Aksana Ismailbekova

Coping strategies: public avoidance, migration, and marriage in the aftermath of the Osh conflict, Fergana Valley

This article examines the changing survival strategies of Uzbeks in the aftermath of mass violent conflict in Osh in June 2010. After the conflict, Osh Uzbeks were exposed to many difficulties. The Kyrgyz government used economic and political pressure to isolate minority groups from the titular nationality, and this opened the door to mistreatment of minorities in the form of the seizure of property, job losses, and even verbal and physical abuse. Despite this mistreatment, however, Uzbeks have proved reluctant to leave the Osh area. Uzbeks have a long history of living in the region of Osh; strong emotional and historical sentiments bind them to the region and its graveyards and sacred sites. Uzbeks have thus had to develop alternative ways to cope with the uncertainty and insecurity of their situation. They have adopted strategies which reinforce their vulnerability on the one hand, but provide security for their children during post-conflict reconstruction on the other. These strategies include avoidance of public spaces and public attention, marrying daughters early, and sending male family members to Russia as labor migrants. These strategies are geared to the underlying aims of protecting the honor of the community, maintaining social networks, and preserving Uzbek identity without attracting attention. Uzbeks describe this strategy of patience as sabyrdu.

Constructing the authority of women through custom: Bulak village, Kyrgyzstan

The traditional authority of Kyrgyz women operates within moral frameworks and through their roles as keepers of hearth and home, and has been recognized by the state for its important role in family life and in society. Women are responsible for the health of future generations, for the quality of childrens education, and for safeguarding and passing on moral principles, which contribute to the formation of the traditional Kyrgyz family, and thus to the Kyrgyz nation. Kyrgyz ideas that women are keepers of hearth and home are exactly the ideas that allow women to build authority within the home and family. Not only do Kyrgyz women actually gain a great deal of power in their families over the course of their lives, but also this female power is foundational to the Kyrgyz sense of nation and sovereignty. Thus, what seems to be “domestic” power is, in fact, power with very public connections and effects.

As Long as the Capital Is Far Away: Multi-Scalar Peripheralization in Central Asia

This chapter addresses the making of peripheries in the context of post-Soviet Central Asia. The chapter refers to Henri Lefebvre, and to de Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics, in order to provide a dense description of local actor constellations and their impacts on changing ranges of manoeuvre of local elites in two peripheral metropolitan regions in Central Asia — Khujand, as the regional centre of northern Tajikistan, and Osh, as the regional centre of southern Kyrgyzstan.1