Bahodir Sidikov

Bahodir Sidikov (born July 19, 1970 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) is a journalist, consultant and researcher in Central Asian Studies. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

Biographical Sketch

Sidikov was born in 1970 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He attended a Russian-speaking school in Tashkent with a focus on the German language. He studied Arabic, Hebrew, Islamic Studies, history, and geography of the Middle East at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the State University of St. Petersburg, Russia. He returned to Uzbekistan and worked in various state departments. In 2001 he came back to Germany and met Annemarie Schimmel and Aleksandr Zinovyev. He get his PhD from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and worked as a research fellow at the Institute for East European Studies (Free University of Berlin) in various projects. As a research fellow of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung (Düsseldorf) he works at the Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research. His focus of research is on the process of post-Soviet nation-building and élite formation in Central Asia and South Caucasus. His further fields of interests are informal networks, historiographical concept-building and political Islam. Bahodir Sidikov has also worked as an expert with the World Bank, the Swiss Peace Foundation and the Bertelsmann Foundation, and as a tutor for Uzbekistan at InWent GmbH.

Research

PhD thesis

In his PhD dissertation "Eine unermeßliche Region" Sidikov inspects the construction and re-construction perception of German researchers, authors and travellers to Central Asia. In discussion with the thesis of Orientalism of Edward Said he asked, if the perception of Central Asia is another than the French or British. He collected different perceptions, judgments, minds and values about the Inhabitants and landscapes, the region and behaviours. He showed, that the given reports and analysis were prevailed from judgements and prejudices of the social-cultural background of the author. There are no differences between the perspectives of French, British or German researchers on other parts of the Orient.

Other work on Central Asia

Sidikov studied and analyzed the suppositions and reasons of the present social and political crises and disasters in the states of Central Asia (mainly Uzbekistan, with some outlooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan). His focus is on the one side the roots in the Soviet time before the independence of the states. At the other side he analyzes the problems of the region as a clash of interests from Russia, China, U.S. and the European Community. His third focus is to observe the processes of nation-building and nationalism, which are, according to Sidikov, not completed yet and the roots of many problems. He presents the modern “western” public with his works and analysis a new and different look on an unknown range, named Central Asia.

At the Georg Eckert Institute Bahodir Sidikov works on a project that deals with the construction of history and nation-building in history textbooks aimed at class 7-11 in post-Soviet Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The project's goal is to examine the historiographical discourse about the "emergence" and the "past" of so-called "titular nations" in post-Soviet history textbooks from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with special focus on how - in terms of approaches, methods, contents and models - historiography shapes and conveys post-Soviet nation-building through textbooks.

Another project discusses the idea of the clan theory on network building in Azerbaijan. Sidikov denies the idea that networks feeds from clans. He wants to show that they are more complex and polyvalent phenomena. The analytic frame of this study is the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. The connection between the structure of the political and social field on one hand side, and the habitus on the other side is the focus of the study.

Bibliography

Books

* "Eine unermessliche Region". Deutsche Bilder und Zerrbilder von Mittelasien (1852-1914), Berlin 2003.

Articles

* Barth, Yeraz and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Inventing a New Sub-Ethnic Identity?, in: Remaking Identities on the margins of New Europe. Cultures and Histories in Caucasus and Baltic States, ed. by Ts. Darieva und W. Kaschuba, Frankfurt/Main 2007, 291-311.
* Deutsche Mittelasienstudien (1852-1914) im Lichte der Orientalismus-Diskussion, in: Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 20 (2006), 19-27.
* New or Traditional? “Clans”, Regional Groupings, and State in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan, in: Berliner Osteuropa Info 21 (2004), 68-74.
* ‘Sufism and Shamanism’, in: Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, Vol. 1, ed. by M. N. Walter etc., Santa Barbara etc. 2004, 238-242.
* ‘Uzbek Shamanism’, in: Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, Vol. 2, ed. by M. N. Walter etc., Santa Barbara etc. 2004, 646-649.
* [http://www2.uni-klu.ac.at/eeo/index.php/Mittelasien " ‚Middle Asia’ "] , in: Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens (online), Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt.
* [http://www2.uni-klu.ac.at/eeo/index.php/Zentralasien " ‚Central Asia’ "] , in: Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens (online), Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt.

External links

*PND|124908306

Persondata
NAME= Sidikov, Bahodir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Journalist, consultant and researcher in Central Asian Studies
DATE OF BIRTH=July 19, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH=Tashkent, Uzbekistan
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=