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

The Oasis of Khorezm
At the very western end of Uzbekistan is the province of Khorezm. Historically, this name applied to a much larger region, parts of which are now attached to the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakistan, where indeed the research for this case study was conducted, and to neighboring Turkmenistan. Similar to Bukhara, Khorezm was long a major player in Central Asia and has only recently been reduced to a political backwater. Even more isolated and distanced from other permanently inhabited places, Khorezm suffered particularly in recent years because of the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea, on which the oasis borders.
In ethnic terms Khorezm is unique in Central Asia, as the process of Turkification was completed here several centuries ago. Today, there are no Tajiks left, and the region is populated by several Turkic-speaking groups. The situation is complicated, however, because the local Uzbeks divide into two distinct categories, one speaking an Oghuz dialect, the other a Qipchaq one. In Khojeyli, where I conducted research, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Karakalpaks, lived in more or less equal portions, complemented by a smaller number of Turkmens. This distinction is, however, not merely linguistic but also includes cultural and social markers. As descendants of the Shaybanid invasion, the Qipchaqs, according to the local narrative, have traditionally been seminomadic and show remnants of a clan system, which is unknown to the Oghuz Uzbeks. The importance of livestock rearing is indeed to some degree visible in local settlement structures, which resemble scattered homesteads separated by pastoral land, rather than compact villages as in Bukhara or the Fergana Valley.²⁷
While Turkification is completed, it did not lead to the overall dominance of Uzbek. In fact, it seems that speakers of the four official languages hold each other at length and have settled into a kind of equilibrium where little assimilation occurs. This may indeed be a consequence of the absence of Tajiks who, in other settings, would be the decisive factor in strengthening the importance of Uzbek. Here, everyone speaks in his or her own language, which—with the exception of Turkmen—is fairly easily understandable to one another. This is helped by the fact that in Khojeyli the dominant local Uzbek dialect is the Qipchaq variant, akin to Kazakh and Karakalpak. Many people also master one of the other languages but seldom have the need to use them in everyday life. Also in public, each is recognized as an official idiom and, for example, announcements from the administration may also be written in Karakalpak, the official language in the province, or Kazakh, depending on the local configuration.
Intermarriages are equally rare, although not uncommon or frowned upon. The most frequent pairings were between Kazakhs and Karakalpaks, which are also the two groups most closely related culturally and linguistically. But as the settlements are separated by ethnie, smaller ones often defined by clan or lineage, interaction is less intensive than in other parts of Uzbekistan. As a consequence, families tend to be monoethnic or monolinguistic. Children of mixed unions would then become hybrids or in-betweens, without this having much of a negative connotation.
As in the other sites, there exists a strong sense of a common regional identity, which may at times include neighboring Khorezm province as well. Partly, this is based on a felt distance from and neglect by the central government, which seems to have abandoned the region in its ecological and economic misery. When it comes to internal distinctions, genealogies play a much greater role here, and the local conceptualization of ethnicity in Khojeyli is certainly the most primordial of the four settings. Boundaries are rather clear-cut, although not impassable, and there is very little assimilation going on in any direction.