Central Asia Program

Accounts of national renewal in the republics of the former Soviet Union tend to present these regions as awakening from a long slumber of cultural repression. In this paper I argue against this notion, examining the ways that Soviet cultural institutions developed some aspects of national culture in Uzbekistan while suppressing others. The effects of Soviet institutions and ways of thinking about culture are examined in the context of contemporary cultural production in Uzbekistan, specifically the production of national holiday spectacles. Based on observation of these events and on interviews with cultural elites, I outline Soviet schemas of culture and trace the effects of these schemas on the elite's conception and presentation of Uzbekistan's national culture today.

When we think of the globalization of culture, we tend to think of the consumption of cultural goods produced in the West and the effects of these goods on the values and practices of non-Western consumers. The literature on the globalization of culture also tends to focus on how Western markets for non-Western cultural goods affect patterns of cultural production in the non-Western world.1 Naturally, this focus on markets tends to draw our theoretical interest toward questions of capitalism. However, when we look at societies without a history of capitalism, new questions come to light. That men wear Western-style suits in both Uzbekistan and Italy, that orchestras use polyphony in both Kazakhstan and Austria, and that King Lear is popular in both Turkmenistan and England cannot be explained by the dynamics of capitalism.

This dissertation is about Uzbek national culture during the Soviet period through the mid-1990s. Based on 12 months of fieldwork, I conclude that Soviet understandings of culture remain hegemonic among Tashkent’s cultural elites. This conclusion is puzzling, given that many Uzbek and Western observers charge the Soviet system with cultural imperialism and the repression of traditional culture. Why haven’t Uzbekistan’s cultural elites adopted radically different ways of thinking about and producing culture since independence? Why has there been so little reaction against Soviet discourses about Uzbek national culture?

In order to answer these questions, I look at two aspects of cultural production in Uzbekistan: institutions and schemas. In order to understand the way institutional factors affect cultural change, I examine ways the work of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and various artistic organizations has changed since the 1980s. I also describe a “Soviet schema of culture,” which allowed Uzbek elites to reject Soviet power without rejecting the Soviet institutional logic of culture. The way my informants talk about culture (what it is used for, how it should be produced) points to an enduring Soviet schema that makes alternative ways of producing culture difficult for elites to conceive at this point in time.

I also analyze the form and content of cultural objects produced by these elites, in particular the theatrical spectacles performed on Uzbekistan's major national holidays, Navröz and Independence Day. While socialist content has nearly disappeared since independence, culture producers have retained Soviet forms as the means through which they express Uzbek cultural content. Forms introduced by the Soviets, such as mass theatrical spectacles and women’s dance ensembles, are seen by elites as neutral vehicles through which true national culture can now be expressed. I argue that the use of modern, Western cultural forms for the expression of nationalist sentiments is a part of the post-colonial transformation of nations such as Uzbekistan that want to project an identity embodying aspects of both tradition and modernity.

In this article, the author examines issues of power and situated knowledge in fieldwork by reflecting on her own research experience in Uzbekistan. She argues that playing the mascot researcher role can cause field-workers to feel they have lost control over their identities and the direction of their work. On the other hand, mascots are given special attention and access because of their gender, race, nationality, or guest status. In addition to analyzing the dynamics of the mascot researcher role, she specifies the effects that this role had on her access to information as well as on the conclusions she drew about Uzbek national culture. She concludes that field-workers need to explicitly analyze their knowledge about their research topics in terms of their relationships with informants.

In this essay I argue that it is useful to think about Central Eurasia through the lens of postcolonial theory, but that we must proceed with caution. I view postcolonialism as a contextually situated discourse generated by the responses (both resistant and collaborative) of formerly colonized peoples to the institutional legacies of and ongoing relationship with the colonizer. The Soviet Union was like an empire in that it crafted political domination over a geographically diverse territory as well as imposing a hierarchical culture (with Moscow at its center) over its ethnically diverse citizens. But the Soviet Union was unlike other European empires in a number of ways, the most significant of which was its emphasis on the modernization and political mobilization of the periphery. Whether or not one wants to label the Soviet Union a colonial empire, I argue that this label is irrelevant for the usefulness of the postcolonial theoretical lens to interpret certain aspects of Central Eurasian societies today. Specifically, it helps us understand postcoloniality in Central Eurasia as marked by critiques of Russian cultural domination that largely reproduce Soviet hierarchies of knowledge and values. It is not the only approach, but it is one that should be in our analytical toolboxes so that we can engage in a broader world of scholarship. Furthermore, study of the societies of Central Eurasia can help to refine postcolonial theory by exposing it to a broader range of imperial projects, especially those that are not based on capitalism as a historical mode of domination.

Issues of funding and infrastructure dominate the needs of area studies in 2014.  Respondents are gravely concerned about the stability of external funding to support foreign language teaching and area studies research centers. The question of external funding is inextricable from a more general picture of the state of area studies because respondents say that external funding is essential to sustain a) the teaching of less-commonly taught languages and advanced levels of other languages, b) outreach to the community, and c) library resources in foreign languages. Our data also show the ways that federal funding has numerous multiplier effects in terms of the scholarly impact and public benefit of training foreign language and area studies specialists.  Higher education institutions need to create stable, multi-disciplinary programs to provide students with in-depth knowledge about critical world regions, especially the Muslim world and sub-Saharan Africa. Student interest in the Muslim world is growing but the numbers of students who want advanced training in Arabic, Turkic and Persian languages will always be small enough that universities will not be inclined to devote substantial resources to the departments that cover these languages. However, a select number of universities should be encouraged to specialize in these regions to ensure predictable training in these languages and societies.  Area studies is facing a problem with de-professionalization in foreign language teaching and library sciences. When these specialists retire, they are often replaced by native speakers or graduate students who don't have professional qualifications and are offered low-paid, parttime positions. This de-professionalization detracts from both language education and language-specific research, but it also may deter prospective students from going into these disciplines. Our data indicate that there may not be enough students currently training as area studies librarians to replace the current large cohort of retiring librarians with advanced foreign language skills.  East Asian studies has a large cohort retiring between 2014 and 2025, so universities need to prepare in order to sustain the existing infrastructure by retaining attractive tenure-track positions and support staff positions in order to recruit the current cohort of Ph.D. students who are interested in working in higher education. NCASA Survey Report