This project is part of the New Geographies, New Pedagogies project at the Institute of International Studies; UC Berkeley. Funded by the Ford Foundation.

Interdisciplinary Workshop

Central Asia Palimpsest

Reemerging Identities and New Global Imprints

Introduction

In both public imagination and Western academic focus, Central Asia has long been marginalized as a vaugely defined region traversed by ancient Graeco-Roman, Near Eastern, Chinese, and Indian civilizations, and buffeted by the modern powers ofthe Soviet Union, China, Pakistan and India, and Iran. THis conceptual marginalization is largely the result of the long night of Cold War politics which severely hindered Western research in and about Central Asia, which in turn discouraged succeeding generations of scholars from focus on the region.

Moreover, since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the maturation of Central Asia studies in the Western academy has been hindered by what might be referred to as the "great civilizations" pantheon (a corollary of the "Old Geographies"), a reigning paradigm delineating those ancient and modern "areas" by which academic focus is to be defined. In this regard, it might be noted that at Berkeley there are academic units for every region contiguous to Central Asia [Department of Near Eastern Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for South Asia Studies, South/South East Asian Studies Department, Center for Slavic and East European Studies), but Centeral Asia is not central to the self-definition of any existing unit.¹

The end of Soviet hegemony in the region has led to the emergence of new Central Asia nation-states which had their formal beginnings as artificial polities created under Stalin's policy of "national Delimitation": Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Along with neighboring Afghanistan, these fledgling states are struggling with the conundrums of national identiy amidst competing local and transnational ethnic and religious affiliations.

But more, various globalizing forces are bringing great pressures to bear on the region's constituent parts, vying among them for cultural affiliations, strategic zones of interest, and economic introgression: its propinquity with Russia's and China's Muslim populations, and with Iran and Pakistan, heightens the region's political significance; and as a vat of natural resources, including gas, oil and gold, it has attracted intense interest from multinational capital. Even some of the region's vast depopulated surfaces are of great moment: Russia's missile program and nuclear industry both are deeply if now contingently engaged in Kazakhstan.

This post-Soviet transitional stage in Central Asia presents a number of tensions for the region, and for scholars of both modern and ancient Central Asia, among which are: What governmental forms will succeed local and transnational Soviet structures? What roles will Islam(s) and ethnicity play in new social and cultural constructions? What impact will the transformation of Soviet control to new structures of power have on the economies, infrastructure, and environments of the new republics? What role will global capital play in the formation and entrenchment of these new structures? What effect will emerging ideologies have on the uses of the region's history, and of the direction of scholarship in, and about, Central Asia?

The Proposal: New Geographies and Pedagogies of Central Asia

As the Soviet layer is stripped piecemeal from the geography of Central Asia, the above questions might be viewed through the lens of a single dynamic: How will the new Central Asia reflect long-submerged local identities, and how will these identities be revisioned by transnational and globalizing pressures? Under this rubric, the present proposal seeks to explore the development of Central Asia area studies. In particular, the proposed activities would address the following:

The Middle East and Central Asia

Deep and continuous connections between the two regions are recorded as early as the Achaemenid period (6th-4th BCE), when a large portion of Central Asia was incorporated into the Persian Empire. The reconnection of the two regions after the Soviet annexation has so much early momentum that one scholar (David Menashri) has already posed the question regarding Central Asia "Is there a new Middle East?" Closer examination of this momentum, however, might focus on several related questions:

• Which connections are based on ethnic affinities, which on religious solidarity, and which on influx of oil-based capital?
• As to each of these elements, what are the competing Middle East and Central Asia subsets, including non-state putative "nations"?
• To the extent Pan-Turkism connects parts of Central Asia to a part of the Middle East, doesn't it simultaneously draw them east to China?
• To the extent that states of the Middle East act as surrogates for multinational capital, to what degree are these interests camouflaged by ideologies of convenience?
• Does it continue to make pedagogic sense to study the various connections under a notional "Middle East"?

Russia and Central Asia

Russian interest in and concerns about Central Asia remain exceedingly strong. Obversely, Central Asian dependence on Russian trade and technological support, and on local ethnic Russian populations, may be even more critical.

