Wednesday, September 26, 2007
North/South Divisions Revisited
Ok. I’m going to run this by you. I’m still thinking my way through this, so I’d appreciate any comments anyone would like to make. I was talking to Nasiba and Jipar, two of my research assistants, and they mentioned the north/south divisions in the country (see the post on that subject from a couple weeks ago). Jipar is from Issyk Kol, just like the girl I spoke to before. Nasiba is an Uzbek from Osh. They talked about the differences in much the same way as had been addressed in my previous conversation. They insisted that the differences were real, that they had real consequences for the country, and that it was the other side’s fault. As evidence of the divisions, they again spoke about differences in demeanor, manners, and personality. It was especially interesting to hear Nasiba talk about it, because she said that people in the south were just much friendlier than people in the north. It occurred to me that that was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that. I then realized that this was the first time I had ever talked to a southerner about the divisions.
So it got me thinking about why people think in terms of these divisions. It seems pretty clear from the empirical evidence we have that many of the differences people claim--that southerners are more religious/fundamentalist, that they’re more likely to cause dissent or social troubles, etc.--just don’t hold true. You can find people like that all over the country. Why, then, do people say that those differences exist? Let me walk you through my reasoning.
We have two groups: let’s call them Group A and Group B. Group A and Group B look different. We’ll call these their external differences. It’s pretty easy to find reasons for external differences, demographics being the most obvious. People with different skin color, different facial features, or different body types have many readily observable external differences. Other external differences can be due to geography--differences in clothing styles due to climate or proximity of trading partners, say--or to history; people who historically have had ties to other people who tended to dress a certain way tend to take on some of those styles. Differences in demeanor and personality are external differences. In all these cases, you can look at where the group came from of who they live close too, and find pretty convincing explanations for their external differences.
Things get interesting when Group A looks and Group B and sees a difference in actions. Actions are harder to explain than normal external differences because we generally assume actions to have motivations. Group A sees Group B going to mosque regularly and wants to understand why Group B would feel so motivated to do that when many people in Group A seem to not feel so motivated to do that.
What resources does Group A have for interpreting Group B’s behavior? Well, Group B dresses differently than Group A because Group B historically traded with the Middle East while Group A traditionally traded with China and Russia. So if Group B’s external differences came from the Middle East, where did the motivation for group B’s actions come from? That’s right--from the Middle East. Group B does what it does because it is more Middle Eastern, and Middle Easterners tend to be Muslim, so it’s easy to believe that Group B does what it does because it’s more Islamic.
Then Group B does something that Group A really doesn’t like, like participate in a demonstration to protest poor economic conditions. Group A (at least from the perspective of most of the people in Group A) didn’t do that, so why did Group B? Well, Group A already knows that Group B is different and already knows why Group B is different, so that says that they need to attack the source of that difference if they are going to stop the behavior they don’t like. So they ban certain forms of religious organizations for inciting social unrest.
Now skip to Group B’s perspective. They tend to make all the same kinds of assumptions about why Group A is different than them. But when some of them decided to protest the bad economic conditions, it was really because the economic conditions were truly bad. Those people wanted things to be a little better. But now, religious organizations are getting banned. From the perspective of the people who protested, the economic conditions and the religious organizations were two separate issues. Now they are the same issue. Now the bad economic conditions are not just the result of the poor oversight of some government leaders or an economic depression. They are a symptom of anti-Islamic sentiment among Group A. This idea is reinforced by the fact that many fundamentalist organizations specialize in social welfare, like distributing food and clothing. So what is Group B supposed to do? They protect the organizations that are important to them.
Now switch to the people in Group B who didn’t participate in the protests. They just lived their religion like anyone else does--not really thinking about it in terms of larger social issue or policies or anything like that. But now, their organizations are getting banned and other people in Group B are telling them it is because Group A doesn’t like Islam and wants to attack it. So now these previously socially-inactive members of Group B turn into activists to protect organizations that weren’t causing the problems in the first place.
Now switch to yet another subgroup of Group B. These are people who didn’t really consider themselves religious and who weren’t that dissatisfied with their economic conditions. But they did consider themselves Muslims, even if they didn’t always act like it. Well now, apparently, Group A is saying that Islam is bad and that Islamic organizations need to be banned. These luke-warm Group B-ers now turn red hot and say, “You’re not going to tell ME that my religion is bad.” And they start going to mosque more regularly.
So you have now got several major subgroups, subgroups that were previously not unified--coalescing to protect their normal way of acting from the encroachments of what they believe to be a hostile outside group. They want to show solidarity with the cause. How do they do that? They go to mosque more often. They dress more Middle Eastern. They carry prayer beads and pray more regularly, sometimes in public places.
And Group A looks at all of this and says, “See? They’re just more Islamic than we are.”
