List of figures Preface Introduction: Central peripheries Part 1. Writing the national biography 1. The longue durée of national storytelling: Soviet roots and the quest for ethnogenesis 2. Centrality and autochthonism: Uzbekistan's nationhood 3. Aryan mythology and ethnicism: Tajikistan's nationhood 4. National unity versus pluralism: Kyrgyzstan's nationhood 5. Reborn nation, born-again religion? The case of Tengrism Part 2. Politics and the Nazarbayev order 6.

Hybridity in nation-building: the case of Kazakhstan 7. Ideology of the 'crossroads': Eurasianism from Suleimenov to Nazarbayev 8. Media and the nation: searching for Kazakhness in televisual production 9. Language and ethnicity: the landscape of Kazakh nationalism 10. Generational changes: the Nazarbayev Generation Conclusion: The missing pieces of Central Asia's nationhood puzzle References Index.