Post-liberal statebuilding in Central Asia: A decolonial perspective on community security practices and imaginaries of social order in Kyrgyzstan

Lottholz, Philipp (2018). Post-liberal statebuilding in Central Asia: A decolonial perspective on community security practices and imaginaries of social order in Kyrgyzstan. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis presents a development of the concept of post-liberalism to analyse processes of statebuilding in Central Asia by the example of Kyrgyzstan from a decolonial angle. Recent debates in peace, conflict and intervention studies have conceived of ‘post-liberal’ and ‘hybrid forms of peace’ as modalities of resistance against and re-negotiation of a globally dominant ‘liberal peace’ template promoted by Western governments and the international intervention architecture. This research proposes to critically reconsider these debates by introducing ‘imaginaries of statebuilding’ – understood as mental constructs structuring people’s thoughts and actions – through which the study captures the complex and contradictory processes of reception, adoption and resistance against globally dominant notions of capitalist economic development, democracy, and peacebuilding and security practices. Practices of peacebuilding and community security – and their embeddedness in the post-liberal trajectory of statebuilding – are analysed by the example of local crime prevention centres, territorial youth councils, and a national level NGO network working on police reform and participatory provision of public security. The research demonstrates how exclusion, structural violence and precarity are reproduced and feed into patterns of post-conflict governmentality which exist in sync with seemingly emancipatory and contextually meaningful ways of coexistence and steps towards institutional reform.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):