ABSTRACT
The origins of sociology in Kyrgyzstan – when, where and why the field came into being as a ‘field of knowledge, academic discipline and professional practice’ (Isaev 1999a) – is largely a hermeneutical question which depends on how sociology itself is defined. Founding narratives have therefore become matters of contention amongst Kyrgyzstani sociologists since the republic’s independence as rival histories of the field’s development emerged in the construction of a new disciplinary identity and competition in a new professional market. Some, predominately those trained by or associated with the late Asanbek Tabaldiev, claim that his sociological laboratory established within the Department of Philosophy and Historical Materialism at the Kirgiz State University (KSU, later the Kyrgyz National University or KNU) in 1966 was the first sociological laboratory in the republic and that therefore he should be considered the ‘founding father’ of sociology. Those affiliated with Kusein Isaev argue that his laboratory, opened in the Department of Scientific Communism at the Frunze Polytechnic Institute (FPI) in 1983, was the first ‘national’ sociologist and that he therefore deserves to be called ‘father of Kyrgyz sociology’. Others, including Isaev himself and outside observers and younger scholars, argue that sociology had been stagnant from the 1960s (Blum 1993) and that opportunities for its development only emerged during perestroika (Isaev 1998b; Isaev et al. 1994b).
