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Papers by John Schoeberlein

For three weeks in June, 2011, Columbia University hosted "America Engages Eurasia: Studies,... more For three weeks in June, 2011, Columbia University hosted "America Engages Eurasia: Studies, Teaching, and Resources," a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. This Institute examined the evolution of "academic" engagement with Eurasia: the historic personalities, institutions, organizations, and research resources that collectively constituted the foundation of Eurasian studies in America. These components were considered within the broad framework of the geopolitical relations of America and Eurasia over more than 150 years, with the goal of establishing a more broadly applicable paradigm of area studies development in the United States (for Middle Eastern, East Asian, African, Latin American studies, etc.), suggesting avenues of comparative research. This presentation was delivered on June 24, 2011, by John Schoeberlein, Director of the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus, Davis Center, Harvard.

Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022

... In his own variation on the Soviet Era interventions into the sphere of the family, Niyazov d... more ... In his own variation on the Soviet Era interventions into the sphere of the family, Niyazov declared that for-eigners seeking to marry a Turkmen woman would have to pay the state $50000 in kalim, or bride wealth In his own version of calendrical reform reminiscent of moves ...

The Journal of Asian Studies, 1995

Introduction - Islam under Communism - The Politics of Transition: The Gorbachev Era - Islam and ... more Introduction - Islam under Communism - The Politics of Transition: The Gorbachev Era - Islam and the Post-Communist Central Asia - Democratic Opposition - The Central Asian States and the Politics of Islamic Revival - Islam and Ethnic Relations - The Middle Eastern Connection - Conclusion

Harvard international review, 2000

Abstract: Sometime between August and December of 1991, the Second World vanished. Global society... more Abstract: Sometime between August and December of 1991, the Second World vanished. Global society has been divided into the First or Industrialized World, the Third or developing World, and this effervescent Second World that was identified with the communist model of development. When the Cold War officially ended and the Second World vanished, many in the West supposed that any new state freed of the yoke of Soviet domination would enthusiastically embrace the free-market economy. However, Central Asian attitudes toward both political and economic reforms did not conform to Western expectations. Even after 8 years of independence, and more than a decade after the reforms of perestroika, the Central Asian leaders still favor levels of state intervention in the economy and state provision of economic services more reminiscent of the Soviet era than of a Western market economy. Text: Obstacles to Development and Prosperity Sometime between August and December of 1991, the "Secon...

Harvard International Review, Mar 22, 2000

Anthropology of East Europe Review, Dec 17, 2014

Until the end of the 1980s, the vision of the now for the Kyrgyz pastoralists was elaborated in t... more Until the end of the 1980s, the vision of the now for the Kyrgyz pastoralists was elaborated in the framework of an omnipresent state. The running of herds over mountain pastures was organized by state entities (kolkhozes and sovkhozes) and the great majority of animals were effectively state-owned. The state system maintained roads and vehicles for livestock transport, the provision of veterinary services, and the marketing of wool and meat, as well as the provision for the other needs of Kyrgyz pastoralists' livelihoods. Today, the pastoral landscape is scattered with the ruins of large livestock shelters, the doors and roofs of which have been pilfered for the needs of a much more small-scale, privately organized economy. As ownership of livestock and machinery passed to private hands in the mid-1990s, there was initially a catastrophic collapse of livestock herding as a basis of livelihood for most herders. As communities sought to reconstruct their future in the absence of the reliable state, their sense of belonging shifted from state entities to traditional concepts of relatedness remembered from their primordial past. Yet while the initial privatization was organized on the premise that collectivities based on extended kinship would replace the state organization, this proved unworkable in many ways. Such collectivities then fragmented and livelihoods became organized around families in the narrower sense. Thus, in a twenty year period, Kyrgyz herders have shifted from relying on the state organization of their lives, to an unstable primordial kinship, and now to a new set of orienting principles which hinge on complex assessments of what can assure the future. In this paper, based on fieldwork in Narïn Province, we will examine how these transformations have taken place in pastoral livelihoods, as well as the challenges that have emerged in this environment of rapidly changing belonging in relation to livelihoods, kinship and the state.

Europe-Asia Studies, 2009

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Central Asiatic Journal, 1957

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Death of the father: an anthropology of the end …, 2004

Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, Jan 1, 1994

Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022

The Journal of Asian Studies, 1995

Harvard international review, 2000

Harvard International Review, Mar 22, 2000

Anthropology of East Europe Review, Dec 17, 2014

Europe-Asia Studies, 2009

Поиск в библиотеке, Расширенный поиск. ...

Central Asiatic Journal, 1957

RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...

Death of the father: an anthropology of the end …, 2004

Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, Jan 1, 1994

This talk will examine the ways that Islam has come into interaction with modernity. It will take... more This talk will examine the ways that Islam has come into interaction with modernity. It will take the long view, with some attention to the tsarist and early Soviet periods, but most attention to the late Soviet period and the time since independence. It will look at the ideas and social processes that affect change in Islam which emanate from discourses within Islam, from the changing social environment, and from the Soviet and post-Soviet states with their political agendas regarding Islam.

