Prevrashenie (Transformation) of Bacha: Cracks and Ghostly Matters in the National/ist Heritage of Central Asia (original) (raw)

Introduction. Gender as intersections. A different way of seeing Central Asia

Central Asian Affairs, 2022

Gender-based violence, (geo)politics, and Islam continue to dominate the production of knowledge about Central Asia. While using a gender lens, this Special Issue offers a different perspective on the region. The authors link historical analyses of imperial and Soviet gendered modernities to contemporary Central Asians' daily lives and local nationalisms to shed light on often overlooked areas in the literature, such as a systematic screening out of historical and contemporary gender diversity, sex work, virginity tests, in-bodiment (as in corporeality, not just the performance of social norms,) queer activism, and the use and abuse of discourse on traditions. As a platform for a conversation about negotiating gender in Central Asia and indigenizing gender theory from within other than Euro-American contexts, this Issue is an example of knowledge production by and with Central Asians. This Issue is also an invitation to continue using a gender lens, as there are still several research areas that remain unexplored and would, we believe, benefit from such an approach. central asian affairs 9 (2022) 149-175

The History Of Gender In Central Asia And Contemporary Issues

The article analyzes the historical evolution of gender roles in the region and their current significance and importance. It examines how gender policies and social changes unfolded during the Soviet era and post-independence periods, highlighting the persistence of traditional-patriarchal systems and their impact on modern society. Additionally, the article delves into issues of gender equality in contemporary Central Asian societies, the provision of equal opportunities for men and women in education and workplaces, and the acceptance of gender stereotypes. The research is based on modern academic literature, aiming to identify existing gender issues in the region and provide recommendations for their resolution.

24 THINKING WITH GENDER ABOUT CENTRAL ASIA

Routledge Handbook of Contemporary CA, 2021

The concept of 'gender,' which refers to a socio-cultural construction used to differentiate among individuals in a society of whether and how one is female, male or any other culturally acceptable category, is not indigenous to the Central Asian region and may not be widely embraced by local populations, scholars and governments (Khalid 2015: 361; Kamp 2009; Megoran 1999).The local use of this term is often limited to the field of international aid and development and non-governmental activism. This is not surprising. As an analytical concept, gender originated and matured in American and European academic and activist circles from the 1960s onward (Olson & Horn-Schott 2018). During the last decade of the twentieth century, international agencies introduced this term to local activists and scholars (Hoare 2016: 292). Despite this history, thinking with gender about local lifeways is not just replicating an analytical concept produced elsewhere. Gender as a lens on social complexity offers a way for a more nuanced understanding of human diversity in and history of the region. Thinking with gender is not a requirement, but an option. Many of the existing works about Central Asia rely only on two, well-established, and widely accepted categories, such as 'women' and 'men.'These two categories are not the only categories present in the Central Asian context historically.They also fail to capture a contemporary diversity of meaningful and liveable human lives in the region. 1 As a result of a persistent scholarly reliance on 'women' and 'men' dichotomy assumed to be universal, humans and collectivities that do not fit neatly within these two categories are considered deviant and/or exceptions often undeserving of scholarly focus and empirical research. Despite the efforts of a handful of scholars (e.g., Buelow 2012;Wilkinson & Kirey 2010; Suyarkulova 2019), academic reliance on this dichotomy continues to create and maintain empirical and theoretical blind spots, which remain as mainly uncharted territory in scholarly work in and about the region. Hence, thinking with gender is also a call for offering thicker descriptions and analyses of local complex and complicated lives by shedding light on these blind spots. One of these spots is gender variance or a range of behaviours associated with opposite sex. This chapter is neither a well-balanced representation of gender roles and/or gender struggles in the region, nor it is a balanced insight into each country's gender orders associated with a (geopolitical) concept of 'post-Soviet' or 'former-Soviet' Central Asia.These imbalances reflect a

Introduction. Practices of Traditionalization in Central Asia

Central Asian Survey, 2019

Over the last two centuries, ‘tradition’ has been invoked in Central Asia by Russian and Soviet regimes, as well as by local Central Asian elites, largely in two ways: either as a deficiency to be overcome (often in juxtaposition to an aspirational ‘modernity’) or as a quality to be embraced (often in alignment with nationalism). The two are not mutually exclusive or even strictly separate, but the distinction serves well to outline general themes and dynamics in the work of tradition. It is likewise difficult to make clear distinc- tions between academic analyses and everyday invocations of the term, as they play off one another, and entirely new genres of writing and practice are still emerging. The centrality of tradition in today’s Central Asia cannot, however, be denied.