Abstract
The meaning of peace in post-Soviet Central Asia is highly contested. At the everyday level of the popular and the social, understandings of peace diverge among different social and ethnic groups. At a national level, public discourses of peace that prioritize notions such as stability and authority are contested by individuals and communities pursuing justice or defending human rights. At an international level, multi-lateral organizations promote liberal understandings of peace and peacebuilding, but these ideas are challenged by authoritarian conceptualizations of peace and stability promoted both by governing elites and by regional hegemons such as Russia and China.
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Notes
See David Lewis, ‘The Failure of a Liberal Peace: Sri Lanka’s Counter-Insurgency in Global Perspective’, Conflict, Security & Development 10, no. 5 (2010): 647–671;
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, ‘Illiberal Peacebuilding in Angola’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 49, no. 2 (2011): 287–314.
Nancy Lubin and Barnett Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia (New York: Century Foundation Press, 1999).
In effect, they followed Collier’s argument that rebellion could be traced to opportunity and feasibility, and not to underlying grievances. See Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler and Dominic Rohner, ‘Beyond Greed and Grievance: Feasibility and Civil War’, Oxford Economic Papers 61/1 (2009), 1–27. On the ‘greed vs grievance’ debate in the Central Asian context,
see Christine Bichsel, Conflict Transformation in Central Asia: Irrigation Disputes in the Ferghana Valley (London: Routledge, 2009), 34–35.
Laura Nader, Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village (Stanford University Press, 1991).
John Heathershaw, Post-Conflict Tajikistan: The Politics of Peacebuilding and the Emergence of Legitimate Order (London: Routledge, 2009), 75–76.
Judith Beyer, ‘Ordering Ideals: Accomplishing Well-Being in a Kyrgyz Cooperative of Elders’, Central Asian Survey 32, no. 4 (2013): 432–447.
Nick Megoran, Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism (London: Chatham House, Russia and Eurasia Programme Paper, 2012).
Till Mostowlansky, ‘“The State Starts from the Family”: Peace and Harmony in Tajikistan’s Eastern Pamirs’, Central Asian Survey 32, no. 4 (2013): 462–474.
Morgan Liu, Recognising the Khan: Authority, Space, and Political Imagination among Uzbek Men in Post-Soviet Osh, Kyrgyzstan (PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2002), 1, as cited in Heathershaw, Post-Conflict Tajikistan, 69.
Morgan Liu, Under Solomon’s Throne (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 117.
Similar modes of mediation have been identified in some other Asian cultures. See Joel Lee and Teh Hwee Hwee, An Asian Perspective on Mediation (Academy Publishing, 2009).
Robin N. Haarr, ‘Wife Abuse in Tajikistan’, Feminist Criminology 2, no. 3 (2007), 245–270; ‘Suicidality among Battered Women in Tajikistan’, Violence against Women, 16, no. 7 (2010), 764–788.
Theo Van Leeuwen, Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Anara Karagulova and Nick Megoran, ‘Discourses of Danger and the “War on Terror”: Gothic Kyrgyzstan and the Collapse of the Akaev regime’, Review of International Studies 37, no. 1 (2011): 17.
Sarah Kendzior, ‘Poetry of Witness: Uzbek Identity and the Response to Andijon’, Central Asian Survey 26, no. 3 (2007): 329.
Tim Epkenhans, ‘Defining Normative Islam: Some Remarks on Contemporary Islamic Thought in Tajikistan–Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda’s Sharia and Society’, Central Asian Survey 30, no. 1 (2011): 91.
Roger Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance: Hybrid Forms of Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Aksana Ismailbekova, ‘Coping Strategies: Public Avoidance, Migration, and Marriage in the Aftermath of the Osh Conflict, Fergana Valley’, Nationalities Papers 41, no. 1 (2013): 109–127.
David Lewis, ‘Who’s Socialising Whom? Regional Organisations and Contested Norms in Central Asia’, Europe-Asia Studies 64, no. 7 (2012): 1219–1237.
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Lewis, D. (2016). Central Asia: Contested Peace. In: Richmond, O.P., Pogodda, S., Ramović, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_30
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