a linear socialism-to-capitalism transition scheme fails to capture the diversity of such micro-arrangements, because the emerging commercial sphere is too variegated and its paths of development too multidirectional.

In yet another work, Humphrey (2002b: 17) focuses on post-Soviet practices of bribery. Rather than stipulate a priori that bribery is simply and universally "corruption," she considers how bribery is actually practiced in different contexts and its relations to other forms of extralegal activity. While the term "bribe" [vziatka] applies strictly only to payments made to public state officials and is, as a practice, morally condemned in everyday Russian life, it exists within a more amorphous arena of unorthodox payments in the newly developing private commercial sphere - payments variously called "additional fees," "tariffs," or "gratuities" (Humphrey 2002b: 127). How such payments are regarded depends on economic status: the disadvantaged abhor them but participate in them out of necessity, while elites practice them as ethically neutral costs of doing business. In some circumstances bribes can even be presented as a moral good. For example, payments to school officials or teachers for placement in the institution have been regarded by the payers as justifiable "in this commercial world," where state support for education has dwindled and teachers remain unpaid for long periods (Humphrey 2002b: 142). An analogous argument has been made concerning the subtle practices of payment for medical services in post-Soviet Russia (Rivkin-Fish 2003). Bribing practices have thus diversified and adapted to the new conditions of state withdrawal and commercialization of public life. It is therefore erroneous to see them as Soviet-era holdovers; rather, they reveal fault-lines in the tectonic shifts of the unstable socio-economic order.

Ethical Dilemmas

The ethical dilemmas of postsocialist transformation are sine qua non for understanding economic or political "transition," which as an abstract template projected into the region, necessarily confronts particular and particularistic practices and moral discourses about class, ethnicity, and nationhood. What are these ethical dilemmas? With the contraction of previously taken-for-granted state institutions, people interpret and act upon the severe constraints on their lives not as neutral facts "out there," but according to strongly held notions about how things ought to be. State socialism irrefutably socialized its citizenry into attitudes and practices reflecting a well-defined moral sense about justice in social arrangements on issues ranging from wealth distribution to gender equality. This sense of how society should be organized ran deep, regardless of the state's actual practice or failure to implement fully the stated ideals. Since then, "the everyday moral communities of socialism have been undermined but not replaced" (Hann 2002a: 10, italics in original). Analytic attention to small-scale complexities on the ground, and to the variety of human creativity acting in the real world, leads to the recognition that the very tangible material crises of postsocialist transformation are frequently apprehended and acted upon as ethical dilemmas and choices. Many of those who advocate liberal reforms in Central Eurasia are themselves motivated by an ethical imperative to elevate the material welfare, human rights, and dignity of others. To attempt to do so, however, while ignoring the distinct ethical sensibilities of those affected by the changes would be disingenuous and paternalistic.

Under socialism people lived with certain expectations about the active role of the state in overseeing society and economy. "Socialism's basic social contract" held that the state would collect the total social product, and in return provide, however imperfectly, lifetime employment, medical care, pensions, and consumer goods, as well as an overall sense of stability and predictability (Verdery 1996: 25). The subsequent disintegration of these "social protections" is widely regarded throughout Central Eurasia as a breach, even a betrayal, of the state's duty. It is bad enough that rampant unemployment and unprecedented inflation have disrupted family livelihoods in general: but specific facts about the new economic order have provoked moral indignation. The variation of prices across different stores or seasons, for example, leads Central Eurasians to see much of the new economic activity as criminal. The above discussion about petty trade illustrates the point.

Harsh economic realities can load the identities ascribed to "others" with weighted moral value: "they" are all thieves, or "they" are all immoral, since "they" are all engaged in swindling, drug trafficking, prostitution, or sedition. Any and every kind of outsider - from whatever other region, country, ethnicity, or religion - is threatened with such stigmatization.[3] Tensions arising from incipient class or ethnic relations are thus cast as ethical judgments. Recognizing the ethical dimension of these tensions helps to explain the uncompromising absoluteness that accompanies group conflict, in a manner that "rational choice" analyses cannot adequately capture. Studies of identity formation and interethnic conflict in Central Eurasia must pay serious attention to the moral convictions that motivate individuals and groups to act and speak as they do. However, it would be a reductionist error of the first order either to collapse ethics into economics or politics on one hand, or, on the other hand, to treat it as a cultural "residue" representing "traditional mentality." The subjects whom we study are sentient beings as complex and fully human as ourselves, and whose moral sensibilities implicate political logics and economic rationalities in multilayered and complex ways.

Anyone who doubts the significance of the ethical dimension to understanding important macro-scale phenomena should consider the appeal of Islam and attraction of authoritarianism in post-Soviet Central Asia. These very phenomena are not, for Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan for example, simply resurgences of a pre-Soviet or Soviet past. They are instead novel responses to post-Soviet conditions, based upon moral sensibilities about authority that were originally produced within local Soviet Central Asian contexts (Liu 2002). These Uzbeks value Islam because it cultivates virtuous individuals and peaceful, productive communities by establishing, among other things, proper relations of authority between people (Liu 2000). These Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan advocate a ruthless but benevolent rule that exercises discipline over or training of the people [tarbiya], the supposed purpose of which is to prepare them for political and economic liberalization (Liu 2003). In their political imagination President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is seen as a paternalistic figure with a moral charge to oversee the development of the land and its people. To be sure, this khan-like image of a post-Soviet Central Asian president - notably cultivated by Karimov's astute self-identification with Timur (Tamerlane) - can be a cynical strategy of power (Manz 2002). To be sure, some in the region use Islam as a way to speak to the economic disenfranchisement that others experience. Yet even those behaviors tap into deep convictions about the ethical nature of political authority. The value of a "fatherly steward" that is ascribed to the ruler and the value of a "community-builder" that is ascribed to Islam are central to the significance and potency of authoritarianism and Muslim identity as social forces in Central Asia today.

