Part 1. Introduction (lectures) 1. What is Central Asia? 2. Colonization, Post-colonialism and Decolonization 3. Socialism and Post-socialism in Central Asia Part 2. Institutional changes and everyday economic life in Central Asia (seminars) 4. Cross-border trade, informal economy and bazaars 5. Corruption and bureaucracy: discourses and practices 6. Rural-urban migration and informal renting 7. Informal mining practices and the development projects 8. Post-Soviet agrarian changes 9. Socialist ecological crises and their aftermath Part 4. Students' presentations & debate (students' contributions) 10. Presentations and debate (economic and social changes in urban contexts) 11. Presentations and debate (economic and social transformations in rural settings) 12. Film discussion Week 4. Karrar, H. H. (2019). Between border and bazaar: Central Asia's informal economy. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 49(2), 272-293. Week 5. Steenberg, R. (2021). Legitimate corruption: Ethics of bureaucracy and kinship in Central Asia. Studies of Transition States and Societies, 13(1), 3-20. Week 6. Kishimjan Osmonova (2016) Experiencing liminality: housing, renting and informal tenants in Astana, Central Asian Survey, 35:2, 237-256 Week 7. Munkherdene, G., & Sneath, D. (2018). Enclosing the gold-mining commons of Mongolia: the vanishing ninja and the development project as resource. Current Anthropology, 59(6), 814-838. Week 8. Hofman, I., & Visser, O. (2021). Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan's trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change. Land Use Policy, 111, 105-461 Week 9. Alexander, C. (2020). A Chronotope of Expansion: Resisting Spatio-temporal Limits in a Kazakh Nuclear Town. Ethnos, 88(3), 467-490. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2020.1796735 Recommended readings (lecturers supplements) Alima Bissenova (2023) Decolonizing 'the field' in the anthropology of Central Asia. 'Being there' and 'being here,' in The Central Asian World ed. By Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Madeleine Reeves. p.82-95. Russell Zanca (2021) Writing about peoples: an American's reflections on 30 years of Central Asian studies, Central Asian Survey, 40:4, 523-538, Sergey Abashin (2023) Ethnogenesis through the lens of Soviet ethnography: academic research in the service of nation-building and socialist modernity, in The Central Asian World ed. By Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Madeleine Reeves. p.21-38. Fatland, Erika. Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. 1st ed. Pegasus Books, 2020. Adeeb Khalid (2016). "National Consolidation as Soviet Work: The Origins of Uzbekistan" Ab Imperio, 4, pp. 185-194 (article) Etkind, Alexandr (2011). Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience. Cambridge Khalid, Adeeb (2015). Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Cornell University Press. Kivelson and Suny (2017) Russia's Empires. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Mark R. Beissinger. (2005) Rethinking Empire in the Wake of Soviet Collapse, in Zoltan Barany and Robert G. Moser, Eds. (2005) Ethnic Politics and Post-Communism: Theories and Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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This course explores economies and societies in contemporary Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). We will start with a critical discussion of what "Central Asia" as a region is, where it "starts" and "ends", taking a brief look at its political, economic and religious history. We will pay particular attention to changes experienced by the people during colonization by the Russian Empire and the Qing Empire in the XIX century; industrialization, sedentarisation and collectivization on the Soviet side in the early and on the Chinese side in the middle of XX century; marketization and privatization as part of the Chinese (Deng Xiaoping) reforms and Soviet (Gorbachev) ones, culminating in the implementation of IMF "shock therapy". These sessions will take the form of lectures and students will be advised on relevant readings. Then we will change the form of work and conduct 6 sessions in the form of seminars. This means that students will read at home and discuss in detail in class 6 papers about everyday economic life in a Tajik village, use of nature in Mongolia, bazaars in Kyrgyzstan, informal renting in Kazakhstan, etc. These 6 papers will be compulsory readings, in contrast to the recommended papers of the first three sessions. The last 3 sessions will be devoted to student presentations and discussions on the current situation in the region. When selecting topics for presentations, students are encouraged to consider the topics discussed in the seminar. The instructor will suggest reading material.
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