This protest song originated as part of Uzbek women's cultural resistance to the imposed sovietisation and modernisation of Central Asia in the late 1920s and critiqued the forcible removal of the Islamic veil by Soviet authorities. This practice was presented by Soviet sources at the time as involving the liberation of women but in reality was often carried out at gun point and demonstrates dramatically the conflict generated when an outside model of development or empowerment is imposed on a society. Culturally ignorant development imposes change in a way which is experienced as alien and which negates the value and depth of the local cultures it is formally devoted to helping.

The conflict between the values of powerful outside imperial forces in Central Asia and their modernising project and often misrepresented or misunderstood local social and cultural norms is being acted out again, 80 years later, in the neighbouring country of Afghanistan, where a Western-led coalition propounding an ideology of modernity and human rights battles belief groups who hold paramount local tribal and religious or cultural affiliations.

At the very least, social work and social development practice which fails to engage with local political, communal and cultural realities is ineffective, and at worst, it can promote active conflict and place local social work practitioners at risk.

This chapter attempts to examine the basis for a theoretical understanding of the evolving role of social work in Central Asia's most populous country, Uzbekistan. It examines the tension between social work's claim to universal values and the more recent international moves toward models of practice which embody indigenisation of theory and methods and the broader incorporation of local culture.

An important cultural centre on the Silk Route, the territory of Uzbekistan has been home to artists and spiritual leaders such as Alisher Navoi (15th century), famous for the cyclical collection of poems The Hamsa; and leading medics like Ibn Sina (11th century), who wrote The Cannon of Medicine, as well as historians such as Abu Rayhan al-Bruni (11th century), who wrote the history of India.