The Critical Geopolitics of Danger in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Drawing on critical security studies and critical geopolitics, I examine how geopolitical discourses of danger circulate in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Whereas some work in this field risks reinscribing the discursive articulation of danger as an inevitable condition of political formation, in this paper I emphasise the need to disaggregate the concept of danger carefully to highlight its operation in specific contexts. I explore these processes across a range of discursive sites from official media to popular music, contrasting findings with material from focus groups composed of socially marginalised populations. I demonstrate the role of discursive constructions of danger or safety in the production and maintenance of the political identity of the new states, and how this is inseparable from material conditions of elite power struggle. I conclude by echoing Hewitt's call for a critical geography that confronts and challenges the domestic exercise of state terror.