Locating Central Eurasia’s inherent resilience

Abstract

This article aims to contextualise the inherent resilience of Central Eurasian states through the exploration of their particular history. The main purpose is to ground the ideas of resilience and capacity building in the context of the geography and ecology of Central Eurasia thus confronting the current views of the need for making these communities resilient by borrowing European, Western or global ‘best practice’ in order to achieve stability and development. This paper offers an overview of the history of the region to bring into focus the ‘local’ Central Eurasian milieu. The sophisticated tapestry of understanding, action and strategies developed over centuries has made this region resilient in the face of unpredictability caused by natural and manmade events. This paper seeks to locate how the region has consistently overcome obstacles in its long history of inhabiting a disparate space. We apply the term intercalation here to describe the emergence of a collective identity from strongly interacting ingredients that represents the inherent resilience of the region. Consequently, the focus is on the ways in which communities within the region connect, cooperate and build nodes of interaction to achieve prosperity and development.