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

Conclusion
The strong focus on local proximity and joint cultural patterns as the basis for identification and mutual classifications may be of different strengths in the four settings within Uzbekistan, but at the same time they form an overarching theme. It is not only that regional differences are an admitted fact. They are also constitutional for the very idea of what an Uzbek is. This, by extension, is also true for the diaspora settings. People of different provenance are expected to vary in their attitudes and behavior because they have been socialized accordingly. Consequently, Uzbekness is not a unifying theme but rather the sum of a number of different local practices and ideas. This is what I have labelled a “territorial concept of identity.”³⁸
But this stress on locality not only implies difference. It also recognizes the possibility of change and a certain permeability of boundaries. After all, a person is thus the result of their upbringing in a specific place, which at times may overshadow genealogies. When in the course of a lifetime the relevant others and points of reference change, this will also affect an individual’s own behavior and alliances. This has allowed the Uzbeks, or their prototypes of different names, to attract and easily incorporate members of other ethnic and social groups over the course of history.³⁹
It is impossible to determine how such decisions have come about in the past. But judging from contemporary data and an analysis of the benefits that be(com)ing Uzbek has provided over time, it is not too far of a stretch to presume a certain rationality behind that. It was, and in some settings still is, advantageous to be an Uzbek because it enlarges the number of potential partners for economic and social interaction. Uzbeks, or sedentary Turkic speakers, were linguistically and culturally in-between the local Iranian population and the pastoralists in the steppe region.⁴⁰ Within contemporary Uzbekistan, the incentive to switch identities is correspondingly highest in those places where there is still a sizable number of Tajiks.
At the core of such changes is language use. The Bukhara setting shows persuasively that the temptation to switch to Uzbek is a constant feature, and once begun quickly changes the character of the respective village.⁴¹ The ethnographic material also clearly highlights the very conscious and strategic attitude people have in preparing their children for the future by, for example, not sending them to Tajik schools. Among the diasporas the same may happen in the opposite direction, but the overall trend seems less pronounced, with the possible exception of Tajikistan. By contrast, marriage choices are guided by very different preferences, namely geographical proximity and pre-existing kin relations, and language distinctions or career calculations play less a role in that. Depending on the respective constellation, however, mixed marriages can quickly lead to the adoption of an Uzbek way of life among minorities.⁴² As with the language, the situation in the diaspora settings seems to be more stable in this regard.
Ethnic boundaries are thus not as clearly demarcated, or differently defined, as one might expect. For each setting closeness across linguistic borders may be stronger than with people of the same tongue and ethnonym somewhere else. In line with this, ideas about the transmission of identity and individual personality are equally localized and contrast with the primordial patterns we know from other settings within Central Asia and beyond. It is thus a question of becoming Uzbek throughout a person’s life, with a strong emphasis on early socialization patterns, rather than ancestry. Consequently, a gradual shift of language and cultural attitudes allows an individual to become an Uzbek also later, a process hardly thinkable in societies based on ideologies of genealogy and (patrilineal) descent, such as Kazakhs or Kyrgyz.⁴³
The state takes a decisive role in this—and has always done so. Assimilation processes in the past have been no less political than they are today. It is not necessarily that earlier Turkic statehoods, such as the Uzbek khanates, wanted their subjects to change language and identity. But they set the costs and benefits connected with different forms of social being. This is very much what the states of Uzbekistan as well as its neighbors do today. By defining the language of higher education and the preferred ethnicity of people in power, the incentives for people have changed and accelerated an assimilation process that has been going on for roughly one and a half millennia. It may, in the course of time, lead to a further marginalization of the Tajik language, at least outside the republic bearing its name.⁴⁴
All this has been shaken in recent years due to tremendous changes in the economic and social situation of people in Central Asia. Confronted with constantly decreasing living standards and widespread impoverishment caused by a highly exploitative production system that has replaced the Soviet-style command economy with a neofeudal one in Uzbekistan, people have started to leave the country in the millions. Similar numbers of out-migrants are reported for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with many of them being Uzbeks as well. Most of them went to Russia where a booming economy based on oil and gas extraction attracted cheap labor in the construction sector, in petty trade, and many other activities. Smaller numbers migrated to Kazakhstan or Turkey. As in neighboring Tajikistan, this was primarily a male phenomenon, which left hundreds of thousands of families without their main breadwinner at home.⁴⁵
The main destinations were the larger cities of Russia, such as Moscow or Novosibirsk. But migrants from Uzbekistan can be found from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. They usually follow the path of kin or fellow villagers when deciding their destination. While some have established their own businesses, most work for low wages and often in precarious conditions. Thus, for example, migrants from Central Asia built most of the facilities for the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. Reports have it that many of them were never adequately paid and had to work under slavelike conditions. In addition to the poor economic situation the migrants also suffer from the threat of right-wing attacks, which have caused numerous casualties in recent years. In a climate of xenophobia and white supremacy the illegal or semi-legal migrants from Central Asia are easy prey to neofascist attacks, which are hardly ever prosecuted by state authorities.
But what this also meant is that millions of Uzbeks from all over Central Asia left their place of birth and thus their source of prime belonging. It would be premature to tell what this will do with the territorial model of identity described here. After all, most prefer to settle together with other members of their home community and often build new extended households in Russia. Still, this does imply a fundamental change of spatial orientation and attachment that contrasts with the patterns at home. It also contrasts with the reported unwillingness of Uzbeks to leave their villages for better-paid jobs during Soviet times. It ultimately leads to new configurations and alliances with people from different regions and backgrounds at their new places of residence.