It seems to me--and I admit that this is based on only a small amount of observation so far--that the so-called cultural differences in the country are much more the result of frictions between the northerners and southerners than the causes.
So it got me thinking about why people think in terms of these divisions. It seems pretty clear from the empirical evidence we have that many of the differences people claim--that southerners are more religious/fundamentalist, that they’re more likely to cause dissent or social troubles, etc.--just don’t hold true. You can find people like that all over the country. Why, then, do people say that those differences exist? Let me walk you through my reasoning.
We have two groups: let’s call them Group A and Group B. Group A and Group B look different. We’ll call these their external differences. It’s pretty easy to find reasons for external differences, demographics being the most obvious. People with different skin color, different facial features, or different body types have many readily observable external differences. Other external differences can be due to geography--differences in clothing styles due to climate or proximity of trading partners, say--or to history; people who historically have had ties to other people who tended to dress a certain way tend to take on some of those styles. Differences in demeanor and personality are external differences. In all these cases, you can look at where the group came from of who they live close too, and find pretty convincing explanations for their external differences.
Things get interesting when Group A looks and Group B and sees a difference in actions. Actions are harder to explain than normal external differences because we generally assume actions to have motivations. Group A sees Group B going to mosque regularly and wants to understand why Group B would feel so motivated to do that when many people in Group A seem to not feel so motivated to do that.
What resources does Group A have for interpreting Group B’s behavior? Well, Group B dresses differently than Group A because Group B historically traded with the Middle East while Group A traditionally traded with China and Russia. So if Group B’s external differences came from the Middle East, where did the motivation for group B’s actions come from? That’s right--from the Middle East. Group B does what it does because it is more Middle Eastern, and Middle Easterners tend to be Muslim, so it’s easy to believe that Group B does what it does because it’s more Islamic.
Then Group B does something that Group A really doesn’t like, like participate in a demonstration to protest poor economic conditions. Group A (at least from the perspective of most of the people in Group A) didn’t do that, so why did Group B? Well, Group A already knows that Group B is different and already knows why Group B is different, so that says that they need to attack the source of that difference if they are going to stop the behavior they don’t like. So they ban certain forms of religious organizations for inciting social unrest.
Now skip to Group B’s perspective. They tend to make all the same kinds of assumptions about why Group A is different than them. But when some of them decided to protest the bad economic conditions, it was really because the economic conditions were truly bad. Those people wanted things to be a little better. But now, religious organizations are getting banned. From the perspective of the people who protested, the economic conditions and the religious organizations were two separate issues. Now they are the same issue. Now the bad economic conditions are not just the result of the poor oversight of some government leaders or an economic depression. They are a symptom of anti-Islamic sentiment among Group A. This idea is reinforced by the fact that many fundamentalist organizations specialize in social welfare, like distributing food and clothing. So what is Group B supposed to do? They protect the organizations that are important to them.
Now switch to the people in Group B who didn’t participate in the protests. They just lived their religion like anyone else does--not really thinking about it in terms of larger social issue or policies or anything like that. But now, their organizations are getting banned and other people in Group B are telling them it is because Group A doesn’t like Islam and wants to attack it. So now these previously socially-inactive members of Group B turn into activists to protect organizations that weren’t causing the problems in the first place.
Now switch to yet another subgroup of Group B. These are people who didn’t really consider themselves religious and who weren’t that dissatisfied with their economic conditions. But they did consider themselves Muslims, even if they didn’t always act like it. Well now, apparently, Group A is saying that Islam is bad and that Islamic organizations need to be banned. These luke-warm Group B-ers now turn red hot and say, “You’re not going to tell ME that my religion is bad.” And they start going to mosque more regularly.
So you have now got several major subgroups, subgroups that were previously not unified--coalescing to protect their normal way of acting from the encroachments of what they believe to be a hostile outside group. They want to show solidarity with the cause. How do they do that? They go to mosque more often. They dress more Middle Eastern. They carry prayer beads and pray more regularly, sometimes in public places.
And Group A looks at all of this and says, “See? They’re just more Islamic than we are.”
It seems to me--and I admit that this is based on only a small amount of observation so far--that the so-called cultural differences in the country are much more the result of frictions between the northerners and southerners than the causes.
Choosing a Research Site
As I said in my last posting, the free lists are my first phase and interviews are my second. I’ll use the information from the first two phases to construct a survey in the third phase. I’ll write more about that as it gets closer, but I took the chance on Friday to do some preparation for distributing that survey.
I’m going to be distributing the surveys country-wide. I want to make sure I get people from lots of different backgrounds and with different experiences to better ensure that my findings cover most of the important differences in the country. To do that, I’m going to target people of different economic environments (urban/rural), different ethnicities (Kyrgyz/Russian/Uzbek/other), different genders (male/female), and different ages.
