Net Talk: January 1995

CenAsia: A Listserv Worth Visiting

Persons with projects in the new Central Asian states as well as those with a general interest in the region will find the CenAsia listserv to be an excellent resource. CenAsia includes announcements of meetings and job openings; news of organizations working in the region; leads to other Internet resources related to the region; and references to print materials, such as journals and dictionaries. Because the community of Westerners interested or working in Central Asia is relatively small, many members know each other and the ethic of sharing infomration is strong. A frequent use of the list involves searches for e-mail addresses and sources of connectivity in the region.

CenAsia is also a political discussion list, and unlike some discussion lists on the Internet, CenAsia is distinguished by the high quality of discussion and the background and expertise of its participants. Academics such as James Critchlow and Edward Keenan of Harvard and Barnett Rubin of Columbia and the Council on Foreign Relations are joined by articulate people from the region, many of whom are scholars, too.

In the past couple of months Cen-Asia has included:

a review of Tajikistan's civil war by academics and others who were in the country at the time;
a discussion of the state of agriculture in Uzbekistan;
an interesting series of posts on the background of clans and ethnic groups in the region;
an interview (followed by a list discussion) with a Tajik scholar visiting the U.S., who spoke about what he saw as Central Asia's limited exposure to democratic institutions and traditions;
a report by Muhammed Saleh, Chairman of the ERK Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, on the human rights situation in that country.

CenAsia also includes regular posts on current conditions from people stationed in U.S. embassies and the Voice of America in the region--news that does not appear in the major media in the U.S.

CenAsia averages around 3-5 messages a day, with an average monthly volume of between 40,000 and 60,000 bytes.

To subscribe to CenAsia send an e-mail message to:

[email protected]

In the body of the message type:

subscribe cenasia [your full name]

Once you are signed on and ready to post messages to others signed on to the listserv, use the following address:

[email protected]

This article is from the January 1995 issue of
Net Talk

For more information or to order a subscription, see our publications page.

The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/nettalk/95-01/cenasia.htm
Last updated: March 29, 1995

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