Fashioning the nation: gender and politics of dress in contemporary Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This article investigates gendered nationalist ideologies and their attendant myths and narratives in present-day Kyrgyzstan through an investigation of clothing items and practices. Clothes “speak volumes,” revealing tensions between gendered narratives of nationhood and various interpretations of what “proper” Kyrgyz femininities and masculinities should be. Clothing thus becomes both a sign and a site of the politics of identity, inscribing power relations and individual strategies of Kyrgyz men and women onto their bodies. Individual clothing choices and strategies take place within the general context of discursive struggles over what authentic and appropriate representations of Kyrgyzness should be. Thus, such clothing items as ak kalpak (conical felt hats) and the practice of Muslim women covering their head (hijab) acquire social and political meanings that stand for wider processes of identity contestations in the country.

Keywords:

• dress
• Kyrgyzstan
• gender
• nationalism
• discourse

Notes

1. Residents of Bishek told me that Chuy Avenue (formerly Lenin Prospect in Frunze), which runs through the city center, was known as “Broadway” among the fashionable stiliagi crowd (comparable to today's hipsters) in the 1960–1970s. These groups styled themselves in colorful clothes (procured on the black market of smuggled imported goods or custom made by local tailors and shoemakers), according to their perceptions of what people wear in the “West,” while their appearance was subject to much ridicule in official discourse and ostracism by society as they were considered unpatriotic and they were decried as “petit bourgeois” for their interest in material things.

2. There is a difference between city and village in how clothing is acquired, styled, and worn. Louise Bechtold's research into the practice of gift exchange in the rural ritual economy of south Kyrgyzstan, for instance, shows that most clothing is acquired through gift exchange, while jooluk functions as at once the smallest item for exchange in these transactions, as a means of showing respect to those of higher social standing, as well as a means for a bride's integration into her new family. The various colors of jooluk signify different stages in a woman's life (young bride, maturity, mourning). The ak jooluk (white headscarf) is used during bride abduction as the symbol of the girl's acceptance of her fate and new status of a wife. Elder women of the abductor's family persistently force the jooluk onto the abducted girl's head until she accepts it (Bechtold 2015).

3. It is estimated that between 600,000 and 1 million Kyrgyz citizens regularly migrate to Russia for seasonal work for periods lasting between nine months and three years. Despite common assumptions that a typical migrant is a “young married male with secondary education,” the migrant work force of Central Asians in Russia is rapidly feminizing (Laruelle 2007, 106). According to various estimates, men comprise between 60% and 90% of Tajik and Uzbek migrant workers in Russia, while almost half of Kyrgyz labor migrants are female. The numbers of Uzbek and Tajik women traveling to work in Russia were increasing steadily until the economic crisis hit the region in 2008 (Marat 2009, 10).

4. The word mankurt first appeared in Chingiz Aitmatov's novel Burannyĭ polustanok (A day lasts more than 100 years). A mankurt was a person who was captured by a tribe of Zhuan-zhuans and through extremely cruel manipulations was turned into a perfect slave. Such a slave “did not know who he was, where he came from, did not know his own name, did not remember his childhood, his father and mother – in one word, mankurt did not know his own humanity” (Aitmatov 1988, 126). The theme of mankurtism is a recurrent and very powerful one in the official and popular nationalist discourses of all of the Central Asian states.

5. Historians of Kyrgyz costume date the ak kalpak’s appearance in the region to the thirteenth century. Kalpaks are made from four wedge-shaped parts that are wider at the brim of the hat. The brim can be lifted and lowered to protect the eyes against the elements. The top is decorated with a tassel. Kalpaks had different designs. Those of the aristocracy had a tall crown, and the brim was lined with black velvet. Poor Kyrgyz men lined their kalpaks with satin, while children's kalpaks were decorated with red velvet or other red material. One type of kalpak – ay kalpak – did not have a slit brim (Mal'chik 2005).

6. Some scholars of dress have doubted that there ever existed a fully uncontaminated “authenticity” either in peasant or tribal dress (Taylor 2002, 201–205). Rather, I would argue that any dress with pretentions of “authenticity” is inevitably a simulation. According to Liudmila Stavkaia, a professor of history at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavonic University, what is considered the traditional “ethnic” Kyrgyz dress today is actually based on a stylized theatrical costume created for early Kyrgyz opera and ballet performances in the 1930s (Interview with Dr Liudmila Georgievna Stavskaia, 4 April 2012, KRSU campus, Bishkek).

7. The link between norms of propriety prescribed for women and the system of gendered power distribution in society is well established. Traditional practices of secluding higher class women (purdah) and veiling signified the privilege of their families showing that they could afford to withdraw women from nondomestic work, ensuring the “honor” of the family by controlling female sexuality (Kandiyoti 1988, 280). This is a part of what Deniz Kandiyoti refers to as the “patriarchal bargain” – men are supposed to provide protection in exchange for women's submissiveness and propriety. This explains why, in the context of modern societies where classical patriarchy is disintegrating under the pressures of a global capitalist economy, some women who have been pushed to work outside of their homes would be interested in upholding their part of the bargain with the patriarchy if they believe that veiling is a sign of being a “good woman” and a path to economic, social, and physical security and respectability (Kandiyoti 1988, 283).

8. Similarly, the term “ethnic Muslim” seems to be in wide circulation within certain popular religious discourses, to denote any ethnicity that is assumed to be Muslim by default (for instance, Alyautdinov 2011).

9. The name has been changed for confidentiality reasons.