Critical Awareness of Neoliberalism

The accumulated findings of contemporary field research discussed above - which represent but a sample of all the work available - illustrate how the ethical dimension of social thought and action is revealed at the detailed level of the small scale, where people create unexpected responses to the pressing circumstances of everyday life.[4] Although this argument represents a decidedly anthropological perspective on the state of Central Eurasian studies today, I would hardly seek to make anthropologists out of scholars with other disciplinary backgrounds (whether in the social sciences or in the humanities), and still less out of policy-makers or their advisors. I would instead offer the above examples as evidence for the value of grounding our views of the region in small-scale, actually occurring social contexts, even if this means foregoing clean-cut, all-explaining answers. This research in postsocialist societies has already made indispensable contributions to both methodology and actual research findings by showing it is possible to discern important regularities without losing sight of complications on the ground. Cooperative interdisciplinary dialogue will allow the profitable integration of these advantages into other modes of analysis.

A concluding insight emerging from the examples presented here is the need for a critical awareness of neoliberalism, and specifically in the Central Eurasian context. If disincentives felt on the ground are subverting the development of civil society; if liberal intentions end up reinforcing illiberal patriarchy in the mahalla; if trade liberalization has resulted not in modern capitalist modes of distribution but instead in a panoply of unforeseen economic arrangements; if people yearn for authoritarian rule because they believe it is for their own good; or if the results of Westernized policy interventions are consistently falling short of predictions by grand theory: then we must question whether something is happening other than an "incomplete transition" to neoliberal outcomes. Will "freeing" a society from socialism and dictatorship inevitably set it on a course toward capitalism and democracy as we recognize them? Can we not concede that the multi-dimensional complexity of possibility means we cannot predict how these societies will actually develop? Neoliberalism - like every other "-ism" that claims to inaugurate a utopian epoch of human civilization if not "the end of history" (Fukuyama 1992) - is but a collection of concepts and institutional practices, the development and deployment of which are themselves historically contingent and path-dependent (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1999; Paley 2002).

The field of Central Eurasian studies contains the exciting possibility of criticizing and modulating the self-assured triumphalism of strident neoliberal doctrine applied to the region. Research attentive to the reality on the ground can sensitize neoliberal projects to the particular complexities of the region's everyday life. Those who believe in the liberalization of Central Eurasia and consciously work towards that goal must ask hard questions about the unintended effects of their policies. They must, if need be, have the courage radically to rethink cherished neoliberal preconceptions about social development and political change. Only unflinching engagement with these realities and only genuine collaboration with Central Eurasians as equals will yield contextually effective approaches to transforming the region's societies and economies. The alternative is to become a perhaps unwitting accomplice in yet another utopian project promising prosperity and security to the whole of humankind, blind to the detours that emerge from closer scrutiny and attention to context.

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1958 (1920) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribners Sons.

Notes

[1] My grateful acknowledgement goes to Robert Cutler for his eloquent and insightful editing of this article.

[2] Humphrey (2002c: 73) cites an amazing figure: an estimated 49% of the population of Irkutsk was taking part in trade in 1992, although that figure quickly dropped in the ensuing years.

[3] A stigmatized outsider can come from a nearby region (Humphrey 2002a). Roma ("Gypsies") are a most notable ethnic outsider group throughout Central Eurasia (Lemon 2000: 56-79). Regarding religious outsiders in Central Eurasia today, there are local converts to Protestant Christianity and to Islamist movements, so-called "Wahhabis," a word employed throughout the region to index their foreignness and militancy at least as much as any particular doctrinal orientation (Knysh 2002).

[4] Many more such case studies can be found in the cited edited volumes (Berdahl, Bunzl and Lampland 2000; Burawoy and Verdery 1999b; Hann 2002b; Humphrey 2002d); in the new book series Culture and Society after Socialism from Cornell University Press, edited by Bruce Grant and Nancy Ries; in the journal Anthropology of East Europe Review (whose purview overlaps with the Central Eurasian region), and at the annual conferences of Soyuz: the Network of Post-Communist Cultural Studies, which is an interest group within the American Anthropological Association.

[Contents]

Research Reports and Briefs

Comparative Perceptions of Risk From Nuclear Testing in Kazakhstan: Preliminary Results and Proposed Research

Cynthia Werner, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA, wernerneo.tamu.edu; Kathleen Purvis, Assistant Professor, Joint Science Department, Claremont Colleges, California, USA, kpurvisjsd.claremont.edu; and Nurlan Ibraev, Director of the "Densaulq" State Agency for Health Care, East-Kazakhstan Province, Kazakhstan, baklanovaustk.kz

Between 1949 and 1989, approximately 470 nuclear tests were conducted at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan. At least one million people were exposed to significant doses of radiation as a result. The test site, also known as the Polygon, is a 19,000 square kilometer tract of land situated about 150 km west of Semipalatinsk, a city of approximately 400,000 residents. A number of smaller towns and villages are situated even closer to the test site. Studies comparing the health problems experienced by populations living near the Polygon with those experienced by control populations indicate that the populations near the test site have experienced higher rates of cancers (including leukemia), benign thyroid abnormalities, psychological problems and birth abnormalities (Gusev 1998; Peterson 1998). Despite new information about the nuclear tests and the dangers of radiation, many individuals have continued to live in areas near the former test site where they are exposed to chronic low dose radiation, and some individuals engage in high-risk activities, such as mining copper from the former test site.

Our collaborative research project compares the ways that four social groups (Kazakh villagers, Russian villagers, local research scientists, and local health care workers) perceive the risk from radiation exposure. This study also identifies the factors that influence each group's risk perceptions and suggests how different perceptions of risk can affect individual decision-making. This research report provides background information on our research team and on the research site and a brief summary of our preliminary findings in Kazakhstan.

Background

This is an international collaborative research project that involves the combined efforts of a cultural anthropologist (Werner), an environmental chemist (Purvis), and an oncologist (Ibraev). Preliminary research for this project was conducted in Kazakhstan during the summers of 2000 and 2001. Further research will be conducted during the summers of 2003 and 2004, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.

