M Pelkmans
Biographic Data
| ID | 15468 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Pelkmans |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Pelkmans |
| SIGNATURE | PELKMANS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5188-3470 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 245 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Misfits: Towards a critical analysis of the in-between
This introductory article introduces the concepts of misfit and misfitting as a relational prism for analysing social life in conditions of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Drawing on ethnographic materials from ‘in-between’ places in a multipolar world, it examines how elements that no longer – or not yet – fit dominant orders generate awkward relations that reverberate across cognitive, affective, spatial, and temporal domains. Engaging criticall…
Dead bodies on edge: Misfitting graves and awkward repair on the Georgian – Turkish border
Questions of belonging are especially acute for border dwellers, who do not easily fit the exclusivist logics of the nation state. This certainly has been the case for inhabitants of Sarpi ever since their village was cut in two by the border separating the Soviet Union from Turkey. In Soviet Sarpi, villagers had to navigate a state suspicious of their Muslim and ethnic minority Laz identity, and their potential loyalties to the other side. When …
Capricious States and Betwixt Citizens across the Caucasus
Suspicion and Evidence: On the Complexities of Online Truth-Seeking in Times of Uncertainty
How do people discern between truth and untruth? What characterises their engagements with evidence? Some progress in answering these huge questions can be made by exploring them in conditions of radical epistemic uncertainty, such as the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus's behaviour was largely unknown and the efficacy of interventions unknowable. This article focuses on the workings of suspicion and its relationship with evi…
Introduction: Post-Soviet Space and the Unexpected Turns of Religious Life
The Kyrgyz viewed the Germans as barbarians whose mission activities only reinforced their conviction that Christianity was something of Europeans.Over the next six years (1916 to 1922) no further cases of Kyrgyz converts to Christianity were reported.To the Kyrgyz the idea of converting to Christianity continued to be inconceivable.Seventy years later, after the communist experiment had ended, new German missionaries
How People Compare
This opening chapter starts with the observation that at its core, comparison is about establishing a relationship between two or more ‘things’ to thereby bring into view differences and similarities. Such acts of comparison are essential for people to make sense of and orient themselves in the world, while at the same time they will be affected (and constrained) by the comparative work of others. The chapter argues that the cross-cultural study …
Frontier Dynamics: Reflections on Evangelical and Tablighi Missions in Central Asia
Missionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pente…
Dynamics of wilful blindness: An introduction
What are the politics of ignorance in an age of misinformation? How can the concept of 'wilful blindness' help us to understand the logics involved? We start the introduction to this special issue by arguing that the intrinsic instability of wilful blindness draws valuable attention to the graded nature of intentionality and perception, and the tensions between them. These features are an essential part of the workings of ignorance, as we illustr…
Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan
largely invisible to me; Emil Nasritdinov collaborated with me in a related research project on former mining towns, and invited me to travel with the Tablighi Jamaat on several of its mission trips.Particular gratitude goes out to Kadyr Osmonov, who, together with his wife, Aziza, was an excellent host and became a close friend.It was with great sadness that I learned of his untimely death in 2011.I have benefited from the institutional funding …
Moneylending and Moral Reasoning on the Capitalist Frontier in Kyrgyzstan
This article explores the links between informal moneylending and aspects of sociality and morality. It documents the moral reasoning and strategizing of two female moneylenders who operate in the radically destabilized context of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. By analyzing these women’s lending practices and the way they talk about their experiences, we are able to document in some detail the constitutive intertwinement of morality, sociality, and form…
Stuff of boundaries? Kyrgyz-Russian marriages and the actualization of ethnic difference
What are ethnic boundaries made of? How do people come to experience such boundaries? Notwithstanding the formidable analytic attention to the role and effects of boundary drawing in social life, such questions are rarely asked. We look at the apparently stable boundary between Russians and Kyrgyz villagers in the Issyk-Kul region to trace how its dimensions were naturalized through settler colonialism, Soviet modernization, and post-socialist up…
Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan
How does ideology function during periods of political and economic turmoil? This book, based on long-term ethnographic research in a destitute former mining town in Kyrgyzstan, testifies to the precariousness of life in the former Soviet republics in the decades after the collapse of the USSR. It follows inhabitants as they make sense of a radically changing world and as they try to imbue their lives with relevance and direction, while concentra…
Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia
This book, one of the first in English about everyday life in the Republic of Georgia, describes how people construct identity in a rapidly changing border region. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it illuminates the myriad ways residents of the Caucasus have rethought who they are since the collapse of the Soviet Union.Through an exploration of three towns in the southwest corner of Georgia, all of which are situated close to the Turkish…
The restlessness of doubt, and the tenacity of belief
Comment on Bubandt, Nils. 2014. The empty seashell: Witchcraft and doubt on an Indonesian island. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Paradoxes of Religious Freedom and Repression in (Post-)Soviet Contexts
The religious revival that followed the collapse of the USSR provides an excellent opportunity to compare the dynamics of projects of religious freedom with those of religious repression. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, this article documents the contradictory effects that both repressive and liberal policies and laws have on religious expression. Thus, while Soviet anti-religious policies undeniably caused mu…
Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies
Religious and secular convictions have powerful effects, but their foundations are often surprisingly fragile. New converts often come across as stringent believers precisely because they need to dispel their own lingering doubts, while revolutionary movements survive only through the denial of ambiguity. This book shows that a focus on uncertainty and doubt is indispensible for grasping the role of ideas in social action. Drawing on a wide range…
Ruins of hope in a Kyrgyz post‐industrial wasteland (Respond to this article at http: (Www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
When people find themselves in dire situations, they use their imagination to transcend space and time. Forward‐projected hope and backward‐looking nostalgia are usually juxtaposed for their different temporal orientations and their different roles in social action. This article examines how this plays out in a former mining town in post‐Soviet Kyrgyzstan, whose inhabitants treasure the memories of Soviet modernity while dreaming of a future of e…
A wider audience for anthropology? Political dimensions of an important debate
Anthropologists are convinced of the societal relevance of their discipline, but they have failed to claim a significant presence in the public domain for decades. As Eriksen documents in his book Engaging anthropology (2006), anthropology has by and large retreated from public debates since the end of the Second World War (see also Borofsky 2000). These days, ethnographies are rarely read by large non-specialist audiences; anthropologists with t…
Conspiracy theories and their truth trajectories
This article aims to reinvigorate analytical debates on conspiracy theories. It argues that definitional attempts to set conspiracy theories apart from other theories are flawed. Blinded by the "irrational" reputation of conspiracy theories and deluded by the workings of institutionalized power such approaches fail to recognize that there are no inherent differences between the two categories. We argue that assessments of conspiracy theories shou…
Religious Crossings and Conversions on the Muslim-Christian Frontier in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan
The renewed relevance of religion in post-Soviet public spheres has been accompanied by conspicuous and controversial conversion processes. This article compares cases of conversion on the Muslim-Christian frontier in Kyrgyzstan and in Georgia. It argues that the notions of boundary and frontier are essential to construct a more dynamic model for understanding 'spiritual' movement in social contexts that are rapidly changing. This approach in tur…
Conversion after socialism: Disruptions, modernisms and technologies of faith in the former Soviet Union
The large and sudden influx of missionaries into the former Soviet Union after seventy years of militant secularism has been controversial, and the widespread occurrence of conversion has led to anxiety about social and national disintegration. Although these concerns have been vigorously discussed in national arenas, social scientists have remained remarkably silent about the subject. This volume’s focus on conversion offers a novel approach to …
Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia: Islam, Nation-State and (Post)Socialism
This article investigates the changing intersections between religion and politics in Muslim Central Asia. Adopting a long-term historical perspective, it shows how successive regimes meshed and clashed with Islam in their efforts to assert worldly power. Religion was uniformly marginalised in the era of Marxist–Leninist–Maoist socialism, but the cases of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang show that religion has been playing somewhat different…
The "Transparency" of Christian Proselytizing in Kyrgyzstan
To make an object transparent implies that its internal features become better visible. It also means that the surface of that same object becomes less discernable. I apply this analogy to argue that the current preoccupation with transparency allows certain ideological movements to hide controversial agendas from public scrutiny. Focusing on evangelical Christian aid to Kyrgyzstan, this article traces how post-Soviet liberalization enabled evang…
