Books in the Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures series

This collection provides a broad analysis of social, political, economic, and security issues in contemporary Central Asia. In particular, the contributors highlight the differences and similarities among the region's states in how they have consolidated statehood since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This collective study of the "Nazarbayev Generation" examines the diversity of Kazakhstan's younger generations. The contributors analyze the transformations of social and cultural norms since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This book analyzes the anthropological concept of "culture" in the development sector of the Kyrgyz Republic. The author calls for a revitalization of the culture concept regarding diversity and social change in order to better inform broader debates about development and well-being.

This source reader discusses Central Asian history through the context of Russian colonialism and its aftermath. It examines the influence of ethnonationalism, religion, and cross-cultural contact in the nation-building process across Central Asia.

This monograph traces the history of Kazakh filmmaking from its conception as a Soviet cultural construction project to its peak as fully-fledged national cinema to its eventual re-imagining as an art-house phenomenon.

This collection provides a broad analysis of Afghanistan and its neighbors in recent decades and investigates the various historical and political contexts into which the region has been placed. It examines the legacy of Soviet intervention, patterns of cooperation and conflict among regional states, and recent US strategic initiatives.

This study examines informal institutions of reciprocity and their connections to state-building in Kazakhstan. The author analyzes both how these institutions changed over time and how they bridged the transition from the Soviet to post-Soviet periods.

This study examines regional and international security dynamics related to Afghanistan and focuses on the role of foreign troops and the potential effects of a final withdrawal.

This collective study of the "Nazarbayev Generation" examines the diversity of Kazakhstan's younger generations. The contributors analyze the transformations of social and cultural norms since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This collection provides a broad analysis of social, political, economic, and security issues in contemporary Central Asia. In particular, the contributors highlight the differences and similarities among the region's states in how they have consolidated statehood since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This collection provides a broad examination of contemporary Uzbekistan. The contributors analyze its geostrategic significance, its economic potential, and its demographic importance. This study also argues that the country's political, social, and cultural evolutions symbolize the transformations of the region as a whole.

This examination of the political, social, and cultural changes of Kyrgyzstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union offers tools to go beyond the country's simplistic dual status of being both an "island of democracy" and a "failing state" to a more nuanced understanding of its own position and its role in the region.

This collection is a multidisciplinary examination of modern-day Kazakhstan. It analyzes the country's fast-changing national identity, the current regime's ongoing quest for popular support, relations between the Kazakh majority and the Russian-speaking minorities, and various other issues.

This examination of the political, social, and cultural changes of Kyrgyzstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union offers tools to go beyond the country's simplistic dual status of being both an "island of democracy" and a "failing state" to a more nuanced understanding of its own position and its role in the region.

In May 1992 political and social tensions in the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan escalated to a devastating civil war, which killed approximately 40,000-100,000 people and displaced more than one million. The enormous challenge of the Soviet Union's disintegration compounded by inner-elite conflicts, ideological disputes and state failure triggered a downward spiral to one of the worst violent conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This book explains the causes of the Civil War in Tajikistan with a historical narrative recognizing long term structural causes of the conflict originating in the Soviet transformation of Central Asia since the 1920s as well as short-term causes triggered by Perestroika or Glasnost and the rapid dismantling of the Soviet Union. For the first time, a major publication on the Tajik Civil War addresses the many contested events, their sequences and how individuals and groups shaped the dynamics of events or responded to them. The book scrutinizes the role of regionalism, political Islam, masculinities and violent non-state actors in the momentous years between Perestroika and independence drawing on rich autobiographical accounts written by key actors of the unfolding conflict. Paired with complementary sources such as the media coverage and interviews, these autobiographies provide insights how Tajik politicians, field commanders and intellectuals perceived and rationalized the outbreak of the Civil War within the complex context of post-Soviet decolonization, Islamic revival and nationalist renaissance.