I’m dividing the ages into three groups: those born between 1980 and 1992, those born between 1945 and 1980, and those born before 1945. I chose those dates for specific reasons. The early 1980s marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. That time period corresponds with the liberalization of the Soviet government under Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost’ policies. I chose 1992 as the cutoff point because anyone born after that if going to be under 17 and therefore less likely to be an active participant in the large-scale social activities that are the focus of my research. People born during this time period essentially came of age after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and their worlds have essentially been post-Soviet for most of their lives. I choose 1945 as the cutoff date for the next group because it corresponds to the end of WWII, which was a devastating time for the Soviet Union. People born this time period were all fully-grown when the Soviet Union dissolved, making that a major event in their lives. People in the third group, born before 1945, still often act as if the Soviet Union still existed. They have a very different outlook on life than people in the other two groups.
If you take all of the possible combinations of economic environment, ethnicity, gender, and age group, you get 48 combinations. That means, in a best-case scenario, I will be able to survey 48 people to get an example of every combination of the factors that are important to me. I’m sure I won’t be able to get all of those in every province (I highly doubt I will be able to find a rural Russian of any gender or age in Naryn province, for instance), but I’m going to try. I raised the number to 50 just to make it prettier.
So, I need 50 people per survey site. That leaves the question of where I am going to survey. I already know I want to survey each of the seven provinces, but there are a lot of differences in the provinces themselves. For example, in Issyk Kol province, the northern shore of the lake has a more temperate climate, a larger Russian population, and is normally considered more economically well-off. So I want to have at least one site on the north shore and one site on the south. Also, there are two major cities--Balykchy and Karakol--on the western and northern corners of the lake, respectively. People have often commented that there are big differences between those cities. Other provinces have different kinds of divisions.
That is where Friday’s activities came into the picture. AUCA has students from all over the country. After a student filled out a survey, I asked him or her what province he or she was from. I then asked something to the effect of, “If I was traveling to your province, and I wanted to see the most different places--especially places where the people were different from one another--what places should I got to?” I tried to get at least four places out of each of them.
I took the results and tallied them up. Interestingly, the Issyk Kol divisions I mentioned above held true in these students’ perceptions. Most of them seemed to think that four different locations embodied all of the major differences in the province. In most of the other provinces, two or three different locations stood out. To make it more even, and to try to make sure I don’t miss anything too important, I’ve decided to survey 50 people in four locations in each of the seven provinces. That makes for 1400 surveys total. I’m going to survey an additional 50 people in both Bishkek and Osh--the two major cities in the country--to bring the total up 1500. I think that’s a respectable number for a survey of a country of this size.
I feel good about choosing the sites based on what people say rather than just looking at statistics for each of the cities concerning population size and demographics and stuff like that. It just seems to make more sense to go with what the local people say.
I’m going to be distributing the surveys country-wide. I want to make sure I get people from lots of different backgrounds and with different experiences to better ensure that my findings cover most of the important differences in the country. To do that, I’m going to target people of different economic environments (urban/rural), different ethnicities (Kyrgyz/Russian/Uzbek/other), different genders (male/female), and different ages.
I’m dividing the ages into three groups: those born between 1980 and 1992, those born between 1945 and 1980, and those born before 1945. I chose those dates for specific reasons. The early 1980s marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. That time period corresponds with the liberalization of the Soviet government under Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost’ policies. I chose 1992 as the cutoff point because anyone born after that if going to be under 17 and therefore less likely to be an active participant in the large-scale social activities that are the focus of my research. People born during this time period essentially came of age after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and their worlds have essentially been post-Soviet for most of their lives. I choose 1945 as the cutoff date for the next group because it corresponds to the end of WWII, which was a devastating time for the Soviet Union. People born this time period were all fully-grown when the Soviet Union dissolved, making that a major event in their lives. People in the third group, born before 1945, still often act as if the Soviet Union still existed. They have a very different outlook on life than people in the other two groups.
If you take all of the possible combinations of economic environment, ethnicity, gender, and age group, you get 48 combinations. That means, in a best-case scenario, I will be able to survey 48 people to get an example of every combination of the factors that are important to me. I’m sure I won’t be able to get all of those in every province (I highly doubt I will be able to find a rural Russian of any gender or age in Naryn province, for instance), but I’m going to try. I raised the number to 50 just to make it prettier.
So, I need 50 people per survey site. That leaves the question of where I am going to survey. I already know I want to survey each of the seven provinces, but there are a lot of differences in the provinces themselves. For example, in Issyk Kol province, the northern shore of the lake has a more temperate climate, a larger Russian population, and is normally considered more economically well-off. So I want to have at least one site on the north shore and one site on the south. Also, there are two major cities--Balykchy and Karakol--on the western and northern corners of the lake, respectively. People have often commented that there are big differences between those cities. Other provinces have different kinds of divisions.
