"While migration has become an all-important topic of discussion around the globe, mainstream literature on migrants' legal adaptation and integration has focused on case studies of immigrant communities in Western-style democracies. We know relatively little about how migrants …
Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) is a rapidly growing trans-national Islamic movement which aims to revive the classical Islamic Caliphate. Consequently, it has come under increasing international focus as a result of its rapid expansion beyond its traditional heartland of the Middle East in…
This thesis applies role theory to understand how Uzbekistan's bilateral relationships became either conflicting or cooperative between 1991 and 2010. Roles are key elements of social interaction as they describe plausible lines of action in a particular subject-person. They are…
Entrepreneurship has become one of the most researched areas in recent years. Its importance has increased further by the emergence of the ‘transition countries’, the countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. As the transition countries strived to overhaul their e…
The collapse of the Soviet Union left countries of Central Asia to experience political confrontations over territory and water rights. Additionally, independence of Central Asian countries resulted in the change of control systems, including transboundary rivers of the region. …
Uzbeks in the Ferghana Valley of Uzbekistan increasingly perceive themselves to be distinct from their ethnic brethren in other parts of the country. Two predominant approaches in existing literature, which either view identity formation as a process enmeshed in social relations…
This dissertation examines how dissidents exiled from Uzbekistan use the internet to attempt to refute the legitimacy of the Uzbek government, reinterpret Uzbek culture, and resolve their internal conflicts. I argue that contrary to optimistic predictions of social media revolut…
Mobile phones are a global phenomenon and can be readily found in places as technologically disparate as Japan and sub-Saharan Africa. Their sociological impact in these diverse cultural and technological contexts is rich because, on top of serving practical functions related to…
This dissertation explores the construction of the post-communist political imaginary as an attempt to translate the vagaries of liberal democracy in to the certainties of post-Soviet epistemology. The ambiguities of the political are refracted through the "independent Republic …
Patient rights are gaining attention worldwide. ‘Patients’ exist within the health care system. In Uzbekistan, the health system was inherited from the Soviet Union and is now undergoing reforms. This research was conducted as part of a USAID-funded health reform project in rura…
In the last decade, important members of the international aid community - including the UNDP, the World Bank, and USAID - have produced reports that encourage states to devolve administrative power. In response, the Uzbek government promoted its ongoing efforts to empower local…
Why did Tajikistan's state collapse into a five year civil war while state power in Uzbekistan became mired in prebendal politics? Theories drawn from the comparative study of the state, which have tended to concentrate sources of varying state development in the hands of rulers…
This study combines the economic and the political transition literature in order to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the reform processes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan from 1991–2003. Information from interviews conducted with economists from the financial institutions as w…
The surfeit of contentious opinions on the future of Central Asia reflects the complexity of the circumstances surrounding this particular region of the world. Since the Fall of 1991, there has been a plethora of discussion and debate over the region's emerging importance and na…
This dissertation is concerned with the hydrological responses of the upper Amu Darya basin in Central Asia to climatic warming, and the management implications of those responses. The Amu Darya is an important river in three respects: environmentally, as one of the main water s…
The problem. The purpose of this study was to examine characteristics of and intercultural relationships among major cultural groups in formerly Soviet Central Asia, culturally integrating and differentiating processes in the context of the Soviet Union's breakup and possible co…
The central focus of this dissertation is an examination of the new regional character of the five post-Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In the first three post-Soviet years, 1992-1994, the five states gradually …
This dissertation is about Uzbek national culture during the Soviet period through the mid-1990s. Based on 12 months of fieldwork, I conclude that Soviet understandings of culture remain hegemonic among Tashkent's cultural elites. This conclusion is puzzling, given that many Uzb…
This dissertation consists of three essays that examine product differentiation with new technology and allocation of water. The first article present a theoretical model that analyzes the effect of the introduction of functional food produced with new technology. I model consum…