Information about the Soviet nuclear testing program was highly classified until the glasnost years in the late 1980s. Thus, villagers who lived as close as 40 kilometers from the test site and occasionally herded their animals on the test site were never informed of the risks associated with the tests. Before each test, the Soviet military consistently warned the local citizens that there would be an "explosion," yet they only evacuated local residents for temporary periods during the largest atmospheric tests. Today, the villagers talk about how they never knew that the atmospheric explosions that many enjoyed watching, almost like a firework display, were poisoning their bodies and endangering their health. Not knowing the risks, villagers occasionally entered the irradiated Polygon territory to herd their sheep, to sneak into the closed city of Kurchatov, and to steal objects that the Soviet military left behind.

Soviet leaders knew that the tests had harmful effects on human health but the Soviet government silenced medical doctors who were responsible for gathering and reporting statistics on illnesses and causes of death. Cancer diagnoses were seriously underreported because they could only be made by doctors in Almaty or Moscow. Soviet leaders also used villagers as guinea pigs to monitor the effects of radiation on human subjects. Beginning in 1961 many of the villagers were treated in a "secret clinic" in Semipalatinsk, known as Brucellosis Dispensary Number Four. Signs on the building described the clinic as a center for treating animal-borne diseases, yet those who worked inside knew that the clinic was a highly classified research clinic for studying the impact of radiation exposure on human bodies. Military personnel would routinely visit the villages, and offer rides to any villagers who sought medical care. At the time the villagers felt privileged to have this opportunity, because they felt the clinic offered exceptional care. In exchange for this care, they unknowingly became the subjects of scientific research on the effects of radiation. One of the former directors of the dispensary today admits that "the role of the facility was not to assist radiation victims, but to observe them and write reports for Moscow." It is difficult to assess the actual quality of care because most of the research data collected by Dispensary Number Four was either destroyed or taken away to Russia.

The villagers' trust in the government was shattered in the late 1980s. Inspired by glasnost policies, the Kazakh writer Olzhas Suleimenov founded the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement in 1989. Although the closing of the test site in 1991 was a great victory for the people who live near the test site, the Cold War has not really ended for these people. They still live in an area that is contaminated by radioactive fallout and their bodies are still suffering from years of chronic, low-dose radiation. Many scientists believe that the current levels of radiation exposure still present health risks to individuals living near the test site. In the post-Soviet period poverty and poor nutrition complicate the wellbeing and health care of these villagers.

Preliminary findings in context

Studies of risk perception demonstrate that specialists and non-specialists do not always agree on the risks associated with certain hazards and technologies (Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtenstein 1979) and show that risk perceptions are heightened among laypersons when a particular technology or hazard is perceived to be involuntary, uncontrollable, dreaded, unknown, and potentially catastrophic (Slovic 2001).

Existing studies of risk in other cultures clearly demonstrate that economic and technological risk is socially and culturally constructed (Bujra 2000; Cashdan 1990; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982; Weber and Hsee 1999). Studies of risk in non-Western cultures suggest that the very concept of risk is more developed in "modern" societies, where scientific rather than religious or superstitious explanations are used to explain unfortunate or unplanned events (Beck 1992; Beck 1999; Giddens 1998; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). Although cultural differences have been acknowledged as a significant factor in shaping risk perception (Renn and Rohrmann 2000), there is a significant need to fill the gap in the literature when it comes to risk perception regarding nuclear energy and radiation exposure. Do the theories about risk perception in Western societies apply to a non-Western setting where traditional healing practices combined with Islamic (and Russian Orthodox) religious beliefs might play an important role in shaping local attitudes towards health and risk?

Rural Kazakhs and rural Russians are both literate and educated, yet their worldview is different from the respondents in previous risk studies. Shaped by personal experience and information from the popular press, Kazakh and Russian villagers who live near the test site have constructed their own perception of how nuclear testing has affected their health and environment. Based on preliminary interviews we know that perceptions of risk towards radiation vary within the villages. On the one hand, some of the villagers we spoke to claim that they are not at all worried about radiation exposure from the water they drink or the food they consume. They believe that the harmful effects of radiation do not exist anymore, since the last nuclear test was conducted over a decade ago. Some villagers even pursue "risky" behaviors, such as mining copper cables from the former test site. On the other hand, we spoke to several villagers who are very concerned that they are still being exposed to harmful levels of radiation. These villagers express a general sense of hopelessness and despair. Due to economic conditions they simply cannot afford to move to another region or to buy "safe" water and food. We do not yet know why villagers have varying perceptions of risk. Our survey research will examine whether ethnicity, gender, education or age can help explain the variation.

Previous studies argue that non-specialists perceive greater risks than "experts" because they do not fully understand the science of nuclear energy. The risk literature also suggests that expert views vary depending on their scientific field. Our study considers two groups of experts: local research scientists (including those who work at the former test site and the former secret laboratory) and health care workers (including doctors, nurses and hospital administrators) who treat the "victims" of nuclear testing. Our survey research will demonstrate whether a similar dichotomy between experts' perceptions and laypersons' perceptions exists in Kazakhstan. Based on preliminary interviews we expect this to be the case. For instance, in one interview, a nuclear scientist working in Kurchatov mentioned that he and his colleagues were exposed to radiation throughout the testing period, but do not think of themselves as victims. He believes that diet, rather than radiation exposure, plays the greater role in explaining the poor health of villagers. Although his views are shared by other nuclear scientists, they are not shared by health care workers. All of the health care workers we interviewed have a fairly high perception of risk from radiation exposure. They are certain that the high rate of cancer in the villages surrounding the Polygon can be explained by radiation exposure. Unlike the villagers, however, they realize that radiation exposure is not the only factor that affects the health of villagers.

In addition to testing hypotheses based on findings in risk studies, we plan to analyze existing environmental data collected by the Kazakhstan Research Institute of Radiation Ecology and Medicine both during and after the nuclear testing period. We also plan to analyze health statistics on the incidence of cancer and heart disease in the two test villages as well as one control village (Zharbulak). This research will add a longitudinal component to a previous study (conducted by Ibraev) on the incidences of cancer and heart disease in Semipalatinsk province. Both data sets will be useful for putting the perceptions of risk in perspective.

A final objective of this study is to examine the ways in which risk perceptions affect choices made by individual villagers. These choices involve certain activities and behaviors that could limit exposure to radiation and/or improve individual and family health. The study assumes that there will be some variation among villagers regarding the perception of risk from radiation exposure. Additional survey questions and qualitative interviews will be used to get at these questions.

References

Beck, Ulrich

1992 [1986] Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications.

1999 World Risk Society. New York: Blackwell Publishers.

Bujra, Janet

2000 "Risk and trust: Unsafe sex, gender and AIDS in Tanzania." In: Risk Revisited. Pat Caplan, ed., pp. 59-84. London: Pluto Press.

Carlsen, Tina, Leif Petersen, Brant Ulsh, Cynthia Werner, Kathleen Purvis, and Anna Sharber

2001 "Radionuclide contamination at Kazakhstan's Semipalatinsk test site: Implications on human and ecological health," Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, 7(4): 943-955.

Cashdan, Elizabeth, ed.

1990 Risk and Uncertainty in Tribal and Peasant Economies. Boulder: Westview Press.

Douglas, Mary, and Aaron Wildavsky

1982 Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Environmental and Technological Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Giddens, Anthony

1998 Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gusev, B., R. Rosenson, and Zh. Abylkassimova

1998 "The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site: a first analysis of solid cancer incidence (selected sites) due to test-related radiation," Radiation and Environmental Biophysics, 37: 209-214.

Peterson, Leif, Zhaksibay Zhumadilov, Sunil Kripalani, Yuri Progulo, Thomas Wheeler, Boris Gusev, Ridha Arem, Sergei Yonov, and Armin Weinberg

1998 "Diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid disease in the East Kazakhstan Region of the Republic of Kazakhstan: A case review of pathological findings for 2525 patients," Cancer Research Therapy and Control, 5: 307-312.

Renn, Ortwin, and Bernd Rohrmann

2000 "Cross-cultural risk perception research: state and challenges," In: Cross-Cultural Risk Perception: A Survey of Empirical Studies. Ortwin Renn and Bernd Rohrmann, eds., pp. 211-233. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Slovic, Paul

2001 Introduction and overview, In: The Perception of Risk. Paul Slovic, ed., pp. xxi-xxxvii. London: Earthscan Publications.

Slovic, Paul, Baruch Fischhoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein

1979 Rating the risks, Environment, 21(3): 14-20, 36-39.

Weber, Elke, and Christopher Hsee

1999 "Models and mosaics: Investigating cross-cultural differences in risk perception and risk preference," Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 6(4): 611-617.

[Contents]

Interviewing NGO Leaders in Bishkek

Sada Aksartova, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., USA, sadaprinceton.edu

I have recently returned from a research trip for my dissertation comparing US civil society assistance in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. My field work was supported by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), as well as the MacArthur Foundation and Princeton University's Center for International Studies. The dissertation, titled "Civil Society from Abroad: Western Donors in the Former Soviet Union," examines cultural and organizational dimensions of the interaction between US donors and recipient NGOs in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. A significant portion of my empirical evidence comes from in-depth interviews with representatives of donor and recipient organizations. To conduct the interviews I spent 4.5 months in Moscow and one month in Bishkek. In this report I will discuss some of the problems I confronted doing this kind of research in Bishkek and their broader implications.

At first I found it far easier to work in Bishkek than in Moscow. For one thing, Bishkek is a much smaller city. Although the donor presence is large relative to the size of the city and of the country, it is not too big numerically and I quickly understood what key organizations and people I should contact. People were for the most part very open to my inquiries and could usually find a time to meet with me the same or next day when I called to introduce myself and request a meeting (which almost never happened in Moscow). That said, in Bishkek I observed a pattern that had not manifested itself to the same degree in Moscow: local NGO leaders were far more apprehensive about meeting with me than were representatives of the donor community, who were mostly but not exclusively Westerners.

Several prominent activists repeatedly declined my requests for interviews, usually citing hectic schedules and pressing deadlines. I initially took these explanations at face value and began to wonder if these were in fact the real reasons only after I had heard them several times. Like anyone else in my position, I accepted that some people I wanted to interview were not interested in meeting and speaking with a researcher. At the same time, I began asking myself whether this unwillingness represented something that I, as a researcher, needed to understand. Just at the moment when these thoughts started taking shape in my mind I had a fortuitous encounter with a respondent who was willing to address these issues head-on and without my asking. It had taken several phone calls to arrange the meeting, and when we met the respondent opened the conversation by informing me that she (most NGO leaders are women) had no interest whatsoever in talking to me; that the meeting took place only because of my doggedness; that she had talked to many a researcher in the previous ten years and nothing useful for her work ever came out of those conversations; and that she was no longer willing to pour her heart out to visitors and spend hours explaining to them the basic facts about Kyrgyzstan's political life and society. Surprising as it may sound, after this opening salvo we actually had a very interesting and informative conversation about Kyrgyzstan's NGOs and politics.

I feel immensely grateful to this person for putting these issues on the table. The conversation opened my eyes to a certain perception of Western researchers that exists in Kyrgyzstan's NGO community and helped me formulate questions that I could pursue in subsequent interviews. When I raised this subject with other respondents, several were ready to discuss it. Their very readiness and thoughtful arguments were, in my view, a strong indication that this issue is a "social fact" of which Western researchers need to be cognizant.

According to my interlocutors, there is a fairly common concern among local NGO leaders that Western researchers come to interview them with the purpose of purloining their ideas, which they then use to produce publications and advance their careers. In part this attitude is related to the fact that researchers in the post-Soviet context are less respected than they are in the West. However, there are several other dimensions that are specific to Western involvement in Kyrgyzstan. One is what I would call interview fatigue caused by the feeling of being exploited by foreign researchers. The stream of Western researchers passing through Bishkek over the last ten years has been large relative to the size of the local NGO community, so that NGO leaders - especially because they are more likely to speak English than, say, academics or politicians - are approached again and again with similar inquiries but rarely see the outcome. As a result, they feel that Westerners come to pick their brains and then leave, never getting back in touch to share the product of their research. There was an undercurrent of the same attitude toward Western researchers in Moscow, but it became far more obvious and explicit in Bishkek because researchers' presence looms larger in this much smaller city.