That is where Friday’s activities came into the picture. AUCA has students from all over the country. After a student filled out a survey, I asked him or her what province he or she was from. I then asked something to the effect of, “If I was traveling to your province, and I wanted to see the most different places--especially places where the people were different from one another--what places should I got to?” I tried to get at least four places out of each of them.
I took the results and tallied them up. Interestingly, the Issyk Kol divisions I mentioned above held true in these students’ perceptions. Most of them seemed to think that four different locations embodied all of the major differences in the province. In most of the other provinces, two or three different locations stood out. To make it more even, and to try to make sure I don’t miss anything too important, I’ve decided to survey 50 people in four locations in each of the seven provinces. That makes for 1400 surveys total. I’m going to survey an additional 50 people in both Bishkek and Osh--the two major cities in the country--to bring the total up 1500. I think that’s a respectable number for a survey of a country of this size.
I feel good about choosing the sites based on what people say rather than just looking at statistics for each of the cities concerning population size and demographics and stuff like that. It just seems to make more sense to go with what the local people say.
Free Lists
Last Friday, I started the first phase of my research. I distributed 140 free-list surveys to students at AUCA. A free list is a piece of paper with a question at the top. The question asks you to list as many of a certain kind of thing as you can. The rest of the paper has numbered lines on which you can list those things. I had seven different questions:
- What kinds of group differences are there in Kyrgyzstan? For instance, it’s possible to divide people by gender (into men and women). However, often group differences have more to do with social distinctions than biological ones. Please list all of the group differences in Kyrgyzstan that you can think of.
- What do you worry about most in your life?
- In your opinion, what are the biggest problems facing Kyrgyzstan today? If you had the chance, what would you change about this country?
- Please list some of things in your life that you would fight the hardest to protect or save.
- What people in Kyrgyzstan have the greatest effect on how this country is run?
- Please list your greatest needs. Be sure to list only needs, and not simply wants.
- What do you want to change most about your life?
I use free lists at beginning of my research in order to get a general picture of what I’m looking at. My research is focusing on the ways people think about their everyday lives and how things like group affiliation and participation in national institutions fit into those everyday concerns. These free lists (I hope) will give me a rough idea of what categories people use to understand these aspects of their lives. I gave 20 copies of each of these seven questions to students at AUCA.
I expect that there will be five to ten things that get listed on the majority of the surveys. Then there will be a few things that get mentioned by a small portion of the people, and then there will be tons of random stuff. As I go into the next phase of my research--in which I interview people in depth--I will be sure to ask a lot about the things that got mentioned a lot, a little about the things that got mentioned a little, and I’ll ask about the random stuff if it comes up. This initial phase was just a way to help me focus my research and to help minimize the chances of me missing something really important.
It actually didn’t take me too long to do the free lists, either. I’ve had several undergraduates volunteer to be my research assistants. I’ll write more about them in a later post, once I finalize who is going to be on my team and once I can get pictures of them all. They were great: they grabbed some pens and surveys and wandered through the halls of the university getting people to fill them out. It made my job a lot easier.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Research Assistants
I went to a little informal gathering for anthropology faculty and students at AUCA yesterday. I got the chance to tell the students about my research, and a few of them showed interest in helping me with it. I'm trying to figure out just how to manage research assistants: how many I need, how much I should pay them, what jobs I should have them do. Basically, my study has three phases, all with different jobs.
First, I’m trying to get a general picture of what I’m looking at. I need to find out some basic ways that people categorize aspects of their lives, their relationships, and their country. This is the easiest part of the research. I can find out how people categorize things through list tasks. List tasks ask people to list all the different kinds of a certain thing they can think of, like all the things they worry about on a regular basis, all the people who influence the running of their country, or all the different groups that people can belong to. This is a quick way to lessen the chance that I am missing any really important ideas. However, all this gives me is a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It does not tell me how the pieces fit together.
Second, I put the pieces together. I need to find out how people’s everyday concerns relates to their group relationships. What does a person’s religion have to do with the way they act on a regular basis? When is ethnicity important and when is it not? Are there times when gender differences affect a person’s actions or thoughts more than other times? I answer these questions by asking people about them. I interview people. I ask them to tell me how to put the puzzle together. I also try to find ways to participate with people in events that relate to my research topics. If someone goes to a meeting associated with religion that he or she feels is very important, then I want to go to the meeting as well. If someone works on a newspaper or a committee that tries to effect changes in the country, then I would like to go to work with them and help them. This helps me put myself in their place and put some of the puzzle pieces together myself. This helps me decide what the puzzle looks like. This does not tell me if I put it together right.
