North/South Divisions Revisited

Ok. I’m going to run this by you. I’m still thinking my way through this, so I’d appreciate any comments anyone would like to make. I was talking to Nasiba and Jipar, two of my research assistants, and they mentioned the north/south divisions in the country (see the post on that subject from a couple weeks ago). Jipar is from Issyk Kol, just like the girl I spoke to before. Nasiba is an Uzbek from Osh. They talked about the differences in much the same way as had been addressed in my previous conversation. They insisted that the differences were real, that they had real consequences for the country, and that it was the other side’s fault. As evidence of the divisions, they again spoke about differences in demeanor, manners, and personality. It was especially interesting to hear Nasiba talk about it, because she said that people in the south were just much friendlier than people in the north. It occurred to me that that was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that. I then realized that this was the first time I had ever talked to a southerner about the divisions.

So it got me thinking about why people think in terms of these divisions. It seems pretty clear from the empirical evidence we have that many of the differences people claim--that southerners are more religious/fundamentalist, that they’re more likely to cause dissent or social troubles, etc.--just don’t hold true. You can find people like that all over the country. Why, then, do people say that those differences exist? Let me walk you through my reasoning.

We have two groups: let’s call them Group A and Group B. Group A and Group B look different. We’ll call these their external differences. It’s pretty easy to find reasons for external differences, demographics being the most obvious. People with different skin color, different facial features, or different body types have many readily observable external differences. Other external differences can be due to geography--differences in clothing styles due to climate or proximity of trading partners, say--or to history; people who historically have had ties to other people who tended to dress a certain way tend to take on some of those styles. Differences in demeanor and personality are external differences. In all these cases, you can look at where the group came from of who they live close too, and find pretty convincing explanations for their external differences.

Things get interesting when Group A looks and Group B and sees a difference in actions. Actions are harder to explain than normal external differences because we generally assume actions to have motivations. Group A sees Group B going to mosque regularly and wants to understand why Group B would feel so motivated to do that when many people in Group A seem to not feel so motivated to do that.

What resources does Group A have for interpreting Group B’s behavior? Well, Group B dresses differently than Group A because Group B historically traded with the Middle East while Group A traditionally traded with China and Russia. So if Group B’s external differences came from the Middle East, where did the motivation for group B’s actions come from? That’s right--from the Middle East. Group B does what it does because it is more Middle Eastern, and Middle Easterners tend to be Muslim, so it’s easy to believe that Group B does what it does because it’s more Islamic.

Then Group B does something that Group A really doesn’t like, like participate in a demonstration to protest poor economic conditions. Group A (at least from the perspective of most of the people in Group A) didn’t do that, so why did Group B? Well, Group A already knows that Group B is different and already knows why Group B is different, so that says that they need to attack the source of that difference if they are going to stop the behavior they don’t like. So they ban certain forms of religious organizations for inciting social unrest.

Now skip to Group B’s perspective. They tend to make all the same kinds of assumptions about why Group A is different than them. But when some of them decided to protest the bad economic conditions, it was really because the economic conditions were truly bad. Those people wanted things to be a little better. But now, religious organizations are getting banned. From the perspective of the people who protested, the economic conditions and the religious organizations were two separate issues. Now they are the same issue. Now the bad economic conditions are not just the result of the poor oversight of some government leaders or an economic depression. They are a symptom of anti-Islamic sentiment among Group A. This idea is reinforced by the fact that many fundamentalist organizations specialize in social welfare, like distributing food and clothing. So what is Group B supposed to do? They protect the organizations that are important to them.

Now switch to the people in Group B who didn’t participate in the protests. They just lived their religion like anyone else does--not really thinking about it in terms of larger social issue or policies or anything like that. But now, their organizations are getting banned and other people in Group B are telling them it is because Group A doesn’t like Islam and wants to attack it. So now these previously socially-inactive members of Group B turn into activists to protect organizations that weren’t causing the problems in the first place.

Now switch to yet another subgroup of Group B. These are people who didn’t really consider themselves religious and who weren’t that dissatisfied with their economic conditions. But they did consider themselves Muslims, even if they didn’t always act like it. Well now, apparently, Group A is saying that Islam is bad and that Islamic organizations need to be banned. These luke-warm Group B-ers now turn red hot and say, “You’re not going to tell ME that my religion is bad.” And they start going to mosque more regularly.

So you have now got several major subgroups, subgroups that were previously not unified--coalescing to protect their normal way of acting from the encroachments of what they believe to be a hostile outside group. They want to show solidarity with the cause. How do they do that? They go to mosque more often. They dress more Middle Eastern. They carry prayer beads and pray more regularly, sometimes in public places.

And Group A looks at all of this and says, “See? They’re just more Islamic than we are.”

It seems to me--and I admit that this is based on only a small amount of observation so far--that the so-called cultural differences in the country are much more the result of frictions between the northerners and southerners than the causes.