Rethinking Kazakh and Central Asian Nationhood: A Challenge to Prevailing Western Views [Anglais] [Broché]

"This work focuses upon one of the most vital issues that Kazakhstan is currently facing as a nation." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

After summarizing the five main views of nationhood, including the central debate between ´naturalists-perennialists´ and ´Western modernists´, a critique is offered of Western modernist writers treating the Kazakh and Central Asian nations. These writers insist on applying the cardinal Western doctrine of ´the separation of ethnicity and state´ in the Central Asian context in an effort to conform the post-Soviet Central Asian nations to Western norms of multiethnic ´democratic´ nationhood. To achieve this, they offer historiographical reinterpretations based in late 20th century Western modernist theories which themselves still echo Western eurocentric views of ´historyless, cultureless peoples´. They attribute the rise of modern ethnicity and statehood in Central Asia to Tsarist and/or Soviet policy. Modern Central Asian ethnic identities as well as the nation-states associated with them are, in their view, artificial (i.e. ´imagined´ or ´invented´) constructs, political fabrications "created" via Russian "ethno-engineering" and Russian-trained ´elite´ nationalists who inculcated in the masses an entirely ´new´ and ´modern´ idea of ethnonational identity having little or no roots in their own past. By taking this approach, they allegedly demonstrate that today´s nation-states in Central Asia have no true or historic relation to the ethnic nations whose names they bear and that those ethnic identities themselves in their current forms are ´inherently problematic´, inconsistent and highly unstable, largely divorced from their pre-colonial histories. The Central Asians are conveniently (for Western modernists) left with no rightful historical claim as ´ethnic nations´ to their own modern ´political nations´. These views continue to profoundly impact international and ethnonational human rights in the modern global age, including rights of national language, culture and history in Central Asia.

As a challenge to these prevailing Western views, the author offers a perspective on Central Asian ethnonational identity which affirms its ´complex unity´ and depth of historical rootedness, recognizing the long-standing intimate connection between the ethnosocial, ethnocultural, ethnolinguistic, ethnoreligious and ethnopolitical dimensions of nationhood in the Central Asian tradition. From this unique, non-Western historical and contextual base, a more indigenous, integral form of ´Central Asian democratic nationhood´ is sought which strives to achieve genuine justice and equality for all ethnonational peoples involved. The author´s experience and insight is founded upon eight years of living and working in Kazakhstan, including a Ph.D. in cultural theory and history from Kazakh National University working entirely in Kazakh under the direction of Kazakh scholars. He draws significantly upon this base of Kazakh scholarship as a central part of the ´challenge to prevailing Western views´ regarding Central Asian nationhood. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

R. Charles Weller (1963-) grew up in the northeastern part of the United States, in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He spent the mid-1980-90s in the greater Los Angeles area where he met and married Yumiko, a Japanese national. Since then they have lived predominantly in Japan and Kazakhstan, including eight years living and working in Almaty. He completed his Ph.D. in cultural theory and history at Kazakh National University, with all work done in the Kazakh language under the direction of Kazakh scholars. He is founder of Asia Research Associates (ARA) and Central Asian Historical-Cultural Research Center (CAHCRC). He has published various books and articles in Kazakh and English, including "The National Culture of the Kazakh People" (2003, Kazakh) and a Kazakh version of "Rethinking Kazakh and Central Asian Nationhood" (2005). His life´s aim in all things is to love God and his fellow human beings -- ethnic, religious, individual and otherwise -- in the international world community. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.