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- Convenor:
-
Madeleine Reeves
(University of Oxford)
Send message to Convenor
- Theme:
- ANT
- Location:
- Posvar 3431
- Start time:
- 27 October, 2018 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 1
Long Abstract:
How do imaginations of security and insecurity express themselves in the everyday lives of different people across Central Asia? Some Western academics have criticized the ways in which the region becomes popularly framed in accordance to "discourses of danger" that foreground the threats of terrorism, organized crime or political instability. The chapters in this edited volume, most of which are authored by scholars from Central Asia, agree that such state-centric perspectives only provide a partial account of what in/security means for many people in the region. Nevertheless, they argue that this should not subdue analyses into de-emphasizing the importance of vernacular threat-perceptions in the micro-spaces of everyday life. Especially for marginalized groups deep-seated feelings of insecurity - "discourses of danger" - remain a central factor underlying a variety of quotidian social practices. The edited volume roughly distinguishes these practices or 'securityscapes' in terms of their relation to time and space. For some groups, they mainly revolve around attempts to conserve the past, to ascertain one's ethnic and cultural identity by drawing numerous social and physical boundaries between 'us' and a threatening 'them'. Other people place a greater emphasis on future-making, on seeking security through looking ahead and, in the course of doing so, occasionally imagining more inclusive and holistic spaces. Finally, securityscapes may neither center on the past or the future, but simply on surviving the present. This entails frequent attempts to cross boundaries by means of trickery, adaptation and mimicry. The edited volume discusses different types of security practices with reference to a wide variety of marginalized and endangered groups, mostly from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Tajikistan it charts the everyday securityscapes of the Pamiri and Ruszabon minority as well as civil rights activists. In Kyrgyzstan it considers groups as diverse as the Uzbek minority in Osh, mixed couples and the LGBT community.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Nina Bagdasarova (American University of Central Asia)
Paper long abstract:
The new turn in security studies shifting interest from "state" security making towards agency of ordinary people in their everyday life evoked new approaches and categories to describe and explain individual and social practices in the scope of security. The "securityscapes" concept was proposed in order to understand how people response to existential threats within three dimensions: body, identity and spiritual beliefs or/and moral principles. LGBT people living in the two largest cities of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek and Osh) participated in research devoted to their everyday security practices. The design for participatory research was developed involving LGBT community representatives in collecting and interpreting data. The specific securityscapes of LGBT people are described in the paper that include structural elements of body; space and material objects; social surrounding; time in terms of future, past and present; behavioral strategies of avoiding, adaptation and others. The role of individual and collective imagination in securityscapes making was investigated.
Aksana Ismailbekova (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO))
Paper long abstract:
"How will the children grow up as patriots if the alphabet says that our homeland is Russia?"
As the quotation states, this is the resentment of the Member of Parliament Ainura Altybaeva at the parliament session. Many Uzbek parents equally express the importance of learning the Russian language because they do not see their children's future in Kyrgyzstan, and their children and grandchildren attend private Russian schools, kindergarten, and other additional courses. This phenomenon was in contrast what the state is doing at the larger political level, increasing the role of Kyrgyz language, culture, and tradition. In this way, the imagination of future is given common form in learning Russian language, attending private schools, and opening a private business sphere. This has encouraged people to rely on different educational and professional strategies which provide better security and establish feelings of belonging in a period where people are insecure about their future prospects. The purpose of this article is to examine how parents make sense of their children's future in acceptable ways in response to dramatic conflict and political changes in Kyrgyzstan's post-Soviet environment. In times of insecurity and rapid change as a result of conflict, new needs and demands emerge in the society. This process of change gradually brings new opportunities for belonging within a potential system which provides access to resources and satisfies basic needs in present time. My aim is to discuss the emotional aspects of security generated by the parents, specifically how expectations and hope are created together with feelings of protection and dependency. This paper examines the future orientation and local security making of parents towards their children in the Osh, Kyrgyzstan. The key question I pose is how parents decide their children's education and their future perspectives and what practices they use to achieve their ends and secure their children's future.
Asel Myrzabekova (AUCA)
Paper long abstract:
Intermarriage was used by the Soviet socialist propaganda in promotion of internationalization and modernity through which it was possible to spread Soviet culture and decline religiosity. At the same time, intermarriages with foreigners were considered as a dangerous, "disloyal" and "politically immature" practice and the government would "outlaw" such marriages, recognizing them as invalid. In the post-Soviet period this practice of the control of social and personal life of people decreased in independent Kyrgyzstan, thus in recent years state's influence on the marriage and family is symbolic and is observed only in the rhetoric of the state. Soviet and post-Soviet scholars and analysts often focused on rates of intermarriage and patterns of groups which were more likely to intermarry. However, they treated interethnic marriages as a given and unproblematic phenomenon. Today private life and family are perceived as a "shelter from threats" that come from public life, as well as from political, economic instabilities, and in this context the new marriage practices in Kyrgyzstan are blended with the Soviet legacy and images that remains a significant factors affecting gender relations in families. This paper will present subjective, emotionally rich cases of interethnic couples in Kyrgyzstan that are surviving in present with a particular focus on their future imaginations of threats and insecurities, such as financial securityscapes, fears related to crossing cultural/ethnic boundaries and threats related to loss of the loved one.