While the term may be inaccurate to describe the phenomenon, the new migrants are sometimes also referred to as diasporas. This does certainly reflect a longing for home among many of them, although the situation can hardly be described as forced resettlement. But it does create a huge proportion of the population—estimates go as high as 20 percent for Uzbekistan and similar numbers for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan—to live temporarily beyond the boundaries of their respective native state. In this they are exposed to new influences and ideas from a broad range of sources. As most of them come from a rural background, life in contemporary urban Russia is distinctively different, which is part of the attraction for many of them. Although Central Asia is obviously also part of a globalizing world, this is felt much more strongly on the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. Another influence that is felt strongly is the growing importance of Islam among the younger generations of males in particular. This may partly be a response to the exclusion experienced by the “host” society and a strengthening of distinctions that link people to their homes.
At the same time, the influences the migrants are exposed to in Russia are also transported back home. People invest the money they earn into social capital at the place they come from. One aspect of this is, as in many comparable cases worldwide, the building or renovating of representative dwellings. When travelling though Central Asia these days, one sees new and often unfinished houses, many of them two-storied, scattered all over the place. The idea is to use those when one comes back after years of work abroad and thus also to claim one’s place in the local society. Another expenditure is the lavish life-cycle ceremonies that dominate Uzbek society and have become ever more exuberant in recent years. As the migrants play a key role in these and also contribute significantly to the expenses, the seasonal cycle has been adapted to the times of the year when many of them come back from Russia for holiday.⁴⁶
The absence of a major part of the male population has also set in motion important changes in social relations and gender roles. It has also influenced the self-understanding of those who stayed. While maybe less than that of the migrants, the identity of Uzbeks has been influenced by a steady flow of people back and forth as well as the intrusion of a new type of market and trade economy. While within Central Asia itself the local community and regional identity is still of utmost importance, the temporary absence of males and the new global influences they bring home do begin to make a difference.
Notes
1. Peter Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity: Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas, and Political Constraints in Identification Processes (New York: Berghahn, 2014).
2. James Critchlow, Nationalism in Uzbekistan: A Soviet Republic’s Road to Sovereignty (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991).
3. Peter Finke, “Competing Ideologies of Statehood and Governance in Central Asia: Turkic Dynasties in Transoxania and Their Legacy in Contemporary Politics,” in States of Mind: Power, Place and the Subject in Inner Asia, ed. David Sneath (Bellingham: Western Washington University Press, 2006), 109–28.
4. Ingeborg Baldauf, “Some Thoughts on the Making of the Uzbek Nation,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 32, no. 1 (1991): 79–96.
5. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
6. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn, A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Maurice Bloch, How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Rogers Brubaker, Mara Loveman, and Peter Stamatov, “Ethnicity as Cognition,” Theory and Society 33, no. 1 (2004): 31–64.
7. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
8. Ibid.
9. Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987).
10. Beatrice. F. Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
11. Seymour Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
12. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
13. Gerhard Dörfer, “Ein Modell zur Klassifikation der Türksprachen,” Materialia Turica 11 (1987).
14. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
15. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
16. Yuriy Bromley, Etnos and etnografiya (Moscow: Nauka, 1973).
17. Richard Foltz, “The Tajiks of Uzbekistan,” Central Asian Survey 15, no. 2 (1996): 213–16.
18. Edward Allworth, The Modern Uzbeks: From the 14th Century to the Present: A Cultural History (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990); Baldauf, “Some Thoughts on the Making of the Uzbek Nation.”
19. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
20. Ibid.
21. Peter Finke and Meltem Sancak, “To Be an Uzbek or Not to Be a Tajik: Ethnicity and Locality in the Bukhara Oasis,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 13, no. 1 (2012): 47–70.
22. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
23. Ibid.
24. S. Gubayeva, Naselenie Ferganskoy doliny v kontse XIX—nachale XX v. (etnokul’turnye protsessy) (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo FAN Uzbekskoy SSR, 1991).
25. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. C. E. Bosworth, “Kish” in The Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition, vol. V (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 181–82; V. Barthold, “Kash,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition, vol. IV (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 694.
29. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
30. Research for this project is taking place within a joint project of the University of Zurich, the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Funding is provided by the Swiss National Science Funds (SNSF) and the German Research Council (DFG). Research within the project is conducted by Khadija Abbasi, Indira Alibayeva, Wolfgang Holzwarth, and Baktygul Karimova. I owe the included insights to them while taking responsibility for all the interpretations offered here.
31. Peter Finke, “Historical Homelands and Transnational Ties: The Case of the Kazak Oralman,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 138, no. 2 (2013): 175–94.
32. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
33. Stephane Dudoignon, Communal Solidarity and Social Conflicts in Late 20th Century Central Asia: The Case of the Tadjik Civil War (Tokyo: Islamic Area Studies Project, 1998).
34. Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
35. Conrad Schetter, Ethnizität und ethnische Konflikte in Afghanistan (Berlin: Reimer, 2003).
36. Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek, “Ethnic Identity versus Nationalism: The Uzbeks of North-Eastern Afghanistan and the Afghan State,” in Post-Soviet Central Asia, eds. Touraj Atabaki and John O’Kane (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1998), 204–30.
37. Schetter, Ethnizität und ethnische Konflikte in Afghanistan.
38. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
39. Ibid.
40. Also see B. Fragner, “Tadjik: Historical Developments of the Term from Timurid Times Onwards,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition, vol. X (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 63–64.
41. Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Foltz, “The Tajiks of Uzbekistan”; Finke, Variations on Uzbek Identity.
45. Madeleine Reeves, “Black Work,” 108–34.
46. Eliza Isabaeva, “Leaving to Enable Others to Remain: Remittances and New Moral Economies of Migration in Southern Kyrgyzstan,” Central Asian Survey 30, no. 3/4 (2011): 541–54.
Chapter Thirteen
The Nation Narrated