Surviving Everyday Life: The Securityscapes of Threatened People in Kyrgyzstan

Description

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, sexual orientation or political activism. 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.

Marc von Boemcken is Senior Researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC). Nina Bagdasarova is Professor of Psychology at the American University of Central Asia. Aksana Ismailbekova is Senior Researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO). Conrad Schetter is Director for Research at the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BCC).