Identifying Local People: Colonial and Postcolonial Practices in Central Asia
Identifying Local People: Colonial and Postcolonial Practices in Central Asia

Author(s): Jan Kieniewicz
Subject(s): Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: identity; colonialism; Central Asia; Great Game; ethnicity; nation-building processes; postcolonial theory
Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the influence on Central Asian reality exerted by naming and the practice of identifying the peoples inhabiting this area by dominant Others. I note that the identification of those human communities was always an act of aggression that led to establishing a relation between rulers and those subordinate to them. I submit that what joins various epochs in the history of the human communities of Central Asia is not imperialism but rather colonialism, and propose describing those processes by means of a systemic concept of colonialism. Imperial practice in Central Asia was based on subordinating tribal communities and non-national states without deeper interference into their inner structures. Up until the 20th century the three great powers jockeyed above all to block one another. The change following the collapse of the USSR did not lead to the creation of regional independence. Rather, the national identities of the new states are a product of the modernization compelled by Soviet policies. This especially concerns small communities that, always valuing their autonomy, did not strike observers-explorers as material for nations. The preponderance of the external point of view along with the influence of images arisen in the dominant surrounding (including that of science) maintain these local communities in a state of backwardness. Identification and classification remain an effective tool for blocking their path toward establishing a new identity.

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