Turning Marx on his Head: Missionaries, `Extremists' and Archaic Secularists in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
■ Christian and Muslim religious movements have made significant inroads into post-Soviet Kyrgyzstani society, and have been seen as a threat by the secular establishment. In this article we discuss the defence mechanisms that are locally employed to ward off the danger that these `new' religious movements represent. Our focus on secular responses not only fills a gap in the available research (which has focused on religious renewal but largely i…
Culture' as a tool and an obstacle: Missionary encounters in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
The relatively large number of converts from Islam to evangelical Christianity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is exceptional in the Muslim world and has challenged local confidence that Islam is an inseparable element of Kyrgyz nationality. I argue that part of the missionary success stems from unexpected synergies between communist cultural legacies and new evangelical approaches. Both communists and evangelicals attempted to advance their ideals by …
Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia
This book, one of the first in English about everyday life in the Republic of Georgia, describes how people construct identity in a rapidly changing border region. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it illuminates the myriad ways residents of the Caucasus have rethought who they are since the collapse of the Soviet Union.Through an exploration of three towns in the southwest corner of Georgia, all of which are situated close to the Turkish…
Culture' as a tool and an obstacle: Missionary encounters in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
The relatively large number of converts from Islam to evangelical Christianity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is exceptional in the Muslim world and has challenged local confidence that Islam is an inseparable element of Kyrgyz nationality. I argue that part of the missionary success stems from unexpected synergies between communist cultural legacies and new evangelical approaches. Both communists and evangelicals attempted to advance their ideals by …
Turning Marx on his Head: Missionaries, `Extremists' and Archaic Secularists in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
■ Christian and Muslim religious movements have made significant inroads into post-Soviet Kyrgyzstani society, and have been seen as a threat by the secular establishment. In this article we discuss the defence mechanisms that are locally employed to ward off the danger that these `new' religious movements represent. Our focus on secular responses not only fills a gap in the available research (which has focused on religious renewal but largely i…
Conspiracy theories and their truth trajectories
This article aims to reinvigorate analytical debates on conspiracy theories. It argues that definitional attempts to set conspiracy theories apart from other theories are flawed. Blinded by the "irrational" reputation of conspiracy theories and deluded by the workings of institutionalized power such approaches fail to recognize that there are no inherent differences between the two categories. We argue that assessments of conspiracy theories shou…
Dynamics of wilful blindness: An introduction
What are the politics of ignorance in an age of misinformation? How can the concept of 'wilful blindness' help us to understand the logics involved? We start the introduction to this special issue by arguing that the intrinsic instability of wilful blindness draws valuable attention to the graded nature of intentionality and perception, and the tensions between them. These features are an essential part of the workings of ignorance, as we illustr…
Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies
Religious and secular convictions have powerful effects, but their foundations are often surprisingly fragile. New converts often come across as stringent believers precisely because they need to dispel their own lingering doubts, while revolutionary movements survive only through the denial of ambiguity. This book shows that a focus on uncertainty and doubt is indispensible for grasping the role of ideas in social action. Drawing on a wide range…
Ruins of hope in a Kyrgyz post‐industrial wasteland (Respond to this article at http: (Www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
When people find themselves in dire situations, they use their imagination to transcend space and time. Forward‐projected hope and backward‐looking nostalgia are usually juxtaposed for their different temporal orientations and their different roles in social action. This article examines how this plays out in a former mining town in post‐Soviet Kyrgyzstan, whose inhabitants treasure the memories of Soviet modernity while dreaming of a future of e…
Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia: Islam, Nation-State and (Post)Socialism
This article investigates the changing intersections between religion and politics in Muslim Central Asia. Adopting a long-term historical perspective, it shows how successive regimes meshed and clashed with Islam in their efforts to assert worldly power. Religion was uniformly marginalised in the era of Marxist–Leninist–Maoist socialism, but the cases of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang show that religion has been playing somewhat different…
