ADI Summer School on Central Asia

Organized within the framework of the cross-faculty Asian Dynamics Initiative at the University of Copenhagen, this summer school is designed as an interdisciplinary event to provide students unfamiliar with the region with introductory courses into the societies, polities and cultures of contemporary Central Eurasia. It will also offer students who already have some knowledge of the region a deeper insight into ongoing academic research and discussions of the post-Soviet independent states, Afghanistan, Mongolia and Xinjiang. All participants will learn to situate their studies in the context of international scholarship and receive assistance in identifying new directions for further, independent work.

Both the definition and the naming of the vast, landlocked area that stretches from the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang and Mongolia in the East, and from the southern parts of Siberia to Iran and Afghanistan in the south, remain problematic, imprecise and arbitrary; but in spite of the inherent ambiguities, enough shared features can be identified which lend this space a certain sense of unity. In opting for the designation ‘Central Eurasia' we join a growing trend that seeks to transcend the artificial distinction between Europe and Asia - a divide still implicit in terminology such as Central Asia or Inner Asia. The term Central Eurasia does justice to the continuous and complex interactions taking place along its famous trade routes, retrospectively named the Silk Routes by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen, which allowed for a lively, two-directional exchange of goods, technologies and ideas between the great agrarian empires of East and West Eurasia. In the late nineteenth century, the region was the stage for political rivalry and conflict between the great colonial powers Russia and Great Britain that became known as the ‘Great Game`. Following incorporation into the Russian Empire and its successor the Soviet Union, much of Central Eurasia became inaccessible to foreign researchers for over 70 years. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new independent ‘-stan' states at the end of the twentieth century opened up new possibilities both for the ethnographic study of contemporary Central Eurasia and for archival research into its history.

The intensification of knowledge production about the region is not just a matter of making good a scholarly deficit. It is of great urgency on account of Central Eurasia's geostrategic, economic and political significance. A source of enormous commercial and energy potential, most of the region has long belonged to the Islamic world. Safeguarding internal stability is therefore of paramount interest to numerous global actors, including not only China, Russia and the US but also India and several Middle Eastern states, all of which seek to exert their influence there. Yet the civil war in Tajikistan, the chronic fragility of Afghanistan and outbreaks of horrific violence in Uzbekistan, Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan in recent years have all served to highlight the region's volatility. Meanwhile authoritarian regimes give human rights activists cause for concern, e.g. when they invoke the threat of Islamic terrorism to legitimate their repression. As the peoples of Central Eurasia grapple with formidable new challenges of state building in the modernized, global world, their weak economies render them vulnerable players in the great and small games informed by post-colonialism, post-socialism and the international war on terror.

Students will be initiated into ongoing scholarly debates on current issues in various disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences, while at the same time acquiring specialized regional knowledge with a strong historical dimension. Courses will emphasize micro-macro links, showing how local moments can simultaneously be grasped as transnational phenomena embedded in the broader Eurasian and global context. MA and BA students will be given an opportunity to present and discuss their dissertation topics. Priority will be given to the following topics:

1. processes of identity building, ethnicity and citizenship
2. state formation and state building, borders, regionalism and territoriality
3. the entanglement of the religious, the cultural and the political

The combination of regional expertise with disciplinary perspectives reflects the profile of both the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies and the Asian Dynamics Initiative and it is consistent with the goals of other leading academic institutions worldwide. The summer school is conceived as a first step towards re-establishing and strengthening Central Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Practical information:   

1. Eligibility

The Summer School is open to all applicants registered as students at BA (second or third year), MA or PhD level who attend courses in area studies, or in any discipline within the social sciences or the humanities, who feel that they would benefit from familiarizing themselves with ongoing scholarly research on Central Eurasia.

2. Credit Points

Students who attend and complete this summer school will obtain 15 ECTS. In addition to active participation in all events of the summer school, students are required to submit a written paper in the autumn following the summer school.

4. Language

The working language of the Summer School is English.

• Laura Adams, Lecturer on Sociology and Co-Director of the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus, Davis Center, Harvard University

• Ingeborg Baldauf, Professor, Zentralasienseminar, Humboldt Universität, Berlin

• Thomas Barfield, Professor of Anthropology, Boston University

• Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Associate Professor, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

• Rasmus Christian Elling, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, History Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

• Beate Eschment , Dr. phil., Editor of Zentralasienanalyse, Berlin

• Esther Fihl, Professor, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

• Bert Fragner, Professor, Austrian Academy of Sciences

• Roland Hardenberg, Professor of Ethnology, University of Tuebingen

• Christopher Kaplonski, Senior Research Associate, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

• Maria Louw, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, University of Aarhus

• Birgit Schlyter, Professor, Dept. of Oriental Languages, South and Central Asian Studies, Stockholm University

Download the list as a PDF here.

