Embedded in history: A study of Kyrgyz historicity and historical consciousness
In the modern world people are encouraged to view history as processes of significant change in the world and to view the personal and local as less important. Personal history is subordinated to large-scale processes that are explained by scholars and politicians.
While Kyrgyz villagers in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan understand these hierarchies of world history, they hold to other ideas about the place of history in community life. This project investigates how Kyrgyz create and share local understandings through material, social and spiritual practices that embed them in history. Interactions with ancestors and other spirits give direct knowledge of the past, abilities such as healing and divination are inherited within family lineages, and popular Muslim historical ideas circulate in religious activities. People are identified in terms of kin, ancestors and age-mates. In social life people evoke the shared past as foundation for present solidarity, and display the mutual appreciation that promotes good relations for the future.
Émile Durkheim argued that society worships itself through its religion, but this project investigates the ways Kyrgyz construct and sacralize their society through historical knowledge and its expression. This project analyzes how Kyrgyz historical consciousness comes less from European modernity than from indigenous practices and concepts, and historical significance emerges from ongoing engagement of community and individuals.
While Kyrgyz villagers in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan understand these hierarchies of world history, they hold to other ideas about the place of history in community life. This project investigates how Kyrgyz create and share local understandings through material, social and spiritual practices that embed them in history. Interactions with ancestors and other spirits give direct knowledge of the past, abilities such as healing and divination are inherited within family lineages, and popular Muslim historical ideas circulate in religious activities. People are identified in terms of kin, ancestors and age-mates. In social life people evoke the shared past as foundation for present solidarity, and display the mutual appreciation that promotes good relations for the future.
Émile Durkheim argued that society worships itself through its religion, but this project investigates the ways Kyrgyz construct and sacralize their society through historical knowledge and its expression. This project analyzes how Kyrgyz historical consciousness comes less from European modernity than from indigenous practices and concepts, and historical significance emerges from ongoing engagement of community and individuals.
Final report
Scientific final report for project “Embedded in history : A study of Kyrgyz historicity and historical consciousness” (P15-0692:1)
Nathan Light, Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University.
March 10, 2020
This project investigated forms of historicity (historical experience and practices), historical consciousness and historical knowledge in the Talas Valley in Kyrgyzstan. Nathan Light carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan during two extended visits and several briefer visits, and collected a large body of audio and visual materials from 25 sites in the Talas region. Events investigated included rituals, healing practices, local commemorations, and heritage celebrations at sites such as museums, tombs, monuments and sacred natural sites. A wide variety of local experts were consulted about their lives and historical practices, in order to show the varieties of ways people engage with history within professional, community and personal activities. A subset of these received closer study and analysis, based in detailed interviews investigating how the people connect historical knowledge, sites and things, and personal practices.
Through collaborating with Kyrgyz researcher Professor Gulnara Aitpaeva, Nathan Light was also able to join a major project on historical knowledge in other parts of Kyrgyzstan, that included participants from all parts of Central Asia. Aitpaeva visited Uppsala for joint project work, and she also managed a major three-year project on the Central Asian Uprisings and Exodus of 1916. Light participated in meetings and research activities for this project, and made important connections between Talas and the Karakol region (eastern Kyrgyzstan) through this work. As planned, the Embedded in History project contributed funds for Aitpaeva’s project, and supported publishing 1916 project results in open access form. Aitpaeva and Light also collaborated on two publications about the UNESCO listed world heritage site Sulaiman Too in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Important Results
The major results and contributions of the Embedded in History project include a deeper understanding of the complex relations of materiality, temporality, and historical practice. Founded on recent work by specialists in the “anthropology of history”, this new theoretical model examines the problem of “transtemporality”, and takes up a broader perspective on the relationship of human experience and time. It emphasizes the many ways that people overcome time and find ways to move through it, and escape the sense of being stuck in it. The wide variety of ways people connect experiences, events, and objects across time helps them create distinctive historical formations and ways of living in time. The concept of transtemporality emerged initially from Light’s work on a contribution to the volume “Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas”, and serves as a fundamental concept for the monograph from this project.