The "Transparency" of Christian Proselytizing in Kyrgyzstan
To make an object transparent implies that its internal features become better visible. It also means that the surface of that same object becomes less discernable. I apply this analogy to argue that the current preoccupation with transparency allows certain ideological movements to hide controversial agendas from public scrutiny. Focusing on evangelical Christian aid to Kyrgyzstan, this article traces how post-Soviet liberalization enabled evang…
A wider audience for anthropology? Political dimensions of an important debate
Anthropologists are convinced of the societal relevance of their discipline, but they have failed to claim a significant presence in the public domain for decades. As Eriksen documents in his book Engaging anthropology (2006), anthropology has by and large retreated from public debates since the end of the Second World War (see also Borofsky 2000). These days, ethnographies are rarely read by large non-specialist audiences; anthropologists with t…
Moneylending and Moral Reasoning on the Capitalist Frontier in Kyrgyzstan
This article explores the links between informal moneylending and aspects of sociality and morality. It documents the moral reasoning and strategizing of two female moneylenders who operate in the radically destabilized context of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. By analyzing these women’s lending practices and the way they talk about their experiences, we are able to document in some detail the constitutive intertwinement of morality, sociality, and form…
Stuff of boundaries? Kyrgyz-Russian marriages and the actualization of ethnic difference
What are ethnic boundaries made of? How do people come to experience such boundaries? Notwithstanding the formidable analytic attention to the role and effects of boundary drawing in social life, such questions are rarely asked. We look at the apparently stable boundary between Russians and Kyrgyz villagers in the Issyk-Kul region to trace how its dimensions were naturalized through settler colonialism, Soviet modernization, and post-socialist up…
The restlessness of doubt, and the tenacity of belief
Comment on Bubandt, Nils. 2014. The empty seashell: Witchcraft and doubt on an Indonesian island. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
On transition and revolution in Kyrgyzstan
This essay reviews the revolutionary situations that recently emerged in the post-Soviet world, focusing on the 'Tulip Revolution' in Kyrgyzstan. Observers were quick to explain this revolution in terms of democratic resistance to authoritarianism. This view is particularly problematic given that Kyrgyzstan was among the 'fast reformers' in the region and made its name as an 'island of democracy'. Instead of assuming that problems started when th…
Misfits: Towards a critical analysis of the in-between
This introductory article introduces the concepts of misfit and misfitting as a relational prism for analysing social life in conditions of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Drawing on ethnographic materials from ‘in-between’ places in a multipolar world, it examines how elements that no longer – or not yet – fit dominant orders generate awkward relations that reverberate across cognitive, affective, spatial, and temporal domains. Engaging criticall…
Suspicion and Evidence: On the Complexities of Online Truth-Seeking in Times of Uncertainty
How do people discern between truth and untruth? What characterises their engagements with evidence? Some progress in answering these huge questions can be made by exploring them in conditions of radical epistemic uncertainty, such as the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus's behaviour was largely unknown and the efficacy of interventions unknowable. This article focuses on the workings of suspicion and its relationship with evi…
How People Compare
This opening chapter starts with the observation that at its core, comparison is about establishing a relationship between two or more ‘things’ to thereby bring into view differences and similarities. Such acts of comparison are essential for people to make sense of and orient themselves in the world, while at the same time they will be affected (and constrained) by the comparative work of others. The chapter argues that the cross-cultural study …
Frontier Dynamics: Reflections on Evangelical and Tablighi Missions in Central Asia
Missionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pente…
Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan
largely invisible to me; Emil Nasritdinov collaborated with me in a related research project on former mining towns, and invited me to travel with the Tablighi Jamaat on several of its mission trips.Particular gratitude goes out to Kadyr Osmonov, who, together with his wife, Aziza, was an excellent host and became a close friend.It was with great sadness that I learned of his untimely death in 2011.I have benefited from the institutional funding …
Society for the Anthropology of Religion: Religion and Civil Society in Central Asia
On transition and revolution in Kyrgyzstan
This essay reviews the revolutionary situations that recently emerged in the post-Soviet world, focusing on the 'Tulip Revolution' in Kyrgyzstan. Observers were quick to explain this revolution in terms of democratic resistance to authoritarianism. This view is particularly problematic given that Kyrgyzstan was among the 'fast reformers' in the region and made its name as an 'island of democracy'. Instead of assuming that problems started when th…
Culture' as a tool and an obstacle: Missionary encounters in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
The relatively large number of converts from Islam to evangelical Christianity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is exceptional in the Muslim world and has challenged local confidence that Islam is an inseparable element of Kyrgyz nationality. I argue that part of the missionary success stems from unexpected synergies between communist cultural legacies and new evangelical approaches. Both communists and evangelicals attempted to advance their ideals by …
Turning Marx on his Head: Missionaries, `Extremists' and Archaic Secularists in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
■ Christian and Muslim religious movements have made significant inroads into post-Soviet Kyrgyzstani society, and have been seen as a threat by the secular establishment. In this article we discuss the defence mechanisms that are locally employed to ward off the danger that these `new' religious movements represent. Our focus on secular responses not only fills a gap in the available research (which has focused on religious renewal but largely i…
Conversion after socialism: Disruptions, modernisms and technologies of faith in the former Soviet Union
The large and sudden influx of missionaries into the former Soviet Union after seventy years of militant secularism has been controversial, and the widespread occurrence of conversion has led to anxiety about social and national disintegration. Although these concerns have been vigorously discussed in national arenas, social scientists have remained remarkably silent about the subject. This volume’s focus on conversion offers a novel approach to …
Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia: Islam, Nation-State and (Post)Socialism
This article investigates the changing intersections between religion and politics in Muslim Central Asia. Adopting a long-term historical perspective, it shows how successive regimes meshed and clashed with Islam in their efforts to assert worldly power. Religion was uniformly marginalised in the era of Marxist–Leninist–Maoist socialism, but the cases of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang show that religion has been playing somewhat different…
The "Transparency" of Christian Proselytizing in Kyrgyzstan
To make an object transparent implies that its internal features become better visible. It also means that the surface of that same object becomes less discernable. I apply this analogy to argue that the current preoccupation with transparency allows certain ideological movements to hide controversial agendas from public scrutiny. Focusing on evangelical Christian aid to Kyrgyzstan, this article traces how post-Soviet liberalization enabled evang…
Religious Crossings and Conversions on the Muslim-Christian Frontier in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan
The renewed relevance of religion in post-Soviet public spheres has been accompanied by conspicuous and controversial conversion processes. This article compares cases of conversion on the Muslim-Christian frontier in Kyrgyzstan and in Georgia. It argues that the notions of boundary and frontier are essential to construct a more dynamic model for understanding 'spiritual' movement in social contexts that are rapidly changing. This approach in tur…
Conspiracy theories and their truth trajectories
This article aims to reinvigorate analytical debates on conspiracy theories. It argues that definitional attempts to set conspiracy theories apart from other theories are flawed. Blinded by the "irrational" reputation of conspiracy theories and deluded by the workings of institutionalized power such approaches fail to recognize that there are no inherent differences between the two categories. We argue that assessments of conspiracy theories shou…
Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies
Religious and secular convictions have powerful effects, but their foundations are often surprisingly fragile. New converts often come across as stringent believers precisely because they need to dispel their own lingering doubts, while revolutionary movements survive only through the denial of ambiguity. This book shows that a focus on uncertainty and doubt is indispensible for grasping the role of ideas in social action. Drawing on a wide range…
Ruins of hope in a Kyrgyz post‐industrial wasteland (Respond to this article at http: (Www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
When people find themselves in dire situations, they use their imagination to transcend space and time. Forward‐projected hope and backward‐looking nostalgia are usually juxtaposed for their different temporal orientations and their different roles in social action. This article examines how this plays out in a former mining town in post‐Soviet Kyrgyzstan, whose inhabitants treasure the memories of Soviet modernity while dreaming of a future of e…
A wider audience for anthropology? Political dimensions of an important debate
Anthropologists are convinced of the societal relevance of their discipline, but they have failed to claim a significant presence in the public domain for decades. As Eriksen documents in his book Engaging anthropology (2006), anthropology has by and large retreated from public debates since the end of the Second World War (see also Borofsky 2000). These days, ethnographies are rarely read by large non-specialist audiences; anthropologists with t…
Paradoxes of Religious Freedom and Repression in (Post-)Soviet Contexts