What is the impact of the contradictory policies on the way that Muslims in Central Asia conceptu... more What is the impact of the contradictory policies on the way that Muslims in Central Asia conceptualize and practice Islam, in particular, Sufism? How do Muslims seek out a space for pious practice which negotiates a path around the treacherous terrain of the state politicization of religion? This lecture will examine the ways that people both adopt and circumvent the version of Sufism put forward by the state.

In both scholarly and political discourses about Central Asia since Soviet rule, the claim is oft... more In both scholarly and political discourses about Central Asia since Soviet rule, the claim is often made that, due to a combination of Central Asia's marginal position in the Islamic World and the impact of Soviet anti-religious policies, Islam for Central Asians has really ceased to function properly as a religion and instead serves mainly as a basis for a secularized national identity. This talk will examine the concepts of Islamic religion, secularism and national vs. religious identity upon which these claims rest, and consider whether such concepts help us to understand empirical observations in Central Asia.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing discourse of the risk of conflict posed by new eng... more Over the past decade, there has been a growing discourse of the risk of conflict posed by new engagements with Islam among the population of southern Kyrgyzstan. Before June 2010, in many circles there was much more concern about the problem of “radicalization” and the north-south divide in Kyrgyzstan which was conceptualized as difference in orientations toward Islam versus modern, European culture. When the conflict broke out in June, the inevitable question was: was it connected with Islamic radicalization? This paper will examine the “real” and “imagined” roles that social and political processes related to “Islamization” have played in the discourse behind and surrounding the conflict. This will include the discourses of those who inhabit the spaces where the conflict occurred, those in the wider society, and those who create analyses in various spheres, including in state policy discourse, in public media discussions, and in local and international scholarship on the conflict. The discourses are diverse, ranging from claims that international Islamist terrorists or local mosques started the conflict to perceptions that it was a loss or perversion of Islamic values that caused the conflict or that Islam actually helped to mitigate it. The paper will consider the Islam enters into social and political explanatory narratives and what this reveals or obscures about the issues emerging in relation to new orientations toward Islam in Kyrgyzstan.

On the face of it, the notion of re-Islamization of Central Asia is absurd. Central Asians did no... more On the face of it, the notion of re-Islamization of Central Asia is absurd. Central Asians did not renounce or forget about Islam under Soviet anti-religious policies. Yet the notion of re-Islamization is used by both participants and observers of the processes to which this term is applied. For some it is yielding salvation while for others it promises radicalism, destabilization, and a return to mediaeval social norms. This talk will explore what this kind of conceptualization of social process surrounding Islam reveals about how participants and observers of the "re-Islamization" think about Islam, religion more broadly, and their relation to social life in post-Soviet Central Asia.

According to many observers of Central Asia, and especially according to the rhetoric of Central ... more According to many observers of Central Asia, and especially according to the rhetoric of Central Asian governments, all that is dangerous and destabilizing about post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia is attributable to the negative impact of foreign influences. Various foreign actors -- most notably Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but also others such as Turkey and Iran -- are seen as fostering radicalism by promoting foreign models of Islam, which may be seen as inherently radical (e.g., Wahhabism) or disruptive of the good balance between local traditional Islam and the secularism inherited from the Soviet Union. This runs counter to other discourses that endorse good ties with other Muslim countries and emphasize that Central Asian Islamic traditions are part and parcel of an integrated Islamic world. This paper will explore the question of whether foreign Muslim states are actually having the foreign policy effects that are attributed to them, whether it be to be to foment radicalism or promote salutary integration with the wider Muslim world.

Advocates of the "right Islam" present strident views, which are strongly dismissive of the "wron... more Advocates of the "right Islam" present strident views, which are strongly dismissive of the "wrong" Islam. Advocates of purity claim that others have deviated from the true path and may be considered no longer really Muslim. Those who emphasize tradition claim that others would like to impose foreign and dangerously radical models and lack respect and understanding for the local tradition. The proponents of modernizing Islam argue that un-modernized Islam will drag Muslim societies backwards, preventing them from attaining the benefits that a Western model can offer. But most people who are deciding between the stark options that are put to them do not adopt an ideal model, but develop a complex set of orientations that represent a combination of the "ideal" orientations. This talk will look at the ways that the practices of post-Soviet Islam which constitute a reaction to these contradictory ideal models, but most often simply incorporate contradictions. The resulting picture is much more interesting and much less coherent than the ideal models.