Third, I compare a lot of people’s ideas about the puzzle to see how they compare to my idea. Do people put the puzzle together differently in different parts of the country? Do people with different religious opinions put the pieces together differently? What about people of different economic conditions? I do this part through statistics. I take all of the things from the first and second phases of research that I think are important parts of the puzzle, and I condense them into separate survey questions that people can agree or disagree with. I then give that survey to a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds with a lot of different opinions. By comparing their answers, I can see what ideas people agree on, what they disagree on, and what parts don’t really fit into the puzzle after all.
For the first phase, I don't really need any help, but it wouldn't hurt to have some. I'm distributing the free lists to AUCA students on Friday. I'm hoping a couple of the students who wanted to help me will be able to help distribute and then collect the lists.
I need help for the second phase, but it's all behind-the-scenes work. I basically need people to find contacts for me so I can interview them. Students know a lot of people, but I think they might not feel like being appointment setters for me is really worth their time.
I really need help for the third phase. I need students who are willing to travel to the different provinces of the country to distribute surveys. This will take a lot of work, and a fair amount of time. I'm very willing to pay them for this part. Now I just have to figure out what the going rate for research assistants is, and from that decide how many I can hire. I would love to be able to hire 15 or so students, because that would give them jobs and get my research done really quickly. I might only have the funds to hire seven or so.
First, I’m trying to get a general picture of what I’m looking at. I need to find out some basic ways that people categorize aspects of their lives, their relationships, and their country. This is the easiest part of the research. I can find out how people categorize things through list tasks. List tasks ask people to list all the different kinds of a certain thing they can think of, like all the things they worry about on a regular basis, all the people who influence the running of their country, or all the different groups that people can belong to. This is a quick way to lessen the chance that I am missing any really important ideas. However, all this gives me is a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It does not tell me how the pieces fit together.
Second, I put the pieces together. I need to find out how people’s everyday concerns relates to their group relationships. What does a person’s religion have to do with the way they act on a regular basis? When is ethnicity important and when is it not? Are there times when gender differences affect a person’s actions or thoughts more than other times? I answer these questions by asking people about them. I interview people. I ask them to tell me how to put the puzzle together. I also try to find ways to participate with people in events that relate to my research topics. If someone goes to a meeting associated with religion that he or she feels is very important, then I want to go to the meeting as well. If someone works on a newspaper or a committee that tries to effect changes in the country, then I would like to go to work with them and help them. This helps me put myself in their place and put some of the puzzle pieces together myself. This helps me decide what the puzzle looks like. This does not tell me if I put it together right.
Third, I compare a lot of people’s ideas about the puzzle to see how they compare to my idea. Do people put the puzzle together differently in different parts of the country? Do people with different religious opinions put the pieces together differently? What about people of different economic conditions? I do this part through statistics. I take all of the things from the first and second phases of research that I think are important parts of the puzzle, and I condense them into separate survey questions that people can agree or disagree with. I then give that survey to a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds with a lot of different opinions. By comparing their answers, I can see what ideas people agree on, what they disagree on, and what parts don’t really fit into the puzzle after all.
For the first phase, I don't really need any help, but it wouldn't hurt to have some. I'm distributing the free lists to AUCA students on Friday. I'm hoping a couple of the students who wanted to help me will be able to help distribute and then collect the lists.
I need help for the second phase, but it's all behind-the-scenes work. I basically need people to find contacts for me so I can interview them. Students know a lot of people, but I think they might not feel like being appointment setters for me is really worth their time.
I really need help for the third phase. I need students who are willing to travel to the different provinces of the country to distribute surveys. This will take a lot of work, and a fair amount of time. I'm very willing to pay them for this part. Now I just have to figure out what the going rate for research assistants is, and from that decide how many I can hire. I would love to be able to hire 15 or so students, because that would give them jobs and get my research done really quickly. I might only have the funds to hire seven or so.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
North/South Divisions
I was walking home from IREX, past one of the campuses of the National University, when a girl stopped me and asked me if I spoke English. I hate that. I mean, I’ve come to expect that, because I know I totally look like a foreigner, but I hate it when my foreignness is pointed out to me.
Her knowledge of English was about as good as my knowledge of Kyrgyz, so we switched to Russian. She’s a student at the National University, working on a degree in tourism administration (a rapidly growing field in Kyrgyzstan). We chatted for a while and then I brought up my research. That got us talking about the country and she mentioned something that comes up in a lot of the literature on Kyrgyzstan: the north/south split. The Tien Shan mountains run straight through Kyrgyzstan. That geographic barrier has shaped a lot of the history of the region. Islam reached the southern part of the country several centuries before it got into the northern part. Russian influence spread a lot more easily into the northern part of the country than it did into the south.
