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Theorizing Central Asian Politics pp 213–236Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

State Identities in Post-Soviet Foreign Policy: Theories and Cases in Central Asia

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Part of the book series: International Political Theory ((IPoT))

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the discussion on the conception, formulation and the routinization of state identity constructs by Central Asian political elites in their foreign policies. By doing so, it ventures into the theories of state identity formation by exploring how the elites self-narrate the stories of their states internally to their citizens and externally to the world outside of the borders to socialize both to the polity they represent. Consequently, it applies these theorizing into empirical data from the region with emphasis on Kyrgyzstan alongside the comparisons made to other states in the region. As such, this chapter contributes to the growing literature on analysis of the ideational domain and the role of state identification practices in the foreign policies of Central Asian states.

Before we can make proper sense of things we need to turn the many single images into a ‘movie’ that can run parallel to the movements of which we take our lives to exist. We do this as we tell stories about the metaphors we have come to embrace. First we see something as some-thing, in other words, and then we construct a narrative about this something.

Ringmar 1996, p. 451

Selbi Hanova was previously a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher on the EU funded program TENSIONS, which was an FP7/Marie Curie ITN action grant agreement N°: 316825 and which supported this research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In 2014, The Guardian published an online quiz titled ‘How much do you know about “the Stans” of central Asia?’ and there are frequent travel sites that refer to the region in the same vein, for example, the Lonely Planet’s 2008 online discussion title is revealing by itself ‘Are “The Stans” Worth the Trouble’ or Conde Nast’s travel guide to five ‘stans’, in which it is mentioned that ‘Now, 20 years after independence, they are forging their own identities’. Though the reference to ‘stan’ is rather an outside image and it is never used in the official self-articulations by the states, the reference forms part of the image outside and, hence, is a subject to reflection by foreign policy makers internally.

  2. 2.

    Interviews with diplomats conducted during the field work in Kyrgyzstan for the PhD thesis in 2015.

  3. 3.

    Prostranstvo vneshney politiki is the formulation in Russian, which literally translates into the ‘space of foreign policy’.

  4. 4.

    Interviews with diplomats conducted during the field work in Kyrgyzstan for the PhD thesis in 2015.

  5. 5.

    Mankurt is a term used among Kyrgyz, which was brought into popularity in Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel The Day Lasts More than a Century.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CADAP 6, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

    Selbi Hanova

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  1. Selbi Hanova
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

    Rico Isaacs

  2. Almaty Management University, Almaty, Kazakhstan

    Alessandro Frigerio

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Hanova, S. (2019). State Identities in Post-Soviet Foreign Policy: Theories and Cases in Central Asia. In: Isaacs, R., Frigerio, A. (eds) Theorizing Central Asian Politics. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97355-5_10

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