The hidden integration of Central Asia: the making of a region through technical infrastructures

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article challenges existing interpretations of Central Asia as a geographical entity. Adopting a history of technology approach to defining and analytically ‘constructing’ Central Asia as a region, it scrutinizes the ways the region has been materially created over the years through four types of large technical systems (infrastructures): waterways, railways, electricity grids and natural gas pipelines. This process, which is traced over a period of 150 years, can be thought of as Central Asia’s ‘hidden integration’ (and ‘hidden fragmentation’). The article maps the processes through which different parts of the region have become technically interlinked through the four systems, and Central Asia’s resulting ‘network geography’. It also studies the historical tensions, as they evolved over time, between ‘system-builders’ and ‘border-builders’.