Description
Book SynopsisMoving beyond state-centric and elitist perspectives, this volume examines everyday security in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and written by scholars from Central Asia and beyond, it shows how insecurity is experienced, what people consider existential threats, and how they go about securing themselves. It concentrates on individuals who feel threatened because of their ethnic belonging, gender or sexual orientation. It develops the concept of ‘securityscapes’, which draws attention to the more subtle means that people take to secure themselves – practices bent on invisibility and avoidance, on disguise and trickery, and on continually adapting to shifting circumstances. By broadening the concept of security practice, this book is an important contribution to debates in Critical Security Studies as well as to Central Asian and Area Studies.
Table of ContentsPreface ~ Nina Bagdasarova Introduction~ Marc von Boemcken and Aksana Ismailbekova Studying Danger in Central Asia: Towards a concept of everyday securityscapes ~ Marc von Boemcken Security Practices and the Survival of Cafés in Southern Kyrgyzstan ~ Shavkhat Atakhanov and Abylabek Asankanov Securing the Future of Children and Youth: Uzbek private kindergartens and schools in Osh ~ Aksana Ismailbekova Selective Memories, Identities and Places: Everyday security practices of the Mughat Lyulis in Osh ~ Hafiz Boboyorov and Shavkhat Atakhanov How to Live with a Female Body: Securityscapes against sexual violence and related interpretation patterns of Kyrgyz women ~ Kathrin Oestmann and Anna M. Korschinek Romantic Securityscapes of Mixed Couples: Resisting moral panic, surviving in the present, and imagining the future ~ Asel Myrzabekova The Space-Time Continuum of the ‘Dangerous’ Body: LGBT securityscapes Kyrgyzstan ~ Nina Bagdasarova Postscript: Towards a Research Agenda on Security Practices ~ Conrad Schetter