A "re-Islamization" is unfolding in Central Asia. Though Central Asia never stopped being Muslim,... more A "re-Islamization" is unfolding in Central Asia. Though Central Asia never stopped being Muslim, all across the region today people are looking at Islam in new ways and many are thinking that they should try to be more Muslim than in the recent past. As Western observers and secular local political and intellectual elites watch this unfold, they are often preoccupied with the question of how Muslim the region will become -- often worried that it is becoming too oriented toward Islam. The worry is either that people will have the wrong Islamic orientation or that any increase in popular orientation toward Islam will be a hindrance to needed modernization. So we have diverse observers trying to figure out "how Muslim is Central Asia becoming?" The tools that are used to ask and answer this question, however, are problematic. Any move toward Islam is often assumed to be a move towards potential radicalism -- piety, as sign of a political threat. This talk will explore these worries, the assumptions that underlie them, and the issues that they reveal concerning the ways that non-Muslims think about the meaning of what Muslims do.

How do individuals and societies benefit from an education that does not focus particularly on th... more How do individuals and societies benefit from an education that does not focus particularly on the practical skills that one will need in one's professional career? Why is it useful to have our young people confront the big ideas and the diversity of cultural practices and beliefs that have preoccupied humankind in our more glorious and tortured moments throughout history and across the world? This lecture will explore the ways that both individuals and societies can -- through liberal education -- become better able to address the real problems they confront. The lecture will focus in particular on anthropological conceptual tools and problems of religion in their broader social context.

The turn back towards Islam in Central Asia following the collapse of the Soviet Union has taken ... more The turn back towards Islam in Central Asia following the collapse of the Soviet Union has taken different forms in the different former republics and at different moments in the two decades since independence. In fact, the Soviet system in Central Asia was not so thoroughly anti-Islamic as it has often been imagined, and the post-Soviet regimes and societies have not abandoned the secularist vision and suspicions of religion which they inherited from the Soviet system. In this talk, I will explore the ways that religion is being reimagined as a tool for making a good society, while it is also imagined as a potentially destabilizing threat. It is a relatively straightforward matter to analyze the ways that Central Asian states have sought to gain control of Islam as a means of gaining regime legitimacy and limiting unwanted trends in popular Islamic orientation. It is more of a challenge to explore the ambivalence that is felt by those among the population who were formerly being pushed toward militant atheism and who are now being pushed toward "moderate", "local", pro-regime Islam. In this talk I will explore the ambivalences which emerge both on the level of the state, and amongst those whose religious orientation is viewed as potentially dangerous.

For those who were sure two decades ago that the Soviet Union had to go, it seemed obvious that C... more For those who were sure two decades ago that the Soviet Union had to go, it seemed obvious that Central Asian culture would have to be remade. Central Asians would need to recover what was lost due to Soviet repressions, and to clear away the negative and contrived legacy of ideologically motivated cultural projects that had no other purpose than to bolster the defunct Soviet regime. But those with such certainty were mainly not in Central Asia, while Central Asians were often quite ambivalent about the non-Soviet culture which was meant to be "recovered", as it often seemed to them quaint, contrived, and anti-modern, and they felt much more affinity to precisely the familiar Soviet culture, with its Russian and modernist attributes, in which they had been nurtured. In this talk, I will explore the challenges which Central Asians have faced as they have sought to work out what culture is right for them following the demise of the processes which produced Soviet culture. In facing these challenges, Central Asian have had to position themselves in relation to the process of decolonization -- de-Russification, de-Sovietization, re-nationalization, re-Islamization -- and have often responded by affirming that they were never colonized. While states' and elites' struggles to gain some post-Soviet legitimacy have helped foster some real enthusiasm for various decolonization projects, even the approaches to cultural cleansing and recovery carry a strong imprint of Soviet sensibilities. Even Islam, for example, is being revived in its Soviet forms, among others.

Seventy years of Soviet rule in Central Asia had put the region on the track toward state structu... more Seventy years of Soviet rule in Central Asia had put the region on the track toward state structures defined in terms of nations. Not only had there not previously been an Uzbekistan or a Tajikistan, but there had not even been an Uzbek or a Tajik nation in the sense in which they are now understood. Yet now such concepts and institutions have become unquestioned features of the political landscape. Soviet atheism also established a firm legacy of strictly state-enforced secularism. While post-Soviet states have been keen to bolster their legitimacy by claiming the nationalist cause and subsuming within that a notion of Islam as part of national heritage, it has not been so easy to nationalize Islam as it had been to nationalize the state. Today, a wide array of notions of new roles for Islam are in contention in Central Asian societies, often at odds with the secular vision of society held by most elites, who view Islam as a potentially dangerous and retrograde social force. Meanwhile, Central Asian states have made some attempts to harness the legitimizing potential of Islam, claiming a symbolic association with it in ways that increasingly go beyond the limited vision of Islam as national heritage, while at the same time introducing steadily more restrictive laws on religion and other measures to rein it in. The result is a political arena fraught with tensions -- both between state and society and even between the secular and the Islamizing impulses of states.

The keynote will be held in: University of Amsterdam Roeterstraat 11, Building E Room E.015 ... more The keynote will be held in:
University of Amsterdam
Roeterstraat 11, Building E
Room E.015

The earlier conference sessions will be held in Room E.010