Security and gendered national identity in Uzbekistan

Abstract

Contributing to the growing literature on feminist geopolitics, this article addresses the security discourses employed by the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan's post-independence nation-building process. It examines the ways in which militarism and the ‘culture of war’ are productive of gendered national identities in Uzbekistan, focusing on how the ‘protector–protected’ relationship figures prominently in the Karimov regime's anti-terrorist rhetoric. It does so through a textual analysis of the Andijon uprising and the ‘Day of Memory and Honor’ holiday. It argues that the terrorist threat has been a driving factor in the pervasive militarization of society, but that official responses to state violence in Andijon obscure alternative security concerns of the general population in Uzbekistan – and more specifically those of women. It adds to existing feminist geopolitics literature by expanding it into a new empirical context, while rejecting the assertion that a ‘geopolitical’ analysis necessarily entails a ‘global’ approach.