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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