A related project result is the investigation of how events (and related places and objects) become ideological, practical, or emotional formations for individuals and groups. Such events may consist of personal experiences, those of forebears or those described in myths, legends and other heritage narratives. Transtemporal formations intertwine experience and narrative knowledge into multiple intersecting layers. People engage with these formations to connect powerful pasts to the present and future through their actions and narratives. They combine evidence, convictions, identity, character and actions to produce effects. Investigation of local processes and practices in Talas valley has revealed people engaging with widely varied deep histories (first millennium Kyrgyz origins, Mongol conquest, wars with Dzungars), legendary histories and heroes, Islamic history, and Soviet historical processes, through local, individualized practices. These results have been described in several published and forthcoming publications.
Another key writing project involved close analysis of genealogical knowledge in the Kara Buura district of Talas valley, and associated historical legends in the article “Kyrgyz Genealogies and Lineages” (2018). This work brought new insights into the political and religious history of lineages, and showed how local heroes were involved in major political events over the past 3 centuries. It also showed the diverse versions of lineage knowledge that circulates and is preserved in oral narrative, material representation, and vernacular documentation, and the varied ways community members engage with such knowledge.
New research questions
This project has generated a number of new research questions: the most important relate to transtemporality as a research program, connecting fields of philosophy of history, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, linguistics and narrative studies, and material culture studies. Further theoretical, ethnographic and experimental work is needed to develop this paradigm.
An important dimension of the project involved investigating gendered experience and histories. Kyrgyz women are not usually identified with a single lineage, but marry out of one and into another, with the result that they are less attached to collective lineage histories. Further research should explore more fully the ways Kyrgyz men learn and circulate collective narratives about their identity groups, while women’s more flexible links to lineages give rise to more individualized understandings of persons and pasts.
In 18th century Central Asia, there was a major genocide of Dzungars by Qing China. This history has not been written adequately. The current project uncovered related aspects of local history in Talas, and identified young scholars who are developing research on Dzungar history, one in the US and one in Sweden. It is important to investigate further the potential of using local materials from Talas in combination with documentary and archival research.
The project also traced connections among amateur archeologists and historians from Talas to international scholarly publishing. Although significant professional archeology has been carried out in Talas, the working methods of these amateurs also provide valuable insights and findings. It is important to investigate why these contributions receive little or no attention.
International Activities
The project has strong international dimensions: in addition to the collaboration with Gulnara Aitpaeva mentioned above, it included conference participation at institutions in Russia (Department of Anthropology, Tomsk State University; Russian Geographical Society, St. Petersburg), an extended visit for research and presentations at Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (CNRS/EHESS, Paris), and conference presentations in Copenhagen, Pittsburg, and Milan. Light also presented at seven national and international conferences within Sweden, and organized three conference panels. By invitation of the Svenska Forskningsinstitutet i Istanbul, Light gave the 2016 Jarring Memorial lecture at Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm.
International cooperation for the project included work with French, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, UK, Mexican, and American scholars. Light also participated in ten research conferences and seminars in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and gave three lectures in the same city. He served as advisor for Kyrgyz researcher Meerim Maturaimova, who wrote a study of a developing religious heritage movement in Kyrgyzstan, supported by the Global Centre for Pluralism, Ontario, Canada.
Nathan Light, Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University.
March 10, 2020
This project investigated forms of historicity (historical experience and practices), historical consciousness and historical knowledge in the Talas Valley in Kyrgyzstan. Nathan Light carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan during two extended visits and several briefer visits, and collected a large body of audio and visual materials from 25 sites in the Talas region. Events investigated included rituals, healing practices, local commemorations, and heritage celebrations at sites such as museums, tombs, monuments and sacred natural sites. A wide variety of local experts were consulted about their lives and historical practices, in order to show the varieties of ways people engage with history within professional, community and personal activities. A subset of these received closer study and analysis, based in detailed interviews investigating how the people connect historical knowledge, sites and things, and personal practices.
