Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
The chapter investigates individual securityscapes that respond to gender-based violence. Indeed, large parts of Kyrgyz society remain structured around highly patriarchal norms and violence against women is commonplace. Academic literature on this problem has so far mainly considered the practice of 'bride kidnapping' in rural areas of the country. However, as this chapter demonstrates, it also concerns young women in the capital city of Bishkek. In order to avoid the ever-present prospect of sexual harassment or even rape, they need to adhere to specific security measures that determine much of their daily lives. This involves, for example, remaining inconspicuous and constricting their movements around certain times and places.
The introduction outlines the main purpose and objective of this volume. It compares the conceptual approach adopted here to other writings on security in Kyrgyzstan and locates its particular take on the issue within the wider academic landscape. The introduction provides a brief overview of each chapter and shows how all the contributions are conceptually related to one another. Finally, it explains the overall research project, of which this volume is a result, details the methods applied by the involved scholars and reflects on methodological shortcomings and limitations that became apparent during field research.
The chapter asks how the insights generated here can make a more general contribution to the future study of everyday security practices of marginalized groups. It emphasizes the importance of taking into account the factors of space and time when analyzing security. In particular, it supports calls to analyze security practices beyond the limiting framework of the 'nation-state'. A stronger focus on individual future-making activities may very much enrich security-related research. Moreover, the chapter asks to what extent the findings collected in this volume may similarly apply to marginalized – and often violently repressed – people in other parts of Central Asia.
This chapter combines the two themes of security against ethnic and gender-based violence, which have been at the center in the previous chapters. Frequently, violence against women becomes intertwined with ethnic identity politics in Kyrgyzstan. A particularly controversial topic here is ethnically 'mixed' relationships. If a Kyrgyz female decides to become involved with a non-Kyrgyz partner, she can often expect to be ostracized by her family, in some cases even beaten and threatened with death. The chapter looks at various cases and shows the different ways in which couples deal with this situation. The choice usually boils down to either keeping the relationship secret or to running away with one's partner and trying to make a new life for oneself in another place.
The chapter continues to study the securityscapes of Uzbeks in Osh following the violence of 2010. Its emphasis is on how certain imaginations of the future influence the construction of everyday securityscapes. In particular, the chapter concentrates on the schooling practices of Uzbek parents, that is to say, on their decisions concerning the kind of kindergartens, schools and universities to which they send their children. It finds that many Uzbek parents want their offspring to be educated in such a way that they are able to speak Russian without an accent. Not only would this help them to conceal their Uzbek identity. It also speaks to the imagination of a more secure future outside of Kyrgyzstan.
The chapter explores the securityscapes of individuals from the Uzbek minority in the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. In 2010 Osh was shook by violent ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbek residents, which claimed several hundred lives. The contribution asks how the everyday security practices of Uzbeks have changed ever since. It installs its focus on Uzbek catering sector. The chapter demonstrates how Uzbek owners of cafés and restaurants hide any markers that would give away their ethnic identity, including the names of their businesses or the dishes offered there. In highlights the importance of 'food politics' in the ongoing ethnic conflict and the Uzbek securityscapes in Osh.
The Uzbeks were not the only ethnic minority that suffered from the violent rampages throughout Osh in 2010. The small community of Lyuli or, more precisely, Mughat people on the outskirts of the city also became targets of ethnic hatred. Up to this day, they are treated with great suspicion by the Kyrgyz majority and continue to be frequently threatened and attacked. The chapter focusses on the securityscapes of female Mughat collectors of alms and waste products, who are the main bread-winners in their community. They need to be highly mobile, yet this mobility comes with great risks as, for instance, sexual assault is a very real threat when moving through the city or the country. The contribution examines the various creative tactics that female collectors apply in order to attain a degree of security, usually involving continuous adaptations to shifting circumstances.
From the perspective of large parts of Kyrgyz society, 'non-traditional' relations do not only pertain to ethnically mixed couples but equally to same-sex partnerships. This chapter takes a look at the securityscapes of individuals from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in Bishkek, who face similarly dire consequences if their sexual orientation or gender preference is found out. Their everyday life in public thus often resembles a continual masquerade. The chapter focusses, in particular, on an LGBT nightclub in the capital city. It argues that the stress of having to keep disguising oneself may occasionally excite moments of excess and frenzy, of experiencing one's 'true' self only in a temporary act of transgressing the norms of profane life.
This conceptual chapter situates the theoretical and empirical approach adopted here within the wider body of literature on security and danger in Central Asia. It is, in this sense, in parts a literature review. Moreover, it explains the concept of securityscapes in terms of combining two established analytical perspectives in (Critical) Security Studies, namely a focus on the individual human being as principal referent-object ('deepening' of security) and an understanding of security as a social practice rather than an objectively measurable condition of existence (praxeology of security). All the subsequent empirical chapters proceed from the conceptual clarifications presented here.
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.
