The emergence of global history has been one of the more notable features of academic history over the past three decades. Although historians of disease were among the pioneers of one of its earlier incarnations—world history—the recent “global turn” has made relatively little impact on histories of health, disease, and medicine. Most continue to be framed by familiar entities such as the colony or nation-state or are confined to particular medical “traditions.” This article aims to show what can be gained from taking a broader perspective. Its purpose is not to replace other ways of seeing or to write a new “grand narrative” but to show how transnational and transimperial approaches are vital to understanding some of the key issues with which historians of health, disease, and medicine are concerned. Moving on from an analysis of earlier periods of integration, the article offers some reflections on our own era of globalization and on the emerging field of global health.

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A Global Perspective: Reframing the History of Health, Medicine, and Disease.

Increasing numbers of citizens from the eastern and southern regions of the USSR sought and obtained residence in the ‘two capitals’ of Leningrad and Moscow following the Second World War. This article exposes the uniqueness of late Soviet periphery to core migration, all the while placing it within a global post-colonial framework. Soviet policies that promoted the ‘friendship of peoples’ spared migrants from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asian regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic the ethnic violence and ghettoization that accompanied parallel movements to Western industrial capitals. Most appreciated the opportunities that awaited them, even as social spending on the periphery forestalled substantial economic migration. This paper argues nonetheless that subtle tensions existed on official and unofficial levels. Oral histories as well as sociological surveys demonstrate that nationalist and racist ideas and encounters challenged the friendship of peoples. Migration emerg...

Druzhba Narodov or second-class citizenship? Soviet Asian migrants in a post-colonial world

Introduction: Central Asia and Everyday Life Part One: Background Introduction 1.Turks and Tajiks in Central Asian History Scott Levi Part Two: Communities Introduction 2. Everyday Life among the Turkmen Nomads Adrienne Edgar 3. Recollections of a Hazara Wedding in the 1930s Robert Canfield 4. Trouble in Birglich Robert Canfield 5. A Central Asian Tale of Two Cities:Locating Lives and Aspirations in a Shifting Post-Soviet Cityscape Morgan Y. Liu Part Three: Gender Introduction 6. The Limits of Liberation: Gender, Revolution, and the Veil in Everyday Life in Soviet Uzbekistan Douglas Northrop 7. The Wedding Feast: Living the New Uzbek Life in the 1930s Marianne Kamp 8. Practical Consequences of Soviet Policy and Ideology for Gender in Central Asia and Contemporary Reversal Elizabeth Constantine 9. Dinner with Akhmet Greta Uehling Part Four: Performance and Encounters Introduction 10. An Ethnohistorical Journey through Kazakh Hospitality Paula A. Michaels 11. Konstitutsiya Buzildi: Gender Relations in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan Peter Finke and Meltem Sancak 12. Fat and All That: Good Eating the Uzbek Way Russell Zanca 13. Public and Private Celebrations: Uzbekistan's National Holidays Laura Adams 14. Music Across the Kazakh Steppe Michael Rouland Part Five: Nation, State, and Society in the Everyday Introduction 15. The Shrinking of the Welfare State: Central Asians'Assessments of Soviet and Post-Soviet Governance Kelly McMann 16. Going to School in Uzbekistan Shoshana Keller 17. Alphabet Changes in Turkmenistan: State, Society, and the Everyday, 1904-2004 Victoria Clement 18. Travels in the Margins of the State: Everyday Geography in the Ferghana Valley Borderlands Madeleine Reeves Part Six: Religion Introduction 19. Divided Faith: Trapped between State and Islam in Uzbekistan Eric McGlinchey 20. Sacred Sites, Profane Ideologies: Religious Pilgrimage and the Uzbek State David Abramson and Elyor Karimov 21. Everyday Negotiations of Islam in Central Asia: Practicing Religion in the Uyghur Neighborhood of Zarya Vostoka in Almaty, Kazakhstan Sean Roberts 22. Namaz, Wishing Trees, and Vodka: The Diversity of Everyday Religious Life in Central Asia David Montgomery 23. Christians as the Main Religious Minority in Central Asia Sebastien Peyrouse

Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present

This article examines the place of interethnic intimacy in post-Stalinist discourse and policy on nationality and modernity in Central Asia. Soviet theorists deemed marriages between Central Asian Muslims and Europeans to be an important force for ‘modernizing’ Central Asia and bringing this historically ‘backward’ region into the Soviet mainstream. Because mixed marriage was thought to promote gender equality, the discourse of intermarriage was closely linked to Soviet policies of female emancipation. Rising rates of mixed marriage were also considered evidence of progress in the consolidation of a unified ‘Soviet people’, whose imminent appearance became an article of faith in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. However, the twin goals of intermarriage—modernization and ethnic assimilation—were undermined by the increasing institutionalization and primordialization of ethnic identities in the post-war Soviet Union.

Eva Maurer

Papers

BOOK REVIEWS - Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia