Giving a State a Bad Name? Kyrgyzstan and the Risk of State Failure

Published in GLOBAL DIALOGUE Volume 13 ● Number 1 ● Winter/Spring 2011—Failed States.

International Agency in Kyrgyzstan: Rhetoric, Revolution & Renegotiation

in Kavalski, Emilian (ed.) Stable Outside, Fragile Inside?: Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia. Ashgate, 2010.

Letting Reality Interfere with Theory: Towards a "How" of Fieldwork-Based Securitization Studies

Draft only - please do not cite without permission.

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association Annual Conference "Global Governance: Political Authority in Transition", Le Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel, MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA, March 16, 2011.

Despite the increasing prominence of critical approaches to security over the last two decades, as yet little attention has been paid to the place of fieldwork in understanding security. Rather than being seen as an opportunity to experience security and its multiple situated meanings, all too often fieldwork becomes an exercise in finding what theory tells the researcher to look for. While this approach is likely to lead to a better fit between data and model, it is in danger of causing the researcher to be either "realities blind" or to feel that theory lacks sufficient explanatory power to be of use.

This paper explores the tensions that exist when theoretical models are taken into the field. Specifically, I reflect upon how the researcher can begin to navigate these tensions between fieldwork and theory via the reflexive utilisation of her experiences in the field. In doing so, theory becomes one of many possible interpretations of security, rather than offering a definitive account of security in a particular location. I then discuss how this reconceptualisation of the relationship between researcher, theory and the field can facilitate the development of critical sensibilities capable of mediating between theory and realities.

What's in a name? The personal and political meanings of'LGBT'for non-heterosexual and transgender youth in Kyrgyzstan

Also published in Kirmse, S. (ed.) Youth in the Former Soviet South
Everyday Lives between Experimentation and Regulation, Routledge, 2011.

The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Useable Outside Europe?

Interpreting security: grounding the Copenhagen school in Kyrgyzstan

Positioning “Security” and Securing One's Position

5 The limits of spoken words

Kyrgyzstan: E-Revolution