THE BORDERS OF ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP?
The politics and pain of nationalism and identity along the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary, 1999-2000.
A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, September 2002.
In 1999 and 2000 the boundary between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan became a concrete and sometimes violent reality in the lives of those living in the border area, as Uzbekistan stepped up surveillance and control and began unilateral demarcation. 'The border' became a politically sensitive issue between these two states that had, in 1997, signed a 'treaty of eternal friendship.' This dissertation asks why this happened, and what the effects on populations in the Ferghana Valley were. It uses this case study to engage with a number of theoretical, methodological and empirical debates in the burgeoning literature on political change and nationality in these republics, and a number of theoretical and disciplinary debates within geography.
Although recongising their importance as a background, it considers those deterministic explanations of the boundary question that revolve around Soviet-era borders and nationalities policies, the needs or interests of states, ethnic animosity, or the logic of independent statehood, as insufficient. Rather, drawing on critical social theory in geography, it emphasises the importance of the interaction of domestic power struggles in both states. 'The border' acted as both a material and discursive site where elites struggled to gain or retain control of power and to imprint their own geopolitical visions of post-Soviet space on the Ferghana Valley.
This study of elite discourse is balanced by an ethnographic account of the traumatic effects of the unfolding crisis on borderland populations. It uses ethnography, interviews and focus groups to highlight the gulf between elite and popular conceptions of ethnicity and political geography. Against accounts that depend upon theoretically and empirically deficient notions of 'ethnic conflict', 'nationalism' or 'democratisation,' it suggests that this dynamic space is vital to the understanding of the politics of nationalism in post-socialist Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and may also be key to envisaging alternative future political formations.
Nick Megoran
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, September 2002.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Chapter 1 : Introduction- National Territorial States And International Boundaries In The Ferghana Valley
Chapter 2 : Discourses Of Danger At The Border: Political Identity And Nationalism In Uzbekistan.
Chapter 3 : Kyrgyzstan's Frontier- Enclosing the 'Common Home' or the Home of Manas?
Chapter 4 : Beyond Representation? Embodiment, Performativity, And An Ethnography Of The Border.
Chapter 5 : Ethnicity And Popular Geopolitical Visions Of The Borderlands
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Transliteration Tables and Terminology
Bibliography
OBTAINING A COPY OF THIS DISSERTATION
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CORRECTION! The pdf version of this dissertation has the Uzbek-English Kyrgyz-English transliteration tables incorrectly coded. These were printed on page 266 of the dissertation. Please download and print off this page, by clicking on the icon below. This can also be used as a stand alone transliteration table.
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