Ethno-Cultural Images at Central Asia: National Costume

Abstract

Ethno-cultural images (ECI) are not by chance of interest to researchers of various social disciplines: their effectiveness in solving an urgent regional problem which is the search and strengthening of the latest national and state identities in each of the five young independent republics of Central Asia is generally recognized. It is well known that the main resource in the creation of ECI is often historical and cultural heritage of the people, and therefore various ethnographic sources. One of them is a national costume. The article reveals who and for what purpose creates modern national costumes (significantly different from the complexes of traditional “ethnic clothing” of the past), what are their new functions inside and outside the state. Author notes the coexistence of two types of ECI in the modern mass culture of Central Asia. The distribution area of the first type is associated with large historical and cultural areas that developed in ancient times (such as Semirechye, Ferghana, Khorezm, Sogd, Margiana, etc.), and, of course, do not coincide with the borders of modern states. The population of each such historical and cultural area had its own local complexes of traditional clothing, which were the ECIs of these real and spontaneously formed cultural communities. Fragments of such images have partially preserved to the present. The second type of modern Central Asian ECI is represented by the latest “national costumes” that combine the features of modern “European” and generalized local traditional clothing. The creation of it began in Soviet times, but now their transformation has intensified, and the function is much clearer – this type of ECI serves only as a tool for constructing new national and state identities in each republic.