Perspectives on Central Asia No 5 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Perspectives on Central Asia, Issue 7
Perspectives on Central Asia, 2015
- "There's simply no excuse for the EU's deafening silence on the tenth anniversary of Andijan", interview with Steve Swerdlow - "Offshore Central Asia: Switzerland as a Site for Political Struggles between Kazakh Elites" by Edward Lemon and Damian Rosset - "The status of the Caspian Sea and its legal implications: a basic understanding" by Stylianos A. Sotiriou - "Seven Secrets of Istaravshon" by Edward Schipke - " 'Uncertain Light', A Novel that Explores the 'Floating World' of Development Workers", interview with Marion Molteno
The Middle Ground Journal, 2022
The range and high quality of English-language scholarship on the history of Central Asia which we enjoy today would have been difficult to imagine twenty years ago when the subject was still a largely empty space on the margins of Russian, Chinese, South Asian, and Middle Eastern historiographies. Despite the flood of monographs and journal articles we have enjoyed since then, the great desideratum has remained a high-quality but accessible teaching textbook to provide an introduction to the region's history for undergraduates. For years the only real candidate has been Svat Soucek's A History of Inner Asia, which had an excellent bibliography of primary and secondary sources but a plodding, outdated, and often inaccurate text. 1 German-speakers could use Jürgen Paul's brilliant Zentralasien in the Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte series, but this has never been translated into English. 2 Scott Levi and Ron Sela have produced a sourcebook for Islamic Central Asia which is a powerful tool in the hands of university teachers, but the closest thing to an accompanying textbook is the second volume of the Cambridge History of Inner Asia on the "Chinggisid Age," whose essays are excellent but which does not give the narrative overview that students typically need, while neither volume covers the period after the Russian and Chinese conquests of Central Asia or its bewildering transformation under Communist rule in the twentieth century. 3 Most recently we now have the second volume of David Christian's general history of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia-but, while it has many merits, it remains largely focused on Russia, and is not entirely reliable on the history of Islamic Central Asia. 4 Well, those of us who teach Central Asian history can now rejoice-not one, but two accessible and well-written narrative histories of Central Asia in the modern age have been published within a year of each other, accompanied by a sourcebook about the same period. Adeeb Khalid's elegant narrative history is set to become the standard account of Central Asia over the last three centuries for many years to come, but I think that specifically for teaching purposes Shoshana Keller's brilliantly compact and readable volume just has the edge.
Perspectives on Central Asia, Issue 6
Perspectives on Central Asia, 2014
- "The OSCE Academy is here to work for the region", interview with Pal Dunay, Director of the OSCE Academy, Bishkek - "Engaging Remote Mountain Communities with Knowledge, Information and Technology in Kyrgyzstan" by Aline Rosset and Jangyl Ismailova - "A snapshot of a year and a half spent in a Tajik village: Pinion, a rural idyll" by Christine Oriol
Contemporary art in Central Asia
Contemporary art in Central Asia in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia, ed. by Rico Isaacs, Erica Marat, 2021
Post-socialist Central Asia, a diverse region of different cultures with a shared Soviet past, diverse post-Soviet trajectories, has a small in scale, but vibrant contemporary art scene. The art scenes for each Republic is dispersed rather than united, but they share common discursive narratives and structural problems. Such problems include a lack of institutional development and support, a low quality of art education, government restrictions on media, religion and public expression and a limited of the traditional public sphere (Laruelle 2019: 3). In this context where there is a shrinking ‘traditional’ public sphere and limited space for public debates, contemporary art constitutes an arena for an alternative public sphere, producing new narratives and discussions, symbols and meanings and provoking debates on online platforms and social networks (Tsay 2019: 269). This chapter introduces the reader to contemporary art and art practices in the postsocialist Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It also examines the role art and artists play in the formation of an alternative public sphere which produces narratives and meanings, reflects on social and cultural transformations, raises critical issues and generates public debate and discussion. The focus of the chapter is on the agency of independent artists in which artists establish a public space for free creative expressions, cultural protests and social critique. This chapter focuses on art and artists who create counter-narratives and new discourses in the closed societies of Central Asia, where with limited freedom of expression artists can still form an alternative artistic model of the public sphere.
Post-Soviet Art and Culture in Central Asia
The political consequences of the breakup of the Soviet Union have been subject of interest and scrutiny by the outside world since it happened in 1991. A very important area that was deeply affected by the collapse of the communist regime -and yet has not received much attention -is artistic and cultural activities.