Security and gendered national identity in Uzbekistan

Contributing to the growing literature on feminist geopolitics, this article addresses the security discourses employed by the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan's postindependence nation-building process. It examines the ways in which militarism and the 'culture of war' are productive of gendered national identities in Uzbekistan, focusing on how the 'protector-protected' relationship figures prominently in the Karimov regime's anti-terrorist rhetoric. It does so through a textual analysis of the Andijon uprising and the 'Day of Memory and Honor' holiday. It argues that the terrorist threat has been a driving factor in the pervasive militarization of society, but that official responses to state violence in Andijon obscure alternative security concerns of the general population in Uzbekistan - and more specifically those of women. It adds to existing feminist geopolitics literature by expanding it into a new empirical context, while rejecting the assertion that a 'geopolitical' analysis necessarily entails a 'global' approach.