Identity Problems in Global-Local Relations

The categories of identity, identification, state, civil, national, and ethnic identity are being widely used in sociology and other disciplines. These concepts are rather new to Kyrgyzstan's public domain and scientific rhetoric where the interpretation of a nation as citizens of the state started entering political and academic discourse. According to Habermas, post-traditional, post-national identity is "a more sober political identity" that separates itself from the background of the past centred around ethnic history. Modern civil nation is not made spontaneously and at one step. It evolves as a result of efforts aimed at consolidation of civil society and its institutes in their interaction with the state.

Modernization of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan in the context of local-global relations of post-traditional world will be successful only when traditionalism is overcome based on conscious and free choice of civil identity. Dominant role of paternalistic, tribal and religious identities is a feature of traditional societies in which ideology, ethnicity, and religious traditions are main social values. In post-traditional world the values of civil nations are asserted that integrate multi-ethnic communities and ascertain cultural pluralism as a main vector of collective identifications. 'A civil nation' is not developed by chance, but emerges as a result of the efforts to strengthen civil society and its institutes and their interaction with the state. The overall problem of the Kyrgyzstan's identity is a mismatch between its basic elements such as national, ethnic, religious, cultural and political ones. There is a trend for new interpretation of these elements' composition. While the Soviet identity was dominated by the concepts as 'merging', 'destruction', 'formation of unified Soviet people' and others; currently national-patriotic, primarily national-cultural, notions of Kyrgyzstan's identity are growing stronger compared to civil understanding of the phenomenon of Kyrgyz nation.