The End of Nomadism?: Society, State, and the Environment in Inner Asia PDF
Preview The End of Nomadism?: Society, State, and the Environment in Inner Asia
CAROLINE HUMPHREY AND DAVID SNEATH . J T HE E ND OF N O M A D I S M? T HE E ND OF N O M A D I S M? SOCIETY, S T A TE AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN INNER ASIA Caroline Humphrey and David Sneath Duke University Press Durham, 1999 © Duke University Press, 1999 All rights reserved First published in the United States in 1999 by Duke University Press Durham, NC 27708 and in the United Kingdom in 1999 by The White Horse Press 10 High Street, Knapwell, Cambridge CB3 8NR Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Humphrey, Caroline The End of Nomadism?: society, state and the environment in Inner Asia / Caroline Humphrey and David Sneath. p. cm. ISBN 0-8223-2107-6 (hardcover: alk. paper), — ISBN 0-8223-2140-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Nomads—Asia, Central. 2. Pastoral systems—Asia, Central. 3. Human ecology—Asia, Central. 4. Asia, Central—Ethnic relations. 5. Asia, Central—Environmental conditions. 6. Asia, Central—Politics and government. I. Sneath, David. II. Title. GN635.S64H85 1999 98-34353 305.9'0691—dc21 CIP C E N T R AL ASIA BOOK S E R I ES Flexible frontiers and interchanging components have long characterised the heterogeneous complex often referred to as Central Asia. Where do today's researchers and travellers locate that fluid concept and how should they define it? Many who concentrate their efforts in the field of Central Asian studies yearn to discover and fix the true position, limits and traits of the area. So far, their attempts, rather than leading to consensus, have led in several directions. The specialists have succeeded mainly in describing Central Asia's physical and human diversity, without conclusively delineating its entirety or isolating its essential core. After futile efforts, the search for such geographical precision will most likely remain unrewarded. It seems a paradox that conceptual intractability confers one considerable benefit upon students of the area: to a large degree experienced scholars may define Central Asia as they choose Among scholars and other writers from outside Central Asia, argu- ments over the area's nature that seemingly arouse the greatest disagreement persistendy favour over the others one or another of the variables among language, religion, tribe or dynasty as mainstays in a presumed unity. For those who attempt to conceive of this extensive territory under one concept and heading, objectivity necessarily defers to point of view. The dispute over the best terminology for the area expresses itself especially in fervent advocacy for and use of one of the numerous toponyms applied wholly or in part to the centre of Asia encompassing lands from the Caspian Sea eastward as far as Hami in the Peoples' Republic of China's (PRC's) Eastern Turkistan (Xinjiang) Many of these terms for the region stress compass direction and some refer to ethnic affiliation. They include Asiatic Russia, Central Asia, Eastern Iran, Eurasia, the Greater Near East, Inner Asia, Middle Asia, Northern Asia, Turan, Turkistan, Upper {Haute) Asia, Western Asia, and others less recog- nisable. Scathing polemics have targeted one after another of those toponyms, because none of them precisely embodies the place and population for all observers with strong opinions. Perhaps one good reason for such disarray lies in the absence of a genuine self-name for the area as a whole. Among those place names just listed, except for Turkistan, apparently none served widely as a specific, concrete self-name before the twentieth century. The lack of an anchoring toponym or self-name adopted alike among the inhabitants of the area and the outer world contributes fundamentally to the continuing dilemma over an acknowledged designation for the place. Among outsiders, the dispute over a suitable name extends into journalism, as well. Headlines, without the argumentation, demonstrate these difficulties: There is no "Middle East"' (NYT Magazine 20 February 1994, pp. 42-3) introduces an article in which, it says, the Greater Near East would subsume Central Asia; or, 'Central Asia Rediscovers Its Identity', (NYT 24 June 1990, p. E3), an essay which defines Central Asia as an unspecific idea; and many more variants upon a similar theme. If scholars or reporters agree upon one name for this area, they seldom reach accord on the content or extent of it. Central Asia includes Afghanistan and Eastern Turkistan for some, but not for others. Turkistan covers Tajikistan for many, but not for Tajiks and Iranists. Further complications arise with the popularisation of each additional toponym. The concept of Inner Asia has served a number of specialists as a grand label for the landlocked zone between India and Siberia, the Caucasus and China proper. They may favour this inclusive name, because it reaches farther and includes