In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.

The essays in Globalization on the Margins explore the continuities and changes in Central Asian education development since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Reflecting on two decades of post-socialist transformations, they reveal that education systems in Central Asia responded to the rapidly changing political, economic, and social environment in profoundly new and unique ways. Some countries moved towards Western models, others went backwards, and still others followed entirely new trajectories. Yet, elements of the “old” system remain. Rather than viewing these post-Soviet transformations in isolation, Globalization on the Margins places its analyses within the global context by reflecting on the interaction between Soviet legacies and global education reform pressures in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Instead of portraying the transition process as the influx of Western ideas into the region, the authors provide new lenses to critically examine the multidirectional flow of ideas, concepts, and reform models within Central Asia. Notwithstanding the variety of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and conceptual lenses, the authors have one thing in common: both individually and collectively, they reveal the complexity and uncertainty of the post-Soviet transformations. By highlighting the political nature of the transformation processes and the uniqueness of historical, political, social, and cultural contexts of each particular country, Globalization on the Margins portrays post-Soviet education transformations as complex, multidimensional, and uncertain processes.

This book analyzes how Central Asians actively engaged with the rapidly globalizing world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In presenting the first English-language history of the Khanate of Khoqand (1709–1876), Scott C. Levi examines the rise of that extraordinarily dynamic state in the Ferghana Valley. Levi reveals the many ways in which the Khanate’s integration with globalizing forces shaped political, economic, demographic, and environmental developments in the region, and he illustrates how these same forces contributed to the downfall of Khoqand. To demonstrate the major historical significance of this vibrant state and region, too often relegated to the periphery of early modern Eurasian history, Levi applies a “connected history” methodology showing in great detail how Central Asians actively influenced policies among their larger imperial neighbors—notably tsarist Russia and Qing China. This original study will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary audience, including scholars and students of Central Asian, Russian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and world history, as well as the study of comparative empire and the history of globalization.

A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia’s international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia’s supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.

Since the start of the 1990s, Central Asia has been the main purveyor of migrants in the post-Soviet space. These massive migrations due to social upheavals over the last twenty years impact issues of governance; patterns of social adaptation; individual and collective identities; and gender relations in Central Asia. This volume raises the importance of internal migrations, those at a regional, intra-Central Asian, level, labor migrations to Russia, and carries us as far away to the Uzbek migrants based in Istanbul, New York, or Seoul, as well as to the young women of Tashkent who head to Germany or France, and to the Germans, Greeks, and Jews of Central Asia who have returned to their “ethnic homelands”. Contributors include Aida Aaly Alimbaeva, Stéphanie Belouin, Adeline Braux, Asel Dolotkeldieva, Olivier Ferrando, Sophie Hohmann, Nafisa Khusenova, Erica Marat, Sophie Massot, Saodat Olimova, Sébastien Peyrouse, Luisa Piart, Madeleine Reeves, Elena Sadovskaya.

A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, focusing largely on the unique melting pot of cultures that this region has produced over millennia. Golden describes the traders who braved the heat and cold along caravan routes to link East Asia and Europe; the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors, the largest contiguous land empire in history; the invention of gunpowder, which allowed the great sedentary empires to overcome the horse-based nomads; the power struggles of Russia and China, and later Russia and Britain, for control of the area. Finally, he discusses the region today, a key area that neighbors such geopolitical hot spots as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.

With thirty-two original chapters reflecting cutting edge content throughout developed and developing Asia, Women of Asia: Globalization, Development, and Gender Equity is a comprehensive anthology that contributes significantly to understanding globalization’s transformative process and the resulting detrimental and beneficial consequences for women in the four major geographic regions of Asia—East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Eurasia/Central Asia—as it gives "voice" to women and provides innovative ways through which salient understudied issues pertaining to Asian women’s situation are brought to the forefront.

* Critical retrospective on the first decades of the transition from planned to free-market economy in Central Asia * Contributions from both Eastern and Western scholars * Includes both theoretical NGO research and practical examples taken from experience During the important, early years of post-socialist transformation in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia, the Open Society Institute/Soros Foundation was arguably the largest and most influential network in the region. How NGOs React follows the Soros Foundation's educational reform programs there and raises larger questions about the role of NGOs in a centralist government, relationships NGOs have with international donors and development banks, and strategies NGOs use to interpret global reforms locally. The authors, all former or current educational experts of the Soros Foundation, analyze the post-socialist reform package at the country-level, highlighting the common features such as decentralization, privatization, vouchers and liberalization of the textbook publishing market. They look at the global reforms and their variations as they were transferred to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan over the past decade. A unique combination of perspectives from Western as well as Eastern scholars based in the region makes this collection an essential retrospective on key processes involved in transforming educational systems since the collapse of the socialist bloc. Contributors: Tatiana Abdushukurova, Erika Dailey, Valentin Deichman, Natsagdorj Enkhtuya, Alexandr Ivanov, Saule Kalikova, Elmina Kazimzade, Anna Matiashvili and Armenuhi Tadevosyan.

In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.

This anthology brings together studies of post-colonial, post-Cold War, Central Eurasia. This part of the world is in transition to independent statehood, nation building and the release of market forces. The objective of the work is to better comprehend the process of state-nation building.