| This thesis examines the role of securitizing discourses in the Karimov regime's nation-building project since Uzbekistan's independence in 1991, which has been termed the "Ideology of National Independence". It examines how has the elite vision of Uzbekistani identity been discursively constructed, gendered, and deployed. Temporally, it focuses on the period from 1999 to present, and examines in particular detail the case of the Andijon uprising in May 2005. The thesis employs a critical geopolitics theoretical framework, but also draws from feminist theory. It is situated within several cross-disciplinary literatures, which include political geography, feminist geography and international relations, nationalism studies, and Central Asian regional studies. Methodologically, it employs discourse analysis, drawing data from official texts (e.g. government publications, speeches, interviews, and state actions) and popular texts (e.g. mass media, music videos, state rituals, and secondary reports). Lacking a field work component, the thesis instead places a strong emphasis on regional and historical contexts, in addition to an analysis of the contemporary geopolitical context of the Karimov regime's nation-building project. The analysis chapters provide a background to the Andijon uprising, by presenting the ways in which securitizing discourses have been applied to the "Islamist threat" in Uzbekistan, demonstrating how Uzbekistan's engagement with the US-led "War on Terror" has validated and furthered a "culture of war" in the country. This is elaborated through the case of the Andijon uprising, by comparing explanatory scripts in Uzbekistan with those of the United States. It points to way in which the domestic environment (in which national identity is militarized, etc.), as crafted through the Karimov regime's nation-building and self-legitimating project, has set the stage for the scripting of domestic responses to the uprising. It also suggests the centrality of the geopolitical context in the development of the regime's nation-building strategies and the multi-scalar responses to the Andijon crisis. |
