Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics

(co-edited with Johan Rasanayagam and Judith Beyer). Indiana University Press, 2014.

This volume brings ethnographic research in Central Asia into long-overdue conversation with recent political anthropological debate on the state. By attending ethnographically to the various ways in which the state in Central Asia is practically enacted, morally navigated, remembered, invok Continue reading →

Movement, Power and Place in Central Asia and Beyond: Contested Trajectories

Special Double Issue of Central Asian Survey (Vol. 30, issues 3-4, 2011), subsequently published as a volume in Routledge’s Third Worlds series (2012).

Drawing together established scholars and a new generation of historians, geographers and anthropologists, this volume brings empirical specificity and theoretical depth to debates about the politics of place-making in this diverse region, making an important contribution to Central Asian studies and a distinctive regional comparison to the ‘spatial turn’ in social analysis.
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Surviving the Transition? Case Studies of Schools and Schooling in the Kyrgyz Republic Since Independence

(co-authored with Alan De Young and Galina Valyayeva). Information Age Publishers Series on International Perspectives on Educational Policy, Research and Practice, 2006.

Drawing on ethnographic and case study methods, this book explores the everyday navigation of radical economic and political transformation within four school communities in rural Kyrgyzstan. The case study that I contribute, from Ak-Tatyr village of Batken district, Continue reading →