Disjuncture 2.0: youth, Internet use and cultural identity in Bishkek

Abstract

With the diffusion of networked media like the Internet, Kyrgyz youth are increasingly growing up in a world that is marked by a mix of the local and the global. With the Internet come vast, searchable, global databases, as well as a potential repositioning of users as receivers and producers of content on global networks. Media and cultural studies scholars argue that this change can unsettle social relations and lead to new ways of structuring identities. In this view, emergent identities seem to be more fluid, more unpredictable, and much less dependent on tradition. Using ethnographic techniques, this study brings to light the interaction between cultural identity and Internet use in the everyday lives of urban Kyrgyz youth. The study finds that Kyrgyz youth – catalysed by their ability to carry out searches and to maintain social connections online – are placing their cultural inheritance in a global context and questioning ‘tradition’ as few Kyrgyz have done before. Emergent cultural identities are not necessarily ‘traditionally’ Kyrgyz, nor are they global, Western or ‘Russified’. Instead, youth identities are idiosyncratically local and uniquely ‘in between’.