TY - GEN
T1 - Disorder over the border
T2 - spinning the spectre of instability through time and space in Central Asia
AU - Koch, Natalie
N1 - Funding Information:
Parts of this research were supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) [grant number 1003836] and a Graduate Research Fellowship. It was also supported by the Syracuse University Office of Sponsored Programs.
Funding Information:
Parts of this research were supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) [grant number 1003836] and a Graduate Research Fellowship. It was also supported by the Syracuse University Office of Sponsored Programs. The author thanks Edward Lemon, Madeleine Reeves and the anonymous peer reviewers for their useful feedback, as well as Evan Carr for his assistance in collecting and archiving the texts for this project. Any opinions or conclusions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) or any other granting organization.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Southseries Inc.
PY - 2018/1/2
Y1 - 2018/1/2
N2 - Across Eurasia, authoritarian leaders have sought to justify their ‘strong-hand’ approach to government by framing instability as a security threat and the strong state as a guarantor of political stability. Such ‘regimes of certainty’ promote a modernist valorization of order, the flip side of which is a demonization of political disorder instability, or mere uncertainty. Examining the spatial and temporal imaginaries underpinning such narratives about in/stability in Central Asia, this paper compares official discourse in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where state-controlled media and official publications have stigmatized political instability in Kyrgyzstan as indicative of the dangers of political liberalization and a weak state. Ostensibly about the ‘other’, these narratives are also about scripting the ‘self’. I argue that official interpretations of ‘disorder over the border’ in Kyrgyzstan are underpinned by a set of spatial and temporal imaginaries that do not merely reflect regional moral geographies, but actively construct them.
AB - Across Eurasia, authoritarian leaders have sought to justify their ‘strong-hand’ approach to government by framing instability as a security threat and the strong state as a guarantor of political stability. Such ‘regimes of certainty’ promote a modernist valorization of order, the flip side of which is a demonization of political disorder instability, or mere uncertainty. Examining the spatial and temporal imaginaries underpinning such narratives about in/stability in Central Asia, this paper compares official discourse in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where state-controlled media and official publications have stigmatized political instability in Kyrgyzstan as indicative of the dangers of political liberalization and a weak state. Ostensibly about the ‘other’, these narratives are also about scripting the ‘self’. I argue that official interpretations of ‘disorder over the border’ in Kyrgyzstan are underpinned by a set of spatial and temporal imaginaries that do not merely reflect regional moral geographies, but actively construct them.
KW - Authoritarianism
KW - Kazakhstan
KW - Uzbekistan
KW - critical security studies
KW - political geography
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042474269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85042474269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02634937.2017.1338667
DO - 10.1080/02634937.2017.1338667
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042474269
SN - 0263-4937
VL - 37
SP - 13
EP - 30
JO - Central Asian Survey
JF - Central Asian Survey
ER -