The conflict between Nomadic and Sedentary civilizations in a render of cartographical thought

This paper compares the mental map of the Kazakh nomads and representational mappings of Russian surveyors. This comparison makes it possible to identify several categories of place-names, which had been heavily used both by nomads and Russian topographers. In spite of the fact that in many cases these place-names varied little concerning the expression, they usually included a number of key differences concerning the content. Such a situation caused series of mental conflicts, which under certain circumstances could escalate into the arm clashes. One of the conclusions in this paper is that the narratives resulted from colonial knowledge were insensitive to the signifieds that were central to the nomadic existence. In contrast, the benchmarks of representational topography had immediately identified the categories, by which the nomads linked their mental map to the steppe. These categories included «isolated terrain features» (urochishcha), «routes», and «boundaries». The paper provides an analysis of the structure relevant to each of these concepts and reveals significant differences in their values for the representatives of nomadic and sedentary civilizations. The paper contains a few examples that illustrate how these differences could lead to conflicts between Kazakh nomads and Russian sedentary settlers.