Bahodir Sidikov

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Bahodir Sidikov (born July 19, 1970 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) is a journalist, consultant and researcher in Oriental and Central Asian Studies. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

Contents

[edit] Biographical Sketch

Sidikov was born in 1970 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He attended the Russian-speaking school in Tashkent with a focus on the German language. He studied Arabic, Hebrew, Islamic Studies, history, and geography of the Middle East at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the State University of St. Petersburg, Russia. He earned his MA in Oriental Languages and Literature with a thesis on "Learning Materials for the Arabic Dialect of Baghdad". He returned to the independent state of Uzbekistan and worked in various state departments. From 1996 to 1997 he was the personal secretary of the Uzbek Ambassador in Bonn, Germany. After his return to Uzbekistan he made researches in Cairo about "Islamic Movements in Central Asia" and was Senior Lecturer at the University of International Diplomacy and Economy, Tashkent. As a research fellow at the Institute of History, Tashkent, he surveyed in 2001 the "Social Role and Function of Ethnoreligious Minorities in Islamic Societies of Central Asia" at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 2001 he come back to Germany with a PhD fellowship and got in touch with the well known and very influential ‘grand dame’ of the German Oriental Studies Annemarie Schimmel and Russian logician, sociologist and writer Aleksandr Zinovyev. As a PhD at (Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg) he works as a research fellow at the Institute for East European Studies (Free University of Berlin). He was a participant in the project "Accounting for State-Building, Stability and Conflict: The Institutional Framework of Caucasian and Central Asian Transitional Societies". In this position he made individual fieldwork in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan about Strategic Groups and State in Post-Soviet States. From 2005-2006 he was a research fellow in the project "Soviet Historiography of Tsarist Colonialism: Central and Regional Perspectives". Actually he works as an independent consultant, trainee for intercultural relationships, lecturer and freelance journalist.

[edit] ”An unmeasurably region”

In this study Sidikov inspects the construction and re-construction perception of German researchers, authors and travellers to Central Asia. In discussion with the thesis of Orientalism of Edward Said he asked, if the perception of Central Asia is another than the French or British. He collected different perceptions, judgments, minds and values about the Inhabitants and landscapes, the region and behaviours. He showed, that the given reports and analysis were prevailed from judgements and prejudices of the social-cultural background of the author. There are no differences between the perspectives of French, British or German researchers on other parts of the Orient.

[edit] ”An unknown range”

Sidikov studied and analyzed the suppositions and reasons of the actual social and political crises and disasters in the states of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan). His focus is on the one side the roots in the Soviet time before the independence of the states. At the other side he analyzes the problems of the region as a clash of interests from Russia, China, USA and the European Community. His third focus is to observe the processes of nation-building and nationalism, which are, in the meaning of Sidikov, not completed yet and the roots of many problems. He presents the modern “western” public with his works and analysis a new and different look on an unknown range, named Central Asia.

[edit] Central Asia in discussion

A new perspective on the processes of nation-building presents Sidikov with a comparative study on history textbooks. He wants to examine the description of nation-building in the schoolbooks of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. The question of the ‘Who’, ‘How’ and ‘Why’ are the central topics of the research. Are the young nations real or imagined communities? Are there differences between the idea of nation in the states and why?

Another project discuss the idea of the clan-theory on the network-building in Azerbaijan. Sidikov denied the idea that networks feeds from clans. He wants to show that they are more complex and polyvalent phenomena. The analytic frame of this study is the sociology of the by Pierre Bourdieu. The connection between the structure of the political and social field on one hand side, and the habitus on the other side is the focus of the study.

A third project is to examine the influence of the post-Soviet historiography on the nation-building processes in the young states of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan).

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

  • "Eine unermessliche Region". Deutsche Bilder und Zerrbilder von Mittelasien (1852-1914), Berlin 2003.

[edit] Articles

  • Barth, Yeraz and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Inventing a New Sub-Ethnic Identity?, in: Remaking Identities on the margins of New Europe. Cultures and Histories in Caucasus and Baltic States, ed. by Ts. Darieva und W. Kaschuba (in print).
  • “Shadow State” and Strategic Groups in the Post-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia (in print).
  • Deutsche Mittelasienstudien (1852-1914) im Lichte der Orientalismus-Diskussion, in: Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 20 (2006), 19-27.
  • New or Traditional? “Clans”, Regional Groupings, and State in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan, in: Berliner Osteuropa Info 21 (2004), 68-74.
  • ‘Sufism and Shamanism’ , in: Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, Vol. 1, ed. by M. N. Walter etc., Santa Barbara etc. 2004, 238-242.
  • ‘Uzbek Shamanism’ , in: Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, Vol. 2, ed. by M. N. Walter etc., Santa Barbara etc. 2004, 646-649.
  • ‚Middle Asia’ , in: Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens (online), Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt.
  • ‚Central Asia’ , in: Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens (online), Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt.
  • Central Asia: Islam or Communism?, in: The Times of Central Asia 32/01.
  • Aids Outbreak in Uzbekistan, in: The Times of Central Asia 49/00.
  • Uzbekistan Takes First Hesitant Steps Into the Virtual World, in: The Times of Central Asia 43/00.
  • Would Uzbekistan Benefit from Tourism? , in: The Times of Central Asia 41/00.
  • Tajik and Uzbek: Forever Brothers?, in: The Times of Central Asia 37/00.
  • Lottery-Like Economics , in: The Times of Central Asia 35/00.
  • Enviromental Hazards Facing Tashkent , in: The Times of Central Asia 33/00.
  • Water War in Central Asia? , in: The Times of Central Asia 33/00.

[edit] Analysis

  • FAST Update Azerbaijan. Quarterly Risk Assessment. May to October 2006. Swiss Peace, Bern 2006.[1]
  • FAST Update Azerbaijan. Quarterly Risk Assessment. February to May 2006. Swiss Peace, Bern 2006.[2]
  • Azerbaijan. A study for Bertelsmann-Stiftung / Conference of Democracies. Gütersloh/Berlin 2006.

[edit] External Links

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