Central Asian Affairs is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal, ranked in Scopus and available in Open Access. It aims to feature innovative research on contemporary developments in the wider Central Asian region. Its coverage includes Central Asia, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Xinjiang, Kashmir, neighboring powers (China, Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, Turkey), and the role of leading international powers and donors in this region. Central Asian Affairs informs scholarly discourse and policy discussions on the region by engaging experts from across the policy and academic arenas, drawing on a diverse array of disciplines including political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, development studies, and security studies.
Central Asian Affairs is committed to equity. We encourage authors to be sensitive to their own epistemic practices, including as reflected in their citations’ gender balance and representation of scholarship by authors from the country or countries under study.
Volume 9 (2022)
INTRODUCTION
The Mobilizing Potential of Communication Networks in Central Asia by Jasmin Dall’ Agnola and Colleen Wood
ARTICLES
Online Discourses in Post-Soviet Media: The Threat of the Islamic State in Central Asia by Rano Turaeva
The Optics of Leadership: A Comparative Exploration of Uzbek and Tajik Presidential Posing on Instagram by Cordelia Buchanan Ponczek
Rising Civic Awareness through Local Instagram: Young Kazakhstani Russians and Their Belongingness to Kazakhstan by Marina Zhir-Lebed
Keeping Receipts: Lessons on Civic Engagement in Autocratic States from Kazakh Advocacy for Xinjiang by Colleen Wood
“Tell Me Sister” – Social Media, a Tool for Women Activists in Tajikistan by Jasmin Dall’ Agnola
INTRODUCTION
Special Issue Gender as Intersections: A Different Way of Seeing Central Asia by SvetLana Peshkova and Hélène Thibault
ARTICLES
Prevrashenie (Transformation) of Bacha: Cracks and Ghostly Matters in the National/ist Heritage of Central Asia by SvetLana Peshkova, Ruthia Jenrbekova, and Maria Vilkovisky
Tracing the Effects of Soviet Gender and Sexual Politics in Central Asia by Feruza Aripova
Gender at the Intersection of Racialization, Inequality, and Disability in Anbar Otin’s Writing by Donohon Abdugafurova
Down with Bridewealth, Down with the Veil! Soviet Campaign for the Emancipation of Women in Central Asia in Graphics and Textiles between the 1920s and 1930s by Snezhanna Atanova
Bargaining with Virginity: Regulating Practices in Post-socialist Kyrgyzstan by Elena Kim, Elena Molchanova, and Rizvana Orozalieva
Imagined Women: Bearing, Rearing, and Wearing the Tajik Nation by Shahnoza Nozimova
Nastoiashchie Muzhiki and Depleted Masculinity in Kyrgyzstan by Michele E. Commercio
Online Male Sex Work in Kazakhstan: A Distinct Market? by Hélène Thibault
Between the Posts, Into the Void: Making Sense of Feminism and Decolonization in Bishkek and Almaty by Victoria Kravtsova
Volume 8 (2021)
ARTICLES
Central Asian Regionalism or Central Asian Order? Some Reflections by Filippo Costa Buranelli
How Perceptions of the English Language Have Changed in Kazakhstan: A Narrative Analysis by Valerie Sartor
Discussing Sinophobia in Kyrgyzstanby Aizat Shailoobek Kyzy
Uchyot and Foucault: Drug Users and Migrants in Post-Soviet Central Asia and Russia by Rano Turaeva and Muyassar Turaeva
BOOK DISCUSSION
Bagila Bukharbayeva, The Vanishing Generation: Faith and Uprising in Modern Uzbekistan (Indiana University Press, 2019).
