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Enduring the Test of Time: Understanding Ancient Silk Roads Cities Through 'Urban Cosmopolitanism'

经受住时间的考验：通过“城市世界主义”理解古代丝绸之路城市

基本信息

批准号：
ES/V012681/1
负责人：
Aeron O'Connor
金额：
$ 12.68万
依托单位：
University College London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2020
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2020 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV012681%2F1
关键词：
Enduring Test Time Understanding Ancient

项目摘要

This research takes an ethnographic approach to the historical endurance of Silk Roads cities and their ways of life as they have witnessed the rise and fall of many empires, and brings this into dialogue with present-day concerns for urban sustainability in the face of climate change.The project builds on my PhD which re-examined how Central Asia's oldest and longest-inhabited cities, Samarqand and Bukhara, were impacted by the Bolshevik Revolution and how these cities' cultural elites negotiated Soviet agendas. While the Soviet Union set out to persecute bourgeois intellectuals and demote old-guard cities for ideal socialist ones (Kassymbekova 2016), this project highlights how ancient Samarqandi-Bukharan city life and elites survived Soviet agendas and persecution by migrating, from1920 on, to Dushanbe, a village of 3,000 inhabitants. Once there, these displaced urbanites collaborated with Soviet ideology to build a city that could house their centuries-old ways of life under socialism. Dushanbe quickly grew into the capital city of the newly-formed Tajik SSR and the only Soviet capital with no prior urban history. I conceptualise this mobility of people and ways of life from the two cities as a form of 'urban cosmopolitanism': a fluidity of place and urbanism across Silk Roads territories that makes a city's distinct, local characteristics accessible, mobile and transposable beyond its physical confines (Gould 2015; Zutshi 2015). This builds on the recognition that cities have informed the social and spatial geographies of people across the Islamic, Turkic and Persian worlds much more than nations, a concept only introduced in the past hundred years (Eickelman & Piscatori 1990). This mobility, adaptability and shape-shifting is strongly characteristic of the people and places of the Silk Roads (Marsden 2017) and what I term urban cosmopolitanism.My two journal articles will address specific iterations of this social history and urban cosmopolitanism across Silk Roads territories. The two months of fieldwork will give me a chance to further interview families about this, get feedback from them and local scholars on my conceptualisation of urban cosmopolitanism, and audio-visually record evidence of it. I will also extend my findings into another aspect of urban endurance and longevity: sustainability. While cities grow in size and number around the world today, they are also in danger of dilapidation from climate change: rising sea levels and temperatures are already leading to major cities flooding, experiencing droughts and facing contamination of drinking water. In that process infrastructure and cultural sites are damaged: Venice, for instance, is struggling to rescue damaged artworks and books in recent historic floods. As investments and policies are implemented to develop resilient, adaptable cities to today's changing environment, this project will seek out common language, patterns and ideas between the threat cities face by political upheaval and by climate change.Bukharan and Samarqandi migration to Dushanbe in the face of the Bolshevik Revolution is comparable to many recent urban-to-urban en masse migrations: Syrians urbanites fleeing to Turkish cities, Tehranis fleeing the 1979 Islamic Revolution to Los Angeles, Kabulis fleeing during the Soviet-Afghan War to Peshawar. Meanwhile, the climate crisis is affecting cities across the Silk Roads. On a recent visit to Bukhara, I was shown the physical evidence of rapid degradation this ancient city is experiencing due to rising temperatures, melting glaciers and pollution. Samarqand and Bukhara, both UNESCO Heritage Sites, are today under threat- a different threat to that they faced when the Red Army invaded them a hundred years ago. Both events, however, have and continue to threaten the endurance of these cities, materially and socially: Bukhara and Samarqand today experience flash flooding, destroying their stone foundations and their intangible heritage.

本研究采用民族志的方法来研究丝绸之路城市的历史耐力及其生活方式，因为它们见证了许多帝国的兴衰，并将其与当今面临气候变化的城市可持续性问题进行对话。该项目建立在我的博士学位基础上，重新研究了中亚最古老和居住时间最长的城市撒马尔罕和布哈拉，受到布尔什维克革命以及这些城市的文化精英如何谈判苏联议程的影响。当苏联开始迫害资产阶级知识分子并将保守的城市降级为理想的社会主义城市时（Kassymbekova 2016），这个项目突出了古代撒马尔罕-布哈拉城市生活和精英如何从1920年开始迁移到杜尚别，一个有3,000名居民的村庄，从而在苏联的议程和迫害中幸存下来。一旦到了那里，这些流离失所的城市居民与苏联的意识形态合作，建立了一个城市，可以容纳他们在社会主义下的数百年的生活方式。杜尚别迅速发展成为新成立的塔吉克苏维埃社会主义共和国的首都，也是唯一一个没有城市历史的苏联首都。我将这两个城市的人口和生活方式的流动性概念化为“城市世界主义”的一种形式：丝绸之路地区的地方和城市主义的流动性，使城市独特的地方特色变得容易接近，移动的，并且可以超越其物理范围（Gould 2015; Zutshi 2015）。这是基于这样一种认识，即城市对伊斯兰、突厥和波斯世界人民的社会和空间地理的影响远远超过国家，这一概念是在过去一百年才引入的（Eickelman & Piscatori 1990）。这种流动性，适应性和形状变化是丝绸之路的人和地方的强烈特征（Marsden 2017），我称之为城市世界主义。我的两篇期刊文章将讨论丝绸之路地区的社会历史和城市世界主义的具体迭代。在为期两个月的实地考察中，我将有机会进一步采访这些家庭，从他们和当地学者那里获得关于我的城市世界主义概念的反馈，并将其视听记录下来。我还将把我的发现扩展到城市耐力和长寿的另一个方面：可持续性。虽然当今世界各地的城市规模和数量都在增长，但它们也面临着气候变化的危险：海平面上升和气温上升已经导致主要城市洪水泛滥，经历干旱并面临饮用水污染。在这一过程中，基础设施和文化遗址遭到破坏：例如，威尼斯正在努力抢救在最近的历史性洪水中受损的艺术品和书籍。随着投资和政策的实施，以发展弹性，适应当今不断变化的环境的城市，该项目将寻求共同的语言，模式和思想之间的威胁城市面临的政治动荡和气候变化。布哈拉和Samarqandi迁移到杜尚别面对布尔什维克革命是可比的许多最近的城市到城市的移民：叙利亚城市居民逃往土耳其城市，德黑兰人逃离1979年伊斯兰革命到洛杉矶，喀布尔人在苏联-阿富汗战争期间逃往白沙瓦。与此同时，气候危机正在影响丝绸之路沿线的城市。在最近一次访问布哈拉时，我看到了这座古城由于气温上升、冰川融化和污染而迅速退化的实物证据。撒马尔罕和布哈拉都是联合国教科文组织的遗产，如今正受到威胁--与一百年前红军入侵时所面临的威胁不同。然而，这两个事件已经并将继续在物质和社会上威胁这些城市的持久性：布哈拉和撒马尔罕今天经历了山洪暴发，摧毁了它们的石头基础和非物质遗产。