Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia

The State as Social Practice

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Viktoria Akchurina

    1. Department of Politics and Security, OSCE Academy, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • A comparative analysis of the incomplete state in central Eurasia, focusing on Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan
  • Social history of resistance, violence, border and water management in disputed borderlands of the Fergana Valley
  • Interdisciplinary conceptual framework on how neo-liberalization can lead to re-traditionalization of societies

Part of the book series: Critical Security Studies in the Global South (CSSGS)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: The State as Social Practice

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 1-7

  3. The Incomplete State: Fifty Shades of Failure

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 9-39

  4. Understanding State-Building in Central Asia

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 41-64

  5. Follow the Water: Soviet Legacy as Cross-Border Societal Interdependence

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 65-118

  6. Impact of External Actors on States and Societies

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 119-201

  7. When Elites Meet: The Struggle for Power and Its Social Meaning

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 203-277

  8. Conclusion: Keeping It Social

    • Viktoria Akchurina
    Pages 279-293

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 295-342
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book is about transformation of the state and an incomplete state-building. It defies the transitology assumption of continuity, linearity and dichotomy of formal and informal in the transformation of the state. Contrary to the conventional approaches, it claims that any social order or its political scaffolding, the state, is always incomplete and we need to develop cognitive maps to better understand that incompleteness. It reflects on the social practices, processes and patterns that evolve as a non-linear result of three sets of factors: those that are historical, external, and elite-driven. Three Central Asian states - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan - are examined here comparatively as case studies, as Central Asia represents an interesting terrain to challenge conventional understanding of the state. Specifically, the book captures a paradox at hand: how come three states, which made different political, economic, cultural, and social choices at the outset of their independence in the 1990s, have ended up as so-called “weak states” in the 2000s and onwards? This puzzle can be better understood through looking at the relationship among three main sets of factors that shape state-building processes, such as history, external actors, and local elites. This book applies an interdisciplinary approach, combining political anthropology, political economy, sociology, and political science. It helps conceptualize and understand social and political order beyond the “failed state” paradigm

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Politics and Security, OSCE Academy, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

    Viktoria Akchurina

About the author

Viktoria Akchurina is Senior Lecturer at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Her research focuses on state-building in Central Asia and the Middle East, comparatively. She is an author of a number of academic publications on the elite formation, power and hegemony, the incomplete state, security and radicalization, border and water management in central Eurasia. She co-edited a Special Section on ‘Power and Competing Regionalism in a Wider Europe’ in Europe-Asia Studies. In her previous capacity as a researcher at TRENDS Consulting in Abu-Dhabi, she published a number of policy papers on the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East and conducted research on Russian foreign policy in Syria.

Previously, Viktoria taught at the MA program in Peace and Development at Dauphine University in Paris andconducted research on borders, informal cartography, and the "lost cities" in Eurasia at the Centre of "Geopolitics of Risk" at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.


Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation