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Blood Ties and the Native Son
An anthropologist explores the politics and society of Kyrgyzstan through a study of one influential man’s life. A pioneering study of kinship, patronage, and politics in Central Asia, Blood Ties and the Native Son tells the story of the rise and fall of a man called Rahim, an influential and powerful patron in rural northern Kyrgyzstan, and of how his relations with clients and kin shaped the economic and social life of the region. Many observers of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia have assumed that corruption, nepotism, and patron-client relations would forestall democratization. Looking at the intersection of kinship ties with political patronage, Aksana Ismailbekova finds instead t...
Blood Ties and the Native Son
A pioneering study of kinship, patronage, and politics in Central Asia, Blood Ties and the Native Son tells the story of the rise and fall of a man called Rahim, an influential and powerful patron in rural northern Kyrgyzstan, and of how his relations with clients and kin shaped the economic and social life of the region. Many observers of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia have assumed that corruption, nepotism, and patron-client relations would forestall democratization. Looking at the intersection of kinship ties with political patronage, Aksana Ismailbekova finds instead that this intertwining has in fact enabled democratization—both kinship and patronage develop apace with democracy, although patronage relations may stymie individual political opinion and action.
Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia
Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia examines the practice and experience of interethnic marriage in a range of countries and eras, from imperial Germany to present-day Tajikistan. In this interdisciplinary volume Adrienne Edgar and Benjamin Frommer have drawn contributions from anthropologists and historians. The contributors explore the phenomenon of intermarriage both from the top down, in the form of state policies and official categories, and from the bottom up, through an intimate look at the experience and agency of mixed families in modern states determined to control the lives and identities of their citizens to an unprecedented degree. Contributors address the tensions between state ethnic categories and the subjective identities of individuals, the status of mixed individuals and families in a region characterized by continual changes in national borders and regimes, and the role of intermarried couples and their descendants in imagining supranational communities. The first of its kind, Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia is a foundational text for the study of intermarriage and ethnic mixing in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Politics, Identity and Education in Central Asia
Focusing on the areas of politics, identity and education, this book looks at some of the most pressing and challenging issues that Kyrgyzstan faces in the post-Soviet era. It argues that Kyrgyzstan is challenged with oscillations between the old and the new on the one hand, and domestic and international on the other. The book analyses the process of post-Soviet transition in today’s Kyrgyzstan by focusing on the political elites, some of the major identity problems and educational issues. It discusses how Kyrgyzstan’s first president in the post-Soviet era had already been an exceptional leader even prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in terms of his democratic and liberal tenden...
Improvising the Voice of the Ancestors
Cultural heritage and national identity have been significant themes in debates concerning Central Asia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, not only in academic circles, but more importantly among the general public in the newly independent Central Asian states. Inspired by insights from a popular form of traditional cultural performance in Kyrgyzstan, this book goes beyond cultural revival discourse to explore these themes from a historically informed anthropological perspective. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork and archival research in Kyrgyzstan, this historical ethnography analyses the ways in which political elite in Central Asia attempts to exercise power over its citizens through cultural production from early twentieth century to the present.
Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia
With fresh and provocative insights into the everyday reality of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia, this volume moves beyond commonplaces about strong and weak states to ask critical questions about how democracy, authority, and justice are understood in this important region. In conversation with current theories of state power, the contributions draw on extensive ethnographic research in settings that range from the local to the transnational, the mundane to the spectacular, to provide a unique perspective on how politics is performed in everyday life.
Informality, Labour Mobility and Precariousness
From the erosion of state legitimacy in Lebanon to the use of smartphones in Kyrgyzstan, from a Polish suburb to the music scene in Azerbaijan, this volume attempts to explain why, in a variety of world regions, a substantial number of people tend to ignore or act against state rules. We propose to look at informality beyond simplistic associations of the phenomenon with a single category such as "informal labour" or "corruption". By doing this, we propose to look for a correlation between the emergence, and persistence, of some informal practices and the quality of governance in a given area. We also suggest that a better understanding of the variety of informal practices present in a region can help conceptualising more adequate interventions and eventually improve the socio-economic conditions of its inhabitants.
The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2
Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery to explore society’s open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsid...
Polygynous Marriages among the Kyrgyz
During Soviet rule, the state all but imposed atheism on the primarily Islamic people of Kyrgyzstan and limited the tradition of polygyny—a form of polygamy in which one man has multiple wives. Polygyny did continue under communism, though chiefly under concealment. In the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the practice has reemerged. Based on extensive fieldwork, Polygynous Marriages among the Kyrgyz argues that this marriage practice has become socially acceptable and widely dispersed not only because it is rooted in customary law and Islamic practice, but because it can also enable men and women to meet societal expectations and solve practical economic problems that resulted from the fall of the Soviet Union. Michele E. Commercio’s analysis suggests the normalization of polygyny among the Kyrgyz in contemporary Kyrgyzstan is due both to institutional change in the form of altered governmental rules and expectations and to institutional endurance in the form of persistent hegemonic constructions of gender.