A lot of people, Kyrgyz and Westerners alike, argue that the two regions are fundamentally different. The northern part of the country is more Russified and more secular. The southern part of the country is more Uzbekified (Uzbekistan lies on Kyrgyzstan’s southern border and Uzbeks make up about 13 percent of the total population of the country) and more religious. You see these assumptions all over the place. When someone wants to study fundamentalist forms of Islam, they go to the south. This girl had a lot of the same assumptions. She was from Issyk Kul, a northern province, and she attributed a whole bunch of bad things—corruption, cronyism, violence, ineffective governance—to the southerners who have been in control of the country since the outser President Askar Akayev a couple years ago. She seemed to feel that these people, and the divisions they represented, were the source of a lot of problems for Kyrgyzstan. I asked her why these divisions existed.She couldn’t seem to find the words for a second, then basically said that she didn’t like the southerner’s personality. She said they were always greedy, that they were mean and rude, that they would do anything as long as they got money for it.
Now, what she said, in my experience, has some truth to it. The south is not a very hospitable place to live. It is hot and dry, and the one fertile valley is split between three countries, making large parts of it hard to use due to border disputes. Crops fail a lot in the south. Life is hard there. People who live in an environment like that are more likely to hold onto their resources a little tighter. People in the north has, literally, an unending supply of water. The glaciers in the Tien Shan send so much water into Bishkek that they’ve had to devise a whole system of small canals and fountains to divert it. They’ve traditionally relied more on herds, which can be a bit more predictable than small-scale farming, and they receive a lot more foreign investment because the capital is in the north.
What struck me as interesting was the way this girl was ready to infer a lot of actions based on personality characteristics that she found distasteful. She didn’t like the way the southerners acted in their everyday behavior, so she was more ready to believe that she didn’t like the way the southern president ran the country, or the way the southern bureaucrats did their jobs, or the way the southern populations deal with conflict.
That’s actually very similar to what we see in the U.S. Midwesterners are more inclined to believe that New Englanders are all cappuccino-drinking liberals, even though the majority of New England is rural—I have met a whole lot of very conservative Yankees. Likewise, New Englanders are very ready to believe that Midwesterners are just knee-jerk fundamentalists who try to make their government agree with their church, even though that is just as much a mischaracterization.
My conversation made me think something that I had already been turning around in my head: the north/south split is bunk. I’ve already found plenty of evidence for fundamentalism in the north and secularism in the south. The split just looks like its real because the people have developed different ways of acting in their everyday lives. That makes it much easier to believe that they act different in the religious and political lives.
Her knowledge of English was about as good as my knowledge of Kyrgyz, so we switched to Russian. She’s a student at the National University, working on a degree in tourism administration (a rapidly growing field in Kyrgyzstan). We chatted for a while and then I brought up my research. That got us talking about the country and she mentioned something that comes up in a lot of the literature on Kyrgyzstan: the north/south split. The Tien Shan mountains run straight through Kyrgyzstan. That geographic barrier has shaped a lot of the history of the region. Islam reached the southern part of the country several centuries before it got into the northern part. Russian influence spread a lot more easily into the northern part of the country than it did into the south.
A lot of people, Kyrgyz and Westerners alike, argue that the two regions are fundamentally different. The northern part of the country is more Russified and more secular. The southern part of the country is more Uzbekified (Uzbekistan lies on Kyrgyzstan’s southern border and Uzbeks make up about 13 percent of the total population of the country) and more religious. You see these assumptions all over the place. When someone wants to study fundamentalist forms of Islam, they go to the south. This girl had a lot of the same assumptions. She was from Issyk Kul, a northern province, and she attributed a whole bunch of bad things—corruption, cronyism, violence, ineffective governance—to the southerners who have been in control of the country since the outser President Askar Akayev a couple years ago. She seemed to feel that these people, and the divisions they represented, were the source of a lot of problems for Kyrgyzstan. I asked her why these divisions existed.She couldn’t seem to find the words for a second, then basically said that she didn’t like the southerner’s personality. She said they were always greedy, that they were mean and rude, that they would do anything as long as they got money for it.
Now, what she said, in my experience, has some truth to it. The south is not a very hospitable place to live. It is hot and dry, and the one fertile valley is split between three countries, making large parts of it hard to use due to border disputes. Crops fail a lot in the south. Life is hard there. People who live in an environment like that are more likely to hold onto their resources a little tighter. People in the north has, literally, an unending supply of water. The glaciers in the Tien Shan send so much water into Bishkek that they’ve had to devise a whole system of small canals and fountains to divert it. They’ve traditionally relied more on herds, which can be a bit more predictable than small-scale farming, and they receive a lot more foreign investment because the capital is in the north.
