Renegotiating Identities and Cultural Legacies Chapter Twelve Be(com)ing Uzbek

Part IV
Renegotiating Identities and Cultural Legacies
Chapter Twelve
Be(com)ing Uzbek
Patterns of Identification and Processes of Assimilation
Peter Finke
Ethnic and national identities, and the challenges they pose to successful state building in the contemporary world, have been the topic of a vast literature that emerged in the last decades. The newly independent republics in Central Asia are no exception, and social scientists have taken a particular interest in Uzbekistan for a number of reasons. One of these is that its titular group, the Uzbeks, occupy a specific position in the overall configuration of the region. They are not only the largest indigenous population, with some thirty million individuals, but they are also the most centrally located, geographically as well as culturally. In addition to the state bearing their name, Uzbeks also form sizable minorities and often local majorities in the surrounding states of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan.
This chapter examines how “Uzbekness” is conceptualized in this region, both within the state of Uzbekistan and among the diasporas who live beyond its boundaries. I argue that the very concept entails a flexibility and permeability that allows others to join without great obstacles if they see sufficient benefits to doing so. To be or become an Uzbek—in the contemporary meaning of a sedentary Turkic-speaker—has long been an attractive option due to their intermediate position between the Iranian oases dwellers and the pastoralists in the steppe belt. In some ways, it could be argued that the very existence of the Uzbeks in Central Asia is owed to the encounter between these two poles.¹ The chapter will show that, in some parts of the region, there are still benefits to becoming Uzbek, while in others it has lost its attractiveness.
The background to this story is the process of nation building that began with the establishment of the Soviet republics in Central Asia during the 1920s and 1930s but greatly intensified after these gained independence in the early 1990s. Beyond the immediate challenges of economic and political transformation, the new states and their respective elites faced the imminent task of defining a national image for its population that would significantly differentiate them from the others surrounding them. Different regimes followed different trajectories in this, which had impacts not only on the internal ethnic configuration but also for mutual relationships among the Central Asian states and beyond—including, for example, with Turkey, Iran, and China.
The academic literature is also fraught with disputes about “who are the Uzbeks?”² and the apparent mismatch between the historical meaning of the word and its contemporary applications—that is, between descendants of nomadic invaders from the Dasht-i Qipchaq and the heirs of an old sedentary civilization. This opposition became particularly visible when the government of Uzbekistan decided to rebrand the medieval warlord and emperor Timur as the national hero of the country, despite his clearly non-Uzbek self-understanding.³ Another frequent claim in the literature is that traditionally identities were vague and flexible in Central Asia, and it took the Soviet national delimitation process to create, more or less artificially, the ethnic units of today.⁴ Whatever the basis would be, any attempt to establish a unifying national idea would violate some historical facts and was therefore deemed to fail.
This chapter will not discuss this issue. Obviously, national histories and ideologies are always a stretching and distorting of historical trajectories. Uzbekistan is therefore nothing unusual in this regard. What I will try to show is the peculiar way that Uzbeks have conceptualized ethnicity in contrast to other schemes in the region. At the bottom of this is an understanding of localities that not only define closeness and distance with others, but also the way that identity and personhood is transmitted from one generation to another. I have called this a “territorial model” elsewhere.⁵ It rests on a cognitive scheme that gives preference to the becoming of a member of a specific entity by way of socialization and cultural similarity. This contrasts with a “genealogical model,” the predominant understanding among Kazakhs or Kyrgyz—and indeed most of the world—which is concerned more with the affiliation people have toward particular “others” by birth. Obviously, switching is an easier process in the former case.
There is more to it, however, than differences in cognition, which, although shared within culturally patterned groups or categories, are ultimately the property of individuals.⁶ Ethnic boundaries also form institutional frameworks within which people can make reasonable assumptions about each other’s norms and actions. That does not mean that interaction across boundaries is impossible, but it usually implies different rules of conduct, which may not be as familiar and reliable as those within. In other words, belonging to specific ethnic or otherwise defined groups provides public goods and lowers transaction costs.⁷ As a consequence, however, there is always temptation to change one’s affiliation because other groups may be superior in certain respects—for example, by representing a majority favored by state politics.
I begin with a brief historical overview of the development of Uzbekness before turning to its different manifestations in the contemporary state bearing its name. Part of this is based on my own research in four rural settings within Uzbekistan and the respective ways that ethnic identity and mutual relationships are configured. This section is largely a summary of my earlier work.⁸ Next, I look at the fate of the “diasporas” as they represent a challenge to the model and thus deserve special attention. This is all the more true since the respective states are also undergoing rapid transformation that includes their relationship with Uzbekistan. For this part, I rely mainly on an ongoing research project on the Uzbek minorities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. In the conclusion I will revisit some overarching issues and add more recent developments and challenges to this picture. Time does not stand still, and the mass out-migration of Uzbeks in recent years is about to profoundly change perceptions about locality and belonging.