Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy by Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Is the American century over? Joseph Nye is clear and brisk in his response to this self-raised question: “Contrary to those who proclaim a post-American world, we have not entered a post-American world.” A rising China may catch up with the US in total economic size, but the American century, which he dates from 1941, will last to 2041 or beyond. Reviewed by Taehwan Kim, associate professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy and book review co-editor for Global Asia. This volume will be of great intellectual use to readers looking beyond the surface of Central Asian politics to discover the “hybrid character of social reality” and the forces for political change, as well as continuity, in this critical region of the world. Some chapters also illuminate how the Western and communal types of civil society, both present in Central Asia, have more in common than is generally acknowledged: these entities are more oriented toward engaging local communities and “filling gaps” than contesting the state over political issues. Many civil society groups are formed and funded by governments if private, they tend to be supported by international donors and are closely monitored by the authorities. The result is neither a Habermasian civil society, with autonomous groups directly engaging the state in a contest of fundamental ideas, nor a state corporatist model of near-absolute government control, but something in between.

Central Asia, the stage for the 19th-century Great Game between Russia and Britain, is re-emerging as increasing important in global politics as geopolitical contention unfolds among Russia, China, the United States and the European Union, revolving around terrorism, narcotics and hydrocarbons.Ī prominent group of Western and non-Western scholars, in a consensual recognition of differences between Western and non-Western conceptions of civil society, assess in this volume the dilemmas of theorizing about civil society in an authoritarian context.

Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy by Sulmaan Wasif Khan