Abstract
Central Asia is among the world regions that are least explored in terms of their history of technology. This essay reviews a wide array of academic literature that can serve as a base for historical research on technology and material culture in the region. It furthermore explores some of the most promising conceptual avenues for such an endeavor. The metaphor of a borderland, it argues, can be used beyond its geographical meaning to conceptualize the region’s technological landscape. This landscape has been shaped by the coexistence of traditional artisanal practices and material cultures, the industrial and architectural legacies of Soviet rule as well as the region’s recent reemergence as a hub between Russia, China, Europe, and the Middle East. Based on case studies from different disciplines, this essay therefore discusses technology’s role in creating borderlands or territoriality, statehood, production, and everyday life in Central Asia.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 659-687 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Technology and Culture |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, decades of sedentarization, collectivization, and the relocation of settlements had made the Fergana Valley a complex and contested borderland, pervaded by a border that resembled a chessboard. In a rich tradition of borderland ethnographies in Central Asia, Reeves’s study is one of the most recent and illuminating. She analyzes the everyday life of what she calls “border work”: the “messy, contested, and often intensely social business of making territory ‘integral.’”57 The account of a bus ride provides an illustrative example of how technical infrastructures become an integral part of “border work”: During her first field research in the region in 2004, the bus crossed the new international border no fewer than six times. When she returned in 2008 a new bypass road, funded by the European Union, connected the Kyrgyz villages without crossing the border. Both cross-border movement and interethnic encounters were considerably reduced.58