Summary

concrete and sometimes violent reality in the lives of those living in the border area, as Uzbekistan stepped up surveillance and control and began unilateral demarcation. ‘The border ’ became a politically sensitive issue between these two states that had, in 1997, signed a ‘treaty of eternal friendship. ’ This dissertation asks why this happened, and what the effects on populations in the Ferghana Valley were. It uses this case study to engage with a number of theoretical, methodological and empirical debates in the burgeoning literature on political change and nationality in these republics, and a number of theoretical and disciplinary debates within geography. Although recongising their importance as a background, it considers those deterministic explanations of the boundary question that revolve around Soviet-era borders and nationalities policies, the needs or interests of states, ethnic animosity, or the logic of independent statehood, as insufficient. Rather, drawing on critical social theory in geography, it emphasises the importance of the interaction of domestic power struggles in both states. ‘The border ’ acted as both a material and discursive site where elites struggled to gain or retain control of power and to imprint their ow