Security Practices and the Survival of Cafes in Southern Kyrgyzstan

Author(s):  
Shavkat Atakhanov ◽  
Abylabek Asankanov

The chapter explores the securityscapes of individuals from the Uzbek minority in the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. In 2010 Osh was shook by violent ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbek residents, which claimed several hundred lives. The contribution asks how the everyday security practices of Uzbeks have changed ever since. It installs its focus on Uzbek catering sector. The chapter demonstrates how Uzbek owners of cafés and restaurants hide any markers that would give away their ethnic identity, including the names of their businesses or the dishes offered there. In highlights the importance of 'food politics' in the ongoing ethnic conflict and the Uzbek securityscapes in Osh.

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
AbdouMaliq Simone

Abstract:In contemporary urban Africa, the turbulence of the city requires incessant innovation that is capable of generating new ways of being. Rather than treating popular culture as some distinctive sector, this article attempts to investigate the popular as methods of bringing together activities and actors that on the surface would not seem compatible, and as experimental forms of generating value in the everyday life of urban residents. This investigation, sited largely in Douala, Cameroon, looks at how youth from varying neighborhoods attempt to get by, and at the unexpected forms of contestation that can ensue.


2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Sorens

This article analyzes the “risk factors” of secessionism at the substate, regional level. It seeks to answer the question, What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. Specifically, in addition to “identity” variables such as regional language and history of independence, the following variables explain secessionist strength: lack of irredentist potential, relative affluence, geographical noncontiguity, population, and multiparty political system. These factors generally serve as activators of ethnic identity rather than a substitute for the same, although there are important cases of nonethnic secessionism.


2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic

How do we identify and understand transformative agency in the quotidian that is not contained in formal, or even informal structures? This article investigates the ordinary agency of Palestinian inhabitants in the violent context of the divided city of Jerusalem. Through a close reading of three ethnographic moments I identify creative micropractices of negotiating the separation barrier that slices through the city. To conduct this analytical work I propose a conceptual grid of place, body and story through which the everyday can be grasped, accessed and understood. ‘Place’ encompasses the understanding that the everyday is always located and grounded in materiality; ‘body’ takes into account the embodied experience of subjects moving through this place; and ‘story’ refers to the narrative work conducted by human beings in order to make sense of our place in the world. I argue that people can engage in actions that function both as coping mechanisms (and may even support the upholding of status quo), and as moments of formulating and enacting agential projects with a more or less intentional transformative purpose. This insight is key to understanding the generative capacity of everyday agency and its importance for the macropolitics of peace and conflict.


Author(s):  
Meredith Dale ◽  
Josefine Heusinger ◽  
Birgit Wolter

Chapter 5 examines the impact of gentrification processes in Berlin, Germany, on the distribution of older people across the city as well as the everyday experiences of ageing in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The chapter concludes with an overview of developments in the context of political processes, where urban transformation driven by economic interests generates growing conflict and contradiction with the needs of an ageing and increasingly less affluent population.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solange Muñoz

This article expands on current conceptualizations and applications of precarity by exploring the everyday socio-spatial complexities of migrant squatters living in informal hotels in the center of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Through ethnographic methods, this research investigates squatters’ practices of negotiating access to shared domestic spaces and resources, while experiencing long-term waiting for eviction from their home and potentially from the city center. Employing a cultural geographies approach, this work is concerned with understanding the ways in which precarity is routinely experienced in the micro-spaces of everyday life. Precarity is examined in its temporal and spatial manifestations, with particular emphasis on gendered experiences and home-making practices. Moving through daily spaces and routine situations, I document how precarity is embedded in the mundane tasks of the domestic, and as a result, unevenly impacts women whose traditional roles as mothers and caretakers mean that they are often at the fore of place-making practices and responsibilities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Eka Permanasari ◽  
◽  
Thomas Lientino ◽  