What struck me as interesting was the way this girl was ready to infer a lot of actions based on personality characteristics that she found distasteful. She didn’t like the way the southerners acted in their everyday behavior, so she was more ready to believe that she didn’t like the way the southern president ran the country, or the way the southern bureaucrats did their jobs, or the way the southern populations deal with conflict.
That’s actually very similar to what we see in the U.S. Midwesterners are more inclined to believe that New Englanders are all cappuccino-drinking liberals, even though the majority of New England is rural—I have met a whole lot of very conservative Yankees. Likewise, New Englanders are very ready to believe that Midwesterners are just knee-jerk fundamentalists who try to make their government agree with their church, even though that is just as much a mischaracterization.
My conversation made me think something that I had already been turning around in my head: the north/south split is bunk. I’ve already found plenty of evidence for fundamentalism in the north and secularism in the south. The split just looks like its real because the people have developed different ways of acting in their everyday lives. That makes it much easier to believe that they act different in the religious and political lives.
Visa Issues
The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), one of the organizations funding me, has been taking care of all of my visa issues. I was not able to get a visa for the full nine months of my study, so the secretary at the Bishkek office told me to get a one-month visa, which I could then extend in country. I have been trying to get a hold of that secretary for a month now to see how to go about extending it, but she wasn’t answering my emails.
I finally called on Monday. Apparently, the secretary with whom I corresponded was just a temp, and she didn’t know the full procedures. The full-time secretary told me that, worst-case scenario, I would have to leave the country every month in order to extend my visa. I was not excited about that. Luckily, there was a loophole. You can get a year-long visa if the U.S. embassy gives you an endorsement. You can’t get that endorsement unless you are being funded directly by the federal government. Luckily, one of the other organizations funding me is the National Security Education Programs, which operates under the Department of Defense. That got me my endorsement. Now I just have to wait for the paperwork to go through. It’s going to be a little close. Normally it takes two weeks for the endorsement to got through, and another two weeks for the visa procedures. My visa runs out in three weeks. The secretary at IREX didn’t seem to concerned—she said it should work out just fine.
I finally called on Monday. Apparently, the secretary with whom I corresponded was just a temp, and she didn’t know the full procedures. The full-time secretary told me that, worst-case scenario, I would have to leave the country every month in order to extend my visa. I was not excited about that. Luckily, there was a loophole. You can get a year-long visa if the U.S. embassy gives you an endorsement. You can’t get that endorsement unless you are being funded directly by the federal government. Luckily, one of the other organizations funding me is the National Security Education Programs, which operates under the Department of Defense. That got me my endorsement. Now I just have to wait for the paperwork to go through. It’s going to be a little close. Normally it takes two weeks for the endorsement to got through, and another two weeks for the visa procedures. My visa runs out in three weeks. The secretary at IREX didn’t seem to concerned—she said it should work out just fine.
Working with the University
Tynara Ryskulova (my Kyrgyz teacher from trip to Kyrgyzstan last year) was kind enough to introduce me to some of her colleague in the anthropology department at the American University – Central Asia. ACUA actually has the only anthropology department in all of Central Asia. They import a lot of faculty from the U.S. and Europe, but also have many native faculty, most of whom got their degrees in Turkey or the Gulf. A few of them (such as Tynara) got their Ph.D.s right here at AUCA.
My experience with the department was very good. Besides being allowed to take part in an impromptu party (Aigerim Dyikanbaeva, the department head, had a birthday last week and they decided to celebrate), I was also offered a lot of help with my research. For example, Mukaram Toktogulova, one of the faculty, is doing research on small, in-home religious meetings that are increasingly taking place all over Bishkek. She agreed to introduce me to some of the people she has been interviewing. Aigerim offered to help me find students who could act as research assistants, and also introduced me to the people in AUCA’s Center for Social Research. The CSR sets up speakers from time to time, and they think they will schedule me in to speak in a month or so.
In all, it seems like my choice to affiliate myself with AUCA was a good one. The anthropology department is having a party on Tuesday, so I will get to meet some of the students and hopefully set up a few interviews.
My experience with the department was very good. Besides being allowed to take part in an impromptu party (Aigerim Dyikanbaeva, the department head, had a birthday last week and they decided to celebrate), I was also offered a lot of help with my research. For example, Mukaram Toktogulova, one of the faculty, is doing research on small, in-home religious meetings that are increasingly taking place all over Bishkek. She agreed to introduce me to some of the people she has been interviewing. Aigerim offered to help me find students who could act as research assistants, and also introduced me to the people in AUCA’s Center for Social Research. The CSR sets up speakers from time to time, and they think they will schedule me in to speak in a month or so.
In all, it seems like my choice to affiliate myself with AUCA was a good one. The anthropology department is having a party on Tuesday, so I will get to meet some of the students and hopefully set up a few interviews.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Research and Regrouping
I've decided to spend the next week or so regrouping before starting my research. I need to go through all of my book work to remind myself of why I'm here and how I'm supposed to go about answering my research questions. I think that little bit of preparation will be more useful than just jumping in to interviews.