This attitude about exploitative Western researchers is reinforced by the way international organizations conduct their research on Kyrgyzstan. In the words of a respondent with firsthand experience of the procedures of the European Union and the UN for gathering data, international organizations use local social scientists as "plantation slaves" for the most basic tasks of data collection and entry and almost never involve them in analysis and writing which usually take place outside of Kyrgyzstan. According to this person, this arrangement compromises the quality of information in the resulting studies. Local researchers, having no stake in the final product, do not have a strong incentive to be responsible and meticulous about their work and do on occasion falsify data, for example, by filling out questionnaires themselves.

A related concern, which I heard several times in Bishkek, is that knowledge about Kyrgyzstan is predominantly produced in the West, that what is produced is rarely brought back, and that so far there has been very little, if any, development of the capacity for local knowledge production. This concern was also recently voiced here in the United States: in her presentation at the SSRC-sponsored thematic conversation on the Caucasus and Central Asia at the November 2002 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Cynthia Buckley discussed the pervasive lack of access by Central Asian researchers to "public access" data produced by international organizations, which "can both diminish the participation of regional scholars in policy debates and encourage researchers to repeat, often at significant costs, data collection efforts."

My motivation in writing this report for CESR has been two-fold. First, my research experience suggests that Western scholars (including Central Asians, like myself, who are now working in the West) should be aware of the broader context in which their individual research projects take place and that each of us contributes to shaping that broader local context during our field work. Secondly, the Central Eurasian Studies Society is an ideal forum for discussing how to forge stronger links between scholarship here and in Central Asia and to foster the development of knowledge production capacity inside the region.

[Contents]

Bayani's Shajara-ye khorezmshahi and the Russian Conquest of Khiva: An Essay on Historical Production¹

Ron Sela, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., USA, rselaindiana.edu

The1 Russian conquest of Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century drew considerable attention from numerous eyewitnesses (Russians, French, Germans, English) and a great deal of scrutiny from scholars in Russia and elsewhere. Unfortunately, descriptions of the conquest in Central Asian sources were for the most part left out of scholarly inquiry, perhaps because too many of them are still in manuscript form, sometimes difficult to trace and hard to access.

One such source is the Shajara-ye khorezmshahi (Genealogy of the Khorezmian Kings), completed in 1914 by Muhammad Yusuf Bek, known by his poetic pseudonym [takhallus] "Bayani." The work, a history of Khiva written in Chaghatay (the language of Khivan historiography), survived in a single manuscript (preserved in Tashkent at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan) and was never edited nor published in its entirety. In fact, the number of scholars who have actually used it can be counted on one hand.2 In this report I will draw readers' attention to a part of this source that indicates the author's reliance on multiple sources with very different perspectives on the Russian conquest of Khiva. This research is part of an ongoing project concerning Central Asian historiography, relying in part on the extensive and rare materials kept at the RIFIAS (Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies), Indiana University, Bloomington.

Our information on Bayani is limited. We know that he was a poet (he was a member of a poetic circle in Khiva where the khan made him read twice a week from his own works), a writer, and an administrative official. He was the son of Babajan Bek, also a writer and an official at the Khivan court, and the great-grandson of Eltuzer, Khan of Khiva at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Russian ethnographer Samoilovich, who visited Khiva in 1908, listed Bayani as a poet, musician and divanbegi (an official in charge of the treasury). He also mentioned that Bayani was a captain in the service of the Russians (the Russians often gave Central Asians honorary ranks with no real authority), and what is more important for our purpose, knew Russian well and regularly received Russian newspapers and journals.

On the circumstances of the writing of the work, Bayani relates that on 22 Jumadi al-Awwal, 1329 (May 21, 1911) he received instructions from Isfandiyar, Khan of Khiva, to write down the history of the latter's "noble and sublime dynasty" in simple language that common people would find intelligible, "avoiding metaphors and similes" (in contrast with previous historical works, all written in a very ornate style). Therefore, we can entertain the notion that this work was an attempt at producing a Khivan national history.

Bayani based his account on earlier works by Munis and Agahi, the most noted historians of Khiva in the nineteenth century. However, unable to find all of Agahi's chronicles, he had to write the history from 1846-1856 and from 1864 onward himself. These parts are Bayani's original contribution, based on information that he had collected himself. He also explains that this was the reason why it took him three years (1911-1914) to finish the work.

The part of the work I would like to highlight here deals with events surrounding the Russian conquest of Khiva and the bloody expedition against the Yomut tribe of the Turkmens which followed.3 On May 29, 1873, General von Kaufman, Governor of Turkestan and commander of the campaign against Khorezm, triumphantly entered Muhammad Rahim Khan's palace in Khiva. The conquest of Khiva, "Russia's most troublesome Central Asian neighbor," was the peak of the Russian advance into Central Asia at the time, following the subjugation of the other two khanates of the region, Bukhara and Qoqand. Approximately six weeks after Kaufman entered Khiva, he sent General Golovachev to annihilate the Turkmen tribe of the Yomuts in the most brutal expedition of the Khivan campaign. Here is a peek into Bayani's description of the massacre:

The mounted Cossacks dispersed to all sides and set fire to the Yomuts' crops, to their huts and tents. The flames reached the sky from every direction and the smoke could be seen everywhere so that the meaning of [the Qur'anic verse] "Wait for the day when the heavens bring forth visible smoke, enveloping mankind," [Qur'an, 44:10: a reference to the Sura of the Smoke, the Day of Judgment] became clear. The Cossacks fired at everyone they saw. They stabbed the old and the women and children with their sabers and impaled infants who were still suckling their mother's milk on their lances and tossed them into the burning fire. And they carried on plundering the Yomuts' possessions (Bayani, ff. 468a-469a).

As I was reading Bayani's account, I had the distinct feeling that I had read a similar description before, in a report in English on the Russian conquest of Khiva, written approximately 40 years before Bayani started his work. J. A. MacGahan, a correspondent for the American newspaper The New York Herald, was sent by his paper to cover the Russian advance into Central Asia (MacGahan 1970). MacGahan joined General Kaufman's column, attacking Khiva from the East, and later he got Kaufman's permission to accompany him on the operation against the Turkmens, riding alongside Prince Eugene, a commander of one of the Cossack divisions.

Reading both testimonies, it became clear that Bayani may have based parts of his narrative on MacGahan's account, using the same language as MacGahan's report, zooming in on similar scenes, and offering information that otherwise would not have been available to Bayani. My guess is that Bayani had access to MacGahan's account, not in its original English of course, but in a Russian translation of MacGahan's work completed in Moscow a year after the original publication (Mak-Gakhan 1875).

This is not to say that Bayani's description of the conquest isn't useful. On the contrary, his work provides insights into the Khivans' perception of the approaching Russians, into the organization of the Khivan administration and the movements of the Khivan troops, and into the relationship between Uzbeks and Turkmens in Khiva. (We should also bear in mind that the description of the Russian conquest is only a small part of the Shajara-ye khorezmshahi).

More significantly, if indeed Bayani consulted MacGahan's account, this may mark a turning point in historical production in Khiva. It means that the Khivans began to utilize external sources of information that had nothing to do with the organic body of materials that they would normally use to write down their history (such as older court chronicles, "classical" reference works from Central Asia and Iran, documents, stories, popular knowledge, and local eyewitnesses). Naturally, in order to accommodate a new body of materials to Khivan reality, Bayani needed to modify not only some of the contents, but also the style of presentation. Accordingly Bayani would occasionally quote from the Qur'an, provide a domestic perspective on people and locales, and give more credit to the Khivan military than they deserved. Nevertheless, the move to rely on more diverse sources of information in Central Asian historiography would have caused the Khivans to unknowingly rely on a New York journalist as the storyteller of their most depressing hour.

References

Banii, Muhammad Iusuf

1994 Shazharaii Khorazmshohii, Toshkent: Ghafur Ghulom.

Bayani, Muhammad Yusuf Bek

M.S. Shajara-i khorezmshahi, Tashkent, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Manuscript no. 9596.

Bregel, Yuri

1961 "Sochinenie Baiani 'Shadzhara-i khorezmshakhi' kak istochnik po istorii Turkmen [The work of Bayani "Shadzhara-i khorezmshakhi' as a source of Turkmen history]," Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta narodov Azii Akademii nauk SSSR, vol. XLIV, pp. 125-157. Moskva.

MacGahan, J. A.

1970 [1874] Campaigning on the Oxus, and the Fall of Khiva. New York: Arno Press.

Mak-Gakhan [J. A. MacGahan]

1875 Voennye deistviia na Oksuse i padenie Khivy [Military campaigns on the Oxus and the fall of Khiva]. Moskva.

Notes

[1] The following is a concise version of a paper read at the Third Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, October 17-20, 2002, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[2] See Bayani, Shajara-i khorezmshahi (M.S.). For an overview of the work and its history see Bregel (1961).

[3] Recently this part of Bayani's account was transcribed from the Arabic script into Cyrillic (see Banii 1994). The editor accommodated the text for her Uzbek readers by occasionally providing synonyms in modern Uzbek to the original Chaghatay words. The transcription is generally good although this is not a scholarly edition of the text (there is a short introduction but no commentary or analysis).

[Contents]

Typology of Traditional Culture of the Mongol-Speaking Peoples

Tatyana D. Skrynnikova, Chair of the Culture and Art Studies Department, Institute of Mongolian, Buryat, and Tibetan Studies, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, Russian Federation, tscrynnimbitsrv.bsc.buryatia.ru

The project "Traditional Buryat Culture" is being conducted by a group of researchers from two institutions: the Culture and Art Studies Department of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Ethnology and Folklore Department of the Eastern Siberian Academy of Culture and Art. Some of our findings have been published in a series titled "Siberia: ethnos and cultures," and in a monograph, "Rites in the Buryat traditional culture" (Skrynnikova 2002). The results presented in this report are preliminary findings drawn from one of the research stages that has not been published before. In this report I offer a new conceptual schema for understanding the typology of traditional culture.

This study is part of a larger project that extends until the year 2006, and is financed by an "Integration" grant, a program of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. The grant is financing our publication of monographs on the symbolic aspects of the Buryat traditional culture and the Mongol-speaking community. The goal of the research is to accumulate and generalize specific empirical material on Buryat rites; to reconstruct the traditional world view; to identify the leading cultural paradigms of today's traditional culture; and to identify maintenance mechanisms for the sustainable development of traditional society.

The project discussed here focuses on the study of the world view, pantheon and customs in the traditional culture of the Mongolian peoples, as well as the role and features of shamanism. The work has been conducted in the context of cultural anthropology that combines research on ethnocultural phenomena with semiotics, linguistics, sociology, history, ethnology, and archaeology. The data were collected during field trips to the Buryat Republic, the Ust-Orda National Region of Irkutsk Province, and the Aga National Region of Chita Province. As for the data on Mongolia, it was collected from the published materials of our Mongolian colleagues. We also relied on data collected by scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Mongols, Buryats and other Mongol-speaking ethnic groups recognize their unity and cohesion and scholars are aware of their common ethnogenetic identity. However, recent research provides more evidence for the differentiation of two different cultural types existing within the traditional culture of the Mongolian peoples. These differences developed and co-existed from the third century B.C.E. onward. I have identified the foundation of the differences and defined the two types as the East Asian, associated with the Mongoloids, and the South-West Asian type, associated with the Turkic- and Mongol-speaking Caucasoids.

The boundary between the two cultural types runs through Western Mongolia and was clear as early as the Bronze Age. We distinguish between the two types by examining archaeological artifacts: stones with depictions of deer, kereksur,1 and burial mounds are widely spread throughout South Siberia and Central Asia, while slab graves predominate in the east. The foundation for these differences in artifacts comes from the dissimilarity of the pantheon. In the west, the influence of Indo-European tradition meant that a sun god occupied the focal place and was accompanied by two divinities: left/right and good/evil. However, the heaven-earth duality maintained its existence in the east, with the Cult of Heaven emerging only at the turn of the third-second centuries B.C., and the Cult of Earth predominating for a longer period.