more space than envisaged by users of the other designations. Distinguishing the region has posed enough of a difficulty so that several learned discourses in this century have specifically addressed the issue of defining the Inner Asian area. A separate booklet entitled What is Inner Asia (1975) methodically undertook that task. Another treatise (The Limits of Inner Asia, 1987) emphatically puts the case for applying Inner Asia to the entire extent of the former Russian and Soviet Central Asia, the present Eastern (Chinese) Turkistan and the great Mongolian reaches north and especially south of the Russian frontier. An earlier focus upon the concept Inner Asia (Ismerleten belsoAzsia, 1940) emphasised the region's unfamili- arity, remoteness and mystery for Europeans. Some usages have increased that conceptual ambiguity by employing the concepts and toponyms Central Asia and Inner Asia as synonyms, interchangeably. Ultimately, the chief tension straining the argument over a compre- hensive Inner Asia comes from the practice of some Inner Asianists to subsume under that concept, besides Mongolia, the two wings of Turkistan - Western and Eastern. Researchers and writers can conveniently avoid that problem. For many decades, scholarly, official and popular writings in English and Russian have conventionally designated them as Turkistan or, especially since the 1920s, as Central Asia. vii The present volume, The End of Nomadism? Society, State and the Environment in Inner Asia, without specifically setting out to do so, offers relief from uncertainty in respect to these terminological contradictions. In practice, its authors propose a definition of their subject area that also relegates to the background political systems and official borderlines, so changeable and arbitrary. Taking another approach, The End of Nomadism? studies the Eastern fringe of Turkistan but not the Central Asia lying mainly in the Turko- Iranian-Muslim-unity further West. To the East, this Inner Asia reaches far across the pasturelands of Inner and Outer Mongolia. Mongolians and Buddhism-Shamanism prevail over other nationalities and religions in that Inner Asia, but as pastoralists the Turkic Kazakhs and Kirghiz of the PRC and the Tuvans of the Russian Republic figure to some extent in one aspect of its composition. Because the authors of The End of Nomadism? do not extend their map of Inner Asia west of China, their inquiry for the most part avoids reference to Central Asia. In that lies a principal distinction between the concept of this book and the thinking of some other Inner Asianists. Regarding Inner Asia as a long-established cultural-economic zone, the authors cite mobile pastoralism as a way of subsisting that binds its inhabit- ants together into a unit. Patterns of mobile pastoralism depend upon grasslands, wherever they offer range to the animals. This means that political subdivision, though worth noting, remains irrelevant to the concept of Inner Asia. History had its say in affecting the mode of existence there, at least since Chinggis Khan and his successors brought most of Mongolia, Northern Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East into their empire starting early in the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, historical events have obviously not laid down a sufficient basis to support a comprehensive self-name potentially able to coexist with the inclusive nomenclature, such as Inner Asia, popular- ised by outsiders. The present study helps rationalise the distinction between much of the central area, lying in the West of Asia, from the part regarded as interior Asia. The two concepts have importance for each other. That separation and simultaneous small overlap, make the present powerful approach taken by The End of Nomadism? a significant contribution both to Central and Inner Asian studies. It helps in clarifying the confusions in terminology but adds another compelling reason to learn from anthropology. The book advances both its own thesis concerning the unifying principle of mobile pastoralism viii so important in Inner Asia, at the same time demonstrating the special relevance for and compatibility of serious Central Asian scholarship with discrete Inner Asian research. The Central Asia Book Series emphasises the publishing of scholarly inquiries into the culture and society of Central Asians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this, it gives recognition especially to inquiries using indigenous Central Asian-language evidence to a substantial degree. The Series issues learned studies, such as this one, documents, eyewitness accounts and reference works that durably complement published knowl- edge about this changeable area. Edward A. Allworth, General Editor of the Series Columbia University Andras J. E. Bodrogligeti, Advisory Editor University of California, Los Angeles Richard N. Frye, Advisory Editor Harvard University
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