Thammasat University students interested in history, political science, Central Asia, and related subjects may find a new book useful.

Memory and Commemoration across Central Asia: Texts, Traditions and Practices, 10th-21st Centuries is an Open Access book available for free download at this link:

https://brill.com/display/title/32715?rskey=pO2yQ7&result=1

It is edited by Assistant Professor Elena Paskaleva who teaches the Critical Heritage Studies of Asia and Europe at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Dr. Gabrielle van den Berg, who teaches the cultural history of Central Asia and Iran, also at Leiden University.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Central Asia.

Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, These countries all have names ending with the Persian suffix “-stan”, meaning land of.

Central Asia (2019) has a population of about 72 million people, in five countries: Kazakhstan (pop. 19 million), Kyrgyzstan (7 million), Tajikistan (10 million), Turkmenistan (6 million), and Uzbekistan (35 million).

Among nations trying to influence Central Asia are Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, Pakistan, India and the United States of America.

Russia continues to dominate political decision-making, maintaining military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The United States, with its military involvement in the region and oil diplomacy, is also significantly involved in the region’s politics. The United States and other NATO members are the main contributors to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and also exert considerable influence in other Central Asian nations.

China has security ties with Central Asian states through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and conducts energy trade bilaterally.

India has geographic proximity to the Central Asian region and, in addition, enjoys considerable influence on Afghanistan. India maintains a military base in Tajikistan, and also has extensive military relations with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Turkey also exerts considerable influence in the region on account of its ethnic and linguistic ties with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and its involvement in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Iran has historical and cultural links to the region and is planning to construct an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Pakistan has a history of political relations with neighboring Afghanistan and is termed capable of exercising influence.

Japan has an important and growing influence in Central Asia, with the master plan of the capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. The Central Asia plus Japan initiative was designed to strengthen ties and promote development and stability of the region.

An introduction to the book notes:

The most unexpected innovations and fusions of the world’s religions and material cultures have taken place along the trade and communication networks of Central Asia. The artistic vibrancy of the empires that stretched from China to Iran was reflected in their literary and cultural production. Their artistic excellence combined with an exquisite decorum was the product of continuous exchanges, mixing and melding of traditions. The problematic definition of this multi-lingual and multi-religious region, tucked away between the Ural and the Hindu Kush and torn by the entrenched legacies of great empires, from the Ghaznavids to the Shibanids, and later on between Tsarist Russia and the USSR, has not been fully explored. Central Asia is defined in this volume both in historical and contemporary terms. On the one hand, the territory of Central Asia encompasses the realms of powerful empires that ruled across huge swaths of land and ancient cities in historical provinces such as Khwarazm, Mawarannahr (Transoxiana), Turkestan, and Khorasan. On the other hand, Central Asia evokes the intricate processes of identity formation that followed the creation and collapse of the modern nation states defined currently as the five post-Soviet Stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), plus Afghanistan, Mongolia and Xinjiang in China. Given the geographical, linguistic and social complexity of the region, the study of old and new commemorative practices is essential for grasping recent socio-political trends and narratives across Central Asia.

To regard the cultures and borders of Central Asia as a consistent reality would be an anachronism. Nothing is solid in Central Asia as it is an evolving multifaceted cultural ecumene. Its cultures have been produced in the midst of shifting alliances and clashes across the Turkic and the Persianate worlds. The dynamic and symbolic bond between the Turkic nomadic and the Iranian sedentary lifestyles, severed during the modern period, has resulted in denoting this frontier region as “barbaric” and “uncultured.” Unfortunately, this approach has been effectively used to colonize Central Asia and has totally disrupted and suppressed its spatial and cultural relationships.

The national delimitations of the 1920s and 1930s, imposed by the Soviet regime, cut across the ethnic, language and religious diversity of the peoples who inhabited this area. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not result in any unity across Central Asia; since then, ethnic and religious tensions have only intensified. Subsequently, the post-Soviet governments have tried to legitimize the idea of a harmonious present, in which all ethnic and religious minorities share a common purpose of free cohabitation. This ideological attempt to subdue and simplify the diversity of Central Asia, and to transform it into a cultural diachronic unity, has resulted in the creation of a repository of state-defined cultural memory and religious practices. Currently, cultural memory is skillfully used as an ethno-nationalism tool for evoking feelings of pride and belonging. […]

Originally a concept coined by the nation-state, heritage in Central Asia has now become the object of intellectual reclamation by academics and activists. Institutional and non-institutional social actors are increasingly involved in debating the legitimacy as well as the need to “safeguard” different expressions of heritage. Since each ethnic group has its own distinct self-consciousness and self-identification, patriotic heroic tropes and in particular the glorification of the past have gained considerable public attention. […]

One of the purposes of the present collection of studies is to raise more awareness of Central Asia as a vibrant and still widely unknown region among the wider academic and non-academic audiences. The contributions address many of the key issues related to memory and commemoration practices. The interpretations offered by the authors are based on their long-term fieldwork, archival studies and personal experiences. However, many more questions remain open. What will be the impact of recent state policies and governmental intrusions on the diverse cultural production of the region? How will the various legitimization projects in the Central Asian nation states resonate with the insecure political and economic situation in the post-Soviet realm? Will the promised prosperity and revival of the complex cultural exchanges vowed by the fabled Silk Road result in any democratic changes? How will group identities evolve in Afghanistan in relation to religious and commemorative practices, especially in the current circumstances? For now, with this volume, the editors and contributors hope to have shed new light on some of the social, political and cultural intricacies of Central Asia in relation to the theme of memory and commemoration. We hope that the contributions may lead to a better understanding of the complexity and diversity of this colorful and fascinating region that has been regarded as a periphery for far too long.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)