Kok-Boru: Beyond Invention of Tradition

Moira O'Shea, University of Chicago

Kyrgyzstan’s national sport, kok-boru, is at once an ancient game and a contemporary creation. Played on horseback, riders must hurl a 30-35 kg goat carcass into a goal on either end of a long field. To play well, a young man—for only young men play—must have passion, he must be skilled as a horseman, and work well with his team. While kok-boru is said to have been played since ancient times, it is currently played according to rules created in the mid-1990s that are distinctly recognizable. Three playing periods are punctuated by two ten-minute rests, twelve players participate on a team, and two goals bracket the field. This presents an interesting tension: in 2017, kok-boru was inscribed in UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage; at the same time, it is actively promoted, formalized, and commercialized through events such as the World Nomadic Games and the activities of the Kok-boru Federation domestically and abroad. In this paper, I engage scholarship on tradition, cultural heritage, and nationalism to explore kok-boru as a site of multiple tensions. Kok-boru is both ancient and modern; it connects the domestic to the international as it is played in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia generally, and even in the United States; and in Kyrgyzstan it brings a distinctly rural sport into the capital city during holiday tournaments. Through ethnographic and interview-based research, I explore how ideas of culture and tradition are being mobilized to secure a place of pride for Kyrgyzstan in an ever-globalizing world.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 18. Cultural Entrepreneurs