Prof. Laura Adams

Adams, Laura L. 2008. "Globalization, Universalism and Cultural Form", Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, pp. 614-640

Bhavna, Dave 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, language and power. Abingdon, New York: Routledge, pp. 8- 28

Jones Luong, Pauline (ed.) 2003. The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies form Soviet Rule to Independence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (Introduction and Conclusion). 

Prof. Ingeborg Baldauf

http://www.areu.org.af/Uploads/EditionPdfs/428E-From%20Subjects%20to%20Citizens-WP-print.pdf (at least to page 28).

Allworth, Edward 1964. Uzbek Literary Politics. New York, pp. 31-69

Kehl-Bodrogi, Krisztina 2008. "Religion is not so strong here". Muslim Religious Life in Khorezm after Socialism. Berlin: LIT, pp. 31-69

Prof. Tomas Barfield

Barfield, Thomas 2001. "The Shadow Empires: Imperial state formation along the Chinese-nomad frontier", in Empires (edited by Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D'Altroy, Katheleen D. Morrison, Carla M. Sinopoli). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11-41

Barfield, Thomas 2002. "Turk, Persian and Arab: Changing relationships between tribes and state in Iran and along its frontiers", in Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture Politics (edited by Nikki Keddie). Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 61-88

Barfield, Thomas 2004. "Problems in Establishing Legitimacy in Afghanistan", Iranian Studies, Volume 37, No. 2. pp. 263-293

Barfield, Thomas 2010. Afghanistan: A cultural and political History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 273-336 

Dr. Ildikó Bellér-Hann

Becquelin, Nicholas 2004. "Staged development in Xinjiang", The China Quarterly 178. pp. 358-378

Bovingdon, Gardner 2004. "Contested Histories", in Xinjiang. China's Muslim Borderland (edited by S. Frederick Starr) Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 353-374

Gladney, Dru 2004 "The Chinese program of Development and Control, 1978-2001", in Xinjiang. China's Muslim Borderland (edited by S. Frederick Starr) Armonk: M.E. Sharp, pp. 101-119. 

Dr. Rasmus Elling

Foroughi, Payam 2002. "Tajikistan: Nationalism, Ethnicity, Conflict, and Socio-economic Disparities - Sources and Solutions", Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 39-61

Marat, Erica. 2008. "Imagined Past, Uncertain Future: The Creation of National Ideologies in Kyrgystan and Tajikistan", Problems of Post-Communism, Vol 55, No. 1, pp. 12-24 

Dr. Beate Eschment

Collier, Paul 2009. Wars, Guns, and Votes. Democracy in Dangerous Places. New York: Harper, pp. 51-73.

Eschment, Beate 2011. "From Interethnic Harmony to National Unity? Nationalities Policy and the Situation of National Minorities in Kazakhstan", in OSCE Yearbook 2010, (ed. Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg/IFSH), Baden-Baden, pp. 117-131

Gomez, Edmund Terence 2008. "Introduction. Modernization, democracy , equity and identity", in The State, Development and Identity in Multi-Ethnic Societies (ed. Nicholas Tarling, Edmund Terence Gomez) London, New York: Routledge, pp. 1-17

Horowitz, Donald L. 1994. "Democracy in Divided Societies", in Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Democracy (edited by Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 37-55

Kubicek, Paul 2010. "Applying the Democratization Literature to Post-Soviet Central Asian Statehood", in Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia (edited by Emikian Kavalski). Franham Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 37-51

Prof. Bert Fragner

Canfield, Robert L. (ed.), 1991. Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.1-34

Fragner, Bert 1994. "The Nationalization of the Uzbeks and the Tajiks", in Muslim Communities Reemerge. Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (edited by Andreas Kappeler, Gerhard Simon & Georg Brunner, Edward Allworth). Durham & London: Duke University Press, pp. 13-32

Fragner, Bert 1997. "Iran under Ilkhanid rule in a world history perspective", in L´Iran face à la domination mongole (edited by Denise Aigle). (Bibliothèque iranienne 45). Téhéran: Inst. Français de Recherche en Iran, pp. 123-131

Fragner, Bert 2000. "Soviet nationalism", in Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World (edited by Willem van Schendel & Erik. J.Zürcher (Library of International Relations 13). London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 13-33.

Fragner, Bert 2001. "The Concept of Regionalism in Historical Research on Central Asia and Iran (A Macro-Historical Interpretation)", in Studies on Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel (edited by Devin DeWeese). Bloomington: Research Inst. For Inner Asian Studies, pp. 341-354. 

