CASI Conference

September 9, 2016

Central Asian Studies Institute (CASI) Fifth Annual Conference

Contesting Nature in Central Asia

American University of Central Asia

September 16-17, 2016

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

The relationship between humans and their environments is central to both natural and social sciences, yet the fundamental distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is a major reason behind segregating these bodies of knowledge into two distinct fields. ‘Nature’ is often utilized as a shorthand for the unchanging laws of existence, the inexorable materiality of being, for inevitability, determinism and teleology. As such, the notion of ‘nature’ has been challenged by many scholars as a ‘social construction’, whereby neither humans nor their environments are ever fully ‘natural’ or ‘cultural’, but rather are mutually constituted through a network of complex interactions.

The working languages of the conference are English and Russian.