Boundaries of ethnic identity in Central Asia: titular and Russian perceptions of ethnic commonalities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Using data from nationally representative public opinion surveys done in 2005 in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the authors focus on the titular groups as well as the Russians in both countries and provide assessments of their perceived ethnic commonalities with one another and with various other ethnic groups, including Uzbeks and Jews in each country. The results indicate that there are hierarchies of intergroup differentiations that help to delineate the boundaries of ethnic identities in both countries. Multivariate analyses show the systematic effects of regional variables in shaping these ethnic boundaries. The basic topographies of the boundaries are consistent with the effects of social identification processes and the relative power and social standings of the different target ethnic groups across the regions. Our results lend clear support to the ethnic boundaries paradigm by underscoring that ethnic boundaries can be independent of objective commonalities and can vary according to contexts.

Keywords:

• Ethnic identity
• ethnic boundaries
• ethnic commonality
• ethnic hierarchy
• intergroup differentiation
• Central Asia

Acknowledgements

This paper is a revised version of a presentation at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society on 20 September 2008 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The authors greatly appreciate the permission to use the data collected on behalf of the Office of Opinion Research within the US Department of State, as well as the helpful comments of Elaine El Assal, Matteo Fumagalli, Alvin Richman, Anara Tabyshalieva, Andreas Wimmer, the anonymous reviewers, and the Editors. Any errors, omissions, or misinterpretations remain the sole responsibility of the authors. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Department of State or the US Government.

Notes

1. Details on the multi-stage random probability designs used to select these samples and the subsequent weighting are available from the authors upon request.

2. The consistency of these results lends substantial credibility to the presence of compelling social processes beyond the interviewing situations; nevertheless, there may be some concern about whether the ethnicity of the interviewer might have played some role in suppressing or enhancing various perceived ethnic commonalities. Unfortunately, because the ethnicity of the interviewer was not recorded in our databases, there is no way to provide a direct examination of this concern. Further research is needed to determine the impacts of ethnicity of the interviewer on reports of perceived ethnic commonalities.

3. The full definitions of all of these predictor variables plus a table showing the categories of each variable and their frequency distributions are available from the authors upon request. Our focus on region is not intended to deny the importance of the other variables, but space limitations foreclose any serious discussion of each of the separate controls. Tables showing the MCA analyses incorporating the results for all of the controls are also available from the authors upon request.

4. The means for the Jewish commonality follow a complex and unusual pattern. However, any conclusion regarding this pattern needs to be treated with caution because the selective drop in the case base for the Jewish commonality in the rural North may have yielded some sample selection bias created by nonresponse.

5. The MCA coefficients in Kyrgyzstan are not strictly comparable to their counterparts in Kazakhstan because the typology in Kyrgyzstan melds the impacts of two variables (region and urbanicity) while the typology in Kazakhstan uses only a single variable (region) which is subjected to urbanicity as a control in the multivariate analysis.