The Spectacular State: Culture and National Identity in Uzbekistan

Laura L. Adams is a lecturer on sociology and co-director of the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus at Harvard University.

"In this finely nuanced study, Laura L. Adams presents the first serious analysis of national identity in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. Focusing on the elaborate spectacles that mark Navro'z, the spring holiday, and Independence Day every year, Adams shows how the Soviet legacy, global norms, and state interests intersect to shape the ideology of national independence. With its sophisticated theoretical underpinnings, The Spectacular State makes an important major contribution to postsocialist and postcolonial studies."--Adeeb Khalid, author of Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia "Better than anyone else I have read on Central Asia, Laura L. Adams takes seriously what the local people say about the ethnographic present, and she uses her sociological background to explain how it is that they come to such conclusions. Yet The Spectacular State is not only a major sociological account of the region; it is also a significant contribution to broader social scientific discourses about the state and culture."--Michael D. Kennedy, author of Cultural Formations of Postcommunism: Emancipation, Transition, Nation, and War "Drawing on her own observations and interviews with artists, intellectuals and bureaucrats, Adams looks at how the Uzbek government has staged massivecultural extravaganzas in an attempt to produce and express national identity." Survival