The most representative trait of the slab graves is their rectangular or square shape (Skrynnikova 2002: 120-124) symbolizing Earth. Their square or rectangular shape suggests that slab graves were left behind by the tribes that worshiped Earth, and not Heaven. In contrast, the structures identified by E. A. Novgorodova (1989) as sacrificial altars and kereksurs feature circles, which symbolize the sun. The circle can be an actual depiction of the sun, a Segner wheel,2 the motif of the Celestial Hunter who is accompanied by images of the sun in petroglyphs, and so on. These symbols are also related to socially important traditional solar rituals that involve men of the community, including the celebration of vernal and autumnal equinoxes and winter and summer solstices. Moreover, various terms describing the central attributes of the ritual are semantically uniform, e.g., kerek-sur, zagal-mai, khoshoo chuluu/kochai chalu (Skrynnikova 2002: 133-140). These terms also represent the receptacle for the sacred substance of the solar nature of an ancestor who is revived during the Axis Mundi ritual, through which the ritual participants communicate their wishes and accept gifts.

The difference between the western and eastern traditions on the territory of the Altaic linguistic family is found in the Turkic kaganates as well. In most of the ancient Turkic monuments in Mongolia (in the eastern part of the ancient Turkic world) Heaven and Earth-Water (Tengri and Yer-sub) are identified as a divine duality. Umai (the third component of the supreme pantheon) is common among Western Turks. In the early stages the theonym Umai indicated a female sun deity, which goes back to the South-West Asian (Indo-Iranian) tradition.

I argue that the meaning of Umai has been preserved in the Western Buryat tradition, and is reflected in wedding folklore, including ekhn altan umai (golden mother's womb), and esegn mungen serge (father's silver post), whose union leads to the emergence of the people. The color code clearly indicates celestial symbolism: golden = sun and silver = moon. The action code doubles this effect. Ekhn altan umai moves towards the sun, while esegn mungen serge moves in the opposite direction, towards the moon. We can also talk about the horns of the moon in folklore. The moon's horns are phallic symbols, which correlate with its name esegn mungen serge, where serge (tethering post) also represents the phallus. Finally, in the Buryat numeric code, even numbers signify female and odd numbers signify male. We conclude that in the early archetype the Buryats perceived the sun as female and the moon as male because they called them "eight-legged Mother-Sun, and nine-legged Father-Moon."3

Evidence for the two Mongolian cultural types can also be found within the personage code of the traditional culture. The divinities triad (center-right-left) in the western part of Southern Siberia and Central Asia coincides with the Indo-Iranian tradition and can be identified as South-West Asian. The dual (Heaven-Earth) organization of the pantheon in the east can be identified as an East Asian tradition, originating in China. The same principle is preserved in the social organization of the society: the dyad (leader-community members) in the east, the triad (leader-priest-community members) in the west. In the East Asian tradition rites are performed by a secular leader - the head of a tribe, kin, or elder, and in later times by a prince or emperor. This role was determined by his status as a son of Heaven and coincided with the Heaven-Earth duality. The Southwest Asian tradition is characterized by the division of ritual and administrative functions, and by the existence of a priest (white shaman). This is related to the division of the celestial divinities into right/good and left/evil, where the main central deity (Sun) is closer to the good.

The complexity of studying traditional culture, a subject to which modern anthropology devotes substantial resources, comes from the fact that the boundaries separating such terms as culture, traditional culture, and shamanism are not clearly delineated. I have identified these two different types of traditional culture among Mongol-speaking peoples by analyzing different "codes of culture," only some of which I have discussed here. In the personage code the focus is on the pantheon of divinities for whom the rituals are performed; in the agency code we observe those who perform the ritual; using the action code we analyze actions; through the locative code we can discern the direction or territory central to the ritual; in the subjective code we examine the subjects used in the ritual; and with the temporal code the focus is on the timing of the ritual (Vinogradova and Tolstaia 1995: 166-167). This system allows observation of the heterogeneity of culture even within the boundaries of the same ethnos.

The suggested typology is typical for the majority of peoples of Southern Siberia and Central Asia, and possibly, for Eurasia as a whole. The debatable character of the assumptions of the suggested hypothesis comes from the lack of detailed descriptive studies of traditional culture, so I hope my work will lead to further discussion.

References

Novgorodova, E. A.

1989 Drevniaia Mongoliia. Moskva: Vostochnaia literatura.

Skrynnikova, T. D., D. B. Batoeva, G. R. Galdanova, and D. A. Nikolaeva

2002 Obriady v traditsionnoi kul'ture Buryat. Moskva: Vostochnaia literatura.

Toporov, V. N.

1981 "Dve zametki ob iranskom vliianii v mifologii narodov Sibiri," Uchenye zapiski Tarturskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. 558. Iazyki i kultura narodov Vostoka i ikh retseptsiia v Estonii, pp. 36-65. Tartu: Izdatel'stvo Tarturskogo universiteta.

Vinogradova, L. N., and S. M. Tolstaia

1995 Ritual'nye priglasheniia mifologicheskikh personazhei na uzhin: formula i ritual. Malye formy folklora. Moskva: Vostochnaia literatura.

Notes

[1] Round-shaped stone relic of the Bronze Age interpreted by the majority of scholars as an altar used for annual sacrificial customs related to the Cult of the Sun.

[2] A symbol of the sun. An image in the shape of a cross with the ends folded to the right (sun-wise). In some cases the image of the Segner wheel has four horse (or griffon) heads attached to each rotating end.

[3] It is important to pay attention to the meaning of Sun in the Iranian languages: "...khotan-saks urmaysde...'sun'; possibly also vakhan (y)ir sun, as well as the dard yor 'sun'" (Toporov 1981, p. 45). Khotan-saks urmaysde might have influenced the theonym Umai, while the other Iranian name for Sun, yir/yor, could have influenced its meaning in Central Asia: Yar in the name of the Tibetan dynasty of Yarlung (the country of Sun), which is consistent with the Slavic Yar (yaryi, Yarila), or Yuur in Ekhe-Yuuren (Mother-Sun), the Goddess of the Western Buryat pantheon.

[Contents]

Reviews and Abstracts

Svat Soucek, A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiii+ 369 pp. ISBN: 0521651697 (hardback), $70.00; 0521657040 (paper), $26.00.