The religious revival that followed the collapse of the USSR provides an excellent opportunity to compare the dynamics of projects of religious freedom with those of religious repression. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, this article documents the contradictory effects that both repressive and liberal policies and laws have on religious expression. Thus, while Soviet anti-religious policies undeniably caused mu…
The restlessness of doubt, and the tenacity of belief
Comment on Bubandt, Nils. 2014. The empty seashell: Witchcraft and doubt on an Indonesian island. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan
How does ideology function during periods of political and economic turmoil? This book, based on long-term ethnographic research in a destitute former mining town in Kyrgyzstan, testifies to the precariousness of life in the former Soviet republics in the decades after the collapse of the USSR. It follows inhabitants as they make sense of a radically changing world and as they try to imbue their lives with relevance and direction, while concentra…
Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia
This book, one of the first in English about everyday life in the Republic of Georgia, describes how people construct identity in a rapidly changing border region. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it illuminates the myriad ways residents of the Caucasus have rethought who they are since the collapse of the Soviet Union.Through an exploration of three towns in the southwest corner of Georgia, all of which are situated close to the Turkish…
Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan
largely invisible to me; Emil Nasritdinov collaborated with me in a related research project on former mining towns, and invited me to travel with the Tablighi Jamaat on several of its mission trips.Particular gratitude goes out to Kadyr Osmonov, who, together with his wife, Aziza, was an excellent host and became a close friend.It was with great sadness that I learned of his untimely death in 2011.I have benefited from the institutional funding …
Moneylending and Moral Reasoning on the Capitalist Frontier in Kyrgyzstan
This article explores the links between informal moneylending and aspects of sociality and morality. It documents the moral reasoning and strategizing of two female moneylenders who operate in the radically destabilized context of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. By analyzing these women’s lending practices and the way they talk about their experiences, we are able to document in some detail the constitutive intertwinement of morality, sociality, and form…
Stuff of boundaries? Kyrgyz-Russian marriages and the actualization of ethnic difference
What are ethnic boundaries made of? How do people come to experience such boundaries? Notwithstanding the formidable analytic attention to the role and effects of boundary drawing in social life, such questions are rarely asked. We look at the apparently stable boundary between Russians and Kyrgyz villagers in the Issyk-Kul region to trace how its dimensions were naturalized through settler colonialism, Soviet modernization, and post-socialist up…
Dynamics of wilful blindness: An introduction
What are the politics of ignorance in an age of misinformation? How can the concept of 'wilful blindness' help us to understand the logics involved? We start the introduction to this special issue by arguing that the intrinsic instability of wilful blindness draws valuable attention to the graded nature of intentionality and perception, and the tensions between them. These features are an essential part of the workings of ignorance, as we illustr…
Frontier Dynamics: Reflections on Evangelical and Tablighi Missions in Central Asia
Missionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pente…
Introduction: Post-Soviet Space and the Unexpected Turns of Religious Life
The Kyrgyz viewed the Germans as barbarians whose mission activities only reinforced their conviction that Christianity was something of Europeans.Over the next six years (1916 to 1922) no further cases of Kyrgyz converts to Christianity were reported.To the Kyrgyz the idea of converting to Christianity continued to be inconceivable.Seventy years later, after the communist experiment had ended, new German missionaries
How People Compare
This opening chapter starts with the observation that at its core, comparison is about establishing a relationship between two or more ‘things’ to thereby bring into view differences and similarities. Such acts of comparison are essential for people to make sense of and orient themselves in the world, while at the same time they will be affected (and constrained) by the comparative work of others. The chapter argues that the cross-cultural study …
Capricious States and Betwixt Citizens across the Caucasus
Suspicion and Evidence: On the Complexities of Online Truth-Seeking in Times of Uncertainty
How do people discern between truth and untruth? What characterises their engagements with evidence? Some progress in answering these huge questions can be made by exploring them in conditions of radical epistemic uncertainty, such as the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus's behaviour was largely unknown and the efficacy of interventions unknowable. This article focuses on the workings of suspicion and its relationship with evi…
Political science (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Politics (11 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (10 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · History (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (8 works)