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Moving 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.
Abstract: In cooperation with researchers in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, BICC (Bonn International Center for Conversion) is conducting a three-year research project on everyday security practices in Central Asia, which is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The project was launched in July 2015. While security has become an important focus of academic work on and in Central Asia, most studies highlight the geo-strategic importance of the region and underline the threats to states posed by non-state armed groups and transnational criminal organizations. The research project proposes a radically different approach to studying security in Central Asia. As a point of departure, it understands security as an everyday practice of people that consists in identifying and engaging perceptions of existential threat. It asks: How do various groups of people deal with security issues in their daily lives? For the purpose of addressing this question, it develops and applies the innovative concept of secu
Using detailed insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict, this handbook provides essential practical guidance for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent, repressive and closed contexts. Contributors detail their own experiences from areas including the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Myanmar, inviting readers into their reflections on mistakes and hard-learned lessons. Divided into sections on issues of control and confusion, security and risk, distance and closeness and sex and sensitivity, they look at how to negotiate complex grey areas and raise important questions that intervention researchers need to consider before, during and after their time on the ground.
Violent Affections uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Based on analysis of over 300 criminal cases of anti-queer violence in Russia before and after the introduction of ‘gay propaganda’ law, the book shows how violent acts are framed in emotional language by perpetrators during their criminal trials. It then utilises an original methodology of studying ‘legal memes’ and argues that these individual affective states are directly connected to the political violence aimed at queer lives more generally. The main aim of Violent Affections is to explore the social mechanisms and techniques that impact anti-queer violence evidenc...
This landmark book provides a comprehensive anthropological introduction to contemporary Central Asia. Established and emerging scholars of the region critically interrogate the idea of a ‘Central Asian World’ at the intersection of post-Soviet, Persianate, East and South Asian worlds. Encompassing chapters on life between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang, this volume situates the social, political, economic, ecological and ritual diversity of Central Asia in historical context. The book ethnographically explores key areas such as the growth of Islamic finance, the remaking of urban and sacred spaces, as well as decolonizing and queering approaches to Central Asia. T...
The path to inclusion for children with disabilities and other special education needs is long and complex. It has been claimed that inclusion is not a destination, but a process of increasing participation and reducing exclusion from the culture, curriculum and community of mainstream schools. This volume chronicles the journey toward greater inclusion of children with disabilities in Central Asia. Setting out upon this journey is an acknowledged policy goal in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan so that all children are to participate in education, but it raises many questions and quandaries. It stirs the ghosts of social norms and traditions from the past that differ from place to plac...
The Routledge International Handbook of Dialectical Thinking is a landmark volume offering a multi-disciplinary compendium of the research, theory and practice that defines dialectical thinking, its importance and how it develops over the lifespan. For the first time, this handbook brings together theory and research on dialectical thinking as a psychological phenomenon from early childhood through the human lifespan. Grounding dialectical thinking in multiple philosophical traditions stemming from antiquity, it explores current psychological models of such thought patterns and shows how these can be applied in everyday life and across multiple disciplines, including philosophy, physics, mat...
Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders: Symbolic Representations in School Textbooks, the 18th book in the 24-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, explores the interrelationship between ideology, national identity, national history and historical heroes, setting it in a global context. Based on this focus, the chapters represent hand-picked scholarly research on major discourses in the field of history textbooks and symbolic representations of national heroes, and draw upon recent studies in the areas of globalisation, history textbooks, and national leaders.A number of researchers have written on the importance of teaching national histo...
Covering three Lebanese municipalities with striking sectarian diversity, Saida, Bourj Hammoud and Tyre, this book investigates the ways in which local service delivery, local interactions and vertical relationships matter in building peace.
This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how these populations are actively transforming urban space. Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography by urban in-migrants, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management, evictions and gentrification, and the networked labour of displaced populations that underpins growing urban economies. Central throughout is a critical analysis of how the discursive figure of the ‘internally displaced person’ is co-produced by various actors. The book argues that this label exerts significant power in structuring socio-economic inequalities and the politics of group belonging within different Somali cities connected through protracted histories of conflict-related migration.