Data collection--interviews, surveys, focus groups, participant observation--is actually just a very small part of research. In fact, if that is the only part you do, you research probably won't be that useful. I need three things before I start collecting data.
1. Justification. I need a good reason for being here in the first place. I've written a little about this on the web pages attached to this blog. When it comes down to it, I'm not really doing my research on Kyrgyzstan. I'm doing research to figure out whether or not cultural differences can be studied over large geographical and political areas (cultural differences have traditionally been studied in very small contexts, like villages). Kyrgyzstan just happened to be a good place to do that. I need to show exactly why it is a good place.
2. Theory. If I just interview a lot of people, then I'm no different from a journalist. Any science is built on a body of theory about what the important parts of the world are, and how those parts interact. This is usually built on previous research, with a healthy dose of imagination thrown in. I need to show that what I am studying is valid: that the different things I am going to be asking people about and the way those things relate to one another are grounded in good sound logic and don't contradict the empirical evidence we already have.
3. Methods for the Methods. If I just interview some people, then interview some groups of people, then observe some people doing stuff, then, again, I'm just doing journalism. I need to know how I am going to put those methods together to answer the questions from my justification. I need to put them together in a way that corresponds to my theories. That's what makes methods useful.
By the way, I have nothing against journalism. In fact, I use a lot of journalists' accounts in my research. And heaven knows journalism is more interesting to read than most scientific accounts. But journalism doesn't prove anything--it just describes. Science proves--it gives generalizations that you can use to predict what people will do. If I want a good read, I turn to journalism. If I have to make a decision that will actually affect people's lives, I turn to science.
Data collection--interviews, surveys, focus groups, participant observation--is actually just a very small part of research. In fact, if that is the only part you do, you research probably won't be that useful. I need three things before I start collecting data.
1. Justification. I need a good reason for being here in the first place. I've written a little about this on the web pages attached to this blog. When it comes down to it, I'm not really doing my research on Kyrgyzstan. I'm doing research to figure out whether or not cultural differences can be studied over large geographical and political areas (cultural differences have traditionally been studied in very small contexts, like villages). Kyrgyzstan just happened to be a good place to do that. I need to show exactly why it is a good place.
2. Theory. If I just interview a lot of people, then I'm no different from a journalist. Any science is built on a body of theory about what the important parts of the world are, and how those parts interact. This is usually built on previous research, with a healthy dose of imagination thrown in. I need to show that what I am studying is valid: that the different things I am going to be asking people about and the way those things relate to one another are grounded in good sound logic and don't contradict the empirical evidence we already have.
3. Methods for the Methods. If I just interview some people, then interview some groups of people, then observe some people doing stuff, then, again, I'm just doing journalism. I need to know how I am going to put those methods together to answer the questions from my justification. I need to put them together in a way that corresponds to my theories. That's what makes methods useful.
By the way, I have nothing against journalism. In fact, I use a lot of journalists' accounts in my research. And heaven knows journalism is more interesting to read than most scientific accounts. But journalism doesn't prove anything--it just describes. Science proves--it gives generalizations that you can use to predict what people will do. If I want a good read, I turn to journalism. If I have to make a decision that will actually affect people's lives, I turn to science.
General Orientation
I arrived in Bishkek on Thursday, September 6th. My plane came in from London (via Tiblisi) at 3:00 in the morning. I caught a taxi to my apartment, where I waited for Tynara Ryskulova (my contact at American University - Central Asia) to arrive and let me in. The apartment is nice (definitely nicer than the one I stayed in on my last trip). I've poseted a few photos in the photo section for anyone who is interested.
The summer is winding down here. Daytime temperatures reach the mid 80's. Nights can get downright cool, because of the cold air coming down from the mountains that lie along Bishkek's southern edge. The mountains still have snow on them--they never really thaw.
I'm spending most of my time right now trying to orient myself. Bishkek is not a complicated city, but it helps to just walk the streets to figure out where everything is. I have a reasonably good bazaar right around the corner from my apartment, and a lot of stores on Chui Prospect (the main street in the city) for my non-food or specialized-food needs.
The summer is winding down here. Daytime temperatures reach the mid 80's. Nights can get downright cool, because of the cold air coming down from the mountains that lie along Bishkek's southern edge. The mountains still have snow on them--they never really thaw.
I'm spending most of my time right now trying to orient myself. Bishkek is not a complicated city, but it helps to just walk the streets to figure out where everything is. I have a reasonably good bazaar right around the corner from my apartment, and a lot of stores on Chui Prospect (the main street in the city) for my non-food or specialized-food needs.
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