Prof. Roland Hardenberg

Bastug, Sharon 1998. "The segmentary Lineage System. A Reappraisal", in Changing nomads in a changing world (edited by Joseph Ginat & Anatoly Khazanov). Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, pp. 94-123

Bastug, Sharon. 1999. "Tribe, Confederation and State among Altaic Nomads if the Asian Steppes", in Rethinking Central Asia, non-Eurocentric Studies in History, Social Structures and Identity (edited by Korkut A. Ertürk). Reading: Ithaka Press, pp. 77-110

Hardenberg, Roland 2009. "Reconsidering, tribe, clan and relatedness: A comparison of social categorization in Central and South Asia", Scrutiny; A journal of international and Pakistan Studies 1/1. pp. 37-62

Hardenberg, Roland 2010. "The Efficacy of Funeral Rituals in Kyrgystan", Journal of Ritual Studies 24/1. pp. 29-43

Hirsch, Francine 2000. "Toward an empire of nations. Bordermaking and the formation of Soviet national identities", Russian Review 59. 3/11. pp. 201-226,

Jacquesson Svetlana 2008. "The Sore Zones of Identity: Past and Present Debates on Funerals in Kyrgyzstan", Inner Asia no. 10. pp. 281-303.

Schatz, Edward 2000. "The Politics if Multiple Identities: Lineage and Ethnicity in Kazakhstan", Europe-Asia Studies 52/3. pp. 489-506

Tolz, Vera 1998. "Forging the Nation: National Identity and Nation Building in Post-Communist Russia", Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 50, no. 6. pp 993-1022 

Dr. Christopher Kaplonski

Baabar 1999. Twentieth Century Mongolia. Cambridge: White Horse Press. (Chaps. 20 & 21: The Rise of Choibalsan" and "The Great Purge")

Buyandelger, Manduhai 2007. "Dealing with uncertainty: Shamans, marginal Capitalism, and the remaking of history in postsocialist Mongolia", American Ethnologist 34(1). pp. 127-147

Isono, Fujiko 1979. "Soviet Russia and the Mongolian Revolution of 19221", Past and Present 83. pp. 116-140

Kaplonski, Christopher 2002. "Thirty thousand bullets: remembering political repression in Mongolia" in Historical Injustice and democratic transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe (edited by K. Christie and R. Cribb). London, Routledge Curzon, pp. 155-168

Kaplonski, Christopher 2008. "Prelude to violence: Show trails and state power in 1930s Mongolia", American Ethnologist 35(2). pp. 321-337

Larson, Frans August 1930. "The Lamas of Mongolia", The Atlantic Monthly. March. pp. 368-378

Dr. Maria Louw

Louw, Maria 2007. Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia. London & New York: Routledge (Chapters: "Introduction" and "Ziyorat")

Louw, Maria 2010. "Being Muslim the Ironic Way. Secularism, Religion and Irony in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan", in Varieties of Secularism in Asia. Anthropological Explorations of Religion, Politics and the Spiritual (edited by Nils Bubandt and Martijn van Been). London: Taylor & Francis, pp.?

Rasanayagam, Johan. 2011. Islam in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The Morality of Experience Cambridge University Press. pp. 97-153( Ch. 3. "Good and Bad Islam after the Soviet Union: The Instrumentalisation of Tradition" and Ch. 4 "The practical Hegemony of State Discourse") 

Prof. Birgit Schlyter

Schlyter, Birgit 2004. "Changing language Loyalties in Central Asia", in The Handbook of bilingualism (edited by Tej K. Bhatia and William C. Ritichie). Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, pp. 810-832

Schlyter, Birgit 2003. "Sociolinguistic changes in transformed Central Asian societies" in Languages in a globalizing world (edited by Jacques Maurais). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, pp. 157-186

Sengupta, Anita (forthcoming) "Rethinking Regional Organizations. Turkey and the Shanghai Cooperation and Organization", in New Perspectives on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (edited by Marianne Laanatza, Birgit Schlyter and Alyson Bailes). pp. 1-15 

Additional recommended readings by Prof. Fragner (not available as scans)

Bennigsen, Alexandre A. and S. Enders Wimbush 1979. Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union. A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World, Chicago & London

Bennigsen, Alexandre A. and S. Enders Wimbush 1985. Mystics and Commissars. Sufism in the Soviet Union, London : Hurst.

Bennigsen, Alexandre A. and S. Enders Wimbush 1987. Muslims of the Soviet Empire: guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Carrère D'Encausse, Hélène 1988. Islam and the Russian Empire. Reform and Revolution in Central Asia. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London.

