Between ‘imagined’ and ‘real’ nation-building: Identities and Nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia, and beyond

In spite of a large amount of literature focusing on nation-building, and a growing scholarship on Central Asia, works on the region have been concerned with a statist and top-down approach in the construction of a national identity (Bhavna 2004; Bremmer and Taras 1997; Ferrando 2008; Cummings 2013; Laruelle 2012). In particular, given the authoritarian and closed nature of the regimes in the region, often nation-building policies are linked to efforts of power concentration and regime-building. However, this top-down perspective often does not take into consideration the other side of the state-society relationship. Most studies concerned with Central Asian nation-building focus mostly on how the nation and national identity is ‘imagined’ by political elites, whether through practical policy or discourse, with little attention paid as to whether this is reflected in the attitudes of the people, and the reception, acceptance or renegotiation of such nation-building measures by local actors, both ordinary citizens, non-state actors or some other clearly defined community (Kevlihan, 2013, Ó’Beacháin and Kevlihan, 2013, 2015; Menga, 2015; Morris, 2005; Ventsel, 2012)