Kalijodo has a long history in terms of gambling, prostitution, human trafficking and other illicit activities. Although it is a green belt area, the location had always being filled with semipermanent buildings. The area was changed its meaning in 2016 when the late Governor of Ahok with the help of the police and army, eradicated these housing and transformed this place as the community center (RPTRA-Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak). Together with Yori Antar, Basuki changed Kalijodo into a new center for Jakarta with its mural and skatepark. Former illicit users have been pushed out from the site. Some built a temporary shelter under the highway bridge while others went to their villages. After the fall of Basuki due to the blasphemy crime, the image of RPTRA Kalijodo was contested. Within a day, the area was filled with illegal parking and prostitution returned in different forms taking place under the highway bridge. Layers of meaning and use of Kalijodo transforms rapidly and in results changes the image of the city. Through observation, interviews and archival research, this paper analyses the contestation of the city image by investigating the relationship between the top-down approach and the everyday life uses of space.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 01-10
Author(s):  
Armendra Amar

The 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak tragedy has been classified as one of the World’s major Industrial accidents of the 20th century, recorded post 1919, by a United Nations Report. This tragedy killed thousands of people and maimed thousands. Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released approximately 40 tonnes of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas which went on to touch the lives of more than 500,000 people of the city. In a way, even after it immediately killed and maimed in thousands, it is still a continued disaster as the generations exposed to the toxic gases have been consistently showing up signs of physical and mental deformity. This gruesome event’s impacts on society are beyond time and space. The crucial question that renders is that how media dealt with the situation and to what extent it affects the everyday life of masses. This study came into initiation when the researcher visited the Methyl Ico-Cynate gas-affected area of Bhopal. During the pilot study, the researcher saw that people of the affected place were living in inadequate conditions. Thus, a concern piqued the interest of the researcher, and evoked an indispensible question: Is media fulfilling its responsibility as the fourth pillar of society in times of chaos and devastation, towards the public? For examining his queries researcher has taken renowned print media outlet’s articles of Bhopal gas tragedy as the content of the analysis. Hence on the basis of Hindi print media content of Bhopal gas disaster the researcher has taken the initiative to search appropriate answers to questions which examine the role of media after the tragic occurrence has taken place in society.


Author(s):  
Anna S. Akimova ◽  

Moscow is the city which united the characters of A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”. Kitay-Gorod is the space where the action of the first book is mainly set. In the novel Tolstoy showed in great detail the everyday life of the city and its inhabi- tants. According to the I.E. Zabelin’s research (“History of the city of Moscow”) in late 17 — early 18 th centuries Moscow was like a big village that is why Tolstoy relied on his childhood memories about the life in the small village Sosnovka (Samara Region) describing the streets of Moscow. The novel begins with the description of a poor peasant household of Brovkin near Moscow, then Volkov’s noble estate is depicted and Menshikov’s house. The space of the city is expanding with each new “address”. Moscow estates, and in particular, connected with the figure of “guardian, lover of the Princess-ruler” V.V. Golitsyn, in Tolstoy’s novel are inextricably linked with the character’s living and with the life of the country. The description of the palace built by Golitsyn at the peak of his career is based on the Sergei Solovyov’s “History of Russia in ancient times”. Golitsyn left it and went to his estate outside Moscow Medvedkovo and from there in exile.


Author(s):  
Hafiz Boboyorov ◽  
Shavkat Atakhanov

The Uzbeks were not the only ethnic minority that suffered from the violent rampages throughout Osh in 2010. The small community of Lyuli or, more precisely, Mughat people on the outskirts of the city also became targets of ethnic hatred. Up to this day, they are treated with great suspicion by the Kyrgyz majority and continue to be frequently threatened and attacked. The chapter focusses on the securityscapes of female Mughat collectors of alms and waste products, who are the main bread-winners in their community. They need to be highly mobile, yet this mobility comes with great risks as, for instance, sexual assault is a very real threat when moving through the city or the country. The contribution examines the various creative tactics that female collectors apply in order to attain a degree of security, usually involving continuous adaptations to shifting circumstances.


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