ARTICLES
Civil Society and Patterns of Security in Central Asia by Christoph Schuck and Andreas Vasilache
State Regulation of Organized Civil Society in Hybrid Regimes: A Systematic Assessment of Cross-National Variations in the Regulation of Civil Society Organizations in Seven Post-Soviet Countries by Serik Beimenbetov
EU Efforts to Prevent Violent Extremism (PVE) by Engaging Civil Society in Kyrgyzstan by Chiara Pierobon
Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy Change: Kyrgyzstan’s U-Turns on the U.S. Air Base at Manas Airport by Shairbek Dzhuraev
Cooperation from Outside: Security Regionalism in Central Asia and Its Limits by Sebastien Mayer
ARTICLES
Bargaining over Remittances in Tajik Extended Families by Sabiha Yeasmin Rosy and Fatemeh Nejati
Kazakhstan in World War II: Authors and Publishers of Post-1991 History Textbooks by Berikbol Dukeyev
Authoritarian Regime Stability in Uzbekistan under Patronal President Islam Karimov by Bekzod Zakirov
INTRODUCTION
Introduction: Ethnic, Civic, or Both? The Ethnicities of Kazakhstan in Search of an Identity and Homeland by Beate Eschment and Bruno De Cordier
ARTICLES
Identity of Kazakhstan’s Uyghurs: Migration, Homeland, and Language by Ablet Kamalov
The Chechens and Kurds of Kazakhstan between Historical and Second Homelands by Beate Eschment
Volume 7 (2020)
ARTICLES
The Bureaucratization of Islam in Azerbaijan: State as the Principal Regulator and Interpreter of Religion by Kamal Gasimov
Understanding Factors behind Regional Inequality in Education in Kazakhstan by Aigerim Kopeyeva
Secondary Schools and Inequality: Navigating the Fragmented Landscape of Educational Choices in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan by Aigoul Abdoubaetova
BOOK DISCUSSION
Artemy Kalinovsky, Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Love and Jihad. Female Trajectories from North Caucasus to the Islamic State by Denis Sokolov
“Franchise” Branch Campuses in Uzbekistan: The Internationalisation of Higher Education as a Solution? by Dilnoza Ubaydullaeva
State Reforms and Informal Payments in Secondary Education of Kazakhstan by Dina Sharipova
BOOK DISCUSSION
Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature: Elites and Narraves
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Madrasa-based Religious Learning: Between Secular State and Competing Fellowships in Kyrgyzstan by Asel Doolotkeldieva
Choikhonai Surkh: The Replacement of “Opium Dens” with Red Teahouses and the Limits of the Soviet Enlightenment Project in Tajikistan by Alisher Latypov
Exclusion, Enmity, and the Normalization of the Exception: The September 2015 Incidents and the Development of Sovereign Dictatorship in Tajikistan by Edward Lemon and Omid Rahimi
BOOK DISCUSSION
Hélène Thibault, Transforming Tajikistan: State Building and Islam in
Post-Soviet Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018).
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Institutional Design, Local Elite Resistance, and Inequality in Access to Land: Evidence from Cotton-Growing Areas of Tajikistan by Navruz Nekbakhtshoev
Political Liberalization and Emerging Civil Society in Uzbekistan: The Cases of Public Reaction to Demolition Program and the Use of Forced Labor by Dilnoza Ubaydullaeva
BOOK DISCUSSION
Eren Tasar Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia.
Volume 6 (2019)
ARTICLES
Changing Perceptions of Informal Payments under Privatization of Health Care: The Case of Kazakhstan by Natsuko Oka
Iran’s New Cultural Nationalism: Iranian Cultural Diplomacy in Tajikistan by Lukas Anderson
An Investigation of Journalists’ Job Satisfaction in Bishkek, Capital of the Kyrgyz Republic by Bahtiyar Kurambayev
BOOK DISCUSSION
Nick Megoran, Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Pittsburgh, pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), 368 pp.
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Introduction to the Islamic Mediascape in Central Asia by Wendell Schwab
Islamic Media in Soviet Central Asia by Eren Tasar
Islam and Cultural Heritage on Tajik Television by Benjamin Gatling
The Transformation of Tajikistan’s Religious Field: From Religious Pluralism to Authoritarian Inertia by Shahnoza Nozimova and Tim Epkenhans
The Rhetoric of Islamic Debate in Kazakhstani Mass Media by Wendell Schwab
“Where is Our Honor?” Sports, Masculinity, and Authority in Kazakhstani Islamic Media by Ulan Bigozhin
Atheism 2.0: Searching for Spaces for Atheism in Contemporary Kyrgyzstan by Maria Louw
Religion, Power, and Contemporary Art in Central Asia: Visualizing and Performing Islam by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Regenerating Life: The Power of Reproducing People in Desert Turkmenistan by Cara Kerven
Shaping Historical and Cultural Heritage in Uyghur Children: A Case Study on the Book Series Bilqut Balilar Shexs Hëkayiliri by Giulia Cabras
Carried by Migrants– Frictions of Migration and Mobility Patterns in the Conflicting Assemblage of the Russian Private Transport Sector by Tonio Weicker
BOOK DISCUSSION
Review of Natalie Koch, The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).