This collection provides a broad and multidisciplinary examination of contemporary Tajikistan. The contributors analyze the political regime-its stability, legitimacy mechanisms, and patterns of centralization-as well as various aspects of its social fabric.

This study examines the relationship between the Azerbaijani state and its society in the post-Soviet period. The author analyzes the growing cooperation between secular and religious sectors, the normalization of Islamic discourse, and elite attitudes toward Islam.

This study examines the role of the European Union in Central Asian affairs. The author analyzes the various ways the European Union exerts influence in a region where other global powers have dominant positions and emphasizes the Central Asian states themselves as subjects and actors.

This book argues that literacy functions as a means of tracking social change in modern Mongolia. Its leaders have used literacy to promote new ways of living and socialist identities. In post-socialist Mongolia, literacy expresses the anxieties that Mongolians feel as they navigate globalism and express conflicting identities.

This collection examines the social, economic, and political evolution of the South Caucasian states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the creation of new national identities and value systems, institution-building, and the influence of regional and international actors.

This study examines regional and international security dynamics related to Afghanistan and focuses on the role of foreign troops and the potential effects of a final withdrawal.

This collection provides a broad analysis of Afghanistan and its neighbors in recent decades and investigates the various historical and political contexts into which the region has been placed. It examines the legacy of Soviet intervention, patterns of cooperation and conflict among regional states, and recent US strategic initiatives.

This collection features articles, short studies, and interviews by Alexandros Petersen (1984-2014) and constitutes a broad and prescient examination of Eurasian geopolitics. The author analyzes Western relations with the Caucasus and Central Asia, the expansion of Chinese influence, and Russia strategic interests.

*Shortlisted for the 2018 Book Award in Social Sciences of the Central Eurasian Studies Society*Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature is a book about cultural transformations and trajectories of national imagination in modern Kazakhstan. The book is a much-needed critical introduction and a comprehensive survey of the Kazakh literary production and cultural discourses on the nation in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. In the absence of viable and open forums for discussion and in the turbulent moments of postcolonial and cultural transformation under the Soviets, the Kazakh writers and intellectuals widely engaged with the national identity, heritage and genealogy construction in literature. This active process of national canon construction and its constant re-writing throughout the twentieth century will inform the readers of the complex processes of cultural transformations in forms, genres and texts as well as demonstrating the genealogical development of the national narrative. The main focus of this book is on the cultural production of the nation. The focus is on the narratives of historical continuities produced in the literature and cultural discontinuities and inter-elite competition which inform such production. The development of Kazakh literary production is an extremely interesting yet underrepresented field of study. Since the late nineteenth century it saw a rapid transformation from the traditional oral to print literature. This brought an unprecedented shift in genres and texts production as well as a rapid growth of the ';writing' class urban colonial and first generations of Soviet intelligentsia. Kazakh literary production became the flagman of republic's rapid cultural modernization and prior to the World War II local publishing industry produced up to 6 million print copies a year. By the 1960s and 1970s the golden era of Kazakh literature, the most read literary journal Juldyz sold 50,000 copies all over the country. Literature became the mass provider of knowledge about the past, the present and of the future of the country. Because ';Kazakh readers were hungry to find out about their pre-Soviet past and its national glory' national writers competed in genres, styles and ways to write out the nation in prose, poems, essays and historical novels.

The South Caucasus has established itself as a corridor for transporting energy from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Turkey, and on to Europe, symbolized by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. This new infrastructure has created an east-west ';Eurasian bridge' in which transnational extra-regional actors, especially the European Union and international financial institutions, have played a critical role. This book offers an original exploration of integration in the energy and transport sectors amongst Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, and the capacity of this to fundamentally change relations between these countries. In the period studied, from the mid-1990s to 2008, integration in energy and transport did not result in broader political, security, and sociocultural integration in any significant way. The author sets his analysis in a theoretical framework, drawing on theories of integration, but also grounds it in the detailed, empirical knowledge that is the measure of true expertise.