The State as Social Practice: Sources, Resources and Forces in Central Asia Viktoria Akchurina Dissertation Supervisor: Prof. Vincent Della Sala, University of Trento Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Studies 15 December 2015 Trento Acknowledgements For the memorable journey represented by my PhD process, for the personal and professional transformation and for shaping and creating my identity, I am, above all, grateful to my supervisor, Vincent Della Sala. This thesis would not be possible without his powerful mind and precise language. I would also like to thank the Faculty of the School of International Studies, particularly Roberto Belloni for his insights at the start of my PhD process. I am grateful to Mark Beittel for constantly provoking my sense of self-irony and sense of humor that helped carry me through my PhD process. A special thank goes to Rosaria Astarita, a rare professional who connects all international students with the home, whatever the time or climate zone. For their warm welcome and practical support during my field research, I thank the American University of Central Asia, the State Commissions for Religious Affairs of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the OSCE Office in Dushanbe, the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University in Bishkek, the OSCE CORE research center in Hamburg and the Carnegie Center in Moscow. A special thank you goes to Kahramon Sanginov, Sergey Romanov, Aida Alymbaeva, Zakir Chotoev, Ikbol Mirsaitov, and Timur Isakov. I am grateful to all my informants in Central Asia, Moscow, and beyond, whose voices have influenced the direction of this thesis. I am deeply grateful to Katharina Schroeder-Boersch and Margaret Mackinzie for having helped me to stay the course, when life seemed to set other priorities. I thank Gianfranco Poggi, Stefano Guzzini and Pieter van Houten for the invaluable discussions on state theory. I am also indebted to a team of the most restless and inspiring intellectuals I have met during my PhD process: to Sofia Ahmed, Eranda Gjomema, and Viola Selenica for providing constant inspiration; to Peng Bin for all her moral support and Chinese medicine; to Anita Lavorgna for her insights on how to write an academic article under any circumstances, even at a yoga class; to Davit Sahakyan for his ideas on the value of Kafkaesque absurdity and Dostoyevski’s psychology for thesis writing; to Simon Davis, for discussing the directness and subtleness of the English language with me and helping me correct my “word crimes”; to Maureen Pritchard for sharing the tricks of ethnographic research and an Irish lullaby; to Nadeem Karkabi, for asking that timely yet simple question: “Whom do you write it for? Whose voices do you want to raise up?..” I am truly thankful to Oksana Kalyuzhnaya, Dmitry Kirov, and Camilla Eriksson who have practically saved this thesis during the last week before the submission, despite technological near catastrophe. Not even a lifetime is enough to express my gratitude to my family for their patience and tremendous support. Of course the responsibility for any errors or omissions in this thesis is entirely my own. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... 6 Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................................. 7 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 9 The State as social practice: sources, resources and forces in Central Asia ............................................. 9 Organization of the thesis ....................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 1: Understanding state-building in Central Asia ..................................................................... 18 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 18 1.1. The dominant debate: from the heartland- to the broken-state theory ......................................... 19 1.2. Central Asia as a “conceptual challenge” to the dominant debate on the state ............................. 26 1.3. State as social practice ..................................................................................................................... 38 1.4. Research design and methodology .................................................................................................. 46 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 52 CHAPTER 2. The incomplete state: fifty shades of failure ...................................................................... 55 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 55 2.1. Indicators of failure: explananda or explicantia? ............................................................................. 56 2.2. The incomplete state: operationalizing the explanandum .............................................................. 69 2.2.1. Transnationality: crime and survival ............................................................................................. 69 2.2.2. Cross-sectionality: drugs for “hearts and minds” .......................................................................... 73 2.2.3. Entrysm: mutual trust networks, their stakeholders and social structures .................................. 76 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 86 CHAPTER 3. Follow the water: resources and state construction ........................................................... 89 3.2. State-making: ethnicities, resources, nations .................................................................................. 99 3.4.1. Land: new legal frameworks, old social patterns ........................................................................ 118 3.4.2. Water: restructuring non-land assets – empowering communities?.......................................... 125 3.5. Community level water management: the case of Isfara river ...................................................... 133 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 136 CHAPTER 4. The impact of external actors on states and societies ...................................................... 138 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 138 4.1. Organizing Security ......................................................................................................................... 140 4.1.1. Border management: materializing symbolic borders and the idea of threat ............................ 140 4.1.2. Materialized borders: standardizing national security infrastructures ....................................... 148 4.1.3. Societal consequences of borders: creating the “island pockets” .............................................. 155 Cases of Batken zone, enclaves Vorukh, Sokh, and Shahimardan ........................................................ 155 Case 1: Batken zone (Kyrgyzstan) .......................................................................................................... 156 Case 2: Sokh and Shahimardan (Uzbekistan) ........................................................................................ 160 Case 3. Vorukh (Tajikistan) .................................................................................................................... 164 4.2. Organizing Economies .................................................................................................................... 167 3 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 167 4.2.1. CAREC: promoting non-standard trade – supporing parallel survival strategies ........................ 168 4.2.2. CAREC’s societal consequences: integrating peasantry into the parallel realms of bazaar ........ 176 4.2.3. CASA-1000: the new Silk Road and the Soviet logistics............................................................... 181 4.2.4. CASA-1000 societal consequences: internal displacement and identity of resistance ............... 186 4.3. Organizing Societies ........................................................................................................................ 193 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 193 4.3.1. Formal civil society: institutionalization, patronage, and legitimacy .......................................... 194 4.3.2. Parallel civil society: outsourcing ideological power ................................................................... 204 4.3.3. Islamic NGOs: the narratives of betrayal and their sponsors .....................................................