Waiting for the Road: Emerging Relations and Unfolding Identities in Kyrgyzstan

The thesis is an anthropological study of the complex infrastructural relations that emerge

and unfold around road construction projects in central Kyrgyzstan, based on 11 months of

ethnographic fieldwork between July 2019 and September 2021 in the district of Toghuz-Toro and

along the roads connecting it to other places. The study focuses its analytical and ethnographic

attention on the new Alternative North-South Road of Kyrgyzstan, which runs through Toghuz-

Toro. The Alternative Road, construction of which started in 2014, aims to connect the North and

South of the country, boost economic growth, and become a part of international transport and

economic corridors spanning 433 km. Thus, the district, with its complicated administrative history

and a contradictory sense of cultural belonging and administrative affiliation and its geographic

location provides an interesting angle to examine the infrastructure development in the country

and its implications in the political, socio-cultural, geographical, and bureaucratic spheres.