敦煌曹氏族属与曹氏归义军政权

曹氏在汉宋之际的敦煌是著名的姓氏 ,对两汉与五代、宋朝敦煌地方政治影响极大。敦煌曹氏的渊源有二 ,来自中原内地与来自中亚粟特。本文对汉代以来胡汉两支曹氏的渊源和势力发展进行考察 ,在此基础上推考归义军节度使曹议金的族属郡望 ,最终认定曹议金家族是中亚粟特曹氏的后裔 ,五代初年夺取归义军节度使后冒充谯郡曹氏 ,藉以抬高门第 ;曹氏归义军政权实际上是以粟特人为主建立的政权 ,而此一时期莫高窟藏经洞所体现的敦煌文化正是粟特族为主的各民族共同创造的     

The Aral Sea Basin Crisis: Transition and Environment in Former Soviet Central Asia

The haunting picture of a disappearing Aral Sea is just part of an overall environmental crisis in the Aral Sea Basin, where millions of people are dependent on agricultural production around the flows of two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Forced cotton cultivation in the former Soviet Union, in the context of inefficient agricultural organization and production, caused water mismanagement, salinization, water and soil contamination, erosion and the desiccation of the Aral Sea. In the post-Soviet era of ‘transition’, the governments of the Central Asian states and international donors have tried to mitigate the impact of the crisis and contain its scope. Resource-based tensions in the region reflect national (and sometimes ethnic) interests vested in the crucial agricultural sectors that provide foreign exchange and food. Although the Central Asian governments are gradually formulating regional water, land and salt management strategies, the room for manoeuvre that exists to implement policies which would immediately improve the environment, such as efficient water management and sustainable land use, is not being sufficiently utilized.     

Poverty in Transition: An Ethnographic Critique of Household Surveys in Post-Soviet Central Asia

Post-Soviet transitions have prompted a search for new policy tools and methods of data collection. The shift from universal welfare provision under the Soviet system to targeted assistance and poverty monitoring has stimulated a new interest in the measurement of living standards and poverty lines. This has promoted the use of quantitative techniques and sample surveys (household surveys, in particular) as privileged tools for the collection of policy-relevant information. This paper contends that survey techniques have particular limitations as research tools in an environment where local level case studies are scarce and where a host of new socio-economic processes are creating fundamental shifts in the landscape of social provision, redistribution and employment. These limitations are illustrated by drawing upon a household survey conducted by the author in four villages from two regions in Uzbekistan, Andijan and Kashkadarya, between October 1997 and August 1998. The ambiguities surrounding five basic concepts, those of household, employment, access to land, income and expenditure are discussed in detail, as are the changes in their contents and meanings in the context of transition. The gender differentiated outcomes of current changes and their possible implications are highlighted throughout the text. The conclusion suggests that Uzbekistan finds itself at an uneasy juncture where the policies deployed to ‘cushion’ the social costs of transition may reach the limits of their sustainability. A more contextually sensitive approach to the mechanisms that generate new forms of vulnerability and the use of qualitative and longitudinal methodologies are essential to an adequate monitoring of further changes.     

Han China in Central Asia

A.F.P. Hulsewé. China in Central Asia, the Early Stage: 125 B.C.-A.D. 23. An annotated translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty, with an Introduction by M.A.N. Loewe. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979, Pp. viii, 273, map. (70 guilders)     

Regionalism, Iran and Central Asia

A combination of revolutionary ideology, trouble with neighbours and location in the Middle East, where regionalism is moribund, make the Islamic Republic of Iran an unlikely enthusiast for regional coalition-building. The impetus towards regionalism derives first and foremost from geopolitical considerations–the need to counter the US government's efforts to isolate Iran–but also from domestic dynamics; the regionalist discourse has lent an acceptable ideological colouring to an increasingly pragmatic foreign policy.
Iran's neighbours, however, share neither its geopolitical predicament nor its ideological complexion, and the actual implementation of Tehran's regionalist agenda has been based on functional cooperation, rather than on geopolitics and ideology. Trade promotion and the development of transport infrastructure to link Central Asia and the Caspian to Turkey and the Persian Gulf have been the most appealing areas for northern neighbours, and dominate the agenda of the Economic Cooperation Organization, Iran's main vehicle for multilateral cooperaton with Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Tehran's 1992 proposal for a Caspian Sea Cooperation Organization has so far been stymied by the littoral states' well-publicized disagreements over the sea's legal status, though their numerous multilateral meetings and handful of agreements suggest that the idea has potential in the medium–term.
Notwithstanding the meagre tangible results to date, Iran's tilt towards regionalism has had a positive impact. It has helped to rehabilitate the Islamic Republic in the eyes of its neighbours, contributed to the evolution of policy debate at home and prepared the ground for future multilateral cooperation.     

