The main area of concern for research is a critical examination of this socio-political transformation in the case of Central Asia and Uzbekistan. A standard socio-political analysis on post-Soviet Central Asian republics would assume that the newly created nation-states, like Uzbekistan, would carry out the western model into the ex-communist political systems and establish modern forms of democracies and liberal economies. The shift from the Supra-Soviet identity (which is essentially based on territorialized ethnic identities) to new national identities (which are also based on the domination of one particularly fictive supra-ethnic identity) is an essential problem for modern nation-state building process, i.e. the national identity building, during the transition period. The main question is how to analyze this transition/change, its reasons, conditions and results: Is it legitimate to call this change as modernization that would lead to nation-state? If it is, is this modernization feasible under the Uzbek condition as to yield desirable results or not? Is it possible to conceptualize the telos of this change? If it is modernization, in which dimensions the process of modernization occurs, and how, especially considering the results of the process? What is the place of nation-building within this process of change? This paper aims to give a brief account of Uzbek modernization with a specific reference to the peculiarities of the case. Since our aim is to concentrate on socio-political structures in Uzbekistan other social fields like economic, technical or legal, will only be mentioned when necessary. Historically, and if theoretically applicable, the modernization analysis will include a comprehensively critical interpretation of change through the transition process; i.e. the dominating paradigms of the national identity-building processes in Central Asia. The ‘Uzbek’, ‘Kazakh’, and ‘Kyrgyz’ will then emerge as problematic cases, for in these societies the outcome is conflictual reaction to imposed identities. Indeed the past experiences of these societies clearly show that despite the harsh imposition of Soviet identities along territorial/ethnic lines, the pre-modern or pre-Soviet social forms were persistent and even successful in repelling the imposed forms The territorial homogeneity of the titular nations is problematic, since the construction of these identities is an artificial categorization of the peoples of Central Asia aiming at the manufacturing of hierarchically dominant and subordinate ethnic identities. The already existing groups are those which were created, named and constructed along territorial-regional lines, and even assimilated to the dominant titular groups by the official incorporation of the smaller groups with peculiar communal identities. Obviously, the history of Post-Soviet Central Asia represents conflict that would occur between the modern and the traditional. Central Asian modernization displays peculiar characteristics that are hard to compare/contrast with that of its Western counterpart. In that sense the perception of the specificities of its historical transformation is crucial for understanding what is going on in Central Asia. The research will be based on recent case-studies on Uzbekistan, its history and Soviet experience, and try to bring about a critical perspective for transition, nation-building studies on Central Asia.

bio:

My name is Aslan Yavuz ŞİR. I was born in 1982 in Istanbul-Turkey. I graduated from Bilkent University Department of Political Science in 2004, and same year I began my graduate study in Middle East Technical University, both in the department of Eurasian Studies (Ms.A.) and in European Studies (M.Sc). In fulfillment of my masters’ dissertation, I am writing a thesis on “Modernization, Social Change and Nation-State Building in Uzbekistan”. Also, in the department of European Studies, I am working on a project entitled “European Institutionalization and Its Identity Dimension”. Currently, I am affiliated with an Academic Think-Tank entitled “Global Strategy Institute” based in Ankara-TURKEY . The main area of research of the Institute is Middle East and Iraq, while working as an expert in the Central Asia and Caucasia Unit, I study Eurasian continent in relation to its regional and world-wide influences, and in terms of Turkish Foreign Policy. When I finish my graduate study in Ankara, I plan to conduct an academic research on Central Asia, which would be most helpful for my future study plans.