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ABSTRACT
Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units for Special Purposes) as they participate in politics, and the role tradition plays in these activities. We argue that aksakals actively draw on tradition even in the political realm to avoid being derogatorily labelled ‘elders on duty’, whereas OBON women position themselves as economic and political actors but are subjected to discourses and practices of tradition by others. While both aksakals and OBON women have been central to political action in Kyrgyzstan in the last two decades, this article is the first to compare and contrast these two categories of unusual activists. The comparison reveals a perpetuation of culturally recognized gender roles even when these actors go beyond their ‘traditional’ realms of competence.
Acknowledgements
Data for this article were culled from Beyer’s long-term ethnographic research between 2005 and 2015 in Talas Province in northern Kyrgyzstan and in the capital Bishkek, as well from interviews Kojobekova conducted throughout Kyrgyzstan over a period of several months in 2015. All names used in this article are pseudonyms. In Kojobekova’s case we have also not specified places to protect the identity of her informants. The authors would like to thank Felix Girke, Juliette Cleuziou, Brian Donahoe and David Montgomery for helpful comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 See e.g. Gullette (Citation2010); Reeves (Citation2014); Laruelle and Engvall (Citation2015); Doolotkeldieva (Citation2015); Heathershaw and Cooley (Citation2017); Ismailbekova (Citation2017).
2 ‘OBON’ was coined in tongue-in-cheek analogy to OMON (Russ.: Otriad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniia, Special Purpose Police Unit), an elite police force in Russia that is trained to fight organized crime and is also used to control demonstrations or mass protests. The B in OBON stands for Bab, which is itself short for babushka (grandma, old lady) and a slang word for women in general.
3 For research on elders’ activism in other post-Soviet countries, see, e.g., Leipnik (Citation2016) on the elderly in urban civic activism in Ukraine, and Edele (Citation2008) on Soviet war veterans fighting for social benefits.
4 Kutmanaliev (Citation2015) describes how, during the Osh riots in 2010, an Uzbek woman took leadership and coordinated defensive measures in a local Uzbek neighbourhood. While he notes that this was unusual, he describes the woman as having ‘informal links with the local police’ (470), being in charge of dealing with troublemakers in the neighbourhood (471), and having connections to the Kyrgyz community (472), thus acting well beyond the realm of her household.
5 The ethnonym ‘Kyrgyz’ itself is often attributed to the number 40, as is the image on the Kyrgyz flag, which depicts a sun with 40 rays, with a Kyrgyz tündük – the crisscrossed wooden structure at the peak of the roof of a yurt – in the centre.
6 The kalpak has also become a political statement in the music industry, with nationalist artists such as the Kyrgyz rapper Tata Ulan regularly wearing a kalpak in their music videos alongside other paraphernalia considered traditionally Kyrgyz.
7 For details see Erkebaeva (Citation2017).
8 In 2005, the parliament of 120 deputies was entirely male. In 2015, still only 20% of the deputies were women, and this was after a gender quota had been introduced (UNDP Regional Human Development Report Citation2016).
9 For recent developments concerning ‘heroism’ in Kyrgyzstan, see Kojobekova (Citation2014).
10 Megoran (Citation2017, 85) cites one of the leaders who campaigned to have the female statue removed:
The reason is that in Kyrgyz culture, women never raise the tündük. That is done by the men. Women would do it on two occasions – if all the men were dead, or if all the men were away at war. There is an old curse, ‘Your wife will hold the tündük’, which means basically, I will kill you.’
11 Collective activities of elderly women that do exist – such as lamenting at funerals (koshok singing) – are not public in this sense.
12 See e.g., Kim et al. (Citation2012), Shishkin (Citation2013) and Szymanek (Citation2012). For an overview of the public portrayal of OBON in local news and policy reports, see Alymkulova, Aitmatova, and Mamaraimov (Citation2012).
13 See also Cleuziou’s article in this special issue.
14 All personal names are pseudonyms.
15 Not all OBON are ethnic Kyrgyz, but most of the women Kojobekova interacted with were. For the purposes of this article, we are focusing on ethnic Kyrgyz women, but include this quote to show that some of the discourses are shared among women across ethnic groups. Future research should address more explicitly the element of ethnic background and interethnic cooperation in women’s political activism.
16 While speaking Kyrgyz throughout, the elders would use this Russian expression to indicate that they did not consider this particular way of speaking ‘theirs’ but as typical of a previous political era. See also Yurchak (Citation2006).
17 In 2019, 500 som is the equivalent of about US$ 7.
18 This discussion draws on Beyer (Citation2016) throughout.
19 See also the contributions by Cleuziou and Kudaibergenova in this special issue.