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Tajikistan is a key state in Central Asia, and will become crucial to the regional power balance as it transitions away from Soviet government systems and responds to the rise of Chinese financial power alongside the continuing presence of Russian military might and instability in neighboring Afghanistan. This book demonstrates how the Soviet atheist legacy continues to influence current state structures, the regulation of religion, the formation of national identities, and the understanding of the place of religion in society. Hélène Thibault focuses on the differences between secular nationhood in Tajikistan, and an increasingly popular and influential Muslim identity. Featuring extensive and original primary-source material, including 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, Thibault demonstrates the profound and lasting influence of Soviet power structures and attitudes, and how secular and religious identities clash in a context of tightening authoritarianism.
This book aims at shedding light on the reasons why the death rates during the pandemic were so high in Central Asia. More specifically, this book proposes analysis on why individuals did not follow the sanitary rules imposed by their respective government and on the role played by misinformation. Secondly, it also examines the impact of Sinophobia in Central Asia and the future challenges this feeling may pose on the authorities in the near future. Lastly, this book also proposes analysis of how the pandemic has contributed to show the inherent vulnerabilities of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan by focusing on their immediate and future political consequences.
This book explores the various ramifications and consequences of the violent civil protests that affected Kazakhstan in January 2022. In this compelling study, the authors examine the underlying social and political tensions that have affected this biggest country of Central Asia, especially since its political transition of 2019 and how the state has managed to justify its actions that led to a return to peace. It also puts in perspective this event in the wider transition affecting Eurasia with the war in Ukraine and how this shift of world politics may impact Kazakhstan that required the support of Russia and the other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization during these protests. This book will be of value for scholars, journalists and NGOs working on authoritarianism and on Central Asia.
This book proposes an interdisciplinary look at the culture of shame in Central Asia and evaluates its role in the regulation of social and political interactions in the region. Contributors demonstrate how 'uyat' relies on patriarchal and hierarchical gender norms that negatively affect women and queer bodies. More specifically, contributors address issues of the taboo of sex education in Kazakhstani schools, favored heteronormativity and its consequences on queer bodies, and the compliance of parents to give their first born to adoption to the husband’s parents in Kyrgyzstan. The book also reflects on how these norms are challenged by young generations. Lastly, the book will also bring a novel reading on local political dynamics by examining the role of shame in Kazakhstani politics as a form of accountability in the absence of genuine political competition. This book will interest scholars of Central Asia, gender theorists, and scholars of post-socialist societies.
Written for early-career scholars still in the planning stages of their research, this book explores some of the challenges researchers face when conducting fieldwork in the former Soviet region. It addresses key questions, including: What difficulties do scholars, especially females, encounter when researching in the region? How does an early-career scholars’ positionality – especially their nationality, ethnicity, and sexuality – contribute to their experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and access while conducting fieldwork? How do early-career scholars navigate issues of personal safety in the field? How do junior academics successfully conduct high-risk research? The book includes contributors from both the region and Western countries, paying particular attention to the ways researchers’ subjectivities shape how they are received in the region, which, in turn, influence how they write about and disseminate their research. The book also explores ways to continue research away from the field through the use of digital methods when physical access is not possible.
A sweeping history of Islamism in Central Asia from the Russian Revolution to the present through Soviet-era archival documents, oral histories, and a trove of interviews and focus groups. Few observers anticipated a surge of Islamism in Central Asia, after seventy years of forced communist atheism. Muslims do not inevitably support Islamism, a modern political ideology of Islam. Yet, Islamism became the dominant form of political opposition in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In Politicizing Islam in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins explores the causes, dynamics, and variation in Islamist movements-first within the USSR, and then in the post-Soviet states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and ...
The American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2019 is bringing big science, big technology, and big networking opportunities to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this November. This event features five days of the best in science and cardiovascular clinical practice covering all aspects of basic, clinical, population and translational content.
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.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the political impact of the COVID-19 emergency in central and eastern Europe and Eurasia. Offering a theoretical framework linking the authoritarian, post-Soviet institutional legacy with patterns of political behavior, support and governments’ policies, the expert contributors argue that domestic political regimes mediate and shape citizens’ perceptions of public health crises, and the very regimes’ political survival. The authors explore how the pandemic affected regime change, government stability, business groups and civil societies in more than 15 countries of the region from the discovery of the virus to the vaccination rollout. The ...
The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space, Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992–1997) that left more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic party—the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)—as a key actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reconstruction and democratization. Tajikistan’s linguistic and cultural proximity to Iran notwithstanding, the balance of external powers over the country remains fairly typical of Central Asia, with R...