The United States and Regionalism in Central Asia

This article examines the record of American policy towards regional cooperation in Central Asia. It begins with the determinants of regionalism and the role of external states therein. It then considers the nature of American interests in Central Asia. This is followed by a historical account of the three stages of American policy towards the region. The article argues that regional cooperation has not been a significant aspect of US policy. Instead US policy-makers have preferred bilateral relations or multilateral structures (e.g. the Partnership for Peace, the GUUAM [Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova] group) which draw the region's states beyond its boundaries. US policy tends to reduce incentives for regional actors to develop multilateral cooperation. It may also encourage competitive regionalist agendas on the part of other interested major powers (Russia and China).     

The Tax Policy Regime in American Politics, 1941-1951

This article analyzes the inception of the mass income tax during the Second World War as a decisive moment when relations among state, market, and citizens were reconfigured in a durable way. The state institutionalized the means to devise tax reform–a policy regime–during this formative period of partisan conflict over macroeconomic management strategies. The approach to policy analysis presented here illuminates the process by which political choices are made among competing policy visions embedded in state agencies. This study demonstrates that a policy regime perspective, when applied in a complementary way with interest-driven or institutionalist accounts, is best equipped to bring important but tacit constraints into clear analytical focus.     

Strategic Reassertion in Russia's Central Asia Policy

President Putin has presided over a proactive, hard-headed and relatively effective Russian policy in Central Asia and the Caspian region since at least the summer of 2002, which aims both to support Russia's revival as an economic and military power and to help tackle at source new security challenges from the volatile south. In line with rising domestic nationalist thinking and the growing influence of officials with a security service or military background, Moscow has been searching for a rationale to support a more assertive policy in the region. Meanwhile, Russian and American views on the scope and conduct of the war on terrorism have diverged in important respects. Russia lacks an overall regional strategy for Central Asia, but is seeking to mesh together geopolitical, security and energy policy goals. It is seeking to reinvigorate its military–security influence in Central Asia under the banner of counterterrorism and at the same time has achieved long-term agreements for energy transit and purchases that make Central Asian states increasingly dependent on Russia in energy policy. Overall, a dynamic of competition is displacing the potential for cooperation between Russia and western states, especially the United States, in Central Asia. The prospects for a fully-fledged strategic partnership in the region are fading but the reality of security threats from Afghanistan and within Central Asia might eventually reconcile Moscow to a lower profile but long-term western strategic presence in the region.     

Geography in the Republics of Central Asia

A review of the last 50 years of geographic research in the four Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, and Turkmenia, where the dominant desert and mountain landscapes impose a specific character on geographic investigations. Physical geography has tended to focus on glaciation in mountains and on surface runoff in the desert as potential sources of water for irrigation. Economic geography has emphasized the utilization of desert pastures.     

Explaining recent fertility increase in Central Asia

After a swift decline during the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, period fertility rates have either been stagnating or increasing in all countries of Central Asia. In this paper, I investigate the role of data artifacts, population composition effect, economic context and shifting tempo effect in explaining fertility changes in Central Asia. The analysis is primarily based on comparison of fertility data from the vital registration system with estimates from other data sources. The results show that the recent changes to be real and not a result of data artifact. The most plausible explanations are to be found in the three other non-exclusive factors (population composition effect, economic context and shifting tempo effect) that contributed jointly and simultaneously to push up the period fertility rates in the region.     

Changing security threat perceptions in Central Asia

This article discusses the current process of securitisation in Central Asia and identifies its convoluted and faulty nature as a factor impeding collective security action in the region. It uses the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) as an explanatory tool and posits that security discourse in — and about — the five former Soviet republics is dominated by geopolitical grand strategy on the one hand and by particularist concerns about lack of democracy or transnational threats on the other. Issues of conventional security involving two or more states, such as territorial disputes or resource management, are pushed aside and rarely securitised at the official level. The article outlines conceptual and institutional reasons for this bias, and argues that unless inter-state tensions are properly analysed, debated and addressed, the prospects for security and stability in the region will remain grim.