• How do the independent republics "de-Russify" their administrative and technocratic classes without crippling state capacities or alienating their ethnic Russian populations?
• What are the tensions between Russian regional economic interests and pan-Slavic concerns for ethnic Russian populations?
• Where do the new republics locate their ethnic Russian populations in notions of statehood and national identity?
• How does Russia maintain influence through local ethnic Russian apparatchik classes without supporting a sense of Diaspora it cannot afford?
• How does Russia avoid the cross-border spill of ethnic conflict and Islam-grounded political aspirations?
• To what extent is "Post-Soviet Studies" a more useful pedagogic approach to these questions than one of area studies?

China and Central Asia

Populations in Western China have both ethnic (various Turkic groups) and religious connections to Central Asia. To the extent these connections are heightened, in what ways does that create a more "Asian" identity for some Central Asia republics? Are the republics looking to Muslim China as a huge regional market for trade and cultural exchange? Do these developments suggest an area of study which might be defined as "Sino-Central Asian"?

South Asia and Central Asia

Pakistan is deeply engaged with several Central Asia states, both through contiguous, related populations and through various Diaspora communities of Central Asians in Pakistan. Afghanistan has historical roots in both Central and South Asia, and is currently may be the most direct link for Pakistan's wider involvement in the region. India maintained strong ties with Central Asia through the Soviet period and, in a mix of politico-strategic concerns and commercial interests, continues to do so. Pakistan presents strong ethnic and religious affiliation, while India offers capital investment, access to globalizing forces of media and markets and a Westernized culture that enjoyed high prestige in the Soviet years. These relations may be studied from a South Asian perspective as regional concerns, but that may not sufficiently encompass the breadth of Central Asian interests.

Summary of Program Concerns

Through attention to each of these area-based loci of issues, the proposed program looks to assess whether the array of area studies generally found in the Western academy sufficiently attends to the particularity of the new Central Asia. And using Central Asia as a model, the program would hope to consider ways in which area studies pedagogy can adapt to the supersession of regional considerations by transnational and globalizing forces.

Proposed Activities for a Two-Semester Program

Funding is sought to support a number of activities over two semesters, as follows:

January - May, 2000

1. A doctoral seminar "Rethinking Central Asia." The seminar would seek to draw graduate students from various disciplines whose work bears on Central Asia and would focus their attention on ways in which the current constitution of area studies might be reconsidered for purposes of scholarship about newly perrneable Central Asia and the trans-regional and globalizing forces working upon it.
2. A workshop among the various Berkeley area studies centers and departments, to explore those programs that currently engage in scholarship pertaining to Central Asia and those that might bring a new trans-regional perspective to Central Asia pedagogy. In particular, the workshop would seek ways in which various area studies programs might collaborate in the development of such new pedagogic perspectives, both for research and for the development of curriculum.
3. Visiting scholars (3-4) would be invited for brief residences for more intensive exchanges with Berkeley scholars and students in the doctoral seminar.

August-December, 2000

An international symposium (provisionally) titled "GLOBAL REPOSITIONING: Central Asian 'Nations' Transgressing Regional Boundaries." Scholars from Central Asia, and from U.S. and international area studies programs whose work bears directly on Central Asia would be invited to join scholars who work in relatively recently developed modes (e.g. post-Soviet studies, diasporic identities, media and globalization). The symposium would seek to explore ways in which various dialectics might be established among these scholars to produce new approaches to research on and pedagogy about Central Asia, and by extension about other academically constituted "areas."

Core Faculty and Sponsors²

Sanjyot Mehendale, Near Eastern Studies Department
Lewis Lancaster, Department of East Asian Languages
Center for Slavic and East European Studies: Barbara Voytek (Executive Director)
Center for Middle Eastern Studies: Nezar AlSayyad (Chair)

1. Programs touching upon Central Asia, however, have emanated from existing area studies units, such as the Berkeley Program for Soviet and post-Soviet Studies and the Slavic and East European Center's "Graduate Training and Research Program on the Caucasus and Caspian Littoral." This was initiated by a Ford Foundation grant in 1993, and continues with funding from NSEP. While the Caucasus is the program's main focus, it also encompasses Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
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2. The following academic units have also been invited to participate in the program: Center for South Asia Studies; Department of South/South East Asian Studies; Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies; Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and the Institute of East Asian Studies (some of which have already indicated their interest in participating in the program to a greater or lesser degree).
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