Identity counts: the Soviet legacy and the census in Uzbekistan

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511606045.008

7 - Identity counts: the Soviet legacy and the census in Uzbekistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009

David Abramson

Edited by

David I. Kertzer and

Dominique Arel

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David Abramson: Affiliation:
Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State
David I. Kertzer: Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Dominique Arel: Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island

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Summary

Nations … are not out there to be counted; they are a function of social, political, and economic processes.

David Abramson

Identity matters in so far as perceived ties and interactions between people, appearance, speech, place of residence, and behavior are all observable and classifiable differences. How social difference is constructed and the meanings attributed to those constructions are the basis for abstract, often overlapping and contradictory systems of classification such as kinship, language, race, ethnicity, and religion. As the chapters in this volume show, the names of these abstract systems are incorporated into the language of censuses whose manifest function is to count the state's citizens for a range of purposes including taxation, electoral districting, military conscription, affirmative action programs, and the selection of official languages. These studies also demonstrate that the census is a highly politicized project whose particular forms of interrogation and categorization are subject to contestation and manipulation. The census claims to represent collectivities in the form of social identity and, thereby, sets the terms for this very politicking.

My objective for this chapter is to show that in the case of Uzbekistan, such political possibilities were and are predicated on national difference. Soviet nationality policies, aided by such official state practices as census-taking and the application of census results in reinforcing citizenship and territoriality, have given birth to a political culture organized along the lines of national difference. This is not to say that post-Soviet “cultures” are nationally based.

Type: Chapter
Information: Census and Identity
The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses
, pp. 176 - 201

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606045.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2001

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