Table of Contents
Volume 5 (2018)
ARTICLES
Leadership Succession in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan: Between Stability and Instability by Slavomir Horak
Nation-Building and a School Play in a Kazakh Saint’s Jubilee by Ulan Bigozhin
The Socio–Economic Life around Beans in Kyrgyzstan: Practices, Discourses and Local Households by Gulnora Iskandarova
Informal Economies in the Post-Soviet Space: Post-Soviet Islam and Its Role in Ordering Entrepreneurship in Central Asia by Rano Turaeva
BOOK DISCUSSION
M. Laszczkowski, “City of the Future”: Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
The Fabric of Answer: Constructing a National Façade by Sophie Roche
How Relations Make Persons: Rituals Accompanying Childbirth and Socialization of Infants in Kyrgyzstan by Swetlana Torno
Women, the Parliament and Political Participation in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan by Cholpon Turdalieva and Medet Tiulegenov
Talking about and Doing Elections: The Shaping of a Local Electoral Field in Western Afghanistan by Said Reza Kazemi
BOOK DISCUSSION
Johan Engvall, The State as Investment Market: Kyrgyzstan in Comparative Perspective (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Nation, Religion, and Theology: What Do We Mean When We Say “Being Kyrgyz Means Being Muslim?” by Vincent M. Artman
Islam, Morality and Public Education: Religious Elements of Ethics and Etiquette in the Uzbek School Curriculum by Donohon Abdugafurova
Local Politics and Patronage of a Sacred Lineage Shrine in Kazakhstan by Ulan Bigozhin
Mediatization of Religion in Kyrgyzstan: Diffusion of Religious Authority and Changing Perceptions of Religion by Nurbek Bekmurzaev
BOOK DISCUSSION
Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw, Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 2017)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Polycentricity of Linguistic Landscape and Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan by Aisulu Kulbayeva
Kazakh Land, China Capital: Exporting China’s Project System to External Geographies by Tristan Kenderdine
The Changing Landscape of (Political) Islam in Azerbaijan: Its Contextual Underpinnings and Future Prospects by Murad Ismayilov
BOOK DISCUSSION
Regine A. Spector, Order at the Bazaar: Power and Trade in Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017)
Table of Contents
Volume 4 (2017)
ARTICLES
Two Countries, Five Years: Islam in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz-stan through the Lens of Public Opinion Surveys by Barbara Junisbai, Azamat Junisbai and Baurzhan Zhussupov
Uncertainty Perpetuated? The Pitfalls of a Weakly Institutionalized Party System in Kyrgyzstan by Asel Doolotkeldieva and Alexander Wolters
Toward Smart City Development in Central Asia: A Compara-tive Assessment by Farrukh Irnazarov
BOOK DISCUSSION
Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Re/Claiming Bishkek: Contestation and Activism in the City of Two Revolutions by Emil Nasritdinov and Philipp Schröder
From Shanghai to Iug-2 … and What Now? Traces of (Re-)Claiming Bishkek from Multitemporal Fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan by Philipp Schröder
Ala-Too as the Main City/Country Square: Changing Forms, Uses, and Meanings by Natalya Kosmarskaya, Artyom Kosmarsky and Guzel Sabirova
Making Property in Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek’s Urban Periphery as Redistributive Space by Craig Hatcher
Dynamics of Reciprocity and Networks of the Kyrgyz through Bishkek Toi Making by Cholpon Turdalieva and Rene Provis
The War of Billboards: Hijab, Secularism, and Public Space in Bishkek by Emil Nasritdinov and Nurgul Esenamanova
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
How “Muslim” are Central Asian Muslims? A Historical and Comparative Enquiry by Galina M. Yemelianova
Playing Cosmopolitan: Muslim Self-fashioning, Migration, and (Be-)Longing in the Tajik Dubai Business Sector by Manja Stephan-Emmrich
BOOK DISCUSSION
Sergei Abashin, Sovetskii kishlak: mezhdu kolonializmom i modernizatsiei (Moscow: NLO, 2015)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Contemporary Public Art and Nation: Contesting “Tradition” in Post-Socialist Cultures and Societies by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
