Nationalism and State-Building in Central Asia: What Happens When You Make New International Boundaries Where None Existed Before?

Cambridge Central Asia Forum in collaboration with the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge cordially invites you to a talk by

Dr. Nick Megoran, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University

On
Nationalism and State-Building in Central Asia: What Happens When You
Make New International Boundaries Where None Existed Before?

Abstract: Central Asia’s Ferghana Valley has historically been a mosaic of social groups and identities. The emergence of international

boundaries with the break-up of the Soviet Union imposed a new
political geographical logic on the social fabric of the Valley. This
talk explores the tensions between these two logics of ordering
territory. Focussing on ethnically-mixed rural villages along the
Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan boundary, it traces the fate of communities
whose existence challenged both the new ideologies of nationalism and
the analytical narratives of inter-communal tension. The talk is based
on over two decades of ethnographic and social science research along
the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan boundary.

Biography: Nick Megoran is Reader in Political Geography at Newcastle University. He is author of Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary, Pittsburgh University Press, 2017; and editor, with Sevara Sharapova, of Central Asia in International
Relations: The Legacies of Halford Mackinder (Hurts & Co, 2013).

Everyone is welcome.

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