Through collaborating with Kyrgyz researcher Professor Gulnara Aitpaeva, Nathan Light was also able to join a major project on historical knowledge in other parts of Kyrgyzstan, that included participants from all parts of Central Asia. Aitpaeva visited Uppsala for joint project work, and she also managed a major three-year project on the Central Asian Uprisings and Exodus of 1916. Light participated in meetings and research activities for this project, and made important connections between Talas and the Karakol region (eastern Kyrgyzstan) through this work. As planned, the Embedded in History project contributed funds for Aitpaeva’s project, and supported publishing 1916 project results in open access form. Aitpaeva and Light also collaborated on two publications about the UNESCO listed world heritage site Sulaiman Too in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Important Results
The major results and contributions of the Embedded in History project include a deeper understanding of the complex relations of materiality, temporality, and historical practice. Founded on recent work by specialists in the “anthropology of history”, this new theoretical model examines the problem of “transtemporality”, and takes up a broader perspective on the relationship of human experience and time. It emphasizes the many ways that people overcome time and find ways to move through it, and escape the sense of being stuck in it. The wide variety of ways people connect experiences, events, and objects across time helps them create distinctive historical formations and ways of living in time. The concept of transtemporality emerged initially from Light’s work on a contribution to the volume “Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas”, and serves as a fundamental concept for the monograph from this project.
A related project result is the investigation of how events (and related places and objects) become ideological, practical, or emotional formations for individuals and groups. Such events may consist of personal experiences, those of forebears or those described in myths, legends and other heritage narratives. Transtemporal formations intertwine experience and narrative knowledge into multiple intersecting layers. People engage with these formations to connect powerful pasts to the present and future through their actions and narratives. They combine evidence, convictions, identity, character and actions to produce effects. Investigation of local processes and practices in Talas valley has revealed people engaging with widely varied deep histories (first millennium Kyrgyz origins, Mongol conquest, wars with Dzungars), legendary histories and heroes, Islamic history, and Soviet historical processes, through local, individualized practices. These results have been described in several published and forthcoming publications.
Another key writing project involved close analysis of genealogical knowledge in the Kara Buura district of Talas valley, and associated historical legends in the article “Kyrgyz Genealogies and Lineages” (2018). This work brought new insights into the political and religious history of lineages, and showed how local heroes were involved in major political events over the past 3 centuries. It also showed the diverse versions of lineage knowledge that circulates and is preserved in oral narrative, material representation, and vernacular documentation, and the varied ways community members engage with such knowledge.
New research questions
This project has generated a number of new research questions: the most important relate to transtemporality as a research program, connecting fields of philosophy of history, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, linguistics and narrative studies, and material culture studies. Further theoretical, ethnographic and experimental work is needed to develop this paradigm.
An important dimension of the project involved investigating gendered experience and histories. Kyrgyz women are not usually identified with a single lineage, but marry out of one and into another, with the result that they are less attached to collective lineage histories. Further research should explore more fully the ways Kyrgyz men learn and circulate collective narratives about their identity groups, while women’s more flexible links to lineages give rise to more individualized understandings of persons and pasts.
In 18th century Central Asia, there was a major genocide of Dzungars by Qing China. This history has not been written adequately. The current project uncovered related aspects of local history in Talas, and identified young scholars who are developing research on Dzungar history, one in the US and one in Sweden. It is important to investigate further the potential of using local materials from Talas in combination with documentary and archival research.
The project also traced connections among amateur archeologists and historians from Talas to international scholarly publishing. Although significant professional archeology has been carried out in Talas, the working methods of these amateurs also provide valuable insights and findings. It is important to investigate why these contributions receive little or no attention.
International Activities
The project has strong international dimensions: in addition to the collaboration with Gulnara Aitpaeva mentioned above, it included conference participation at institutions in Russia (Department of Anthropology, Tomsk State University; Russian Geographical Society, St. Petersburg), an extended visit for research and presentations at Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (CNRS/EHESS, Paris), and conference presentations in Copenhagen, Pittsburg, and Milan. Light also presented at seven national and international conferences within Sweden, and organized three conference panels. By invitation of the Svenska Forskningsinstitutet i Istanbul, Light gave the 2016 Jarring Memorial lecture at Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm.
International cooperation for the project included work with French, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, UK, Mexican, and American scholars. Light also participated in ten research conferences and seminars in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and gave three lectures in the same city. He served as advisor for Kyrgyz researcher Meerim Maturaimova, who wrote a study of a developing religious heritage movement in Kyrgyzstan, supported by the Global Centre for Pluralism, Ontario, Canada.