Gross, Jo-Ann (ed.) 1992. Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change. Durham & London.

Swietochowski, Tadeusz 1985. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920. The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Credit points for BA and MA students: 15 ECTS
(requires participation in all summer school activities and passing of exam)

Time: 4th-15th July 2011

Organizer:

Dr. Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Associate Professor
Asian Dynamics Initiative
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
University of Copenhagen

Teaching Faculty:

• Laura Adams, Lecturer on Sociology and Co-Director of the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus, Davis Center, Harvard University

• Ingeborg Baldauf, Professor, Zentralasienseminar, Humboldt Universität, Berlin

• Thomas Barfield, Professor of Anthropology, Boston University

• Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Associate Professor, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

• Rasmus Christian Elling, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, History Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

• Beate Eschment , Dr. phil., Editor of Zentralasienanalyse, Berlin

• Esther Fihl, Professor, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

• Bert Fragner, Professor, Austrian Academy of Sciences

• Roland Hardenberg, Professor of Ethnology, University of Tuebingen

• Christopher Kaplonski, Senior Research Associate, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

• Maria Louw, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, University of Aarhus

• Birgit Schlyter, Professor, Dept. of Oriental Languages, South and Central Asian Studies, Stockholm University

Schedule:

Approximately 70 contact hours (seminars and lectures, student presentations, museum visit, Central Asian films)

Objective:

The summer school is designed as an interdisciplinary event which aims at 1. providing students new to the region with introductory courses into the societies, cultures, polities and economies of modern Central Eurasia careful attention paid to historical contextualization 2. offering students of Central Eurasia who already have some previous knowledge of the region both an overview and deeper insight into ongoing academic research and discussions of the independent states emerging after the collapse of the Soviet Union, together with Afghanistan, Mongolia and Xinjiang.

Contents:

The proposed summer school is designed as an interdisciplinary event which aims at providing students with introductory courses into the "great and small games" taking place in Central Eurasia at the present time. These can only be rendered meaningful with careful reference to historical antecedents. Students will be initiated into ongoing scholarly debates on current issues in various disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences, while at the same time acquiring specialized regional knowledge with a strong historical dimension. Equal attention will be paid to the outcome of anthropological fieldwork, archival research and the broader analyses provided by political scientists, economists and other regional experts. Courses will include lectures and seminars on historical and contemporary issues both as local moments and as transnational phenomena embedded in the broader Eurasian context. Priority will be given to the following topics:

1. processes of identity building, ethnicity and citizenship
2. state formation and state building, borders, regionalism and territoriality
3. the entanglement of the religious, the cultural and the political.

Eligibility:

Applicants must be registered as BA or MA (possibly PhD) students in the Social Sciences or the Humanities at a higher education institution

Enrollment: application according to guidelines specified in the ‘Call for applications'

Course requirements:

1. All students are required to attend and actively participate in all events of the summer school.
2. BA students must submit a written assignment in English (12-15 standard pages) by the 15 October 2011
   
   MA students must submit a written assignment in English (15-20 standard pages) by the 15 October 2011.

A standard page is 2400 keystrokes including spacing. Appendices are not included in the number of pages.

Assessment:

The papers will be assessed by the organizers and teachers of the summer school. Papers will be graded according to the 7 point grading scale currently used at Danish universities.

12 - For an excellent performance
10 - For a very good performance
7 - For a good performance
4 - For a fair performance
02 - For an adequate performance
00 - For an inadequate performance
-3 - For an unacceptable performance

When assessing the written assignments, in addition to the academic content, weight is also given to the student's spelling and formulation abilities.

Pensum:

Pensum requirements for BA students: 1250 standard pages
Pensum requirements for MA students: 2000 standard pages

Students have been given access to the Reader. The organizers will provide a standard pensum for both BAs and MAs based hereon.

Language of instruction:

English

Map

 

Copenhagen Central Station
Bernstorffsgade 16
1577 Copenhagen V

Danhostel Copenhagen City
H.C. Andersens Boulevard 50
1553 Copenhagen V
Tel: +45 3311 8585
Fax: +45 3311 8588
cphcitybooking@danhostel
 

Hotel CABINN City
Mitchellsgade 14
1568 Copenhagen V
Tel: +45 3346 1616
Fax: +45 3346 1717
city@cabinn.com
https://www.cabinn.com/hoteller-danmark/cabinn-city/

Summer School venue
Asian Dynamics Initiative
c/o NIAS
Leifsgade 33, 3rd floor
2300 Copenhagen S
Tel: +45 3532 9500
Fax: +45 3532 9549