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Cynthia Werner
Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas 77843-4352
(979) 847-9254
(979) 845-4070 (FAX)
I am a Cultural Anthropologist focusing on economic, environmental and gender issues in Central Asia. I first visited the region of Central Asia in 1987, and I have been doing research in there since 1992. My research questions address how cultural values are shaping the way people in Central Asia respond to post-Soviet structural changes and global processes. Using ethnographic research methods in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, I have conducted research on gift exchange, household networks, shuttle trade, bride abduction, international tourism development, memories of nuclear testing and popular understandings of radiation, and transnational migration.
People often ask me how I ended up doing research in Kazakhstan. There is no simple answer. I do not share an ethnic heritage with any of the groups living in Kazakhstan, and I didn’t spend any time living there as a child. Instead, I grew up in the suburbs of northwest Houston and graduated from McCullough High School in The Woodlands, Texas. As a child, I developed a strong passion for horses and horseback riding. I still remember waiting for each new volume in the Black Stallion series to be released and I have little doubt that my interest in nomadic pastoralists can be traced to a very romanticized image of Bedouin pastoralists portrayed in these books. As a child, I also developed a strong desire to travel to far-flung places of the world, though my only trips outside of the United States as a child were to Canada and Mexico. After finishing high school, I completed a B.A. in Political Science, with a minor in Russian Studies, from Texas Christian University in 1989. My interest in Soviet politics developed during the late years of the Cold War. I became fascinated with how Soviet ideology affected daily life throughout the Soviet Union. As an undergrad, two experiences had a huge impact on my life: an internship with a “think tank” in Washington, D.C. (the American Center on U.S.-Soviet Relations) and a three week study tour of the Soviet Union. These experiences influenced me to pursue a career in academia, solidified my interest in Soviet studies, provided me with a firsthand introduction to the region of Central Asia, and led me in the direction of anthropology. And, finally, during my first semester as a graduate student at Indiana University, I made the decision to study the Kazakhs while taking a seminar on Central Asian nomadic pastoralism. One research paper on Kazakh nomads, one glance at a faded picture of a Kazakh shepherd tending his flock in the open steppe, and my fate was sealed. Although I am much more familiar with the harsh realities of nomadic pastoralism, I still get excited when I see Central Asian herders with their livestock.
I completed an M.A. (1993) and a Ph.D. (1997) in Anthropology at Indiana University in Bloomington, under the direction of Nazif Shahrani and Richard Wilk. Beginning in 1992, I have spent over thirty months doing field research on several different projects throughout Central Asia. The project that started it all was my dissertation project in a rural region of Southern-Kazakhstan Oblast. For this project, I developed very close ties to a Kazakh family, and researched how rural Kazakhs coped with the difficult early years of the post-Soviet transition. I have published several articles based on this project, and I am currently working on a book manuscript based on my dissertation. After completing my dissertation, I started to look more explicitly at gender issues, including bride abduction. I am currently working on two major projects – one that focuses on how rural Kazakhs living near the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, and another that focuses on the transnational community of Mongolian Kazakhs.
More information on my research projects, my publications, and my courses can be found on other pages of this website.
I joined the faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University in 2000. I am currently an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Anthropology. I am an Affiliated Faculty Member in both the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the International Studies Program. Before coming to Texas A&M, I taught as a visiting professor at the University of Iowa and Pitzer College.
I am an active member of several academic organizations, including the American Anthropological Association. I serve as the Secretary for the Society for Economic Anthropology and as a Board Member for the Central Eurasian Studies Society. I am a Society Fellow in the Society for Applied Anthropology.
