Authors:Nina Bagdasarova Pages: 17 - 40 Abstract: The high level of homophobia in society and a contradictory state policy towards sexual minorities define the specific mode of existence of the LGBT community in Kyrgyzstan. The need to socialise and spend some time together is a big part of building and maintaining an LGBT identity, which requires collective security practices. The concept of “securityscapes”, based on Arjun Appadurai’s idea of “scapes”, was used as a main instrument for the analysis of ethnographic data. LGBT people in Kyrgyzstan navigate quite complicated landscapes of security and insecurity, defined by encounters with various agents, and engage in different strategies of adaptation. During the field research two types of threats within LGBT securityscapes were identified: “outer” threats (such as the homophobic environment) and “inner” threats (such as some behavioural patterns that might expose community members to this hostile environment). LGBT people navigate within their securityscapes individually, yet community life requires specific measures. The collective securityscapes of the LGBT communities in Bishkek and Osh were examined, and it will be shown that despite the differences according to local conditions, similar strategies were developed in both places when responding to “inner” and “outer” threats. PubDate: 2019-03-18 DOI: 10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8659 Issue No:Vol. 49, No. 1-2 (2019)
Authors:Aksana Ismailbekova Pages: 41 - 60 Abstract: Based on fieldwork in southern Kyrgyzstan in October and November 2017, this article explores at a micro-level the security practices undertaken by Uzbek people in Osh. It closely examines the experiences of Uzbek taxi-drivers, traders and businesspeople and thereby seeks to understand how and why local actors have managed to find creative ways to secure their economic activities. The business sector is the sector in which the Uzbek community is dominant, whereas the Kyrgyz community dominates the state structures. Historically, the two ethnic groups have lived side by side and have been in constant contact with each other through this state/business symbiosis. However, the conflict of 2010 drastically changed and destroyed this symbiosis, and with it threatened the Uzbek business sector. The examination of the security- making practices of the Uzbek businesspeople was guided through the prism of the theoretical framework of “securityscapes”. PubDate: 2019-03-18 DOI: 10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8660 Issue No:Vol. 49, No. 1-2 (2019)
Authors:Hafiz Boboyorov Pages: 61 - 82 Abstract: This article discusses how Russian and Russian-speaking (Ruszabon) inhabitants of Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan, shape and maintain their securityscapes through languages, identities, memories, networks and physical structures of the urban space. Securityscapes are physically built and mentally imagined spaces securing individual or collective life from what people perceive as existential dangers. These dangers reflect both objective and imagined conditions threatening individual and collective extinction. Depending on different existential contexts, securityscapes serve either as distinct or as merged and intertwined spatial categories of individuals and collectives. When the Ruszabon face violence in public due to their ethnic and religious origins, they hide their identities or adapt their lifestyle to the hegemonic demands of the Muslim society. Social networks and the physical structures of urban neighbourhoods shape inner securityscapes, as reflected in the physical isolation of individuals and segregation of families, family friends and religious communities from the public. In particular, the memories of the interethnic clashes in the 1990s in Dushanbe, which are substantially influenced by political interpretations, condition and diminish the everyday practices and future expectations of the Ruszabon. PubDate: 2019-03-18 DOI: 10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8661 Issue No:Vol. 49, No. 1-2 (2019)
Authors:Bhumitra Chakma Pages: 83 - 104 Abstract: This paper illustrates the insecurity perceptions and security practices of the Paharis, an indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh. It adopts an interpretive ethnographic approach in which it posits, based on fieldwork experiences, that the security perceptions of the CHT indigenous people are primarily formed by the experiences of marginalisation. Marginalisation has resulted mainly from the assimilationist nation-building policies and ill-conceived development projects pursued by first Pakistan and later Bangladesh, which have not only threatened the Paharis’ group identity but have also generated threats of violence in their everyday lives. The macro-level threat to identity and the micro-level threat of violence in everyday life operate in parallel and in an intertwined fashion. To cope with these threats, the Paharis have employed an array of different strategies at both macro and micro levels, which are analysed in this paper. PubDate: 2019-03-20 DOI: 10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8704 Issue No:Vol. 49, No. 1-2 (2019)
Authors:Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Irene Sondang Fitrinitia, Johannes Herbeck Pages: 105 - 126 Abstract: This article explores the normalisation of urban flooding through two distinct sets of securitised practices in two Southeast Asian megacities – localised disaster management surveillance regimes and the policing of informal settlements in Metro Manila and northern Jakarta, respectively. As a point of departure, we problematise the question of how the incidence of recurring floods (and flooding) is diversely interpreted as both event and as an experiential reality, insofar as the manifestation of the floods never entirely occupies a state of either normalcy or exception. It is this fluid state of inbetweenness in which these diverse securitisation trajectories are explored. The first entails the recent emergence of Metro Manila’s disaster Command Centres, marking a break from conventional ways of responding to flood risks. The second case study engages with Jakarta City’s coercive use of its municipal police unit – the Satpol P.P. – in relocating urban informal settlers who have otherwise actively learned to reshape their familiarity to flooding as a non-issue in order to avoid being evicted. While the paper reflects on the formal structures of flood cultures, we illustrate how vernacular interpretations around security entrenched in notions of “living with floods” lead to broader questions of ontological normalisation regarding watery incursions – as both spectacular as well as mundane, routinised events. PubDate: 2019-03-20 DOI: 10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8707 Issue No:Vol. 49, No. 1-2 (2019)
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