“Between Europe and Asia”: Geography and Identity in Post-Soviet Nation-Building Narratives by Joshua Kucera
From Once-dominant Minority to Historical Christian Outpost on the Southern Caspian: Azerbaijan’s Orthodox Christians by Bruno De Cordier and Cristina Boboc
Assessing China’s New Policy in Afghanistan by Akram Umarov
BOOK DISCUSSION
David Radford, Religious Identity and Social Change: Explaining Christian Conversion in a Muslim World (New York: Routledge, 2015)
Table of Contents
Volume 3 (2016)
ARTICLES
From Frunze to Bishkek: Soviet Territorial Youth Formations and Their Decline in the 1990s and 2000s by Emil Nasritdinov and Philipp Schröder
Promoting Justice Reforms in Central Asia: The European Un-ion’s Rule of Law Initiative as Part of a Comprehensive Democ-ratization Strategy? by Vera Axyonova
International Aid, Frontier Securitization, and Social Engineer-ing: Soviet–Xinjiang Development Cooperation during the Gov-ernorate of Sheng Shicai (1933–1944) by Bruno De Cordier
BOOK DISCUSSION
Svetlana Peshkova, Women, Islam, and Identity: Public Life in Private Spaces in Uzbekistan (Syracuse,NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014).
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Hijab in a Changing Tajik Society by Shahnoza Nozimova
(Re)constructing Muslim Identities from the Soviet Past: Muslim Tatar Women’s Stories of Soviet Moral Selves by Liliya Karimova
Uzbekness and Islam: A Survey-based Analysis of Identity in Uzbekistan by Yaacov Ro’iandAlon Wainer
The Soviet State and Lineage Societies: Doctrine, Local Interactions, and Political Hybridization in Kazakhstan and Kirghizia During the 1920s and 1930s by Isabelle Ohayon
BOOK DISCUSSION
Kelly M. McMann, Corruption as a Last Resort: Adapting to the Market in Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Leadership Succession, Great Power Ambitions, and the Fu-ture of Central Asia by Eric McGlinchey
Tajikistan’s Bureaucratic Management of Exclusion: Responses to the Russian Reentry Ban Database by Malika Bahovadinova
Revolution in the Counter-Revolution: Efforts to Centralize the Taliban’s Military Leadership by Claudio Franco and Antonio Giustozzi
BOOK DISCUSSION
Stéphane Dudoignon and Christian Noack, eds.Allah’s Kol-khozes. Migration, De-Stalinisation, Privatisation and the New Muslim Congregations in the Soviet Realm (1950s–2000s) (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2014)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Visual Culture and Islam in Kazakhstan: The Case of Asyl Arna’s Social Media by Wendell Schwab
The “Personality Cult” Problematic: Personalism and Mosques Memorializing the “Father of the Nation” in Turkmenistan and the UAE by Natalie Koch
Islamic Finance and the State in Central Asia by Alexander Wolters
BOOK DISCUSSION
Jesse Driscoll, Warlords and Coalition Politics in Post-Soviet States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Table of Contents
Volume 2 (2015)
ARTICLES
Introduction by David W. Montgomery
Bad Medicine by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili
Islam beyond Democracy and State in Kyrgyzstan by David W. Montgomery
Islam, Fun, and Social Capital in Kazakhstan by Wendell Schwab
Twenty-five Somonis for a Good Future by Sophie Roche
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, and Damn the Dictatorship by Russell Zanca
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Elite Management in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: A View from Bashkortostan and Tatarstan by Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
Who Gets What, When and How? Housing and Informal Institutions in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Kazakhstan by Dina Sharipova
What It Takes to Avert a Regional Crisis: Understanding the Uz-bek Government’s Responses to the June 2010 Violence in South Kyrgyzstan by Alisher Khamidov
Unexpected Frontiers of Black Internationalism: African Ameri-cans in Soviet Central Asia, 1930–1976 by Athan Andreas Biss
BOOK DISCUSSION