Reviewed by: Alex Marshall, CEP Visiting Faculty Fellow, Buryat State University, Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, Russian Federation, veniukovyahoo.co.uk, alex.marshall3btopenworld.com

For a variety of reasons Central Asia appears to be a region of increasing strategic importance in the world today. The rise and fall of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, the search by external powers for new energy markets in the region, and the growing Western fear of and fascination towards Islamic countries in general have all played a part in Central Asia's recent rise to international prominence. In this regard a sweeping historical guide to "Inner Asia," which Svat Soucek defines as "seven countries: the republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region...and the Republic of Mongolia" (p. x.) is obviously both scientifically relevant and a timely marketing exercise. Soucek takes the reader across a vast historical landscape, from the time of the Kk Trk dynasties of the 6th-8th centuries to the rise of the independent Central Asian republics after 1991. In doing so he covers in overview whole epochs to which individual scholars have, of course, devoted the work of their entire lifetimes. Therefore it goes almost without saying that the book is, at the very least, a masterpiece of concision. Soucek, in his knowledge of local languages and cultures, also displays an impressive level of erudition. From the sources used in this work it is evident that he is fluent in, at the very least, Uzbek, English, German, French and Russian. At times however the sheer depth of knowledge on display here becomes an obstacle to the pleasure of the general reading experience.

Soucek is a bibliographer, and therefore it is natural that the origins of terms and place names is for him a particular field of expertise. If you have ever wanted to know the meaning of yurt (p. 42), qaghan (p. 43), agyz or bir (p. 305) or a host of other Turkic words and expressions you will find the answers here. We are even given a superfluous explanation of the origins of the name Stalin, and a treatise on the spelling of the Soviet ruler's original Georgian name (p. 282). However, at times such attention to every linguistic detail hampers the narrative flow of the work. In addition the detailed and useful geographical overview of the region given by Soucek at the start of his work (pp. 1-45) is almost incomprehensible without access to an adequate map. The maps provided in the book are shoddy in this regard, and although Soucek to his credit points readers in the direction of better and more detailed maps elsewhere, they may be left feeling rather short-changed by a chapter that they cannot use effectively without access to external materials.

This book is a demanding read, and as of necessity the chapters are not always chronological, the narrative jumps are sometimes jarring. For example, having completed a chapter on Central Asia in the 1990s, the reader may be thrown by Soucek beginning his next chapter with a study of events in Xinjiang since 1758 (pp. 262-3). The book covers a great deal of cultural ground, again reflecting Soucek's literary background, and poets, scholars, and artists as diverse as Ibn Sina (or Avicenna, 980-1037), Mir Ali Shir (or Nava'i, 1441-1501) and Sadriddin Ayni (1878-1954) each receive a detailed biography that, again, interrupts the narrative flow. On the other hand the book is extremely weak as military and diplomatic history for while the conquests of the Arabs, Mongols, Timurids and Russians each receive fleeting attention, no coverage is given, for example, as to why nomadic military organization was for so many centuries superior to that of its sedentary counterparts. One is told what a succession of conquerors did but there is no impression given as to how or sometimes even why they acted as they did. This can leave the reader with a bland impression of a long succession of military dynasties, each almost indistinguishable from the next.

There is also a more serious underlying question as to the intended audience for this book. As it stands, I feel strongly that the book, despite many admirable qualities, falls between two camps and satisfies neither. As a general guide and introduction it is unlikely to attract the ordinary reader or tourist to the region, being both too dense and too scholarly for most tastes and lacking illustrations or photographs. Yet as a work of reference for the academic it is also flawed, mainly by the very small number of footnotes used and by the "select," i.e., criminally short, bibliography with which either Soucek or his publisher chose to end the work. In addition, the works cited in the footnotes cannot invariably be correlated to the bibliography, always a source of intense irritation to the academic reader. As a work of reference for the academic, the work comes across as rather disorganized - is this a genealogical history, a cultural history, or a lexicon of the Turkic languages? At times it comes across as a diluted blend of all three and more.

Soucek's judgment is also less certain with regard to contemporary events, and a Russophobic tone creeps into parts of the work. In treating the notoriously corrupt and egoistic President Niyazov of Turkmenistan, Soucek notes Niyazov's adulation of Kemal Ataturk and comments, without irony, that if he [Niyazov] "...sincerely emulate[s] his Turkish hero, he will secure himself an honourable position in Turkmen and world history" (p. 282). This is both to take Niyazov's own pretensions far too seriously and to assume that Kemal Ataturk himself was an admirable figure wholly worthy of emulation, something more than a few scholars and commentators would be willing to question. Economic corruption is also treated as a product of the Soviet Union rather than as perhaps an endemic part of Central Asia's hierarchical society, and Russian loan words are described as "tongue-twisting" for Central Asians (p. 233) compared to Turkic and Iranian ones, evidence again of a subdued Pan-Turkic tone in the work. Overall, however, it is the organizational flaws and the sense of a book being trapped between trying to capture two audiences that most detract from what one feels could otherwise have been a major landmark in the field, but which is, in its existing form, an intellectually dazzling but rather unfocused curate's egg.

[Contents]

Kemal H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Otto

CESR Central Eurasian Studies Review

Perspectives

Research Reports and Briefs

Reviews and Abstracts

Conferences and Lecture Series

Educational Resources and Developments

Editors - CESR Vol. 2 No. 2

Perspectives

Detours from Utopia on the Silk Road: Ethical Dilemmas of Neoliberal Triumphalism[1]

The Big Importance of the Small Scale

Innovative Responses on the Ground

Ethical Dilemmas

Critical Awareness of Neoliberalism

References

Notes

Research Reports and Briefs

Comparative Perceptions of Risk From Nuclear Testing in Kazakhstan: Preliminary Results and Proposed Research

Background

Preliminary findings in context

References

Interviewing NGO Leaders in Bishkek

Bayani's Shajara-ye khorezmshahi and the Russian Conquest of Khiva: An Essay on Historical Production1

References

Notes

Typology of Traditional Culture of the Mongol-Speaking Peoples

References

Notes

Reviews and Abstracts

CESR
Central Eurasian Studies Review

Bayani's Shajara-ye khorezmshahi and the Russian Conquest of Khiva: An Essay on Historical Production¹