ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on nation-building projects in Central Asian states from discourse and policy perspectives. Central Asian governments have embarked on different paths to construct their nations due to the variation in ethnic composition, socio-economic conditions and political openness of the regimes. The inclusiveness of identity policy also determined the variation of nation-building projects in these countries. While Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have been largely preoccupied with construction of supra-ethnic identity and civic-nation discourse, the other three states – Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan – mainly searched for the Golden Age and glorious ancestors.