Marlene Laruelle and Sébastien Peyrouse The Chinese Ques-tion in Central Asia: Domestic Order, Social Change, and the Chinese Factor (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
The Modern Chinese State and Strategies of Control over Uy-ghur Islam by Rémi Castets
Religion, Repression, and Traditional Uyghur Culture in South-ern Xinjiang: Kashgar and Khotan by Michael Dillon
Uyghurs on Chinese Social Networking Sites: The Creation and Destruction of Ethnic Youth Culture by Nathan Light
Paradoxes of Hegemonic Discourse in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: History Textbooks’ and History Teachers’ Attitudes toward the Soviet Past by Damira Umetbaeva
BOOK DISCUSSION
Madeleine Reeves, Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014)
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
The Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan: Episodes of Islamic Ac-tivism, Postconflict Accommodation, and Political Marginaliza-tion by Tim Epkenhans
Power, “Original” Islam, and the Reactivation of a Religious Utopia in Kara-Suu, Kyrgyzstan by Aurélie Biard
Switching to Satr: An Ethnography of the Particular in Wom-en’s Choices in Head Coverings in Tajikistan by Marintha Miles
BOOK DISCUSSION
Sophie Roche, Domesticating Youth: Youth Bulges and their Socio political Implications in Tajikistan (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2014)
Table of Contents
Volume 1 (2014)
ARTICLES
Policing Public Protest in Central Asia by Erica Marat
Mining Junior, Major Political Risks by J. Edward Conway
Post-Soviet Transformations of Health Systems in the South Caucasus by Sophie Hohmann and Cécile Lefèvre
Afghanistan’s decentralised regional foreign policy by Antonio Giustozzi
The View Across the Durand Line by Shaun Gregory
Assessing Uzbekistan’s and Tajikistan’s Afghan Policy by Marlene Laruelle
Post-2014 Afghanistan Policy and the Limitations of China’s Global Role by Elizabeth Wishnick
BOOK DISCUSSION
Morgan Y. Liu, Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Re-newal in Osh
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Moving Toward the Brink? Migration in the Kyrgyz Republic by Paul Fryer, Emil Nasritdinov and Elmira Satybaldieva
The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary, 2003–2013 by Antonio Giustozzi and Adam Baczko
Competition and Benefit Sharing in the Ferghana Valley: Soviet Negotiations on Transboundary Small Reservoir Construction by Mariya Pak and Kai Wegerich
Mediating the Conflict in the Rasht Valley, Tajikistan: The Hege-monic Narrative and Anti-Hegemonic Challenges by Edward Lemon
Kazakhstan and the Global Nuclear Order by Togzhan Kassenova
Proliferation Challenges in Central Asia and the Need for Inter-national Cooperation by Dauren Aben
BOOK DISCUSSION
Lawrence Markowitz, State Erosion. Unlootable Resources and Unruly Elites in Central Asia
Table of Contents
Editor-in-Chief: Diana Kudaibergenova
Managing Editor: Sebastien Peyrouse
Associate Editors: Henry Hale, Sean Roberts, Cory Welt Cory Welt
Gardner Bovingdon, Assistant Professor, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Alexander Cooley, Tow Professor, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA
Sally Cummings, Professor, Saint Andrew University, United Kingdom
Antonio Giustozzi, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Pauline Jones Luong, Professor, Michigan University, USA
Zhao Huasheng, Director, Center for Central Eurasian Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Nargis Kassenova, Senior Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Harvard University
Andrei Kazantsev, Director of the Analytical Center, MGIMO, Moscow, Russia
Simbal Khan, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Strategic Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan
Eric McGlinchey, Associate Professor, George Mason University, USA
Neil Melvin, SIPRI, Stockholm, Sweden
Nazif Shahrani, Professor, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Meena Singh Roy, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, Delhi, India
Tomohiko Uyama, Director, Slavic Research Center, Sapporo University, Japan
