Peace in the Family is the Basis of Peace in the Country: How Women Contribute to Local Peace in Southern Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

There has been a significant amount of research on peacebuilding in Central Asia in general and in Kyrgyzstan in particular. This has helped us both understand socio-political processes in the republic itself, and the shortcomings of the liberal peacebuilding framework in general. However, this work has, with rare exceptions, focused largely on male peacebuilding at either the state or international scale. Correcting that trend, this article illuminates the role of women peacebuilders in the post-conflict city of Osh. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2016, it argues that women have a hitherto overlooked but nonetheless important ‘invisible’ role in peacebuilding.

KEYWORDS:

• Peacebuilding
• gender
• Kyrgyzstan
• family
• elders
• patriarchy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Aksana Ismailbekova, anthropologist, a research fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient ZMO, writes on gender, age, kinship, generation in Fergana Valley, Central Asia. Ismailbekova is the author of the book ‘Blood Ties and the Native Son: Poetics of Patronage in Kyrgyzstan (Indiana University Press, 2017).

Nick Megoran, a political geographer at Newcastle University, in the school of Geography, Politics and Sociology. Megoran's project is on the building of nation-states in modern Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, with particular attention paid to border regions, boundary disputes and geopolitics. Megoran is the author of the book ‘Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Central Eurasia in Context)’ (Pittsburgh University Press 2017).

Notes

1 Focus group in Nookat, 20 August 2016.

2 Interview with Gulsana Abdyshova, 20 August 2016, Nookat.

3 Interview with Gulsana Abdyshova, Osh city, 15 August 2016.

4 Interview with Zharkinai Bolponova, Osh city, 15 August 2016.

5 Interview with Jarkinai Rudieva, Osh city, 14 August 2016.

6 Interview with Zhumagul Bolponova, Aravan, 18 August 2016.

7 Ibid.

8 Interview with Mavluyda Ahmadzhanova, Aravan, 20 August 2016.

9 Focus group in Nookat, 15 August 2016.

10 Ibid.

11 Interview with Mavlyuda Ahmadjanova, Osh city, 7 July 2016.

12 Interview with Anargul Mashaeva, Jalalabad, 1 July 2016.

13 Interviews with Anargul Mashaeva, Jalalabad and Mavlyuda ezhe, Amir-Timur. 3 July 2016.

14 Interview with Cholpon Sultanova, Osh, 2 July 2016.

15 Interview with Jarkynai Rudieva, Osh city, 5 July 2016.

16 Focus group with women, Nookat, 15 August 2016.

17 Ibid.

18 Focus group with women, Nookat 15 August 2016.

19 Cholpon Sultanova, Osh city, 21 August 2016.

20 Interview with Zhumagul Bolponova, Aravan, 18 August 2016.

21 Interview with Zhumagul Bolponova, Aravan, 18 August 2016.

22 Ibid.

Additional information

Funding

Work for this article was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council grant number ES/J013056/1. The comments of the editor and the anonymous reviewer greatly improved the paper. We also benefited from the comments received on our presentation during the lecture series on ‘Central Eurasian Studies and Translocality. A Debate Unfolding’ organised by Stefan B. Kirmse at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin (ZMO), Germany.